What is philosophy and why do people do it? Is it just for ancients or could it be important to modern life? We've looked at reasons for and against doing philosophy; now let's see what we've learned.
Purpose of Philosophy
Philosophy Is Dangerous
Waste of Resources
Philosophy vs. Opinion
Understanding Others
Is Philosophy against My Faith?
I’m not Episcopalian, but I used to teach Introduction to Philosophy at an Episcopal school. One year, a student told me she was surprised the school offered my class because she thought it was antithetical to the faith. I reassured her that although there were a good deal of non-Christian philosophers that rejected Christianity on philosophical grounds, there were also a good deal of Christian philosophers who thought philosophy supported their beliefs. She surprised me, however, by saying that this was just the problem.
(Warning: this is a philosophy blog, not a Bible study! What follows is definitely of interest as an exercise in reasoning, but my main goal is to assuage people who are afraid the Bible disallows them to do philosophy.)
Hebrews 11:6 says, “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” Philosophy, however, seeks knowledge about just such things as God’s existence. Some would argue that you can’t believe in something if you know it. If this is so, then if philosophy is successful in showing God exists, then it would make it impossible to please God.
I don’t think this is the right interpretation, however, as there are other passages in the Bible that seem to teach Christians should engage in just such endeavors. In 1 Peter 3:15, Christians are admonished to “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect….” Giving a reason for belief in God sounds a lot like what we were worried about before. Further, in the Book of Acts, the apostle Paul (the author of a great deal of the New Testament of the Bible) engages with philosophers (Stoics and Epicureans) on Mars Hill. He doesn’t tell them to quit their jobs, but rather reasons (or philosophizes?) with them. In this context, Paul is set out as a person to emulate. So, it seems like far from being something to avoid, Christians should engage their faith through philosophy.
How are we to resolve the tension between the different passages? I think there are several possibilities. First, it could be (and likely is) the case that we can never get total, indubitable knowledge of God’s existence through philosophy and must content ourselves with good reasons for believing in God (if they are available). If this is so, the problem is mitigated. It would still be the case that philosophy reduces the need for faith, but it would never obviate this need. If it’s also the case that pleasing God is proportional to the amount of faith we must rely on–i.e. more faith = more pleasing–then philosophy would lessen the amount God would be pleased, but it would also be commanded of us so that it is a necessary evil.
A more likely possibility, however, is that the two kinds of faith are different. In the latter case, the concern is for convincing others of God’s existence and the Christian soteriological plan (plan of salvation). However, Hebrews 11 is talking about living a life of trust in God. I’ll explain the difference through an analogy.
When my oldest son was very young, he was fascinated by fire. He kept trying to touch the flame on the stove top and I had to keep telling him not to. Eventually, I gave him a little smack on the hand. I know, corporal punishment, right? But, it was all I could do to save his poor little hand from being burned. Of course, the little man couldn’t understand why I would do this. “Why would dad keep me from what I want?” I mean, think about it: fire is bright, it moves in really cool ways, and it feels nicer the closer you get to it (up to a point). Why would dad not only keep it from me, but even inflict pain on me! He didn’t understand why, but he did know that I loved him and that I knew better than him, and for that reason he chose to trust me. I think this is the kind of faith the writer of Hebrews is interested in. In order to please God, you have to trust him even when you don’t understand why something happens to you because you know He is wiser than you and He loves you. If that’s what the author means, then there is no conflict between this kind of faith and philosophical investigation.
Is philosophy totally useless?
“When will we ever need to know this? What’s the point?” The question is a semester killer. Until now, most of your students have trudged through the blizzard of information that is your class, naively assuming there is a point. Now they are all jutted upright in exasperation, waiting for 
your assurances. Surely, you will assuage them with purpose. You are the teacher. You will know why.
“Because it will be on the test,” you say. You blew it. You just told them your class is nothing more than a hurdle to college and career. You serve no purpose but to stand in the way. You are a speed bump. But, this isn’t why you became an expert in your field. You didn’t major in this because it was on the test. Why did you need to know this?
A better answer would have been to show students what they could do with the knowledge you provide. Want to launch rockets? Here’s how to use physics to get your first one going. Like travel? Here’s how to use Spanish to get an experience the average tourist could never hope for. Like money? Here’s how to use math to make it rain. Most people won’t go on to be teachers in your subject—which is good because if everyone were a teacher, we’d have no food, shelter, or surfboards. Showing students how your knowledge helps them do what they want to do makes your knowledge something they want.
However, that’s probably not why you majored in this. It isn’t usually the case that Physics teachers are just former rocket scientists, Spanish teachers are just travelers, or Math teachers are just rich (or have any money at all). No, there is something about the knowledge itself that fascinates people. It should be mind-blowing that 
we can use physical equations to perfectly plan the trajectory of a projectile. It should be incredible that we can describe how an entire language works through a few rules. It should be awesome that we can use numbers to predict the future of a market. That’s what inspires people to dedicate themselves to something. When knowledge is for the sake of something else it is good, but only as a means to an end. When knowledge is for its own sake, then it is good in and of itself.
There is precious little you can do with the philosophy. You won’t send anyone to the moon, you won’t communicate with foreigners (though you’ll sound like one), and you definitely won’t make money (believe me). But that isn’t why people study it in the first place. After years of teaching philosophy, I am convinced now more than ever that it houses the questions people love most. What are we: souls, animals, machines, illusions? What is happiness and what is the point of this life? Is God real and if so what is God like? How can I know whether this is all just a dream or that I’m not the only person among very realistic robots? Is it better to save a life or respect cultural beliefs? Some have argued that these questions are pointless. Maybe. Some say they are a waste of time. Okay. But, no one says they are uninteresting. And, if something done for its own sake is good, then it is good to philosophize.
Objections to Philosophy Are Impossible
It is impossible to lodge a reasoned objection to philosophy without doing philosophy. This should be considered irrefutable evidence that we can’t rationally reject philosophy. However, interestingly enough, I’ve found this to be the least effective response to objections to philosophy. How is it possible that such strong evidence convince so few? Watch the video!
After the video, see a little expounding below.
In this episode, I say objections to philosophy are self-refuting, and you may have felt a little confused by this. To say a claim is ‘self-refuting’ means that it is false by its own standards. Here are some examples.
- “Never listen to what a philosopher says.” Making a claim includes wanting others to listen to you, but this claim tells you not to listen to me. It says something like this: “Listen: don’t listen.”
- “I can’t type a word!” I made this claim by typing, so if the claim were true, I couldn’t have made it.
- Finally, “I don’t speak a word of English.” I mentioned this claim in the episode. I made this claim in English, so it can’t be the case that I don’t speak a word of English.
But—hold on! Surely you can truly say, «No hablo español,» right? Maybe someone would say you were wrong or lying or making nonsense, but imagine the following scenario. You are walking down the street and someone stops you who only speaks Spanish. The only three Spanish words you know are no, hablo, and español. Should you not say «No hablo español»? Would it be a lie? Or, false? Few would say you shouldn’t say it, but they might not all agree as to why. Some might say it is false, but you should still say it because it will be helpful. Some might say language is used because it elicits a desired action, not because it is meaningful, so there is no problem in the first place.
One interesting solution is to say that almost all claims we make include assumed but unspoken qualifications. For example, we might say, “There’s nothing to eat!” but we don’t mean there is literally nothing to eat. When we make this claim, all interlocutors assume qualifications like in this house or that I want to eat. When we say «No hablo español,» we are assuming qualifications like aside from these words or enough to communicate with you. So, just because a claim is literally self-refuting doesn’t necessarily mean it is self-refuting. Instead, we have to determine what the speaker intends to communicate first, and then determine if it’s self-refuting.
Beggars Can’t Be Choosers? Philosophy and Choice
One day when I lived in Philadelphia a homeless person asked me for money. Normally I would offer to buy him food rather than give him money because I knew there was a problem with drug 
and alcohol abuse amongst the homeless and I was afraid I might be enabling an epidemic. On this particular day, however, I was running late for something very important. I couldn’t stop to buy something—but I did have a $20 bill in my pocket. I thought quickly: this money could really help someone trying to get back on his feet, or it could really do a lot of damage to someone struggling with addiction. Should I give it to him and hope for the best? Should I withhold it and risk letting someone go hungry? What choice should I make? What would you choose?
One choice would be to give it no thought and just do whatever I felt like doing. However, imagine someone who lived in such an impulsive way:
acting purely on desire and without any thought. Such a person (a ‘wanton,’ to use Harry Frankfurt’s term) would be little better than a wild animal: giving or keeping, helping or harming, hugging or strangling with whatever whim happens upon her. Such a capricious life has never been attractive to me, so this wasn’t really a choice. I needed a thoughtful decision.
The problem is that there are so many considerations that choices like this can be confusing. Here are three examples:
- Is it best to give people the means to make their own choice or is it best to give them an environment that is most conducive to success?
- Is it better to have a society where people help each other or one where people are independent?
- Why should I help someone in the first place?
These questions are, respectively, questions of human nature, political philosophy, and ethics. In other words, these are philosophical questions, and they have a direct impact on our lives.
On that Philly sidewalk, I didn’t have the time to sift through all these criteria; I had only a few moments to act. Philosophy is something best done when we have time to sit and consider, not on the fly. So, one reason we have to do philosophy (and read philosophy blog posts) is that it will help us to make the difficult decisions that arise in life.
I make my own meaning! And, 3 reasons why you still need philosophy
In a recent video, I argued we should do philosophy to (a) discover the meaning of life, or (b) determine there is no meaning of life. Maybe we can avoid this dilemma with a third option?
Consider a line from the 1992 classic film Wayne’s World. “It could happen. Yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt.” The sentence literally means it is possible that small primates take wing and exit Wayne’s anus. Notice, however, that Wayne is being sarcastic. The meaning he is communicating is actually the opposite of the literal meaning. You might think this shows the meaning of an act of speech depends on the speaker’s intention (for more, see Paul Grice). And, maybe we can say something similar about the meaning of life?
Call the way a thing is outside of the mind ‘objective‘ and the way it is inside the mind ‘subjective.’ In the aforementioned video, I claimed that, if life is meaningful, we must do philosophy to discover what that meaning is. To say life’s meaning must be discovered seems to imply it is objective: outside of the mind to be discovered, like a planet. Maybe the meaning of life is subjective: determined by the one who lives it like the meaning of an act of speech is determined by the one who speaks it. If that’s the case, we might think, we don’t need philosophy to discover the meaning of life because we just make it up ourselves without philosophy.
However, I think we will still need philosophy, and here are three reasons why.
1. We need philosophy to know our options
If I choose my own meaning of life, I will have several options: building something lasting, helping others, living pleasurably, etc. In each case, I will need to know the reasons for and against that option and the possible consequences. For example, let’s say I dedicate my life to patriotism. What if an evil genius rises to power and begins the Fourth Reich in my country? If I find that unacceptable, will I have to abandon the patriot option right now? Maybe I could say the Fourth Reich is an impostor organization and I will be patriotic to the true country, but what constitutes the true country? Just people who agree with me? I will need to do philosophy to sift through these issues.
2. Even if meaning is only subjective, I can only figure that out through philosophy
Even if we totally determine our own meaning, we aren’t absolutely certain that is the case. For all we know, objective meaning could exist, and not living our lives accordingly would mean our lives were unsuccessful. Worse, there could be great repercussions if we don’t live our lives according to their objective meaning (e.g., delay of moksha, hell). So, we should do philosophy to make sure meaning is not objective.
3. Subjective meaning might just be another word for self-deception
If the meaning of life is subjective, it is either because (a) there is an objective meaning of life, which is to determine our own subjective meaning, or (b) there is no meaning of life but we can make up our own. If (a), then there is an objective meaning that we must discover. We will need philosophy to find out our meaning comes from determining a subjective meaning for ourselves.
Possibility (b), however, seems wrongheaded. Imagine I believed I had a grasshopper that lived in my head and guided me in right and wrong, but there was no real grasshopper there. You wouldn’t say there was a subjective grasshopper; you would say I was deluded. In the same way, if the meaning of my life is only in my mind, then even if it directs my actions it is a fiction.
So, it seems subjective meaning either implies objective meaning or is an illusion, and in either case we will want to do philosophy to find out.