Category: Featured

-The following post is written by Assistant Professor of Honors and Philosophy Joseph Trullinger.-
My favorite movie has a scene in which an angel, thoughtfully observing human beings going about their daily lives, reflects on the open-mindedness of childhood.

When the child was a child, it was the time of the following questions:

Why am I me, and why not you?

Why am I here, and why not there?

When did time begin, and where does space end?

Isn’t life under the sun just a dream? Is what I see and hear and smell nothing but an illusion of a world before the world?

Does evil exist, and are there people who are really evil?

How can it be that the I who I am didn’t exist before I came to be,

And that someday the I who I am will no longer be who I am?

I love these sorts of questions, and I believe that, deep down, everybody else does too. At some point, everyone looks up at the stars and wonders if there is a limit to how far up the sky goes, and if so, what happens when one gets there. You can catch the news and, seeing how differently people live all over the earth, feel astonished that other people were born into such radically different circumstances—and, likewise, why you have the life that you do instead of theirs. Or, you might ask yourself what this funny little three-letter word “God” means, and why people keep using it so often. And so on. The questions don’t stop there. The only difference between me and most people—the thing that makes me philosophical—is that I am happy that the world has more questions than I can ever answer. I didn’t become this way because of any extraordinary event or some special quality I possess—and that means you can be this way too, if you want. 
All the same, I do have a story to tell about why I feel so confident that thinking about bottomless questions is a good way to spend my life.

 I thought to myself as I sat there: “I could think about this for the rest of my life.”

I can trace my conviction back to the sixth week of my college career, when I heard a lecture on the good life as conceived by Plato and Aristotle. It was as though my own thoughts kept coming back to me through the reflections in this lecture, but in a far clearer form than I could have expressed. I thought to myself as I sat there: “I could think about this for the rest of my life.”  That epiphany was the moment I knew this is what I had to do with my life, that I had to go into philosophy, and that there was no possibility of doing any differently. From that point forward, I took every philosophy class I could, and approached my teachers continually about the incredible ideas we were discussing. I started to sense just how far down the rabbit hole goes.
To this day, I am still amazed at the breadth and depth of human thoughts on the most basic and fundamental things. From my professors at Bucknell University, particularly Gary Steiner and Pete Groff, I learned how to face the difficulty of unsettling ideas with calm, patience, and diligence. I learned that philosophy thrives in friendly conversation, in which everybody is willing to lose a debate if it means finding the truth. What stayed with me above all is their profound respect for these great texts from across the world and throughout history. With that respect comes the humbling joy that my thoughts are not radically different from thoughts other human beings have been having for eons—and because of that, I am not simply Californian or American, but I am connected to all of humanity. When I was younger I was desperate for recognition and honor; the more time I spend in philosophy, the more I feel that appreciating the human condition is enough.

“Do the gods love certain actions because they’re good, or are those actions good because the gods love them?”

The first philosophical text I read was Plato’s Euthyphro, in a large book entitled The Trial and Death of Socrates (with that wonderfully musty old book smell), which I happened upon in a used bookstore when I was sixteen. I was drawn in by the story: the philosopher Socrates bumps into his old friend Euthyphro on his way to court, and the two have a conversation about the nature of reverence and the gods. They quickly find their views have to answer a dilemma: do the gods love certain actions because they’re good, or are those actions good because the gods love them?
Little did I know that the dilemma with Euthyphro would eventually form the basic parameters of my research as a professor all these years later, studying why the 18^th century philosopher Immanuel Kant says true reverence springs out of a genuine commitment to moral principles we know independently of any religious tradition or scriptures.
I went to the University of Kentucky to get my doctorate in philosophy, with a desire to understand the two philosophical movements I felt most at home in: Platonism and German idealism. Over time, as I turned idea after idea over, I narrowed my attention to Kant’s subtle yet powerful theory that free will is at the heart of morality, of nature, God, and the whole of existence itself. I titled my dissertation The Hidden Life of God: Kant and the German Idealists on Ethical Purity, in order to capture this idea that God, if he exists, would have to be identical with the essence of perfect goodness.

The wonder Kant describes is what makes teaching and researching philosophy worthwhile for me.

Kant’s tombstone has his most enduring and beautiful statement carved into it: “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” The wonder Kant describes is what makes teaching and researching philosophy worthwhile for me. At Mississippi State University, I had the chance to teach wonderful students for four years, in which we carefully studied great books and talked about them for hours in reading groups (fueled by plenty of coffee! sweet, glorious caffeine!)
Words cannot express how much I am looking forward to teaching at George Washington, and I cannot wait to see what you make of these ideas that have taken hold of me. There is no teaching without learning, and that applies as much to me as it does to you.
So come by and wonder with me. My office is in room 101P of Ames Hall, and I love having visitors. You might find me listening to music, reading something obscure, or talking with someone, but you are welcome to join in. As I learned a while ago, it is always the right time for the following questions:

Why am I me, and why not you?

Why am I here, and why not there?

When did time begin, and where does space end?

Isn’t life under the sun just a dream? Is what I see and hear and smell nothing but an illusion of a world before the world?

Does evil exist, and are there people who are really evil?

How can it be that the I who I am didn’t exist before I came to be,

And that someday the I who I am will no longer be who I am?

—
(The movie, by the way, is Wim Wenders’ 1987 masterpiece, Der Himmel über Berlin, which literally means “The Heavens over Berlin.” This title was rather badly mistranslated for English-speaking audiences as “Wings of Desire.” It is an excellent, unusual, and dreamlike movie—but stay far, far away from the horrible 1998 remake with Nicholas Cage, City of Angels. You have been warned.)