I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the Chitheads podcast for the first time. With Athena Potari and Jacob Kyle from Embodied Philosophy. The integration between spirituality and philosophy really resonated with me as I heard my feelings and thoughts around this discipline repeated to me through their conversation.
In it, Athena speaks about the first time she read 'Plato's Republic' and how the book inspired her to delve deeper into philosophy, viewing it as a spiritual path in her life. This is a book that most undergraduates will encounter in their first year of philosophy at university. I came across it when I was about 18 or 19, during my time working as a receptionist at a health club in Cheltenham.
I had picked up the book among a few others to satisfy a growing hunger for knowledge. I had picked up a few books in religion and science, but 'Plato's Republic' was the one that truly ignited a passion in me. The depth and breadth with which Plato explored ideas about humanity and the state blew me away. Before I knew it, I had enrolled to study A-Level Philosophy at home, and by the following year, I was off to Oxford Brookes University to embark on a 15-year journey where philosophy would become my main path and absolute passion.
I initially started this path simply because I was deeply drawn to it and enjoyed it—I had no plan or idea of how it would actually enrich my life. But Athena articulated it beautifully in the podcast as she describes the sprit of her philosophical linage, Greek Hellenism:
‘Philosophy is not about understanding, or reading, or writing or arguing. it’s about practicing also with body, with soul, with everyday life, with mediation. So that you can ripen into that wisdom opening, that awakening that transcends the intellect and the mind. Philosophy is not an intellectual endeavour. Philosophy means ‘love’ and ‘wisdom’.
-Athena Potari on 'Ancient Greek Wisdom with Athena Potari, on the Chitheads Podcast
I actually thoroughly enjoyed the rigor and academic nature of studying philosophy at university. It suited my atheistic mindset at the time, and I believed that many questions could be explored, perhaps even answered, through reading and contemplation. Like Athena, sitting in the magnificent and historical Bodleian Library brought me a great sense of joy and connection with the line of intellectuals who passed through those halls. I was living the highlife, but my experience in Oxford was quite devoid of spirituality, wisdom and feeling that Athena's Hellenism refers to.
As I went through the process of pursuing my PhD, my mental health declined, and academic philosophy ceased to serve as a source of purpose and happiness for me. Once the doctorate was complete, I made the decision to leave that environment just before the pandemic hit the world. I moved to the Forest of Dean, where I shifted from thinking to feeling. I practiced tai chi, started therapy, and spent lots of time in nature.
But the break away from academia revealed the deeper truth of philosophy for me, in the way Athena was talking about. The thinking never actually stopped. In fact, it opened up to a whole new domain. The energy of the 19-year-old hiding philosophy books under the receptionist desk at the health club came back with renewed force, and I find myself as eager as ever to learn. While in Oxford, philosophy was an exercise in knowledge and objective study. In the Forest, I now also embrace it as a practice of wisdom. For me, it has become as much a spiritual journey as it is an academic one— and one that will help me lead, and even teach, a good and fulfilled life.
Links:
Philosophy Podcast: https://www.embodiedphilosophy.com/type/audio
Athena Potari on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Athenoa/
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