Philosophy and Self-Awareness
Philosophy, with Socrates, arose as a critical analysis of collective knowledge in the light of the unity, integrity, and self-transparency of individual consciousness. Not, therefore, of any individual conscience, but of one that fought for that unity, integrity, and self-transparency and that, with a great deal of hardship, was at the same time digging up and erecting them until lifting them above the murky confusion of passions and self-deceptions; confusion that, in part at least, arises from the passive, disorderly, and uncritical absorption of collective beliefs.
This struggle gives the philosopher, together and inseparably, the authority and the cognitive tools to analyze, judge, and, if necessary, condemn established beliefs. And it becomes possible and necessary only because of the double and self-conflicting constitution of the individual conscience itself. On the one hand, this awareness is formed following various currents of influence, both genetic and environmental, which pull it in every direction and awaken multiple mutually contradictory demands. On the other hand, it tends toward unity due to the continuity of bodily existence, as well as the need for decisions and choices that call for the unity of an active subject equipped with self-remembering, perseverance in actions, and the ability to respond toward other players around it.
A second layer of conflicting demands arises from the fact that the individual does not only have to develop as an active subject but must also find or accept a place in society, almost always sacrificing part of his sense of internal unity to the demands of the social role and to the feeling of group identity that sustains and protects, but also limits and distorts their individuality.
No human being would be able to rise to the status of a critic independent of collective beliefs if the only forces at play in the process of self-discovery—or self-constitution—of his conscience were his own individuating impulse and the demands and pressures of the social environment. On the one hand, that impulse is not a causa sui but depends on stimuli and cognitive means—including language—that come from the social environment itself. On the other hand, this environment is based, in part, on inherent needs in the very biological constitution of the individual being. Therefore, any evolutionary conflict that may arise between these two forces takes place within the framework of an inseparable symbiotic unity. In asserting his sovereignty, the individual relies on the social context and implicitly confesses his dependence on it. This is clearly revealed in cases of congenital or acquired maladaptation, in which the individual, when turning against the human environment around him, is expelled to a lower social level where he enjoys even less freedom of movement than that granted to his better-adapted peers.
This is not the case with Socrates. His inner independence is real, and instead of restricting it, it expands his freedom of movement, opening up the space for him to exercise a sui generis social role, in many ways superior to that of other members of society, of which some admire him to the extent of reverence and others envy and fear him to the point of wanting to kill him.
The achievement of this inner independence—and even, to a certain extent, an outside one—would not be possible in a framework delimited exclusively by the biological and social factors of the symbiotic competition between individuals and society. This competition unfolds within existing social standards and, ultimately, reaffirms the importance of society.
The independence that Socrates achieves, exercises, and demonstrates is supported by the interference of a third element, superior and independent of himself and the social environment, irreducible, therefore, be it to the natural constitution of individuality or the set of available socio-cultural data.
It is this element that Socrates calls his daimon, the spirit that guides him through the demands of life, imposing choices and behaviors that transcend both the impulses of his mere individuality and the rules and precepts of the society around him.
Therefore, what bases and defines the philosopher's activity is not the mere criticism of society, nor the use of the faculty as an instrument of this criticism at a natural and social time of “reason,” but rather the appeal to a higher authority qualified to guide and judge both the individual and society.
By submitting consciously and voluntarily to the dictates of this superior instance, the philosopher becomes an emissary of it but not the perfect and unique incarnation of its authority, which he recognizes is also spread at the bottom of the current social order, as degraded and confused as this order is. Hence the apparent paradox that the most independent Athenian citizens bow obediently to the sentence of the court that condemns him, thus refusing to assert in the field of empirical social reality an independence equivalent to that which he had demonstrated in the field of personal thought and ethics.
Socrates is a spokesman for "unwritten laws" that transcend the existing social order but not a prophet-legislator charged with changing that order to the standard set by those laws. His is to remind men of the existence of the transcendent order, not to implement it in the world by force of authority.
This will remain, over the centuries, the mission of philosophers and the very definition of their way of being.
“Philosophy and Self-Awareness”
by Olavo de Carvalho. Preparatory text for the class of the 30th of June, 2012,
translated by Daniel Bertorelli on April 20th, 2020, revised by The Academy on April 14, 2023.
The point the Philosopher makes is luminous.