The Philosophy Tree

When we think of philosophy, we tend to think of an esoteric subject far removed from the actual practice of living.  We think of the obscure terminology, the perpetually ponderous "isms" and the various schools of thought which bear their names.  We tend to think of the great names of philosophy, Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, and so on, those giants of wisdom who's names we invoke in intellectual arguments as though they were the patron saints of their own peculiar ideas.  If we're in a particularly imaginative or hypnagogic state, we may even picture philosophy as the domain of the wise hermit living on the mountain top who pilgrims have to brave treacherous paths and passes to reach in order to hear his sage advice.

In short, we tend to focus on the vast body of work done on the subject of philosophy, accumulated in books and texts, rather than on the object of study itself.  While the stars serve to remind us what the astronomer is looking at, and the flowers are there to remind us what the botanist is up to, philosophy studies something that isn't quite so easily brought to mind.  It seems like something more intangible and remote.  So it's easy to fall into the misconception that philosophers are off hunting ghosts in another dimension with no relevance to the real world.  "That's all well and good.", we say, "But we've got work to do and bills to pay.", and we move on with our lives.  This is a dreadful mistake.  Philosophy isn't hard to fathom because it's so remote from our lives.  Quite the contrary.  We have a hard time seeing it because it looms so large in our lives, because it is so fundamental and all encompassing.  Philosophy is nothing less than the study of existence itself.  Deeper still, it's the study of our understanding of existence and our place in that existence, and our understanding of ourselves.  It makes all the difference in the world.

Imagine that you and I and everyone else has a tree growing somewhere deep in the core of our minds.  As trees tend to do, this tree branches out from a central trunk, and those branches branch out into more branches and those into even smaller branches, and so on.  This tree and these branches form a kind of network which connects all the ideas and opinions and beliefs that you have about everything, from the seemingly inconsequential things like the etiquette for parallel parking out along one of the small twigs, to more meatier issues like where you stand on the death penalty on one of the sturdier limbs.  Your position on fundamental matters along the main branches are going to affect all the smaller branches that lead off from it.  It's all connected.  The tree as a whole represents our concept of the world and our attitude and approach to life.

Philosophy is the study of that tree.  More than that, it's a way of caring and tending, trimming and maintaining that tree.  Many people don't bother.  They let the tree grow wild, the gnarled branches twisting haphazardly around each other at random, choking the life out of some branches and leaving others neglected in the shadows unexposed to the nourishment of the sun.  They suffer the consequences of this in their actions, their choices, and in their very feelings towards life itself.  There are others who do tend to the tree, but some of them end up doing even worse damage because they don't know what they're doing, because they're not careful, and because they don't take the task seriously to begin with.  They cut into some vital organ and leave the tree half-barren, lifeless, and rotted from the inside.

If I say that I am a philosopher, I don't mean that as a matter of vocation or title.  I am a philosopher in the sense that I am an eater, a dreamer, a bather, and a sleeper.  I am a philosopher because I tend to my tree.  I've devoted a large part of my life to tending to my tree.  I've nursed it to health through the long, grey winters; I've cultivated its blossoms in the spring.  I've tried more than one ill-advised method and risked permanent damage, but hopefully I've learned something from my mistakes.  It's nearly a full-time job, taking on the task myself.  It takes time and thought and study and research.  But so far I've resisted the temptation to farm the job out to any religious group or political affiliation.  I have consulted a few experts on occasion, though.  I let Nietzsche have a go at it one summer.  The tree grew tall and strong, and even a little terrifying to behold.  Kant proposed putting a box of mirrors around the tree, blocking out the sunlight completely.  I sent him packing.  And of course Sartre still drops by now and then in the evenings.  He smiles and nods and reminds me that the tree is mine to make what I will of it; the choices and the possibilities are up to me.

And it's up to you as well.  You can tend your own tree, or you can ignore it altogether, or you can hire someone else to do it and find all of your ideas in their debt.  But make no mistake about it.  You have that tree too.  We all have that tree.  Philosophy studies something which is relevant to all our lives.  We all have some way of looking at the world.  The question is: Are you going to let that view fall into place by a random accident of jumbled ideas, or are you going to cultivate that view deliberately and help it to grow into something wonderful?  The choice is yours.