Three Philosophies Of Life
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Solomon mentions five such major candidates. As in any election, there are also many minor candidates running, which he does not mention. They are flashy, spacy, or “far out”, and appeal only to small “lunatic fringes”. A few people try to find their life’s ultimate meaning in things like tying enormous patches of brightly colored plastic around large bridges or small islands or getting into the Guinness Book of World Records by dancing on one leg longer than anyone in human history. But for the vast majority, there are and always have been five basic candidates, at all times, places, and cultures. The five that Solomon mentions are also the five mentioned, for example, in Hinduism’s traditional “Four Wants of Man”, in Plato’s dialogues, in Aristotle’s Ethics, in Augustine’s Confessions, in Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, in Aquinas’ “Treatise on Happiness” in the Summa, in Kierkegaard’s Stages on Life’s Way and Either / Or, in Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents, in Sartre’s Nausea, and in the novels of writers like Dostoyevski, Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann, and Albert Camus. Most important of all, they are the five candidates we find ourselves and our neighbors in “real life” pursuing most of the time.
They are:
1. wisdom
2. pleasure
3. wealth and power
4. duty, altruism, social service, or honor
5. piety, religion
in other words, a life of
1. philosophy to fill your mind
2. hedonism to fill your body
3. materialism to fill your pocket
4. ethics to fill your conscience
5. religion to fill your spirit
The first three constitute what Kierkegaard calls “the aesthetic stage” of life: self-satisfaction. (He classifies even speculative philosophy as “aesthetic”, the satisfaction of curiosity.) The fourth is “the ethical”, and the fifth he calls “religiousness A”, religiousness in general as distinct from Christianity. I exist for myself in the first three, for others in the fourth, and for God in the fifth.
Solomon has tried each of these five and found them wanting both in meaningfulness and in happiness, both in objective and in subjective fullness. And he tells us why. He does not merely argue; he experiments. He lives five lives and shares with us the fruits of experience. “Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it”, someone may object, but Solomon has tried it all. “1 have seen everything”, he says. He has a perfect right to knock it all; he has seen it all.
Even religion fails Solomon, as we shall see, because it is only Kierkegaard’s “religiousness A”, only conventional natural religion, not supernatural revelation.
1. Wisdom
Solomon’s question, remember, is the greatest of all questions: What is the greatest thing? What is the summum bonum, the ultimate end, point, goal, value, or purpose of human life on earth? What is the meaning of life? What is true success, true fulfillment, true happiness? How can I avoid getting A’s in all my subjects and flunking life?
As a philosopher, Solomon naturally hopes that it will be wisdom, for philosophy is the love of wisdom. He gives us the story of this attempt and its resultant failure in Ecclesiastes 1:12-18:
I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to the sons of men to be busy with. I have seen everything that is done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. . . .
I said to myself, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me; 3nd my mind has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” And I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. 1 perceived that this also is but a striving after wind. “For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow” (Eccl 1:12-14, 16-18).
We see the dark cloud approaching in verse 13, when Solomon mentions the “unhappy business” that is the search for wisdom. “Sadder but wiser” is a common coupling. Even Socrates knew that when he said, “Is not the pursuit of wisdom a practice of death?” “Philosophizing is a rehearsal [meletē] for dying.”
A second dark cloud comes when we hear the words “I have seen everything that is done under the sun”. Only God can endure that sight; only eternity can see everything without being bored. Worse than even sorrow is boredom. Sorrow is not necessarily “vain”; boredom is.
Solomon’s great quest for wisdom was not naïve or onesided, for he studied “madness and folly” also. The terrible thing about the result of his experiments with wisdom and with folly was that both seemed to have the same result; both seemed to be a “striving after wind”. Philosophy seemed as foolish as folly.
The only wisdom Solomon learned from this experiment was that “in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow”. He is not the first to find this bitter water in the well of wisdom, nor the last. Think of all the people you know. Is it not true that the ones who laugh the loudest and the most are usually the shallowest and the most foolish? And that the wisest arc usually the gravest?rhaps the wise arc grave because they remember the grave.
2. Pleasure
Well, if the highbrow does not have life’s secret, perhaps the lowbrow has. If the mind cannot make me happy, then perhaps the body can. If one life-style fails, let us try another, an opposite one.
Pleasure is the simplest, easiest, most obvious, and most promising answer to the problem of happiness. For “happiness” seems almost to mean “pleasure”. And pleasures are close at hand, easy to enjoy, unlike wisdom, which is a far and lofty goal, the road to which is hard to travel. Wisdom is a mountaintop; pleasure is a plain. Wisdom is mysterious; pleasure is plain. Wisdom is a walking stick; pleasure is a plane.
But one thing pleasure is not, even for Solomon, even for the man who had it all—especially for the man who had it all—it is not meaning.
To those of us who do not ”have it all”, pleasure beckons promisingly. “The grass is always greener in the other fellow’s yard.” That is one of the worst things about poverty: it is deceptive. When you have little, you can still believe the lie that more will make you happy. But “poor little rich man” Solomon had it all, and the bubble burst; the illusion was shattered. The rich know from experience that riches do not make them happy; the poor can still believe this lie. That is the chief advantage of riches: not that they make you happy but that they make you unhappy—but wise.
Solomon’s experiment with pleasure lacked nothing. He had wine, women, and song; gardens, pools, slaves, cattle—a veritable Disneyland of amusements. And like with any amusement park, the fascination soon wore off.
I said to myself, “Come now, I will make a test of pleasure; enjoy yourself.” But behold, this also was vanity. I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?” I searched with my mind how to cheer my body with wine—my mind still guiding me with wisdom—and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the sons of men to do under heaven during the few days of their life. I made great works; I built houses and planted vineyards for myself; I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house; I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces; I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, man’s delight.
So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem; also my wisdom remained with me. And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them; I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the
sun (Eccl 2:1-11).
Every serious hedonist knows the result of the experiment: pleasure inevitably becomes boring, sooner or later. In Greek philosophy, the pursuit of pleasure soon turned into the pursuit of apatheia, apathy, the avoidance of pain and passion. In modern times, the pursuit of pleasure often turns into an addictn: stronger and stronger doses must be found to fend off the familiarity and boredom. Sometimes it becomes, bizarrely, its opposite: the pursuit of pain, sadomasochism—anything to relieve the boredom.
Hedonists are suckers for salesmen. They arc in the market for anything—anything that might relieve the boredom. That is why hedonism and materialism are bedfellows: an addict has no sales resistance.
3. Power
Power is a deeper desire than pleasure, though most of us do not realize this. This is Adler’s improvement on Freud’s “pleasure principle”. Kierkegaard explains why: “If I had a servant in my employ who, when I asked him for a cup of cold water, brought instead the world’s costliest wines blended in a chalice, I would dismiss him; for true pleasure consists not in getting my wine but in getting my way.”
If we have power, we can push the pleasure buttons at will. Power is broader than pleasure because it includes power over pleasure.
We are more threatened by loss of power and control than by loss of pleasure; by a little inconvenience that we cannot control, like a torn nylon or a car that will not start, than by a great inconvenience that we make voluntarily, under our own power. A little pain bothers us more than a great one if it is not freely chosen. We willingly, even happily, run through the rain to the store to get there before it closes to buy a cup of coffee for the one we love. Our tired muscles and sweating body are offered up as loving martyrdom, But let an insensitive boss command the same act from us, and we will curse him at every step of the way.
Augustine, in the Confessions, goes so far as to find the deepest and darkest motive for sin in the desire to be like God in power, to be over the moral law rather than under it. Why did he steal those hard, bitter pears when he was sixteen? Why did Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit? To be “like God”. But, as Aquinas says, if we are Eke God in power but not in goodness, then we are not even like God in power, because God’s power is one with his goodness.
No jew except Jesus ever wielded greater power than Solomon. He was Israel’s most absolute monarch. His reign was at the top of the mountain of Israel’s history. Never before or since has there been such military, economic, and territorial power and wealth. Yet this too was vanity.
Solomon does not describe his experiment with power as one clearly distinct from his experiment with pleasure, but as a part of it (Eccl 2:8). The form his power took was wealth, the most obvious form of power. Wealth can buy everything that money can buy. Unfortunately, it cannot buy a single thing that money cannot buy; meaning, purpose, happiness, peace, or love.
But from the very failure of power we can find a deep clue to success. Power tries to control things and succeeds, but it cannot buy or control meaning. Meaning, therefore, is not something we can control. It must be free. It must be gift. It must be love.
But wait. We are going too fast. That answer does not come in this book but in another. We must fully understand the problem before we can fully understand the solution. So for the sake of fully understanding love, let us not yet think about love.
4. Ethics
Solomon takes a great leap forward when he abandons the threefold pursuit of selfish gain, satisfying his mind, his body, or his pocketbook, and embarks on a fourth and very different experiment: altuism, philanthropy, social service, working for others, especially for posterity. This vastly expands his horizon, his spirit, and his chance to find meaning.
Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow; but woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they are warm; but how can one be warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken (Eccl 4:9-11).
But even this is not enough, and that is perhaps the most shocking lesson of all to the typically modern counterpart who assumes that of course a life of service to neighbor is the highest wisdom, the greatest good, and the definitive and self-sufficient answer to the problem of vanity. The reason it is not enough is quite simple. All Solomon has found so far are vain toys. How can the gift of vanity be more than vain? If wisdom, pleasure, wealth, and power were vain for him, they will be equally vain for those with whom he shares them. Multiply zero by any number and you still get only zero. If you do not know what the meaning of life is, how can you find it by leading others to it? We all know what happens when the blind lead the blind: both fall into the pit. It is all very well to prefer altruism to egotism, to work for the good of others, but what is the good of others? Once I find the summum bonum, it must be shared, yes, but I cannot share it before I find it.
And, as Solomon sagely puts it, what good does it do to work for posterity if posterity is a fool? “I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me; and who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled” (Eccl 2:18-19).
5. Conventional religion
True religion would indeed be big enough to fill the hole in Solomon’s heart. But Solomon’s religion is conventional religion, not true religion. The true knowledge of God is the answer, the only adequate answer, to the greatest problem in the world. But Solomon’s God is only the God of the Enlightenment, the God of reason, and this God is far too small.
Solomon is honest. In a sense that is his undoing. He does not fake it; he knows that the God of nature and human reason alone, the God known only by observation and experience under the sun, is little more than an x, an unknown quantity, a vague First Cause, the one who stands invisibly behind everything. Aye, there’s the rub—everything. Evil as well as good. God, like the universe, does not seem to give a damn: “In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider; God has made the one as well as the other, so that men may not find out anything that will be after him” (Eccl 7:14).
Such a God could be believed and feared but hardly loved or trusted. Such a God is not Abba, Father, Daddy, but merely a “father figure”, the absent father, “the Great White Father”. Such a God is merely “the Force” of Star Wars.
Observation of nature shows no divine preference for the good guys. Innocent little bunny rabbits and human babies do not fare well against predatory coyotes or leukemia. Observation of human life is no better: the good die young, and the better you are, the more likely it is that you will be martyred. We men have a penchant for assassinating our heroes as well as our villains, our very good men and our very bad men n, seldom women so far, though if the radical feminists have their way, the women will soon be as present on both bloody ends of the assassin’s gun as the men have been). The safest course in such a world, Solomon sees, is: “Be not righteous overmuch. . . why should you destroy yourself? And be not wicked overmuch. . . why should you die before your time?” (Eccl 7:16-17).
Such a religion is as dull as the world. It is superfluous. Such a God is merely there, not here; an it, not an I; a thing to acknowledge, not a person to love and listen to and long for. The Great Unknown, however great, cannot fill the hole in our heart or the hole in our head. He must become known. But that story is in the rest of the Bible.
All five candidates for the position of the summum bonum, all five “toils” under the sun, all five of the things men hope in and give their hearts and lives to, have proved vain. The reason is that they are all under the sun, and everything under the sun is vain. Why?
Five Vanities
Solomon gives five reasons for his major premise, that everything “under the sun” is vain. He observes five features of this world and life “under the sun” that make
it all vain. All five are omnipresent. Like cancers, they extend their tendrils into every corner of our lives. Any one of these five cancers would be enough to kill meaning; life is infected with all five of them. They are:
1. the sameness and indifference of all things
2. death as the certain and final end of life
3. time as a cycle of endless repetition
4. evil as the perennial and unsolvable problem
5. God as an unknowable mystery
1. Sameness and indifference
We make value judgments. We prefer one thing to another: life to death, beauty to ugliness, good to evil. Nature does not. Nature is indifferent. In the words of Stephen Crane,
A man said to the universe,
Sir, I exist!
Nevertheless, replied the universe,
That fact has not created in me
The slightest feeling of obligation.
Take a Gallup poll of the universe. Ask it how many organisms it has brought into life. Let the answer be x. Now ask it how many of these organisms it has brought back to death or is in the process of bringing to death. The number will again be x. Not x + 1, not x - 1, but x. The universe has no preferences. We do. We do not fit this universe. The great tragedy of life is not just that bad things happen but that bad things happen to good people exactly as frequently as to bad people. The tragedy is that
everything. . . is vanity, since one fate comes to all, to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and to the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice (Eccl 9:1-2).