Guarding the truth
On the ideal of the philosopher
I would like to remind you, simply, that the Platonic ideal of the philosopher is the guardian. Not the contemplative mystic, not the creative genius, not the critical thinker. The guardian. It is said all too easily that philosophy has two branches —contemplation and critique. Contemplation of the truth, and critique of all false beliefs that stand in the way of truth.
All historical conceptions of philosophy carry with them something of the truth of philosophy. Philosophy is indeed contemplation of the truth. And philosophy is indeed a critique of doxa, as it is a creative activity concerned with the creation of adequate concepts. But seldom are we reminded of what Plato thought the philosopher to be —a guardian. Here something new reveals itself to us; philosophy is not only concerned with destroying opinion, with finding, and contemplating the truth. It is also concerned with defending the truth. The philosopher guards the truth. It is said that the philosopher is the being in which Being takes place. But Being takes place in all beings. For without Being, there would be no beings. But not everyone devotes themselves to the thinking of Being, not everyone values it so much, that they would care to express it like the artist, or to think and guard it like the philosopher.
This revealing of the Truth that takes place for the philosopher, truth being given to him, also comes with a duty to protect it. The appearing of truth is a gift, but it is a harsh gift, the gift of a purpose.
Heidegger reminds us that thinking is closely related to thanking. And the thanks we owe for Being, we repay by thinking Being. It is our duty to think Being, and it is our duty to let Being be thought.
But when Being is covered over, and when all who speak of it are scolded, when the mere act of thinking being is under threat, when life is driven underground, philosophy comes to be about more than mere thought.
It is said that the society that separates its warriors from its thinkers is soon to see decay. Perhaps, but it is just as accurate to say that thought necessarily breeds ‘warriors.’ For all who think, are necessarily devoting themselves to that which is thought. In thinking Being, we value Being. In thinking Life, we value Life. And what we value, we seek to protect, by nature. A life spent contemplating Wisdom and a life lived in accordance with Truth, is a life spent preparing to protect this mode of life.
It is no exaggeration to say that life itself is under attack today, and with it, the possibility of authentic thought. As much as the world is filled with a diversity of beliefs, and a diversity of modes of life, you are blind if you do not see that there is one over-arching cultural drift. It is this drift that teaches you that you should risk death getting five vaccines, each one being proven just as useless as the one before. It is this drift that teaches you that children should be exposed to the pornography of a Drag show. It is also this drift that teaches you to hide from the sun for fear of cancer, to have toxic sunscreen soak into your skin when inside, to pay universities to lie to you, and to swap your natural diet for a soy-burger filled with toxic oils. It is this same drift that tells you there is no soul to listen to, but only a society to obey. It is this drift that tells you to renounce your own eyes, and listen to some study no one has ever read instead. It is this same drift that has cultural institutions and activists conspire to vandalize works of art. It is this drift that seeks to destroy cultures, to replace their different means of expression with only one mode of consumption. It is this drift that wants to put a chip in your brain to protect you from your own free will. And it is this drift that tells you it is good to get hungry and cold, when it means harming the “killer in the Kremlin”.
If your mind is not too scattered by this very current, then you see that these things are not disconnected, but an expression of the same thing: life turning against life. To turn against life, this is its end and this is its origin.
In such conditions, it is folly to think that things will not change. The more evil there is, the more the good becomes apparent. As contrary is known by contrary. The drift creates its own reaction, by nature. For war is the father of all things, not peaceful enslavement.
The guardian is the result of a training, of a certain discipline —philosophy, the cultivation of wisdom, and the practice of those skills that will allow one to live in accordance with wisdom. What is peculiar, is that there are these times, in which those who would simply like to live in truth, living their quiet lives of contemplation, are no longer allowed to do so. There are many, too many, who would have accepted a quiet life, paying their dues to society, accepting the corruption for what it was, but generally turning the other cheek and focussing on themselves.
But they won’t leave you alone. You went a little bit too far, you crossed a line. They are no longer allowed to live a life of health, for you force them to poison themselves. They are no longer allowed to think for themselves, for you censor them with force. Now these people are pushed into their natural roles as guardians. They will not leave you alone, they will bear the greatest pains to expose you.
There are times when philosophy is allowed to contemplate, and so the philosopher becomes a contemplative. And there are times when philosophy is allowed to spew its critiques, and so the philosopher becomes a critic. But when philosophy is no longer allowed to contemplate, and no longer allowed to criticise, the philosopher necessarily becomes something else.
We guard that which we already possess, but which is simultaneously in danger of being taken. Taken by what? the enemy of philosophy: opinion. What is our most prized possession, given to us with the duty to defend it? Life itself, and the natural order it instills. This is the task of philosophy, to grasp the Logos, and to defend its order against the order of the blind. To, like Odysseus, keep our eyes on our natural home and end, and fight off all deceptions that seek to make us alter course. You are blind today if you do not see the end at least vaguely, and the enemy clearly. There is a war on nature, a war on culture, a war on life itself. It is a great replacement, replacing life with what is foreign and opposed to life. The 'matrix' or 'the cave', understood by children to be no mere metaphor, seen by the learned as merely epistemological riddle, seen by the guardian as reality. This cloud of Typhos, which does not see, that “the experience of evil results in a clearer knowledge of the Good”, and that this knowledge breeds its own guardians.