RE: What's the point of philosophy any more?
March 20, 2018 at 9:33 am
(This post was last modified: March 20, 2018 at 10:17 am by vulcanlogician.)
As you pointed out, philosophy can be a form of mental exercise. But it's more than that. It is a way of opening the mind to new ideas.
People have been declaring philosophy useless for a long time. Socrates' contemporaries couldn't find any use in it, and that was before it birthed the sciences.
Science, sociology, psychology... all these fields were once philosophy. But that's the thing. Once philosophy begins to have a practical use, it no longer is called philosophy. We name it something else. It's actually a bit unfair to say "science was born from philosophy." Science is philosophy. It's just philosophy of a very specific type.
You can't really fault philosophy for not being practical if you're going to give high regard to science in the same breath. How practical is studying distant galaxies or learning what happened moments after the big bang? A lot of science is "not practical"... or at the very least its practical application is not realized until the science is done. Science never starts as a practical endeavor. For example, some scientists were once studying microwaves just to learn about the properties of light at this wavelength. One of them left a candybar on the counter and it melted. The scientists were baffled by this and started asking why this happened. So they ran some experiments. It turned out that microwaves have heating properties. Some time later, a guy used the knowledge that had been discovered to invent the microwave oven--a highly useful and practical invention. The point is, the scientists who discovered this property of microwaves weren't trying to invent an oven. But they ended up doing so, though indirectly. So it is with philosophy. John Locke might not have been considered "practical" in his day, but now, in modern times, most western governments are modeled after his ideas. Things like civil liberties, branches of government, and separation of church and state.
Countless authors, activists, and other genii were inspired by philosophers. Gandhi was greatly influenced by the ideas of Henry David Thoreau. Nobody could see any practical use of Thoreau's work when he was formulating his ideas. But a century later those same ideas were used to liberate an entire nation.
If philosophy doesn't seem practical to you, look closer. Philosophy never seems practical when it is being done. It only becomes practical when somebody decides to do something useful with it. Just like science, philosophy is about discovering the nature of life and the universe. It's not a practical endeavour at the outset, but I guarantee you if we stopped philosophizing right now, compulsory prayer would be back in schools in a few decades. We need thinkers to challenge the status quo. We need thinkers to question our assumptions and postulate something new. We need thinkers to analyze the human condition and plot a course to liberation. In short, we need philosophers or (as a society) we will never be able to see past our own nose.
People have been declaring philosophy useless for a long time. Socrates' contemporaries couldn't find any use in it, and that was before it birthed the sciences.
Science, sociology, psychology... all these fields were once philosophy. But that's the thing. Once philosophy begins to have a practical use, it no longer is called philosophy. We name it something else. It's actually a bit unfair to say "science was born from philosophy." Science is philosophy. It's just philosophy of a very specific type.
You can't really fault philosophy for not being practical if you're going to give high regard to science in the same breath. How practical is studying distant galaxies or learning what happened moments after the big bang? A lot of science is "not practical"... or at the very least its practical application is not realized until the science is done. Science never starts as a practical endeavor. For example, some scientists were once studying microwaves just to learn about the properties of light at this wavelength. One of them left a candybar on the counter and it melted. The scientists were baffled by this and started asking why this happened. So they ran some experiments. It turned out that microwaves have heating properties. Some time later, a guy used the knowledge that had been discovered to invent the microwave oven--a highly useful and practical invention. The point is, the scientists who discovered this property of microwaves weren't trying to invent an oven. But they ended up doing so, though indirectly. So it is with philosophy. John Locke might not have been considered "practical" in his day, but now, in modern times, most western governments are modeled after his ideas. Things like civil liberties, branches of government, and separation of church and state.
Countless authors, activists, and other genii were inspired by philosophers. Gandhi was greatly influenced by the ideas of Henry David Thoreau. Nobody could see any practical use of Thoreau's work when he was formulating his ideas. But a century later those same ideas were used to liberate an entire nation.
If philosophy doesn't seem practical to you, look closer. Philosophy never seems practical when it is being done. It only becomes practical when somebody decides to do something useful with it. Just like science, philosophy is about discovering the nature of life and the universe. It's not a practical endeavour at the outset, but I guarantee you if we stopped philosophizing right now, compulsory prayer would be back in schools in a few decades. We need thinkers to challenge the status quo. We need thinkers to question our assumptions and postulate something new. We need thinkers to analyze the human condition and plot a course to liberation. In short, we need philosophers or (as a society) we will never be able to see past our own nose.
