Six Practices to Make Philosophy Part of Your Home

Closing out seven years writing for the blog, I want to thank Nathan Eckstrand, Maryellen Stohlman-Vanderveen, Richard Byron-Gibson, Sabrina Misirhiralall, Sidra Shahid, Katherine Cassese, Mike Morris, and Michelle Crabb -- as well as many copyeditors, beat editors, and senior editors with whom I interacted only briefly.  Thank you for providing a space to attempt some humane philosophy!

Revised from a Public lecture, Wrocławskie Centrum Akademickie Wednesday, October 11th, 2023, 16h-18h, with thanks to Urszula Lisowska and the Institute of Philosophy, University of Wrocław

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In some ways, there is no better place for philosophy than in a home. Homes are often where we can be with family or find solitude and in these and many other ways get some space and time to be ourselves and to think, perhaps to grow. If they are not stressed by conflict or marred by trauma, homes are places to reflect and to wonder. What better setting for philosophy, provided that the home is peaceful and secure enough, free enough, to admit of some small experiments in living?

But homes are also places that might seem antithetical to philosophy, and not just if they tragically happen to be formed around strife, stifling judgment, or the deterioration of communication. Even healthy homes may seem to be in tension with philosophy. Suppose that homes are places where you can relax and be yourself. But isn’t philosophy a tradition that wants you to become something idealized and not yourself? Or suppose that homes are supposed to be down to earth and places where people can just talk about the everyday things of life. But isn’t philosophy an academic practice that employs abstruse language and concepts far from the ordinary ways in which people speak? Or suppose that home is a place for emotions, but isn’t philosophy abstract and overly intellectualized, a tradition pulling away from heartfelt and sincere feelings?

There is truth to many of these worries about the sometimes overly intellectualized, even alienating, tradition of philosophy, especially in its academic forms. But I want to argue for a way to make philosophy part of the home, even if one needs to leave the home in order to take a walk, go to a neighborhood chat, or tend your garden, only to return with what you have stirred in your mind. I want to emphasize a way of looking at philosophy that fits ordinary life and that supports many different ways of living, including many different belief systems.

My idea is pretty simple: philosophy can be part of the home when practices of wondering are part of the home. Protect wonder in the home, and the home becomes philosophical to some extent.

Wonder, the Background, and Wondering, the Act

Maybe you are stopped at a traffic light and see the neon sign of a gas station. Its shapes do not quite add up, or something about the way the light reflects on the rain draws your attention. Without even knowing it, you begin to think about what that sign or its environment could mean. You feel momentarily stirred as if you were brushed by something from outside of yourself. This normal, default openness of our minds is the background state of wonder.

Perhaps later you return home from work and for some reason the scene from the gas station and its neon lights comes back to you. You find yourself getting absorbed in wanting to understand why it struck you as meaningful. It is ordinary, but you are stirred by it. So, you begin to consider different ways that it could be meaningful and make sense in terms you had not considered before. This act that you are doing is wondering. Wondering is the act of focusing the healthy mind’s capacity to wonder on something we want to make sense of. Wondering takes what is with us normally when we have an open mind and puts it to work.

Wonder and wondering are different. Wonder, the background condition of a healthy mind, is also the basic quality of an open mind. It is spontaneous in a healthy mind, and it just happens. Have you ever noticed how your mind turns over the possibilities of how things can make sense, sometimes without you even being aware of it?

By contrast, wondering is something that we can train and develop. It is something that we intentionally do. When you consider how a problem that does not make sense at all to you can be reformulated in order for it to change its initial meaning and begin to make better sense, you are wondering. You’re aiming to wonder about the problem and its solution, actively keeping an open mind as you focus on its mystery. You take time to get lost in something.

But when you simply walk around during the day with an open mind, keeping a spirit of mental playfulness inside as to the possibilities of what things mean and how they could and could not make sense, well, then you are simply existing in wonder. You are not wondering about anything, just bringing wonder to how you tend to meet the world. That can be very low-key, not a big deal.

Many people think wonder is sudden and disruptive, like an epiphany. It can be, of course. Imagine that at the gas station under the neon lights in the rain, I saw a parade of people on bikes riding by with Christmas lights wrapped along their bicycles and powered by their peddling. Through my window, I heard them singing, “Goodbye to the old world, the new world is here. All our glaciers have turned to rain. All are suns have burned the sky.” This would be weird. As I realize that I am witnessing some kind of climate change ritual, I might be struck by how crazy the world has become, how unpredictable and unstable. So, I would be struck spontaneously by something that really shakes up the meaning of the boring work-day world, like this completely unexpected and strange sight.

But I needn’t be struck by something so disruptive to find that my mind is engaged in wonder. I could simply by tapping my fingers on the steering wheel, somewhat bored, waiting for the light to change, but my mind would be considering the meaning of the neon sign. Wonder need not be an epiphany. It is more ordinary than that.

Related to the view of wonder as some overwhelming experience of surprise is the view that wonder is an emotion. Major philosophers think this from Hume to Martha C. Nussbaum. But the definition I have just given of both wonder and wondering deny that it be understood as an emotion. Rather, as a facet of the mind or as an act of the mind, wonder or wondering can be emotional. But they needn’t be. One can just be calm and wonder. One can be focused and earnest, wondering.

This is because wonder is part of reflective consciousness, something separable from specific emotions, even while thought is suffused with emotional tonality and currents. The tradition my understanding of wonder is in is rooted in Kant’s philosophy of mind and moves all the way up through 20th century phenomenology, including the controversial Karol Wojtyła and Wrocław-based Edith Stein.

Finally, many people think that wonder is delightful or even childlike in its joy. Obviously, it can be. But one turns over the possibilities of the meaning of things that are quite tough. We can find ourselves in wonder in the hospital receiving bad news, even before we worry, or even while we are worrying.

There needn’t be anything especially happy about wonder, even if it tends to keep the mind free. We can find wonder in awful things so long as our minds remain open. A lot of people who work in emergency situations where life is at risk will tell you this. In the midst of the fire, they keep their minds open about the meaning of what they are facing and how to make sense of it. And, in split seconds, they engage at times in wondering in order to solve problems that save lives!

In sum, wonder is completely normal and healthy. It needn’t be some romantic flight of fancy or some exalted thing of overly intellectual artists, writers, or philosophy professors. It can be emotional, but it can coexist with or even be found in many emotions as well as in relatively unemotional states of mind. Whenever you find your mind open, turning over, even being playful with, the possibilities of how things can make sense or stretch into new meanings, your mind is in wonder. Whenever you concentrate enough to focus that consideration through an act that intentionally lets you get lost, absorbed in figuring out how things make sense or what they mean according to their different possibilities, well, then you are wondering.

Modern Homes

One of the reasons I like the idea of protecting wonder in the home is that wonder supports thoroughly modern ideas. Wonder may be ancient, rooted in Plato’s Theaetetus or Aristotle’s Metaphysics, but it is also remarkably modern. With many variations and nuances, it runs the length of the philosophical tradition.

In being just as much modern as ancient, wonder supports modern homes if I may put things like that. What I mean by a “modern home,” though, is not realized in brand new toaster ovens, voice activated AI systems to adjust the heat or turn the lights on, or even clean, spare architectural lines with big, shutterless windows. In speaking of the “modern,” I am speaking of values that are found in ideas, specifically, some modern ideas.

Both wonder and wondering relate to important ideas in modern philosophy such as authenticity, autonomy, and equality. These ideas are “universal” in the sense that they pertain to every human being, not just some intellectual elite. They are ideas belonging to common humanity. Through them, wonder should be seen as in the service of people everywhere, and it should be understood as being involved in keeping open the possibility of human enlightenment and self-direction. These three ideas that wonder supports make for truly modern homes, whatever the technology in the home or the home’s sense of style.

The idea of authenticity is the idea that a human life can be lived so that we are true to ourselves. Moreover, to fail to be true to ourselves, that is, to be inauthentic, is to lose out on living. Your life is no longer truly your own. You are a passenger in it, and it may not be open to how you feel, what you think, or where you want to go. To be authentic is to insist on relating to your life personally, messy and imperfect though that will inevitably be. But only by doing so do we stand a chance of being real with life and of not faking how we feel, what life means for us, and whether we think something truly makes sense to us.

The idea of autonomy is the idea that a human life can be lived such that the norms that govern our lives are ones that truly make sense to us, or, when they do not, that we recognize them as such and maintain a critical attitude on their heteronomy. Moreover, to fail to live autonomously is to live beneath our human dignity, like some dependent machine rather than a self-governing human being who can think for themself.

Autonomy depends on authenticity, because without being true to ourselves – that is, without being to some degree authentic – we cannot possibly recognize whether a norm actually does makes sense to us fully and personally. At the same time, autonomy is important for authenticity, for without leading our own lives by what makes sense to us, it becomes increasingly hard to be true to ourselves, that is to be authentic. Autonomy and authenticity go hand in hand. The former concerns governance and norms, the latter personal connection.

Finally, the idea of equality is the idea that no human being has grounds to deny the presumption of the autonomy of others, provided that others are biologically and developmentally capable of governing their own lives. (In cases where people cannot be autonomous as a matter of physical or developmental ability, subsidiary forms of autonomy kick in, such as treating people with respect through those responsible for them or respecting how they strive in their own ways.) Every human being has their own life, and no one gets to deny that of others. This is a moral idea, obviously, and it undergirds many elaborations of equality, for instance, when people enter into discussion of material equality of wealth or opportunities or equality under the law.

At the base of each of these forms of equality, sometimes called “equity,” is a claim about autonomy, and so, by implication, about authenticity. You have your life, and I have mine, and I do not get to ignore that on pain of failing to understand what it is to be human.

Think of these three modern ideas, and then think of wonder. Protecting wonder and developing wondering are at the heart of all three of them. Here’s why. If my mind is closed to turning over the possibilities of the sense and meaning of things, then I will not be able to tell if I truly relate to something, that is, if it truly makes sense to me. So, I will not be authentic. This in turn will interfere with my autonomy, as we’ve seen. And if I am unstable in my autonomy, then I will have a harder time leaving room for the autonomy of others, if only because I will not be able to enter into autonomous relationships with them. After all, I myself will not be fully autonomous, and this will imperil the quality of our relationship.

Wonder, an open mind, is then at the root of core modern ideas of how to be free and equal human beings. That’s an amazing thing when you think of it – so simple and so powerful! But there’s more. To develop wondering – the act of being lost in wonder – is bound to help one be true to oneself, fortify one’s autonomy, and show others how they too can be authentic and autonomous. Learning how to wonder has positive effects on living your own life, living free from norms that don’t make sense to you at least by being mentally free of them, and being a constructive partner in relationships that allow people to be free and equal together. My argument this late afternoon about protecting wonder in the home is therefore an argument about protecting good relationships in and on the basis of the home by way of protecting a core condition of being true to ourselves and being our own masters.

Protecting Wonder in the Home

I’ve said that wonder is natural to healthy human beings. But it can be driven out of people’s lives. Minds can close down. Inversely, wondering can be developed. We can grow in our capacity to wonder. We can learn to wonder better. Protecting wonder in the home is therefore important for what a home can be. It protects us from having our minds close down, and it opens up the room to strengthen our capacity to make sense of life, the world, and of each other.

A home that protects wonder is one that protects healthy minds, and a home that imperils wonder is one that can close minds down. A home that develops wondering is one where people grow in their capacity to be true to themselves and to be free with others. A home that neglects to develop wondering leaves people mentally homeless in their common humanity, at least when it comes to learning to be true to ourselves and to lead our own lives by our own lights.

The point that I am emphasizing is that to protect wonder takes practice, and this applies to home-life as much as to life out at work or on the street. There are many influences in contemporary societies that can erode the mind’s natural wonder or undermine the chance to develop it through wondering. For instance, think about how much stress work can put on one’s life. When people are under pressure to deliver on the job, or worse when people are overwhelmed by work dynamics or demands, it is very hard to find the mental space to take in the world, let alone to consider it from many angles. It is hard to appreciate the depth and mystery of others, even those with whom you share your most intimate life! One’s attention gets focused on the job or on relief from it, and what easily goes missing if one does not make space for it is time to consider the meaning of what is coming at one and how it may or may not make sense or how it could make sense differently if one considered it differently. Even more profoundly, larger questions go missing about how what one is doing makes sense in the bigger picture of things. And, to my mind, most profoundly, what can go missing is simply a who, not a what. Others can go missing. They can be there right in front of your face, but you barely think about what is going on inside them.

Or think about the narrowing of minds that occurs when people get into bad communicative dynamics, whether over social media, watching television, or in socializing. These dynamics need not be overt polarized and simplistic disagreements such as happen over the internet or on TV. They need not be reactive assertions of will as might happen in bars when alcohol is present and people are acting stupid. Stultifying communicative dynamics can simply be a kind of conformism and tedium that sets into groups that feel negatively anxious to appear a certain way, to talk a certain way, or to repeat a set of conventional beliefs, whether or not how people come off, what they say, or what they believe actually issues from or connects with the hearts and minds of those involved. Would people say what they do or assert such beliefs if they took the time to reflect on them and whether they make sense? It’s hard to know in such communicative environments when people close off the part of themselves that would speak up or question. The negatively anxious, tacitly restrictive environments close down their minds.

Yet when we create practices centered around wondering, we give ourselves something to do that serves to protect wonder from outside influences such as work or subtly draining communication. Repeated practice then habituates us to wonder in our lives. Practices in the home can do that.

Six Ways to Lose the Edges of Your World

To set up practices is something deliberate, even if the practices were inherited from conventions or family traditions without much thought of your own. Once we take a look at the practices and design them to protect wonder, we are setting up an intentional pattern of action inside our homes that puts us in touch, time and again, with our natural power of wonder and gradually trains us to wonder in ways that work better for each of us. Deliberate tinkering with our lives to protect wonder can subtly transform many things that we routinely do into practices of wondering.

Think of the kitchen table meal. It could be stressed out, efficient, mere ingestion of calories. Or it could be boring, negatively anxious, or tense, surface talk hiding what people might really feel or want to say if they had the mental space and felt protected to do so. But wonder can be protected at the kitchen table meal. One can even make a practice of wondering at a meal.

At the start of this post, you may have thought that to make wondering part of regular family meals would be forced or fanciful, people going on flights of enthusiasm into the sky while eating pierogies. But now I hope you understand how ordinary and adaptable wonder is. That affects wondering during a meal.

All that is needed to set up a practice of wondering at the kitchen table meal is a norm to protect moments in the meal where people want to talk out something to see how it makes sense or what it means. Also included in this norm should be the protection of silences where people want to think. Both of these dimensions of the norm may mean taking time with meals or letting conversations stretch piecemeal over many meals.

The important thing is that by making a meal a place where, when the mental impulse arises, people can talk things out or be silent to think, people at the meal gradually get used to their wonder being protected at mealtime. This need not be overt; in fact, it will probably work better if the protection of wonder is unspoken so that people can be more at ease. But the key thing is that the practice of the meal will slowly change over time to acquire a kind of fullness underneath its surface and a richness of talk at its surface, even if the talk consists of few but meaningful words. In such meals as these we are imagining, silence fills the room with the promise of meaning, not with the death of it, and talk begets intelligence with the things of life, not distraction from life’s underlying stupidities. In meals created around the practice of wondering, participants will not feel pressure to shut their minds down or close themselves off as much because they know that the meal has the looseness in it for them to talk or to think while at the table.

After dinner, what can be done? One thing people do is to go for a walk. So, let’s think about the neighborhood walk next. You do not need to copy Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Henry David Thoreau, Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin, or the Zen masters to make a practice of taking a regular walk around your neighborhood. Suppose that you do so with the norms of taking things in, letting your mind be at rest, and following out your associations freely. With these norms shaping your practice, you will, over time, engage the mind’s natural wonder. In fact, the associating will be some degree of wonder already. That’s a really cool thing about a regular and reflective walk, loose and casual though it still can be.

The practice of the neighborhood walk is potent because in going out into your neighborhood, you go away from your home and then back to it, taking in your lived environment. This is one that is both familiar and meaningful to you, although you may often forget that it is so. By going out walking while wondering, you reconnect with this environment and thereby relate your home to its immediate world and vice-versa. So, the things that are physically closest to you become things about which you have a more authentic connection. In turn, you can be more autonomous in your neighborhood as a result, even when the neighborhood is one about which you are critical.

Of course, you might also go out after dinner in order to go hang out with people in your city. This reminds me of one of my favorite practices of wondering, the community discussion group! You remember, this is the thing that I said I’d discuss later at the very beginning of this afternoon’s talk when I was discussing how I ideally approach public philosophy. The practice of the neighborhood discussion group is rooted in the most ancient formation of philosophy in the Athenian schools where groups of Stoics, Cynics, Platonists, and so on talked together at length as part of their ways of living. The thing that I want to emphasize is that if you can organize a discussion group in your community and protect wonder in it, that group will in turn affect your home in positive ways.

First, to protect wonder in a community discussion group requires some such norms as were found at the kitchen table meal. Namely, it must be okay in such groups to talk things out without fear and also at times to be silent in them and to think while listening. In my experience, the best discussion groups are set up simply to make sure that these norms apply to everyone present and that no one dominates the group. If no one does and the norms obtain, then the group is a place open to wonder.

Second, one can develop wondering in discussion groups by leaving the planning of the meetings fairly open. If one lets future meetings be set up by what has come up at past meetings such that the meetings hand off to the future meeting the topic that arises, then the groups develop a sustained act of wondering, not pre-planned in its agenda but evolving with the way the discussion flows. In the first meeting, people raise some questions or concerns, and in subsequent meetings, one tries to speak to those questions or concerns, in turn revealing new ones. Then these new ones are the subject of the third meeting, and so on. The discussion emerges along with the wondering!

Community discussion groups affect the home because the conversations that happen in them stir the mind, and one brings that home with one. The conversations give people something to talk about with people back home or something to think about when home while lying awake and thinking before going to sleep or while browsing the internet. Moreover, one has to make room in one’s home life to go out to a discussion group. So, the group becomes an extension of home by how the home is managed, and its effects come back into the home, stirring the meaning of things and making daily life more reflective. What are the chances, do you think, that if you belong to a community discussion group you will not carry on some of that discussion at the kitchen table meal?

These last two practices are out orbiting the home and then coming back to it. But perhaps you do not want to spend time with many more people when your day is done. So, here’s another possibility that is just outside the home, namely, in a garden.

As I bet many of you are aware, gardening is a solitary activity with a strong philosophical history in many cultures, not just European or Anglophone ones. Many people who garden say, and many philosophical texts around the world attest, that tending our gardens is a way to work through things as we garden, to let them sort out in our minds, to relax in considering them, and to ground them in tangible and satisfying work. Some even say that getting dirty in the garden helps one become comfortable with how messy things can be in life, and that the strange life of plants is suggestive for different perspectives on our own lives. Being okay with messiness or appreciating the strangeness of other forms of life help people wonder.

When gardening is a reflective, even meditative, activity, it involves wonder and has moments of wondering in it. Then gardening grows the mind too. Going out to garden can be a conscious way to protect the openness of the mind. So it’s my fourth practice of wondering to make philosophy part of the home.

For the last two practices (and there are obviously so many more we could imagine! What practices might you make or do you make in your homes?), let’s return inside the home. The fifth practice fits many times of day, early morning before people wake, at mid-morning while taking a break at home or even at work on something from home, after lunch at home and before going out again, even in mid-to-late afternoon over homework, chores, you name it. The fifth practice pays tribute to music lovers. I call it “stereo sanctuary” after the title of a song from an imaginative band in the 1980s. Certainly, listening to music can be an escape or a distraction. But it can also be a way to take in the meaning of things and to figure out how you feel about something. Listening to music can help people figure out how things do or do not make sense to them. When listening to music has that function, it is a practice of wondering.

If you can relate to music reflectively, aiming for a kind of authenticity through it, it is fairly easy to make a practice of wondering out of listening to music in the home, provided that you have some technology to do so and some time and space. You could be with others or by oneself, listen to music out loud or on headphones, be sitting still or be moving about, even doing something else.

But for those who can’t use technology to listen to music (I said that “modern” did not mean “technological”), there is still the possibility of making a practice of listening for music in the day or in the night. Cities give off sounds, voices, songs, noises, silences. The suburbs do too. And the country has its winds, rains, animal cries, and deep quiet of snow. One can make a practice out of listening for music in the ordinary world away from musical compositions. If one does and then joins it with reflecting on the meaning of whatever comes up for one from the day or pertaining to the world, then one has made music a basis for wondering.

Lastly, it’s the day’s end. Maybe it is time to consider the bedtime ritual. If we want to protect wonder in the home, what can we make of bedtime?

It’s understandable that many people often just stay up until they are exhausted and then drop into their beds to go to sleep. During busy lives, things get squeezed up against the edge of bedtime until people simply have to go to bed lest they will be unable to function well the next day. But it is also possible to protect some time before actually going to sleep in order to think about the day. The ancient Stoics made this an art of living, the daily reflection on deeds, and Catholicism absorbed something of this ancient philosophical school in the bedtime self-confession and prayer.

Whatever your belief system, protecting time to wonder before bedtime can be supportive, including if you are praying. To wonder about God is a powerful thing for forming a personal connection with a personal god. There you are in the dark of your mind not just reciting a rote prayer that is all but meaningless in the moment or filling your headspace with negatively anxious worry that you want dispelled. Instead, you are reaching out into the mystery of your own life to make sense of it through the spirit of love. You are trying to reconnect with a personal perspective where things are truly intimate and heartfelt, not violent or anonymous. Even in your worries, such prayer keeps open seeing your life from a different angle because you are stretching outside of yourself.

All one needs to do to make bedtime into a time for wondering to some degree is to insist on a margin of time and space to consider things however they make sense to you. This could be in talking with your partner yet not letting anxious worries take up all of your attention. Rather, you make a practice out of thinking about which parts of the day held open some possibilities of meaning or sense that you have not yet absorbed but which are interesting to you.

Prayer and talking together by the bedside lamp are one thing, but you might also wonder over the day by reading before going to bed. Imagine doing this not simply to be distracted but to give yourself pause to think about the meaning of what you read and the connections you can draw from it. Then reading is a practice of wondering formed into a bedtime ritual.

Finally, perhaps you want simply to lie awake in the dark. Instead of worrying or of planning, you let your mind go in search of what makes sense to you. What from the day is mysterious yet potentially meaningful for you? There in the dark, your thoughts can unfold like smoke rising from a candle. This bedtime ritual is an ordinary practice that fits many different ways of life. Before I went to sleep, I saw the cyclists wreathed in Christmas lights chanting climate change songs in my mind …

Be Wiser to the Twists and Turns of Life

There’s just one more thing to argue. All together the six practices I’ve sketched protect wonder in the home, often by protecting wonder outside the home in a way likely to bring the outside back inside the home in newfound familiarity. There is nothing fancy about any of these practices. I’m imagining that the six examples I’ve just given are so close to everyday life that it is hard to see how they are special. They don’t demand that we do huge intellectual things or engage in mighty philosophical speculations. They aren’t loudly revolutionary or heroically virtuous. All of them are what I would call quiet, subtle, plain, and down to earth. But that is exactly what I want to emphasize this evening in closing – both about wonder and about philosophy.

I told you at the outset that I would not be using philosophy like some mighty thing that hangs over our heads. Such a view of philosophy is stupid. Literally: it stupefies many people, making them feel dumb. But you’d expect anyone interested in modern universal ideas to reject such stupidity. It’s not a bad idea to be interested in things ordinary people can do to quietly keep life open wherever we are. In one of my favorite films by Krzysztof Kieślowski, we are invited to keep life open simply by watching a train station as it moves people through the city, observing social life as a philosophical practice. The same goes for what I’ve related here this afternoon with ordinary practices inside modern homes. What gets really wonderful is when the world itself becomes intelligent and we see each other’s intelligence unfolding in each of our own ways.

The point is, my view of philosophy presumes that protecting wonder and wondering in the home will also put philosophy in the home. That was the title of today’s talk. But I have not yet argued for such an inference. So, let me close this evening’s talk by making a case for it. We need to see how wonder on my understanding leads to philosophy on my understanding.

Well, here goes. When we wonder about something, we ultimately try to figure out how it makes sense. We do this by considering many possibilities, including ones that stretch our minds. Wonder is probing and open to unsettling thoughts. The things that come to make more sense through wondering are things that have been given ample room to be considered in many ways and which are arrived at in the spirit of wanting to figure out more than one can currently see or understand.

This ampleness of wonder makes it conducive to developing well rounded judgment since what we think makes sense is determined within a sea of possibilities after searching reflection and with an openness to things being shifted around in different configurations. People who have developed a habit of wondering take in more of the fullness and complexity of their lives. At the same time, one cannot be truly wise about life without a grasp of its fullness and complexity, its twists and turns. Moreover, to begin to build up a sense of that fullness and complexity is to become wiser, even if one is still in some ways foolish. This process of becoming wiser through reflection is at the core of philosophy as a tradition.

Philosophy is a tradition that began in what is today Turkey roughly twenty-six- hundred years ago among Ionian-dialect-Greek-speaking colonists who developed a sensibility for plain speaking and reasoning as part of an allergy to oracular authorities. The result of their invention was to emphasize that wisdom is not something people possess by mysterious authority but is something that is hard won and ongoing between us when we come to make sense of the world in terms we can mutually understand and explain to each other. With its emphasis on collective and emergent understanding as an ongoing process, philosophy made becoming wiser, not possessing wisdom, the heart of human flourishing, and it located reflection, not mysterious authority, as a core way that anyone engaged in thinking can become a little bit wiser when joined with friends doing likewise over time.

The main reason why protecting wonder inside the home also makes philosophy part of the home is that wondering leads to reflective freedom as a means to becoming wiser. In this, then, it parallels at least and manifests at best the basic form of philosophy that has grown the tradition for thousands of years.

When you talk through things at dinner and insist on letting people think and figure things out at the pace of their minds, when you go out of your home to take in the neighborhood in its twists and turns letting your thoughts go with each step, when you meet others in your community just to discuss the meaning of things together in an open-ended way, or tend to growing things in your garden thinking about life and its meaning as you work, or listen to music in order to protect some authentic connection with yourself through wondering, or when you preserve time and space before sleeping to take in the meaning of the day and try to make sense of it especially in its dark mystery, you bring together the fullness of life intuitively and insightfully, like flashes from the beyond. Ordinary life presents so many opportunities to make philosophy part of our ways of living.

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This is the last installment of Democracy as a Way of Life.  Thanks for reading!