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by PavlovsCat 4739 days ago
> "Not once have I, personally, found any value in the philosophy I did."

Wikipedia defines it thusly:

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument.

Maybe that course you took wasn't so good, but generally, I think there is no day in which we don't engage in philosophy in some way or other. When a kid asks why don't politicians duke it out amongst each other, instead of sending the youth to war for them, that's philosophy, to me. Maybe my bar is too low.

But still, what isn't (related to or based on) "love of wisdom"? Everybody either has or lacks that, and just because it can be studied formally until one either doesn't see the woods for all the trees or gets bored, doesn't mean it has to be. It doesn't have to be studied at all, "doing philosophy" like "doing math" is a weird concept to me; just read philosophers, or even better, daydream. The first time I read Marcus Aurelius, time slowed down for me, maybe I even had goosebumps, I was so utterly fascinated by that little book. All technical documents in the world combined don't even come close to being a shadow of that.

So to me, saying philoshopy is useless based on bad philosophy, or bad treatment of it, is like me saying programming is mostly useless because QBasic sucks.

Especially since everybody is different, what meant the world for me might leave you cold, and vice versa. I can't explain love to you by showing you the people I love, I can't explain it at all -- and while "you'll know it when it happens to you, and maybe it never will", seems condescending, it's what I honestly believe.

Last, but not least: Don't ask what philosophy can do for you, ask what you can do for philosophy :P
1 comments
PavlovsCat 4739 days ago
Oh, and: even "usefulness" strikes me as a philosophical concept. At least unless you qualify it, like "shovels are useful for digging" is not philosophy. But "useful", or "purpose", just as words by themselves? You're already off the deep end without knowing it!

Show me someone who says they have no philosophy, and I will show you someone who doesn't know it, like a fish doesn't know water because it only ever swims in the one kind.

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