What Philosophy Truly Is — the School of Divine Wisdom

I am currently reading  What Happened to Catholicism? The rejection of the true Catholic philosophy is at the root of the crisis.

From One Peter Five

By Robert Lazu Kmita, PhD

The root of the notion “philo-sophia” (“love of wisdom”).

An Unexpected Question

Over the years, I have often surprised my students or friends with an unexpected question: “What is philosophy?” In this way, I have managed to find out, to some extent, what educated people think about the nature of philosophy. The answers I received allowed me to distinguish three categories, which, though different, share a common denominator.

The first consists of those who regard philosophy as something elevated, refined, and even spectacular—a play of words requiring mastery akin to that of the ancient players of the oriental games of chess and Go. The second category is made up of the undecided. These, though more numerous than the first, do not express clear opinions, except for one: they usually agree that “philosophy” is a specialized, sophisticated form of speech, inaccessible to the “uninitiated.”

The last and largest group consists of those who have a negative view of philosophy. While they often mention its uselessness, they almost always criticize the philosophers’ verbal incontinence. In short, they see philosophy as empty talk—an endless series of polemics and discussions revolving around “concepts.” The names usually mentioned are those of typically modern thinkers like Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger. Rarely, Derrida. The main accusation against them is, essentially, the following: philosophy creates endless chains of concepts which, instead of clarifying things, make them even more complicated. In short, philosophy would be empty talk, with no concrete purpose or usefulness, and no connection to reality. The Latins called this kind of talk flatus vocis – empty words.

If we read modern philosophy textbooks that present in detail the aforementioned authors, or others just as sophisticated (Fichte, Brentano, Husserl, Scheler, Jaspers, Wittgenstein, etc.), we will indeed discover that each of them proposed his own conceptual jargon—verbose, confusing, and many times self-contradictory. That is why, in order to clarify their own notions and statements, such confused and confusing thinkers must provide new explanations on top of other explanations that are merely “marginalia” to yet other explanations. In short, a never-ending story.

For example, if you have ever read studies on “the concept of intentionality” in Brentano and/or Husserl, you have surely noticed how easy it is to get lost in the tangle of technical terms. Or perhaps you have tried to decipher Kant’s famous question: “How are synthetic a priori judgments possible?” One could discuss this issue for hours without reaching a clear conclusion. The boldest readers may venture into the works of contemporary philosophers such as Jean-Luc Marion. Their titles are as unintelligible as they are strange: Étant donné. Essai d’une phénoménologie de la donation (Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness), Sur l’ontologie grise de Descartes (Descartes’ Grey Ontology), Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes (Descartes’ White Theology), and so on. For our amusement, I can instantly create other similar titles: The Red Epistemology of the Elephants, The Blue Mystery of the Given Subjective-Objective Non-Being, or The Green Openness of the Closed Popperian Society. What I want to suggest through such fantastical titles is that, at first sight, to an ordinary reader, the language used by “professional” philosophers has no intelligible meaning. Unfortunately, in most cases, the content of the books that bear them shares this trait.

Why so? Because a map created without an end in mind is not usable. In other words, when there is no clear destination to which a map can truly guide you, any such creation has — even though it may bear all the signs and words known to readers — no purpose. The map to El Dorado can be valuable only if the one who creates it has truly discovered the legendary city and knows the way there; otherwise, even if he invents words, names, rivers, mountains, and cities, it offers the public only a fantasy — like Tolkien’s Middle-Earth. This is why I believe that, in the case of those talented philosophers—far fewer than those who think themselves such without being—they ought to have been fiction writers and poets, not “thinkers.”

The hidden implication of the above (critical) statements is an important one: philosophy has a purpose, and the one who is a real philosopher ought to know it and how to reach it. Otherwise, he is only an illusionist, a sophist, a prestidigitator who uses words instead of rabbits and hats.

Without denying the intellectual capacity of such authors, one cannot overlook their practical disregard for Ludwig Wittgenstein’s recommendation in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Yet what stands out most is their inability to define their own discipline—philosophy. Those who have tried to find a clear definition have given up after realizing how contradictory modern thinkers’ views are regarding “philosophy.” Some relativists even claim there is no such thing as “philosophy,” but only “philosophies.” This general state of confusion lies behind Henry David Thoreau’s remark: “There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers.”[1] Despite the boldness of his statement, even Thoreau did not know what philosophy truly is.

Back to the Presocratics

And since we have brought up the understanding of “philosophy,” let us go straight to the subject by establishing a first milestone for anyone who truly wishes to know the nature of this ancient discipline: ancient Greece. Although the “art” of philosophy is universal—born from humanity’s desire to rediscover and return to the lost Paradise—the term by which we designate it in universal culture was undoubtedly invented by the Greeks. Therefore, if we truly wish to understand what “philosophy” is (and, by extension, what it means to be a “philosopher”), we must carefully examine the fragments preserved from the Presocratics. Only afterward can we explore the extensive works of Plato and Aristotle. To stay within the limits of this article, I will refer only to two key authors: Pythagoras (6th–5th century BC) and Heraclitus “the obscure” (6th century BC).

In a fragment recorded by Diogenes Laertius in Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Pythagoras states that “No man is wise, but God alone” (μηδένα γὰρ εἶναι σοφὸν [ἄνθρωπον] ἀλλ᾽ ἢ θεόν).[2] The reason for this statement seems to arise from a deep understanding of the nature of Wisdom (σοφία), which is the root of the notion “philo-sophia” (“love of wisdom”). For Pythagoras, then, the Wisdom that the lover of wisdom seeks is of divine origin. It is by no means the practical wisdom needed by craftsmen or for our daily activities in this transient world. The Wisdom Pythagoras refers to belongs exclusively to the Intellect of God. This understanding places us in the realm of true philosophy, whose guiding star is divine Wisdom. We also learn why Pythagoras refused to call himself “wise” (σοφός), accepting only the title of a practitioner of “love of wisdom” (φιλοσοφία). For only God alone can truly be called Wise. Consequently, no other creature has the right to claim that title.

An equally important and complementary contribution is that of Heraclitus. From him we have the statement—also preserved by Diogenes Laertius—that “Men who love wisdom (φιλοσόφους ἄνδρας) must be inquirers into very many things (μάλα πολλῶν).”[3] At first glance, this seems to speak of the breadth of knowledge, which should be as wide as possible. But if we correlate this fragment with others attributed to Heraclitus, we deduce that he is speaking about the depth of knowledge of those who seek Wisdom, but also about that underlying substratum that unifies it. For the lover of Wisdom can only fulfill his quest by harmonizing his mind with the unifying Logos: “Listening not to me but to the Logos, it is wise to agree that all things are one.”[4] Again, we find the same humility as in Pythagoras: Heraclitus does not claim Wisdom for himself, but sees it as belonging only to the divine Logos, which reveals the profound unity of all beings and things.

Here, then, we have two Presocratic authors who had already defined the Greek notion of philosophy as the love of eternal Wisdom belonging solely to the divine Logos. Plato, Aristotle, the Neoplatonists, and later the great Christian thinkers—some converted from pagan philosophy—such as Dionysius the Areopagite, Justin Martyr and Philosopher, and Nemesius of Emesa, along with brilliant Church Fathers like Saints Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, Athanasius the Great, and many others, all followed the same path of restoring paradisiacal unity around the divine Logos.

Ultimately, the restoration of harmony between the human mind and divine Wisdom forms the foundation of Christian mysticism. Beyond the pagan Greek culture, Christian culture was greatly enriched by Jewish revelation, especially through the sapiential books of the Old Testament. These texts purified, illuminated, and strengthened through divine Revelation what the Greek thinkers had achieved through remarkable intellectual efforts. Meditations and commentaries on the Book of Wisdom, Proverbs, or the Psalms of King David framed the re-harmonization between divine and human Wisdom, between the human mind and the eternal Logos. If we remember that Christian tradition calls the Blessed Virgin Mary Sedes Sapientiae (“Throne of Wisdom”), we immediately understand what the spiritual life invites us to.

Medieval Education and Infused Knowledge

In this same sense of cooperation between divine and human Wisdom, Saint Abbot Alcuin of York (c. 735–804), counselor to Emperor Charlemagne, presented in his short text Disputatio de Vera Philosophia Albini Magistri[5] the ideal of true philosophy. Properly understood as the pursuit of Wisdom, philosophy complements the acquisition of divine Wisdom, which, as Solomon says in Proverbs (9:1), is built upon seven pillars—the gifts of the Holy Spirit. While divine Wisdom can be attained only within the religious-sacramental context (the seven gifts being granted through the Sacrament of Confirmation), the natural wisdom of “active” contemplation lies in the seven steps of the pedagogical tradition created by Pythagoras and Plato: the Trivium (grammar, dialectic, rhetoric) and the Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy).

As a worthy servant of theology (sacra scientia), true philosophy aims to purify and prepare the intellect, as far as possible, through the study of the seven liberal arts. The ultimate goal is to support the great illumination brought by the gifts of the Holy Spirit. This ideal of philosophy, understood as ancilla theologiae (“the handmaid of theology”), as described by St. Peter Damian (c.1007–1073), remains perfectly valid today. Of course, a broader discussion of what this implies and how it can be applied in the modern world is absolutely necessary.

For now, it becomes clear that the highest purpose of true philosophy—whose model is the Blessed Virgin Mary (Sedes Sapientiae)—is the union of our minds and souls with divine Wisdom, a fortunate state lost through Adam and Eve’s original sin. In this sense, passive, mystical contemplation—accessible only through exceptional graces granted to those chosen by God—remains the ideal. Yet even though this does not depend on us, but solely on God’s will, what we can do is prepare our minds and souls by practicing the arts that truly have a purifying effect. Aware, like Pythagoras, that we can never call ourselves “wise” through our own capacities, we await the Creator’s illumination with humility, practice virtues daily, and shape our minds according to the ideal of divine Wisdom.

Photo by Anthony Tori on Unsplash

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[1] In the first edition of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden; or, Life in the Woods, Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1854, the quote can be found on page 17. Pierre Hadot discussed it in an article titled precisely this: “Il y a de nos jours des professeurs de philosophie, mais pas de philosophes” (“There Are Nowadays Professors of Philosophy, but Not Philosophers”), in Henry D. Thoreau, edition coordinated by Michel Granger, L’Herne, Paris, 1994, pp. 188–194.

[2] Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, With an English Translation by R.D. Hicks, In Two Volumes, I, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, 1959, p. 13 and 15.

[3] Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers. A complete translation of the Fragments in Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker by Kathleen Freeman, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948, p. 27.

[4] G.S. Kirk & J.E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers, Cambridge at the University Press, 1957, p. 188.

[5] Patrologia Latina 101, cols. 849C–854A. Unfortunately, I do not know any full English translation of this seminal text. An excellent study on Alcuin’s vision on philosophy is Mary Alberi’s: “‘The Better Paths of Wisdom:’ Alcuin’s Monastic ‘True Philosophy’ and the Worldly Court,” Speculum 76, No. 4, October 2001, pp. 896-910. The text is available online here: https://www.enotes.com/topics/monasticism-and-literature/criticism/criticism-major-figures/mary-alberi-essay-date-october-2001 [Accessed: 11 February 2026].