Topics Philosophy

Question Hello. I have just read the introduction to this site and was interested in the "paradox" you mention -- that everyone confronts philosophical issues but not everyone has the opportunity to learn philosophy. In my ears, this statement has a twinge of arrogance about it, and my question is whether you think philosophy must, almost necessarily, make its practitioners arrogant. In the first place, regarding the claim itself: it seems that far from everyone confronts philosophical issues in their lives. Many people are confronted with practical issues, like how to get themselves out of poverty, or save their daughter from leukemia. Philosophy has nothing to offer here, it seems. Secondly, still regarding the claim that everyone confronts philosophical issues: while it may be true that many people (though probably mostly wealthy people, no?) confront SOME philosophical issues, there seem to be a great many philosophical issues that would never occur to people to be interested in. Issues in the philosophy of history, aesthetics; the mind-body problem, paradoxes about motion and space (like zeno's); issues in the philosophy of language, etc., don't occur to most people, and I suspect if confronted with them most people would find them irrelevant to their lives and consequently uninteresting. Shouldn't philosophy face up to this irrelevance, or at least admit that many of its issues are for aficionados only? Do philosophers think they live their lives better than others, or know more about how to live better lives? Are they like Socrates, thinking others live mistakenly by not examining their lives, but simply hide this opinion, fearing to voice it? If philosophers do think this way, I think many would find this objectionable. They would say that improving their lives and thinking critically about it is something they can do and has nothing to do with how much philosophy they've learned. Does philosophy claim to have a monopoly on exploring the "important" questions, or questions about value? And if a philosopher thinks he knows more, mustn't he necessarily become arrogant and aloof? He thinks he has knowledge about the important questions. Thus when asked to speak about them he speaks with care, weighs his words, etc., thus making him generally distasteful to company and socially awkward. Just as we don't need to know what a hammer is at its essence to use it properly and effectively, it seems neither do we need to know what love is at its essence, or happiness, or any of those things in a philosophical way, in order to use them and experience them in life. So, in sum: the charges against philosophy are its irrelevance and propensity to create practitioners who are likely to be arrogant and anti-social. How do you plead?

Accepted:
December 13, 2005

Comments

Your first point in your third paragraph appears confused. You say that many problems in everyday life are not philosophical. Agreed. Thus, the claim that all problems in everyday life are philosophical is refuted. But that wasn't the claim you set out to refute. You initially disagreed with the claim that many people confront philosophical problems throughout their lives. That might be true even though not all problems they confront are philosophical.

In your fourth paragraph, you argue that many philosophical questions occur to no one in everyday life. Actually, I disagree with many of your examples, but let's accept the claim. (Go to a museum and you'll overhear people engaged in disputes about aesthetics, for instance. Or, more simply, just browse through this website's questions in Mind, History, etc., and you'll find plenty of questions from folks who clearly have no background in philosophy but who have philosophical questions in those just areas you claim people untutored in philosophy have no interest in.) At best, what it shows is that some philosophical questions are irrelevant to everyday life. But it doesn't show what you claim it shows: namely, that for some/many people all philosophical questions are irrelevant.

As for the rest, no, philosophers don't think they are the only ones to think about how to live life well. We all think about that (hence, again, the ubiquity of philosophical questions). And, no, philosophers don't think they've arrived at the right answers about these matters. Why don't you just read through some of the entries on this site -- if anything should strike you, it's how uncertain and humble philosophers are before the Big Questions. And, no, philosophers don't think you need to answer the philosophical questions before being able to live. Socrates said the unexamined life isn't worth living, but another philosopher (my ex-colleague, the late Joseph Epstein) added that the unlived life isn't worth examining. Can we just live it without examining it? Sure, but all the evidence down through the centuries indicates that for most people, in some quiet moments, the examining is part of the living.