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Personal vs social practical philosophies: do we change the world, or just cope with it?
Karl Marx famously wrote that:
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” (Theses on Feuerbach 1845, 11)
Well, to be fair, the two goals are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, one could argue that interpreting the world is a necessary prerequisite for changing it. If we don’t understand things and we just mess with them the outcome isn’t likely to be particularly good.
Moreover, Marx should have known better, as philosophers from Plato to Buddha have, in fact, tried to change the world. However, Marxism is in a class of philosophies, which I will refer to as “social,” that takes a very different approach from the one implicit in a second class of philosophies, which I will refer to as “personal,” examples of which are Stoicism and Buddhism, among several others. The problem, I will argue, is that we need a judicious combination of both.
One way to grasp what I’m trying to get at is that social philosophies are about changing the world from the top down, so to speak, meaning through political reforms. Personal philosophies, by contrast, focus on changing things from the bottom up, one person at a time, if you will.
There are at least two major differences between the top-down and bottom-up approaches. First, top-down change, when it can actually be carried out, is much faster than its bottom-up counterpart. A revolution can literally happen overnight, while changing the world at the individual level may take generations, if it happens at all. Second, however, top-down change is both dangerous and reversible. Counter-revolutions are just as fast as revolutions, and changing a system broadly and quickly may generate societal tensions and unexpected consequences. A pervasive change at the individual level, by contrast, is far less blunt and more likely to be long-lasting. Witness, for instance, the change (not always for the better, admittedly!) brought about in the West as a result of the transition between Greco-Roman paganism and Christianity.
Another problem with social-level philosophies is that they often never get their chance. Marxism, pace a number of misguided right-wing commentators…
