Is philosophy dangerous?

Rousseau

Is philosophy dangerous? Two of the most outstanding Western philosophers, Socrates and Seneca, were forced to commit suicide, so one has good reasons to think so. Indeed, although many philosophers’ lives were not more troublesome than the life of an average person, philosophizing can be quite risky. Many known philosophers were banned from their countries, or otherwise found it better to leave. Even more, some were put in prison or even sentenced to death for their ideas, like Socrates or Seneca.
I think that there are several reasons why philosophy can be risky:
- Philosophers often question and analyse beliefs and ideas that are considered fundamental to people’s personalities and identities. It makes that people see themselves forced to question them, even when they don’t want to and feel themselves happy as they are. People feel themselves criticized, which they may not like. Then they can feel themselves hurt or threatened in their – psychological – existence: Their identities are at stake. Also when the criticism is right, it often feels better and can also be more practical to ignore it and to live on as if nothing happened. But often this is not possible anymore and then you want to get rid of that person whom you see as a gadfly, even if s/he is telling the truth.
- It can also happen that a philosopher doesn’t question, analyse and criticize the individual but the social order. The society the philosopher lives in is analysed as being unjust, repressive, undemocratic or something like that. If too many people will agree with the philosopher’s analysis, it can lead to unrest and maybe to violence and revolution. It’s what rulers and many others fear. They want that the social order remains as it is. The ideas seen as dangerous for the existing social order don’t need to be outright political, so directly criticizing the existing power structure. They can also be indirectly dangerous for the existing social order. So, when at the end of the Middle Ages Aristotle’s views on nature were attacked, this was considered as undermining the social order, while in fact the philosophers concerned criticized Aristotle’s philosophical ideas. In the same way, Galileo’s thesis that the earth revolves around the sun (instead of the other way round) was seen as an attack on the God-given order, although in fact it was an attack on the existing cosmic theories.
- It can also happen that philosophers do not so much criticize the existing social order but those in power. Then those in power maybe don’t fear that the social order is undermined but they fear for themselves (although they often say that the social order is at stake). Those in power are afraid to lose their power, that they will be toppled, and that they must account for their past misbehaviour (or they simply love power for power’s sake).

All this can make that rulers, people or private persons want to get rid of critical philosophers, not only in the sense that they don’t philosophize any longer but that they want to eliminate them physically by banning them, putting them in prison or even killing them, in case they don’t leave “voluntarily” (and even abroad philosophers are sometimes yet persecuted by those they wanted to escape).

I end this blog with a short list of philosophers persecuted if not killed because of their ideas:

- Socrates (c470-499 BC): Death penalty, accused of impiety and corrupting the youth.
- Aristotle (384-322 BC): Fled from Athens, accused of impiety.
- Hypatia (c350-370: Murdered by a Christian mob, accused of witchcraft.
- René Descartes (1596-1650): Left France and lived most of his life in the Netherlands, since he could not freely express his ideas in France.
- Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677): Left Amsterdam because of his religious ideas and then lived most of his life in The Hague.
- Jean Jacques Rousseau: Fled from France to Môtiers in Switzerland (a town then governed by Prussia), since the French government wanted to arrest him because of his religious ideas; he had soon to leave Môtiers, too. Later Rousseau returned to France.
- Karl Marx (1818-1883): Banned from Prussia because of his revolutionary ideas; went to live in London.
- Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919): Murdered by an anti-communist mob.
- Moritz Schlick (1882-1936): Founder of the Vienna Circle, murdered by a student because he criticized Nazism.
- Zoran Đinđić (1952-2003): Serbian philosopher and politician. Murdered because of his political ideas.

These are only a few of the best-known philosophers who felt victim of their ideas. However, many more known and less known philosophers and others who have expressed their ideas freely were killed just because of that. Who wants to say that philosophy cannot be dangerous?