Boethius on What a Philosopher Is
On my bedstand right now: a textbook on cosmology and Boethius's Consolations of Philosophy (which I'd never properly read through before). Lots of interesting stuff in both, but I thought I'd share a passage from Boethius that jumped out at me:
[A man] had insultingly attacked a man who had falsely assumed the title of philosopher, not for the practice of true virtue but simply from vanity, to increase his own glory; and he added that he would know he was really a philosopher if he bore all the injuries heaped upon him calmly and patiently. The other adopted a patient manner for a time and bore the insults, and then said tauntingly: "Now do you recognize that I am a philosopher?" To which the first very cuttingly replied: "I should have, had you kept silent." (524 CE/1918, trans. Stewart, Rand, and Tester, p. 221).
This characterization of a philosopher as someone who practices virtue and, especially, who patiently bears injury, is not of course unique to Boethius but seems to have been common from the ancient period at least into the Renaissance. Today, however -- at least in the circles I frequent -- "philosopher" means something more like "person who teaches in a philosophy department".
Implicit in Boethius's conception of philosophy is an intimate connection between intellectual reflection of a certain sort and a particular type of lived moral practice. On the contemporary conception, intellectual reflection and personal moral practice are much less tightly linked -- even (one might argue) wholly orthogonal. It's worth considering the merits and demerits of this changing conceptualization of the nature of philosophy.
One wedge into the issue is this: What is it to have a moral belief? Is it just to be disposed to say certain things? Or is it -- as I think -- to be disposed more generally to steer one's life in a particular way? If the latter, a philosopher's moral attitudes and her moral behavior may be less distinct than those philosophers who would prefer not to subject their personal lives to moral scrutiny might like to think.