Chaos is not the enemy.  It is a tempting jump to this conclusion.  Is it not the case that the disorganized, and even threatening elements of experience provide material for making a habitat of mind?  I think so.  Organization arises from the mind, and especially from the give and take of shared minds with others.  This is sometime pleasurable, but often not.  On occasion we detect the friction, “the rub” of an unfamiliar idea, perhaps an idea from a source which we were trained to fear, to resist.  But who knows, a opponent might become an ally, or even a friend?

A description of the activity of philosophy given by Plato is that of an Agon, the struggle between two athletes.   Wrestlers grapple bare handed with the physical obstacle of the body presented to the opponent, and with their wits.  A bare-handed struggle.  This has not changed in the some 2,500 years since Plato convened for discussion, and wrote his dialogs in the Athens of  500 BCE.  Philosophy is worthwhile with satisfactions that can be described variously.  But there is always the friction generated by opposing opinion, a different view-point offered in challenge.  Engagement is a given, –the strain, the stress of clashing world views, of alternative sensibility of what is good and bad.  Philosophy requires courage, and a tolerance for discomfort.

We recently discussed the role of opinion within philosophy.  A friend made the assertion that he had the right to his opinion.  Further he questioned whether it was possible to know if one’s opinion was well founded.  Plato’s Socrates had a lot to say about opinion in his writing of the dialogs.  Socrates is depicted in conflict with the opinions, the conventional ideas offered by his friends as they sought to discover the truth of such ideas as justice, or knowledge.  Opinions are the assumptions commonly held, the easily available, often binary options offering meaning in the midst of the raw chaos of life.  Who doesn’t have their opinions? Opinions are plentiful, inexpensively available.

Socrates shows over and over, that opinion often has a kernel of truth, buried within a layered wrapper of BS.  A philosopher is an intellectual artist. Philosophy is the art-form of getting at the truth. Therein lies the Agon, the struggle to get at the truth.

Here are some lines that I captured from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, What Is Philosophy on the topic of opinion.  Yes, I recommend the book.

It is as if the struggle against chaos does not take place without an affinity with the enemy, because another struggle develops and takes on more importance in the struggle against opinion, which claims to protect us from chaos itself.

Thought struggles against opinion and its degeneration into opinion.

Old age is this very weariness: then, there is either a fall into mental chaos or a falling back on ready-made opinions, that reveal that the artist no longer has anything to say.

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Bonus!  I love this song by U-2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO4L1Pnhv8k

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