O my body, make of me always a man who questions!
— Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
PETER: Good point. And, as a final comment, Mary, don’t you think it’s amusing that it turns out, once again, that I was right, after all? But also, once again, that it turns out I was right despite myself?
MARY: It’s good to keep that “despite myself” in mind, Peter. Good for anybody, but especially us, for purposes of our conversations. It helps us to keep from getting uppity, from letting our noses get bent out of shape, as you said about yourself earlier. If you don’t keep that in mind, you can easily be tempted into betrayals, not only of yourself, but also of philosophy. Come to mention it, I’m not at all sure but what betraying the one is betraying the other.
— Francis F. Seeburger, The Stream of Thought
Thought, like water, will always eventually find a way through or around any obstacle put in its path. If we will only let it, thought will also carry us along in its flow.
We are called to let it do just that. If we but listen, we will eventually hear that call; and, once we truly hear that call, we cannot but answer by heeding it. We have only to listen in order to hear, and then to obey.
As long as I can remember, I have always tried to let thought carry me along. I am still doing so. What’s more, insofar as I have any say in the matter, I will continue to try to let thought carry me in its flow for what remains to me of my life. That’s what thought itself has taught me it means fully to accept being human: to go with the flow of thought as best I can, wherever that flow may take me.
To pray, with Frantz Fanon, that one may be always someone who questions is to pray that one may be always someone who thinks. Just reading Fanon’s prayer should itself give one to think, raising as it does the question of what it means to pray to one’s body that, in effect, it may give one a soul. That is not a way of praying to which we are accustomed. Unlike our accustomed prayers, which we all too rarely even attend to when we say them aloud or even just mentally, Fanon’s prayer thus gives us to think.
What’s more, Fanon’s prayer is a prayer of the sort that is already answered in the very preying, just as, to give another example, to pray that other persons be blessed is, by the very praying, to bless them, in the transitively active sense of carrying blessing to them. Augustine observed that the very fact of seeking God (whoever or whatever, if any “thing” at all, that word may mean, let me add) is proof that God has already found one. In just that way, to pray that one continues to be a person who questions proves that one continues to be just such a person, at least for the moment one so prays.
Following along the flow of Augustine’s remark as I hear it, I would add to what he say that to seek God is precisely to give the thanks due to God for having always already found one, even before one prays to be found. Along the same line of thought, to pray Fanon’s prayer—at least when we do so prayerfully, which is to say attentively—is already to thank that to whom or which one so prays. To pray such a prayer is, then, to thank one’s body for giving one to question.
May we all pray such prayer always!
* * *
In the most basic and ancient sense of the word, this is a book of “philosophy” — not philosophy as academic scholarship, but philosophy as the love of wisdom. As the love of wisdom, philosophy is a way of life, and, as Socrates taught, the philosophical life is the only fully human way to live. It is the only way of life that can truly succeed in keeping the heart.
— Francis F. Seeburger, Emotional Literacy: Keeping Your Heart (Educating Your Emotions and Learning to Let Them Educate You)
I have published six books so far in my life of almost 75 years now. The Stream of Thought, from which I took the second of the two epigraphs for the opening section of this post, was my first published work. It came out in 1984 (New York: Philosophical Library). Emotional Literacy, from which derives the epigraph just above for this current section of this post, was my third published book, which first appeared in print in 1997 (New York: Crossroad). In between the two came Addiction and Responsibility: An Inquiry into the Addictive Mind (Crossroad, 1993).
After those first three of my so far published works came The Open Wound: Trauma, Identity, and Community (2012), followed by God, Prayer, Suicide, and Philosophy: Reflections on Some of the Issues of Life (2013). I intentionally circumvented traditional modes of publication for both books, and bought them out myself (North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace).
To complete the list of my six published works, my most recently published book is The Irrelevance of Power. My daughter Freya — a professional cellist and multi-media performance-art producer who uses the professional name Cellista — just last spring published that work through Juxtapositions, her publishing and artistic production company (San Jose, CA: 2020).
In preparation for that recent release of The Irrelevance of Power, last spring I reread all of my own five previously published books. In doing so, I was pleased to find that they all continue to question, which is to say think. I would no doubt write each of them (and especially the first and by far longest one, The Stream of Thought) differently if I were writing them today rather than from between seven and thirty-six years ago. However, I was quite encouraged to find that they all do indeed remain, to borrow the title of the first of my series, afloat in the stream of thought itself.
What more could I ask?
* * *
In his Myth of the Cave, Plato depicts philosophy itself as a process of conversion. Philosophy is the educator. Not just an educator, but the educator. Philosophy and education are the same. And what it is to become educated is to have the soul turned completely around, in more ways than one.
— Frank Seeburger, God, Prayer, Suicide, and Philosophy: Reflections on Some of the Issues of Life
The more we question, the more we question. What is more, no longer to question — which means no longer to think — is to relinquish our very humanity. No other death is so to be feared as that one.
The still-moving corpses of those who die that most frightening of deaths often continue for years to move about above ground. In effect, they have not yet received the word that no soul animates them any longer. No dirt has yet been thrown over those corpses, nor any fire yet set to incinerate them.
Let us all who still live human lives pray that such un-souled-but-still-moving corpses be brought to life at last, before those corpses finally do lie rotting in the ground or going up in smoke and ashes. Let us all so pray not only for those corpses’ sake, but for our own, since such still-walking corpses always enviously oppress the living.
Against such oppression we must all revolt.
NOTE: My second through sixth published books — Addiction and Responsibility; Emotional Literacy; The Open Wound; God, Prayer, Suicide, and Philosophy; and The Irrelevance of Power — are all available for purchase through the Store at this website. My first published book, The Stream of Thought, is out of print. However, I do have a few remaining, autographed copies of the 1984 edition that I am willing to sell for the original cover price of $27.50, with no extra charge for shipping. If you are interested, please email me at fseeburg@du.edu and I can tell you if I still have a copy for you, and where to send your check.