The Healing of Philosophy

John Clark, MD, says our worship of the intellect has become pathological.

- John Clark

Philosophy is in decline. You hear it all the time. The evidence is regularly trotted out: less graduates, no jobs, no prospects, a lack of interest from the culture, etc. It has become a tedious verity. 

But how can that be? Do we collectively not love wisdom anymore? In our modern world, have we cast off the mantle of being Homo sapiens (‘wise person’)? Have we somehow come to be above it all? Are we no longer enamored of our collective role amongst all creatures on the planet of being reasonable? That can’t be right. Knowledge and good choices – these things are timeless, inescapable. So what’s happened to us? What’s happened to our collective minds to permit philosophy’s decline?

Philosophy must be sick. To be sure, there’s an illness afoot, a broad mental affliction that’s spread amongst humanity – an intellectual pandemic: an illness of mind, of culture, of society. This is the only thing that can explain our collective disinterest in wisdom, the decline of our love for the essence of who we are.

We need a doctor. The Greek father of medicine Galen comes to mind. Galen famously said, ‘The best doctor is also a philosopher.’ Perhaps medicine can help. But medicine is sick too. Physicians are killing themselves at an alarming rate. Burnout in medicine is pervasive, and expanding, and has risen to be more prominent in medicine than in any other profession. Doctors are suffering and dying. The healers themselves are ill and in need of healing. Perhaps the pandemic of mind has also afflicted them?

I’m a doctor. I burned out. I became mentally afflicted and I was in decline. It wasn’t pretty. I’ve tried to recover. Thankfully, I was saved. I was saved by philosophy.