SECTION THREE. THE ROLE OF EDUCATION.

A. Wisdom.

1. Education is to be intellectually honest; it involves the ability to change one’s mind.

A crucial part of being a moral artist is to be educated, to be able to think and choose wisely. Education enables a man to become self-aware (aware of the portrait of himself in the world and its effect on the world). When one becomes aware of himself, he utilizes and refines the powers of reason which will help him to deal with the enormous "thought battles" he must face. It is foolishness to send an untrained person into military combat against serious foes. Likewise, persons who are uneducated are destined to fight battles without weapons of reason which could help them. Great tragedy exists in the world as a result of ignorance and the mischief it spawns. The uneducated man is the bad artist who throws paint without order or reason defacing the world around him and soiling himself.

Education promotes the virtues of temperance and tolerance. Temperance is the ability to trust good reasons and to follow them despite the enticements of pathological emotions and desires. Tolerance is the ability to be intellectually honest. It is the admission that there are real problems to which one may never have solutions in one's lifetime. It is a blow to human hubris that persons must admit that life is chock full of puzzles which may not be able to be answered. This is not to say that many problems cannot be solved, but only a caveat that we should not expect more of our powers of mind than they are able to deliver. Tolerance also includes the associated attribute of being willing to change one's mind when someone offers a better theory. How many times are we faced with the situation of someone's knowing that his thesis is flawed, but not willing to change his mind? Education provides the motive to be intellectually honest and to seek truth in spite of other (selfish or prideful) demands.

Education over a period of time has the tendancy to produce wisdom. One learns enough facts about the world and has clarified his beliefs to make them consistent so that problematic situations which he encounters may be dealt with as mysteries and not crises. Wisdom involves humility, the realization that reason cannot give all the answers, but that it can distinguish on a hierarchical scale, those answers which are less rational from those that are more rational. The mistake of too many persons when they encounter a problematic situation is to jump too quickly to a make-shift explanatory hypothesis and then cling to that hypothesis no matter what reasons come against it. Make-shift hypotheses will do in a pinch, but over he long term, they can be disastrous to hold. Religious beliefs often fall into this category. An educated man may have religious beliefs which go beyond the bounds of reason, but he may entertain an hypothesis out of faith only after it has been determined that reason cannot bring a more definitive perspective to the hypothesis.

There is an hypothesis which this paper assumes; the fact that one entertains a search for meaning in life presumes that at least the search is instrumentally meaningful. And that presumption leads to a secondary presumption --a quest for meaning is itself meaningful. Thus, this paper is a petitio in that the conclusion is begged. Perhaps Socrates best expressed this thesis when he said that as a wise man, at least he knew that he did not know, that a search for knowledge is not only instrumentally, but intrinsically good --" the unexamined life is not worth living."

2. Wisdom requires the living of the examined life.

Wisdom involves a commitment to the forces of good --that is, to do right actions. The wise man is someone whom a person can trust for advice in whatever form it may be given. Often, the best advice is given through acting. Watching what the wise man does is often as educational as listening to what he says. The wise man is one who commits his actions to reason and/or the proper emotions which are demanded by the circumstance. What this is to say is that often in circumstances in which there is little time, the wise man will trust his basic intuitions, for they arise out of deep seated beliefs which he may not be able to review given the pressing event, but that in the long run, his actions are based on good reasons.

Plato expressed wisdom as knowledge of the self. When one knows himself, he knows the principles and ingredients of his decisions and is able to trust them as adequate. What that means is that a wise man trusts himself to confront problems, to be able to at least recognize that they are real problems long before he may be able to give solutions --if there are solutions to be had. The wise man trusts his knowledge of self to let him live in the world, and live a life that is good in and to the world. The wise man is thus able to live the life that he finds is worth living, for that life is the one which he has chosen to make. There is a creatio ex nihilo type of argument here; the wise man creates himself and his world through his wise choices. Before he was wise, he was nothing. But, the process of becoming wise, creating his good self, brings out of that nothing something new and beautiful.

Another way of stating the point is that the educated man is self-directed. His actions are directed by what there are the best reasons for and for which he is guided by his intuition as to what is truly good. His rational judgment and his sense of what is good (beautiful) guide his actions through problematic circumstances. He is master of his actions by being a master of the components which make up his very being, his plan-of-action-in the-world. He trusts his judgments, for he trusts that his actions are based on the best reasons.

So, we are educated. With what? That is, how do we make the right judgments? We may be self-directed, but if we do not know what is the right action to take, the results can be catastrophic for everyone, including ourselves. How do we know what is the right action to do?

3. The right action is one which creates the good self and causes no unnecessary suffering.

Good question. A simple answer is that we should not do the wrong action. How can we tell that an action is wrong to do? Much of my paper has dealt with the notion of unnecessary suffering. Obviously, I would hold that a wrong action is one that causes unnecessary suffering. The sixty-four dollar question now is, what do I mean by 'unnecessary?'

Unnecessary suffering is suffering for no good reason. Behind any right action there are good reasons supporting that action. Causing suffering to anything for no good reason is wrong, whether the recipient be a person, animal or even a thing. I shall get myself in trouble here by saying that things can be caused to suffer --things like a great work of art-- but my intuition is that good and beautiful things of the world can be harmed. I would agree that the Grand Canyon cannot feel pain, but I will admit that its beauty can be harmed and harmed in such a way that needless suffering is caused, at least to the sentient creatures who appreciate it.

What about everyday dealings with people, not with the Grand Canyon? How do we know when an action is wrong? Again, when the action causes needless suffering. A simple way to determine whether or not the suffering is necessary is to use the following procedure: "Suppose that the recipient of the proposed action were sitting in front of me, but the person's head was covered with a hood. Suppose all the reasons pro and con for the action were given and a decision was about to be made. Just before the decision is made, the hood is lifted and one sees himself. Are the reasons still convincing such that a rational person would will that action to happen to himself?" The moral of the procedure is that we should have the ethical rationality to care for other people as persons, not as items or things in our environment.

4. The wise person has friends.

Caring for people involves being able to have meaningful relationships with others. Part of being wise or educated is to be able to have friends, to reciprocate care. One need not be intelligent to have friends, only wise. The smartest person in the world may be totally devoid of friends. Being wise means that we are able to be with other persons, establish and keep relationships with them through thick and thin, and enjoy the fellowship of life. This probably sounds like a lot of mush, but the truth of the matter is that life without friends is very close to being meaningless. If we cannot share our ideas, hopes, fears, and beliefs with someone who can appreciate those things for what they are and the person who has them, then we are in a situation which can only lead to despair.

Friendship involves real interest in and care for the other person --an altruism that is based on the commitment of reciprocity to one another. Friends care about each other, even when it is emotionally expensive for one of the friends to care about the other. That kind of commitment is hard to find and requires a peculiar "chemistry" between/among the persons to make the bonds fast. A way to tell about your friendship with another person is when you can understand or actually have the same feelings they do in their trials without their having told you about the situation. Friendship involves a personal empathy that requires courage to have and nurturance to keep.

Religion, as I will note, promises at least one friend to whom we may talk, but the conversation is seemingly one-sided. Having at least one true friend can make the difference between happiness and despair. And, if I may be presumptuous enough to make a recommendation here, I would advise any person to marry his/her best friend.

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