IS KANYE WEST A PHILOSOPHER?
One of my professors at Oxford used to say
“the beginning of wisdom in philosophy is to
learn not to jump straight in to answering questions but to begin by
questioning the questions themselves.” Granted, this is
exactly the kind of saying that tends to give philosophy a
bad name, but we’ve got to side with him in this case.
What is a philosopher?
- A lover of wisdom
This is the definition you get by
analysing the etymology of the word. ‘Philo’ is Greek for
love and ‘sophos’ is Greek for wisdom. Ergo, a philosopher is a
lover of wisdom.
I think this is an overly-romantic definition for what is
often, in its current guise, a thoroughly unromantic discipline. When I
hear the word ‘wisdom’ I think of an old woman who knows what’s
important in life. She’s got a healthy sense of perspective and is untroubled
by small anxieties or ambitions. She probably lives on a beach.
Compare that picture to one of a young post-grad sweating it
out under the lights in the university library, tearing his hair out about the best way to start his essay on whether
four-dimensionalist theories provide a satisfactory solution
to the problem of temporary intrinsics. He probably hasn’t called his
mother in a while.
- A questioner of assumptions
This definition is not so easy on the ear but it
is more accurate. I’d say all philosophers are involved
in the business of questioning assumptions. They ask things like,
‘What do you mean when you say A causes B?’, ‘In what way does
Ben deserve to be punished?’ and ‘What does it mean to know that
apples are red?’
But this definition is imperfect because questioning
assumptions is only part of the brief. You’re only
a philosopher if you try to answer those questions. More importantly,
though, you’re only a philosopher if you fail. If you succeed then
your question was answerable, and if your question was answerable then you’re a
scientist.
- A conceptual engineer
Here’s the one philosophers tell their
relatives at family reunions, trying to lend the subject a bit of
prestige-by-association. It’ll impress them as long as they don’t ask too many
questions, otherwise the whole conceptual edifice comes tumbling
down.
- An asker of big questions
Give a philosopher this definition and she’ll ask
‘What is a big question?’ which may or may not itself be a big question. In any
case, philosophers ask small questions too, like ‘How many grains ofsand do you need to stack up before you have a heap?'
- "A philosopher is a person who knows less and less about more and more until they know nothing about everything."
Honestly, this is probably the best
of the lot. But philosophers take
themselves quite seriously and wouldn’t like it.
What philosophers can agree on, though, is that
this man is one of them:
Socrates. In fact, most philosophers agree that
Socrates is the philosopher. Perhaps the only
true philosopher who ever lived. The philosopher that
every other philosopher dreams of being. The philosopher that
divided the entire field into pre- and post-Socratic philosophy. In the words of one of his contemporaries, a man “so bizarre, his
ways so unusual, that, search as you might, you’ll never find anyone else alive
or dead, who’s even remotely like him.” In Nietzsche’s words, “the turning
point, the vortex of world history.”
So is Kanye like Socrates?
He certainly thinks so. ‘See Me Now,’ a bonus track on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, contains the lyric: “I’m Socrates but my skin more chocolatey.”
Now it’s easy, especially if you don’t like Kanye, to dismiss
this as unthinking braggadocio. It’s easy to see Socrates as just one more name
to be added to the ludicrous roll-call of previous comparisons:
Shakespeare, Da Vinci, Picasso and God among them. Especially since Socrates is
a famous figure and the sound of his name chimes well with
‘hypocrisy’ and ‘aristocracy’ in the line before. But we’re trying to be philosophers now, and if
there’s one thing that’s true
about philosophy it’s that things aren’t allowed to be easy. So let’s
look a little closer.
Socrates was an ancient Greek philosopher who
lived around the 5th century BCE. Unlike your
garden-variety modern philosophers, however, he was part of no university
and he wrote no books. Instead, he did his philosophising al fresco,
which is a kinder way of saying that he harassed people
in the street. Think of him kind of like a charity collector, except
instead of money he was flagging people down in the name
of wisdom.
Like charity collectors, Socrates had a tactic for getting
what he wanted, a tactic that has come to be known as the Socratic
method. This name lends it a lot of intellectual prestige, making it a
favourite of atheist fanboys and people trying to distil their philosophy degree
into a list of lifehacks. However, it basically comes down to asking a lot of
questions, as this extract from Euthyphro shows:
Soc: By the powers, Euthyphro! how little does the common herd know of the nature of right and truth. A man must be an extraordinary man, and have made great strides in wisdom, before he could have seen his way to bring such an action.
Soc: I suppose that the man whom your father murdered was one of your relatives - clearly he was; for if he had been a stranger you would never have thought of prosecuting him.
Euth: I am amused, Socrates, at your making a distinction between one who is a relation and one who is not a relation; for surely the pollution is the same in either case... My father and family are angry with me for taking the part of the murderer and prosecuting my father. They say that... a son is impious who prosecutes a father. Which shows, Socrates, how little they know what the gods think about piety and impiety.
As you can see, it consists of a dialogue between Socrates
and a man called Euthyphro. We learn early on in the conversation
that Euthyphro has some rather important business to attend to. He’s trying to
get his own dad convicted of murder. This shocks Socrates, but not enough to
make him forget his one true passion in this life, so when
Euthyphro says that he’s trying to get his father thrown
in the slammer because it’s the pious thing to do, Socrates
sees his opportunity:
Soc: Good heavens, Euthyphro! and is your knowledge of religion and of things pious and impious so very exact, that, supposing the circumstances to be as you state them, you are not afraid lest you too may be doing an impious thing in bringing an action against your father?
To which Euthyphro responds, foolishly, by claiming to know
what piety is:
Euth: The best of Euthyphro, and that which distinguishes him, Socrates, from other men, is his exact knowledge of all such matters. What should I be good for without it?
Hook, line and sinker. Euthyphro doesn’t know it yet, but
this conversation is only going to end one way: with one man feeling very
angry, one man feeling very smug and no men knowing any more about what piety is.
Most of the Socratic dialogues follow this formula.
Socrates happens upon an eminent member of Athenian society who claims to
know the meaning of some concept – justice, love, virtue, etc. Then
Socrates asks them questions until they realise that actually they don’t know what
they’re talking about.
Now it may not surprise you to learn that Socrates was not
well-liked by the people he harassed. In fact, he came to be so
despised that the people of Athens had him charged with
inventing false gods and corrupting the youth. He was found guilty
and sentenced to death by drinking hemlock. This event is depicted in a famous
painting by Jacques-Louis David.
A true philosopher to the very last,
even imminent death cannot stop Socrates from yammering on.
Despite the impression you might garner from this
painting, Socrates was not a bachelor. In fact, he had a wife, Xanthippe, and
three sons. If Xanthippe is depicted in this painting, she
is the figure waving goodbye as she climbs the stairs,
looking for all the world as if she could not give two shits
about the fact that her husband is about to drink poison and shuffle
off this mortal coil.
Why the lack of tenderness? Well it might have
something to do with the fact that she was reputed to be
“the hardest to get along with of all the women there are.”
Biographers of Socrates invariably present her as infuriating. In one
episode, she is supposed to have taken a cake sent to Socrates and stomped it
into the ground. In another, she is said to have poured an entire
chamber pot over his head in a fit of rage. Her reputation was such that her name became a byword for fiery women. Almost two millennia after
her death, she got a mention in Shakespeare’s The Taming
of the Shrew. Socrates passed his own judgement on her when he said, “By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you will
be happy. If you get a bad one, you will be a philosopher.” (These words from the mouth of a man who was literally killed for being annoying. Funnily enough, we never get to hear Xanthippe's side of the story. Go figure.)
Thus concludes our brief biography of Socrates. Now we
return to the question at hand.
What does Kanye have in common with a man who was widely
despised, accused of corrupting the youth and married to a controversial and famous wife?
Well.
Witty allusions aside, there’s actually a lot going on:
1. A
disdain for books.
"Sometimes people write novels and they just be so
wordy and so self-absorbed. I am not a fan of books. I
would never want a book's autograph. I am a proud non-reader of books. I like to get
information from doing stuff like actually talking to people and living real
life."
– Kanye West
Ah, the quote that launched a thousand whining blog posts. Kanye at his most unrefined? Maybe. But he’s in good company.
“[Books] will create forgetfulness
in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories;
they will trust to the external written characters and not remember
of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not
to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but
only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and
will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally
know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show
of wisdom without the reality.”
– Socrates, Phaedrus
Socrates thought that the ebb and flow of
conversation was a much better way of seeking wisdom than reading
books. In conversation your questions can be answered and your objections
considered. He was very much a proponent of doing stuff like actually talking
to people and living real life.
2. A questioning attitude
Socrates wanted to get to the bottom of things, so
he asked a lot of questions. He wanted to know what the true nature
of justice is, he wanted to know how one should live, and I presume he would
have wanted to know how a man can empower himself.
3. The courage to say things that make people uncomfortable
Speaking at his trial, Socrates compared himself to a gadfly
and the city of Athens to a horse. Just
as the gadfly stings the horse out of its languor, so
Socrates stings the people of Athens out of their lazy
assumptions. His questioning leads him to reveal a very uncomfortable truth to the good people of Athens: that most of the time they don't know jack squat about what they're talking about.
Kanye, too, is unafraid to say things that make people uncomfortable. How many other people alive today can say they caused the all-time low point of a presidency?
4. A keen sense of right and wrong
After Socrates was sentenced to death and thrown in prison,
his buddy Crito came to visit him with an escape plan. Friends and admirers of
Socrates had stumped up the money to bribe the prison guards
and the sum was already agreed. All old Socrates had to do was
say the word and he’d be home and dry, free to live and philosophise
for the rest of his natural life.
Did old Socrates say the word?
Old Socrates did not say the word. Old Socrates
did what he was born to do. He asked Crito a whole load of questions. And after
all these questions, Socrates was not convinced that escaping was the right
thing to do. So he didn’t do it.
Even when it made people angry, even when it was against all
self-interest, even when it seemed to defy common-sense, he always did what he
thought was right. He was a man who lived and died by his principles.
Like him or not, Kanye is also a man who lives by his
principles. He has a keen sense of justice and injustice, of what’s right and
what’s wrong, and acts on that sense even when it makes him unpopular. He
speaks his mind, even when it gets him in hot water. And he never compromises
on his principles, even when he could gain a lot by doing so.
5. An inability to keep their mouths shut
It’s no secret that Socrates could have saved his life if
only he’d shut his mouth once in a while. If he’d left alone just two or three
of the powerful Athenians he’d harassed in the street, he might
even have been well-loved. He could easily have been the lovable old
eccentric if he didn’t step too far out of line.
But, of course, lovable old eccentrics are not still
written about two and a half thousand years after their death. Lovable old
eccentrics do not found entire disciplines.
Similarly, Kanye could easily have been a well-loved artist if
he wasn’t so outspoken. If he’d let a few things go, he wouldn’t be such a
controversial figure. But then he wouldn't be Kanye.
6. Unafraid
to ask for help.
On the 14th of February 2016, Kanye revealed that he was $53
million in debt and reached out to Mark Zuckerberg for help. Never one to do
things by halves, he asked for $1 billion. And he did it on Twitter.
Zuckerberg did not give him $1 billion.
When invited to propose his own punishment for his crimes,
Socrates suggested to the court that he be sentenced to a wage paid
by the government and free dinners for life, which is kinda like
saying:
Athens did not give him a wage and free dinners for
life.
Conclusion
Like a Socratic dialogue, this post began with a question –
Is Kanye West a philosopher? – and examined the evidence. It’s only
right that it should end like a Socratic dialogue too: abruptly, and without a
clear answer either way.