Professional Responsibility

Imagining Ourselves Philosophers

<1> What kind of philosophy do you need to be a lawyer?

What is it about being a lawyer that makes it not only a job but a philosophical world-view?

What kind of philosophy do you see yourself living?

In what sense is the philosophy of the lawyer rooted in what is sometimes called "legalism"? Is it legalism as a philosophy of life you have chosen?

<2> In what sense can it be argued that we are all philosophers? That we are all, better or worse, students of philosophy? What kind of qualifications would you want to make before associating yourself with such a claim?

Would it help get a better picture of what we are talking about if we simply define philosophy? Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary defines philosophy as:

a pursuit of wisdom;

a search for truth through logical reasoning rather than factual observation;

an analysis of the grounds of and concepts expressing fundamental beliefs;

all learning exclusive of technical precepts and practical arts;

sciences and liberal arts exclusive of medicine, law, and theology;

a discipline comprising logic, aesthetics, ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology;

a system of philosophical concepts;

a theory underlying or regarding a sphere of activity or thought;

the beliefs, concepts, and attitudes of an individual or group;

calmness of temper and judgment befitting a philosopher.

Philosophy = phil- or philo- + sophia: phil- or philo- comb. Form [ME, fr. OF, fr. L. fr Gk, fr. philos dear, friendly: lover; one having an affinity for or a strong attraction to][sophia wisdom, sophos wise]

And in Peter A. Angeles, The Harper Collins Dictionary of Philosophy (New York: HarperPerennial, 2nd ed., 1962), we find the following:

the speculative attempt to present a systematic and complete view of all reality;

the attempt to describe the ultimate and real nature of reality;

the attempt to determine the limits and scope of our knowledge: its source, nature, validity, and value;

the critical inquiry into the presuppositions and claims made by the various fields of knowledge;

the discipline that tries to help you see what you say and say what you see.

In Greek, philos means love; while philia is translated as friendship, affection, affinity for, attraction toward.

A philosopher according to the dictionary is a:

scholar, thinker
	a student of philosophy
		a person whose philosophical perspective enables him to meet trouble with equanimity;
			the expounder of a theory in a particular area of experience

Why would anyone want to be a philosopher?

What would it mean to adopt and try to live by a precept of anti-philosophy, to be opposed to philosophy, disdainful of it?

Are lawyers and students of law lovers of philosophy or disdainful of it? Is there something in our training and education as lawyers that sets the mind against philosophy?

<3> Legal education is often seen as an enterprise devoted to the practical art of problem-solving. And we assume there is a real difference between those who are practical and those more philosophically inclined. Perhaps you see this distinction in your teachers, even in yourself. To what extent is this distinction--the practical and the philosophical--of importance to you? In what ways have you experienced it as a student of law? To what extent is the cliché about law students being practical than philosophical an accurate assessment of your own mind-set?

One way we might learn more about what it means to be practical, is to push the idea to its limits. What would it mean to be a real practicalist? Consider the philosopher, George Morgan's description of the prosaic mentality, the mind-set of the true practicalist. [George Morgan, The Human Predicament: Dissolution and Wholeness (Providence: Brown University Press, 1968)]. The "prosaic mentality" says Morgan, is both a product of our culture and "modern daily life." [81-82]

The prosaic mentality is characterized by a cluster of attitudes and interests that it raises to supremacy over others, which are ignored, denied, or suppressed. It is this suppression that constitutes the fallaciousness and perniciousness of the prosaic mentality, and it occurs the moment prosaic interests are given undue stress or brought to inappropriate places.

The prosaic man is interested in abstractions, in groups of properties that can be abstracted from people, objects, events, and so on, and used to deal with them. Often the abstracted properties are what the prosaic man calls facts. To 'get all the facts' and to 'stick to facts' are typical prosaic requests. The prosaic man believes in facts. [82]

Morgan points out that the prosaic man has a particular interest in methods. He is "intent on practicing a method, busy with a procedure, involved in a technique, immersed in a program. . . . Whatever he does, the method, procedure, or program is the center of attention." [83]

"The prosaic man is interested in what I shall call clear-cut boundaries. He wishes to have things sharply defined. He wants to know exactly what is meant, exactly what the facts are, exactly what constitutes his rights and duties, and exactly how to proceed. He hates what he calls blurred boundaries and sees them as a source of misunderstanding, confusion, inefficiency, and conflict. He is determined to find out where to 'draw the line.'

The prosaic man stresses literalness. Whatever is to be understood and communicated he wants to see spelled out in explicit statements. He thinks that stark, literal prose is the only instrument of expression and communication, and sees deviation from such bare, denotative prose as leading to error, miscommunication, and emotionalism.

The prosaic man praises objectivity, regarding it as the essence of reliability and truthfulness. . . . For the prosaic mind, the objective is identical with the factual, and the practice of objectivity is geared to the other prosaic interests; it means concern with clear-cut abstractable properties, especially quantified ones; stress on clear-cut, standard methods, schemes, and programs, all with spelled-out rules; use of sharply drawn lines and divisions and literal, explicit prose. In addition, and most important, it is believed that to be objective means to withhold the feelings and to be detached and impersonal.

The prosaic man does not necessarily carry into effect the interests and attitudes he professes. He may very well neglect facts, his methods may be careless, and the boundaries he imagines to be clear-cut may be blurred. He may make statements that are far from explicit, use language that does not have the virtues of stark, literal prose, and manifest an objectivity that is sorely deficient. Nevertheless, these are the interests he pursues and stresses." [83-84]

"Insistence on explicit answers and clear-cut actions has a far-reaching effect on everyday life. It means that one must always have a definite project, a clear program or plan. Hence the prosaic man is forever incapable of considering issues in depth. He stays at the surface; he remains with things that permit readily specifiable action. He entertains no questions with respect to life, man, or society that do not obviously lead to specific things to do. Everything else, it seems to him is mere words--idealistic, not realistic; sentimental, not practical." [89-90]

"His orientation toward the world is epitomized in a question he is always asking: 'What's the problem?' And a problem, for him is something that can be plainly stated, got hold of, and solved. He looks at the world as if he were studying Euclidean geometry, going from problem to problem--either dealing with those that present themselves or, often, looking for new ones to apply his method to. Since he reduces everything in the world to a problem, his awareness is extremely superficial and narrow." [90]

"For the prosaic man each individual thing is basically another instance of something he has met already. None has freshness, uniqueness, or strangeness. When he finds an unfamiliar situation, it is at once assigned to a compartment or category that provides a standard explanation of it. Stock phrases and routine methods are instantly applied, and the thing is done with." [91]

"In order to exercise intellectual control, the prosaic man wants everything to be explained and settled; he wants it to be reduced to facts, caught in a scheme of abstractions, neatly and securely assigned to categories, pinned down by definitions, and fenced in by clear-cut boundaries." [91-92]

[Prosaic man] "tells himself that there are two kinds of people, his kind being clear-headed, rational, tough-minded, and skeptical; the others, obscurantist, muddled, irrational, sentimental, and gullible. This neat division shows the prosaic predilection for clear-cut schemes." [92]

In what sense have you taken the identity that Morgan describes as a prosaic mentality?

<4> We gain perspective by changing our location relative to the place from which we see the world day-to-day. With a photographic image of the earth taken from outer space we gain a new perspective, a perspective that rekindles a reverence for this place we have known, but a place we now know differently. To have a perspective from which it is possible to see more broadly, to transform the landscape you see before you, requires a new place to stand. It is in this quest for perspective that we become interested in philosophy.