Wednesday Wisdom

We all know the line, arguably with Charles Dicken’s Tale of Two Cities, the most memorable and revealing lines in literature. "Call me Ishmael" Why? Who was Ishmael?

The novel Moby Dick is a Homeric journey, a biblical allegory, and a deep dive into good versus evil, suffering, obsession, and ethical questions of right and wrong. While the novel is an epic and a “Homeric journey”, the first paragraph reads like a poem and by itself is a masterpiece.

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago never mind how long precisely having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

Marcus Porcius Cato the Younger (95 BC–46 BC) was one of the most uncompromising defenders of the Roman Republic, an austere Stoic, a fierce opponent of Julius Caesar, and a symbol of incorruptible public virtue. 

According to Plutarch, a Greek and Roman historian, Cato chose to end his life by stabbing himself with his own sword, refusing to live under Caesar’s authority. Ishmael, in deference and defiance goes to sea and compares himself to Cato who throws himself upon his sword rather than live under the rule of Caeser and the end of the Roman republic. In the novel’s context, it’s not a literal suicide, but a metaphorical one, going to sea as a sailor is Ishmael’s way of escaping. Ishmael goes to sea because his soul is restless. He uses the ocean as a cure for despair and as a path toward understanding himself and the world. 

2026-What can we learn?

Biblically, Ishmael was the firstborn son of Abraham who is the patriarch of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. His mother was Hagar, an Egyptian handmaid and servant belonging to Abraham's wife Sarah. Unable to conceive, Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham to bear a child on her behalf. After Ishmael was born, Sarah eventually conceived her own son, Isaac, and demanded that Abraham banish Hagar and Ishmael to the wilderness. God intervened, promising to protect them and make Ishmael the father of a great nation which is known now as the Arab peoples and a central figure in Islam religion. His name in Hebrew means "God hears" and named because God heard Hagar's suffering. In Islamic tradition, Ishmael is considered a prophet, and he and Abraham are said to have built the Kaaba, the center of Islam, in Mecca together.

Melville’s novel offers an array of epistemological and metaphysical questions? There are so many questions and allegories that the book is a complete academic course, and its meanings have been debated for years. Could there be a simpler and perhaps less extravagant meaning to the book that Melville explores through Ishmael in the first paragraph? Ishmael is a wandering soul who ties three religions together and he looks to the sea to resolve his quandaries. “If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.” Baptismal, cleansing the soul or clearing your head, perhaps the ocean is the answer.

As my dear friend and perhaps philosopher/sage Brian likes to say “The big blue aspirin cures a lot of ills”

And now you know...

Philosophy is the art of thinking, the building block of progress that shapes critical thinking across economics, ethics, religion, and science.

Thank you, Dad, for the gift of curiosity

METAPHYSICS: Literally, the term metaphysics means ‘beyond the physical.’ Typically, this is the branch that most people think of when they picture philosophy. In metaphysics, the goal is to answer the what and how questions in life. Who are we, and what are time and space?

LOGIC: The study of reasoning. Much like metaphysics, understanding logic helps to understand and appreciate how we perceive the rest of our world. More than that, it provides a foundation for which to build and interpret arguments and analyses.

ETHICS: The study of morality, right and wrong, good and evil. Ethics tackles difficult conversations by adding weight to actions and decisions. Politics takes ethics to a larger scale, applying it to a group (or groups) of people. Political philosophers study political governments, laws, justice, authority, rights, liberty, ethics, and much more.

AESTHETICS: What is beautiful? Philosophers try to understand, qualify, and quantify what makes art what it is. Aesthetics also takes a deeper look at the artwork itself, trying to understand the meaning behind it, both art as a whole and art on an individual level. A question an aesthetics philosopher would seek to address is whether or not beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.

EPISTEMOLOGY: This is the study and understanding of knowledge. The main question is how do we know? We can question the limitations of logic, how comprehension works, and the ability (or perception) to be certain.