Anyone who has ever studied philosophy has at some point or another
encountered, if not been cornered by… some of these:
What are you going to do with that?
You gonna be asking me why
I want fries with that when you’re working at Burger King?
When is the last time you did anything productive in a
philosophy class?
These people have a point. Philosophy degrees are superbly efficient
academia to burger king pipelines. Philosophers do not actually ever produce any physical things. Philosophy,
by its nature, is a sort of impractical art form, like creative writing,
painting, studio art… and whatever other humanities might come to your mind.
Now I am not looking to get into an overly technical discussion
with my philosophy friends here but Philosophy, in one of its simpler
conceptions put forth by the prestigious “thefreedictionary.com,” is the
“Investigation of the nature, causes, or principles of
reality, knowledge, or values, based on logical reasoning rather than empirical
methods.”
So some of the things us philosophers might do using just
our cool logic machines aka our brains is ask:
Why?
What is the right thing to do?
What should we do?
Does that make sense?
Now you might think I am dancing around the question of the practical
purpose of philosophy, but think for a second. In what contexts is it necessary
to ask and try to answer some of these questions? Try and think of one or two.
Alright my turn:
Why are some people racist?
Can you imagine if no one in American history ever seriously
posed this question? Where would we be? Social Philosophy
Should the only available qualified cardiac surgeon in the
country operate after he or she had 2 drinks if the patient would otherwise die?
Damn heavy shit! Idk… Medical Ethics.
What should the medical staff do if one of their patients
with terminal cancer tries to commit suicide?
Medical Ethics.
What should we do as a country? What’s good with gun laws,
abortion, taxes, the middle east, privacy, torture and all that good stuff?
That’s the job of the government and big homie Obama to ask every
day. Democrats and Republicans disagree on what we should do; idealistically however
this is a good disagreement because they are both concerned with what the right
thing for the future of the country is. Political Philosophy
Should we fracture underground shale for the hopes of
finding natural gas?
Man… hipsters and republicans at my college sure disagree on
this one but I happen to think it’s a damn good question that some reason and
logic needs to address. Environmental Ethics.
Most people will not argue that these questions and their
answers are trivial pursuits. Their answers determine the genocide or the
sincere respect for an entire race, a patient’s life or death, and a nation’s decision
of whether to investment of young men and women in a regional war.
The common complaint against philosophy and these questions is
that there is no definitive answer to them. Of course this is true, but imagine
if no one really thought about these things, no one really cared to really
rationally assess racism? Or the right things to do as an individual… or a
country? What if we just dismissed such questions as too large to really answer? The
ideas that inform and answer some of these large questions necessarily shape
the actions of us as individuals and as a collective (different levels of
collectives), so rationally thinking about these questions in appropriate philosophy
swagstyle, I believe, should be commonplace for us all to do better things and become better people. It is just the job of
philosophers to think a little harder than most, perhaps too hard at times.
