Journal Questions

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The Assignment

The following questions are to be answered and kept in a journal. Try for 100 words per question.

Philosophy and Self-Knowledge: Keeping a Philosophical Journal

One of the chief characteristics that Euthyphro, Meletus, and Crito share is an inability to criticize their own views. Each lives in his own Cave. They cannot wonder. I suggest you practice wondering.

Wondering is not dreaming, and it is never satisfied with its first observation. Wonder is fueled by questions that criticize conclusions. In the Euthyphro Socrates is a wonder machine. Wonders drive beyond the first, second, and third answer; goes beyond the shadows; and hunts relentlessly for the bright world of Unchanging Truth.

Even my brightest students are poor wonderers. For example, after they have described Euthyphro, I might ask, "Now, what is wrong with what you just said?" Their faces are marvelously blank. The essence of wonder is wondering what is wrong with what you just said. Truth never comes off the top of your head, or if it does, you have a fine opportunity to wonder why.

If I ask you to think about God or the Holy or Socrates, you would probably say what you believed was true and stop rather than wonder. You don't need practice in thinking; you need practice in thinking about what is wrong with your thinking.

To really wonder, you need a subject about which you have a great deal of information. The only thing you have a lifetime's worth of experience about is your life. Here are a series of questions you can fruitfully wonder about in a philosophical diary. (Some of these questions touch on issues or concepts you just read about or may hear in your philosophy class.)

1. Who am I? (This is the central question--the remaining questions will help you fuel your wondering.)
2. What has changed in my personality since childhood?
3. What has not changed in my personality since childhood?
4. What is good about me?
5. What do I mean by the good?
6. What is bad about me?
7. What do I mean by the bad?
8. Where does the good and bad in me come from?
9. What is it that I hold in common with my father? With my mother? With all members of my family? With many other humans? With God?
10. What are the differences between my father and myself? And my mother? And all members of my family? And all humans? And all life? And God?
11. What has remained the same in my relationship with my father, mother, sister, brother?
12. What has changed in each of these relationships?
13. What evidence do I have about what has changed and what has remained the same in these important relationships?
14. What were the turning points in my life? How did they influence me?
15. In what ways have I changed for the better? For the worse?
16. Why do I believe what I believe about any of the above? How do I know it is true?
17. What can I be certain of about myself?
18. About what, or whom, have I been really wrong in my life? What led me wrong? What can I learn from that?
19. What lessons has life taught me?
20. What lies was I told?
21. What illusions have I held?
22. What generalizations can I make about father, mother, family members, friends, or myself? What is my best evidence for these generalizations? What do I believe about any of these people that is not true? How did I arrive at such an error?
23. How would I define love, responsibility, foolishness, and wisdom? What examples from my own life would support this definition?
24. What people have had the greatest influence on me? What did they give me that I lacked or needed? Was their influence good or bad? Again, what do I mean by "good" and "bad"? How have I learned what these words mean?
25. What is wrong with my responses to all these questions?

All these questions will help you wonder about the first question, Who am I? Keep asking yourself what is wrong with what you just said. And when you draw a blank, become suspicious, not content.

Eventually you will come to ideas that seem solid, that feel like bedrock. This is what you are after--answers purified by deep wonder. Live with them awhile, and come back and wonder about them later.

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   August 30, 1999