A professor made the point that it can be a mistake to think of philosophy as a foundation for one’s knowledge of the world.

In other words, we must live in reality before we can philosophize about it. Each of us experiences much of life before we can ever ask the deep and meaningful questions about it. A baby isn’t born wondering what its place is in the created order; he needs to explore the created order – and himself – first. Without this experience of reality, we can’t begin to ask questions about it.

Moreover, we also need the time to assimilate and sort out the details of everyday life that we experience. Philosophy is impossible without leisure. Rather like Wordsworth’s definition of poetry’s source as “emotions recollected in tranquility,” we could define philosophy’s source as “thoughts recollected in tranquility.” We need both the experience of things and the time to think about them before we are able to philosophize.

Claiming we must first build a think and sturdy philosophical foundation before we can figure out the details of reality. We need the truths before we can put them in a system. Descartes’ fanciful idea of sitting down and thinking it all over from the bottom up just doesn’t work; we have to start from the top down, sorting out our messy opinions, beliefs and experiences. The alternative is losing oneself in the theoretical.

For philosophy is theory, ultimately. Certainly we can integrate it very deeply into our ethics and actions every day, but we can’t put our lives on hold in order to think everything through first. We must live; only then can we philosophize.

Which is why, come to think of it, we have the Ten Commandments.