The First Philosophical Question
Albert Camus once famously stated, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.” - The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942.
He was wrong. The first and most important philosophical question is - Why? And it is posed all the time by children.
We can know Camus is wrong because no one, and certainly no philosophers, actually demonstrates the belief that life is meaningless through their actions, i.e., suicide. Only an insane and (worse) deeply unserious “philosopher” would ever think that it was a fundamental question for the lover of wisdom to answer something that neither the simple nor the wise had ever seriously considered and acted upon in favor of suicide, either before, when, or after Camus posed his question.
Fundamental questions are what you consider first, because they are the foundation.1 That’s why Children are Philosophers, and love wisdom much more than Albert Camus. They know nothing, but know that they know nothing, and seek the reason behind everything. That is why they’re always asking “Why?”
The Ever-Present Invasion
They are literally famous for this, and people often find it annoying… just like they found Socrates. Coincidence? I think not.
But, if you’ll forgive the expression, why do they do this?
Because children are God’s front-line soldiers, arguably His strongest. It’s genius actually - our strongest drive and desire leads to His strongest reminder, an invasion into our lives.
Children create why-chains. But have you ever tried to play the why-chain game with a child? “Why this? Well, because of this. Ok, well why is that? Well, it’s because of this other thing.” And so on.
In the end and without fail, why-chains always lead back to God. Is it any coincidence that the uncaused Cause2 would bring into being annoying little destructive monsters that constantly run around yelling “why, why, why, but why Mom???”
No, that’s His entire plan; and the only way to silence them is to surrender and point to God. We are clearly under heavy siege by a very powerful and very clever being (one might almost suspect omnipotent and omniscient). And the more you think about it, the more the battlefield comes into focus:
On “our” side - Noise. Lights. Man-made artifice. Distractions. The world that “we made,” constantly barraging us and trying to drown out the voice of God that comes to us in a whisper, (1 Kings 19:11-13)3 that we forget (e.g. Judges 8:34),4 and that we run away from (Jonah 1:1-3).5
On God’s side - All of existence itself. If you try to drown out the ever-present source of all Being, who we know by Revelation6 and by Reason,7 don’t worry, He will constantly attempt to remind you.
Memento Mori
When Søren Kierkegaard saw the suffering in the world, he remarked, “Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth — look at the dying man’s struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.”
The suffering of humankind points to its sickness. And death will come for us all - Memento Mori. Remember Death. We come into this world in pain and when we leave it we will lose everything. So why is Camus not right, that all seems meaningless?
Perhaps we should ask the philosophers; children don’t seem to think life is meaningless. Children ask why because they seek Truth, as we should. Why are things the way that they are? What is the purpose of it all - the ultimate why? What should we be doing - we can only know if we know the why.
But what God reveals to us is that it is actually He who is searching for us. We were like lost sheep without a shepherd, which is why Christ came down from heaven and became one of us, in order to save us from our sins - this sickness, this lack, this “something off” that we all feel, this not quite rightness, and sometimes even very much wrongness that we experience.
God created us to know, love, and serve Him,8 and that is the purpose of life. Meaning and reality is ordered around God, the source of all being. Only a people who have forgotten that and think that we make our own meaning will be tempted by the lie that everything is meaningless, as Camus was.
God’s Backup Plan
Children ask why to remind us, and to give us hope. Because when we’ve been beaten down by life, by the cares and troubles of this world, and by our own failings, there is a back-up plan of sorts. God never gives up on us, and His “second attempt” to draw us back to Himself involves weird little creatures who see everything anew and remind us of its strangeness.
Children experience anew the world and its magic with a sense of wonder. They point to, with their joys, their sorrows, and their ever-present questions, life’s meaning.
We should wonder with them.
Children naturally search for truth, just like we should, but forget. Children naturally want to be good, just like we should, but forget. And children naturally see beauty in the world and appear beautiful to us - perhaps to remind us to see the value and beauty in both in ourselves and our neighbor that we often forget.
Children are God’s backup plan. His second chance for us. His gentle reminder to not take His gift of life for granted.
Children are Philosophers.
Latin - Fundus, Fundamentum.
“All beings apart from God are not their own being, but are beings by participation. Therefore it must be that all things which are diversified by the diverse participation of being, so as to be more or less perfect, are caused by one First Being, Who possesses being most perfectly.” St. Thomas Aquinas, excerpt from Summa Theologiae I:44:1
“And he said, ‘Go out and stand on the mount before the Lord.’ And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper. And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. And behold, there came a voice to him and said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’”
“And the people of Israel did not remember the Lord their God, who had delivered them from the hand of all their enemies on every side.”
“Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, ‘Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.’ But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.”
“God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’ And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’’” Exodus 3:14. “Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.’” John 8:58.
“Whatever a thing has besides its essence must be caused either by the constituent principles of that essence (like a property that necessarily accompanies the species—as the faculty of laughing is proper to a man—and is caused by the constituent principles of the species), or by some exterior agent—as heat is caused in water by fire. Therefore, if the existence of a thing differs from its essence, this existence must be caused either by some exterior agent or by its essential principles. Now it is impossible for a thing's existence to be caused by its essential constituent principles, for nothing can be the sufficient cause of its own existence, if its existence is caused. Therefore that thing, whose existence differs from its essence, must have its existence caused by another. But this cannot be true of God; because we call God the first efficient cause. Therefore it is impossible that in God His existence should differ from His essence.” - St. Thomas Aquinas, excerpt from Summa Theologiae I:3:3
Q. “Why did God make you?”
A. “God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him for ever in heaven.” - Baltimore Catechism No. 1
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