The Value of Philosophy
Philosophy; philo- + sophia; “loving” + “wisdom.”
Philosophy, according to its etymological definition, is the love of wisdom; it is the pursuit of knowledge; it is the study of intellectual growth.
If one searches online, “What is philosophy?” they will immediately encounter five main philosophical branches: epistemology (the study of knowledge), ethics (the study of morality), logic (the study of reasoning and argumentation), metaphysics (the study of reality and existence), and aesthetics (the study of beauty).
While these fields are typically the most significant in philosophical discourse, philosophy is not limited to the main branches.
Philosophical sub-branches include: philosophy of language, philosophy of religion, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of law, philosophy of economics, and political philosophy amongst many others.
Within each sub-branch is thousands of ideas: Pascal’s wager, the Peano axioms, praxeology, the social contract, and so forth.
With the thousands of ideas, one will find continuous overlap: metaphysics is concerned with natural rights, natural rights impose moral boundaries, moral boundaries are fundamental to law, law represents the type of government a region is bound to; this quickly dissolves into a slippery slope of topics.
Through the understanding that philosophy is concerned with a seemingly infinite amount of ideas is to say that philosophy is, quite frankly, everything.
It does not matter if one is participating in their local election cycle or cheating on a final exam, they are engaging in philosophy.
With everything said, philosophy is not an easy thing to define, but this is not important. All one needs to know is that philosophy is fundamentally significant to all humans; it is not solely the act of isolating oneself in nature to attempt to find the meaning of life but the purposeful effort towards wisdom.
Misconceptions About Philosophy
Despite the universality of the discipline, many find themselves still proclaiming three incorrect statements:
- Philosophy is never changing or advancing; it is a stagnant study that achieves nothing meaningful.
- Most of philosophy is not practical.
- Philosophers are the Greek guys that lived a long time ago.
To address the first, philosophy has indeed evolved a substantial amount in the last few hundred years.
For example, Michael Huemer writes in Knowledge, Reality, and Value,
“Is slavery just?… Aristotle… thought slavery was just. No one thinks that anymore,” and, “Which is better, dictatorship or democracy?… Plato… thought the answer was ‘dictatorship,’” (7–8).
To address the second, all of philosophy is practical and useful to everyday life, just sometimes in unforeseen ways.
For example, epistemology consists of two primary schools of thought: empiricism (the view that knowledge comes only, or at least, mainly, from our senses) and rationalism (the view that reason is the primary source of knowledge).
Many regard epistemology to be impractical because who cares where our knowledge comes from?
However, epistemology is crucial to many “practical” fields, such as economics: is this study a reliable source of empirical evidence to enact such a policy? (The Austrian economist shivers).
To address the third, it is not only a disgrace to Kant, Nietzsche, Russell, amongst many others, but is also a misconception of what a philosopher is.
- Do you like literature? Fyodor Dostoevsky was a philosopher (see, for example, his views on Russian Orthodoxy).
- Do you like science? Albert Einstein was a philosopher (see, for example, Why Socialism?, an essay by him)
- Do you like music? John Lennon was a philosopher (see, for example, songs calling to societal peace).
The Reflection
As hopefully showcased, philosophy is not adequately represented by a bunch of irrelevant scholars arguing over useless topics that fail to evolve; rather, it is the opposite: unique individuals actively evolving necessary schools of thought through a variety of subjective lenses.
“To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.” ― Henry David Thoreau
While one might not reek of the benefits of philosophical development directly, philosophy is the key to erecting an ethically aware and intellectually driven identity.
Through working through criticism and thinking beyond the prevailing notion, philosophy builds a sustainable and logical belief framework that is applicable to all areas of life (work, family, etc.).
Thus, the philosophical end is to work tirelessly through one’s convictions and prejudices to the point of total epistemological upheaval; to participate in the growth of the most necessary field; and to understand the underlying foundation that the world rests on.
With its thousands of ideas, hundreds of sub-branches, and few primary branches, philosophy is a wide-ranging discipline that is at utmost importance to the lives of all.
“Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.” ― Bertrand Russell
References
- Knowledge, Reality, and Value: A Mostly Common Sense Guide to Philosophy by Michael Huemer
- The Value of Philosophy by Bertrand Russel (from Chapter 15 of The Problems of Philosophy)
- What is Philosophy for?
Thank you for taking the time to read this article! I hope you found it informative and engaging.
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Stay curious!
