I think the difference between a lie and a story is that a story utilizes the trappings and appearance of truth for interest of the listener as well as of the teller. A story has in it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device for profit or escape. I suppose if that definition is strictly held to, then a writer of stories is a liar—if he is financially successful.
—John Steinbeck, East of Eden
I know what Steinbeck means.
When I was fifteen, I discovered philosophy. That is when by chance I was made aware that the sort of thing I by nature seemed drawn always to do had a name within the historical tradition into which I had been born. Before long, I decided that I should devote my life to my philosophical calling.
Since I was not a fool, at least in such matters, I soon enough realized that the only way the society into which I was also born would permit me to live a life devoted to philosophy that would last very long at all, was for me to obtain the officially awarded credentials that society dictated be attained to be certified to teach philosophy to others for pay. Then I’d have to use those credentials to get hired into some academic position where I could receive such payment for such services rendered.
So that's what I proceeded to do.
I got my B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees in philosophy solely for that reason, and not at all because I had any respect for those certificates themselves--or, most especially, for the process one had to go through in order to acquire such official stamps of approval. Then I had the luck (it was nothing more than that, and rarely if ever is) to land a couple of academic gigs. As a result, I was able to spend the next forty-five years "making a living" as an academic.
For that forty-five years I had no choice. If I were to follow my philosophical calling, yet still be able to help put food on the family table and keep a roof over our heads, I had to do for money something that should be done solely for love. In other words, I was a prostitute. I prostituted myself to the academic institutions that paid me.
A few months more than six years ago, I was finally able to retire from my prostitute's position and go back to doing philosophy the only way it should be done. From then on, that is, I have been able to pursue philosophy, the “love of wisdom,” solely for the sake of that love, and not for the dollop of cold hard cash I used to get for making my living on my back, as it were.
Me in my academic uniform
* * *
The phrase "professional philosopher" is either a contradiction in terms or a euphemism for a form of prostitution, the very form of prostitution I had to practice for forty-five years—not even counting all the years I had to spend getting official certification to be permitted to make my living on my back. I never had any illusions about that.
You don’t have to take my word for it. Socrates said the same thing millennia ago.
Socrates defined the philosopher by opposing philosophers to sophists, who were, quite simply, those who did it for money. At least by that Socratic definition, for the forty-five years of my academic career necessity forced me to practice sophistry.
Since I was never a high-priced call boy, the life I lived with my family during my forty-five years of practicing prostitution was never luxurious. My wife often made more money than I did, even without having to be a whore to do it. At any rate, between the two of us, we have been able at least to keep afloat on the seas of our capitalist world—something chance does not permit countless others to do, even when they prostitute themselves.
At least in that regard, Socrates was luckier than I was. He did not have to prostitute himself in order to survive. He and his wife had just enough inheritance to sustain themselves. That was enough for Socrates (though it may have torqued his wife a bit). So instead of having to prostitute himself, he was able just to go to the market in Athens and give away for free the love of wisdom that had come to him at any early age—give it away freely to all the youth of Athens, imparting that same love to them whenever he was given the opportunity to do so.*
*The powers that be today are no different than they were back then: They don’t at all like free giveaways of what they can sell for profit. In resentment of his doing such a thing, the powers of Socrates’ day eventually killed him. My long service as a prostitute kept the powers that be today from killing me; and for certain reasons they are not likely to worry about killing me now that I’m retired from my life as a whore. All that, however, is another story or two, not the one I’ve been telling in this post.