An Extended Viewpoint: In Defence of Philosophy

If you've ever confessed at a family dinner or a social gathering that you're studying philosophy, you’ve probably been met with a range of bemused or horrified expressions, accompanied by sarcastic comments like, “Oh, so you're aiming for unemployment?” or “Nice! You've decided you don't need actual skills then?”  

Philosophy students everywhere are likely familiar with these stereotypes, but they can find solace in the fact that the philosophers they study faced similar treatment. Take Socrates, for example. Opinions on him differ: some consider him to be the greatest thinker to have ever lived, others think he was just kind of alright, and many people (including some we know personally) would really rather not have to hear about him or his equally nauseating student Plato anymore. In fact, many of Socrates’ contemporaries couldn’t stand him and his constant questioning either. The Greek comic Aristophanes wrote a whole play depicting Socrates as an air-head fraud who was more attached to sophisticated argumentation than to reality. 

Of course, at the turn of the fourth century B.C., Socrates’ incessant philosophising and general questioning of society’s most basic institutions and cherished values eventually got him put on trial. He was executed. Pro-tip: that “the unexamined life is not worth living" is not a good defense when capital punishment is on the table. And, though we do not advocate putting any philosopher to death (no, not even Hegel), we do appreciate that leading an over-examined life can be equally soul-sucking not just for oneself but also for others. 

This caricature of philosophy as annoyingly obtuse and socially detached has persisted. Philosophy, so the argument goes, is utterly disconnected from real-world concerns which are better understood through the careful study of the physical and social sciences or... “like, you know, just living, man”. Philosophers are navel-gazing sophists who live in a La-La Land of abstract concepts and are too caught up with correctly using the jargon they themselves have invented to realise how miserable they’ve become as a result of their frontal lobes developing beyond what is necessary for human survival and reproduction (God knows, some philosophers struggle with reproduction). 

But here’s a revolutionary thought: philosophy might just be more essential than you think. Philosophy is the mother of all disciplines; it serves as the foundational bedrock from which numerous fields have emerged and which continue to draw intellectual sustenance. Historically, many disciplines we recognise today started as branches of philosophical inquiry. Physics, for instance, was originally just a part of "natural philosophy": humanity's first attempts at asking and answering fundamental questions about nature, matter, and the universe itself. Mathematics, with its logical rigour and precise reasoning, traces its origins directly to philosophical logic and inquiries into the nature of numbers, truth, and proof. Political science, too, was once inextricably tied to political philosophy, addressing some of the thorniest dilemmas about justice, governance, and human rights. 

This deep philosophical lineage extends into other modern academic domains. Even a cursory study of economics acquaints you with giants like Adam Smith and Karl Marx who considered themselves philosophers just as much as economists. Study economics in any more depth, and you’ll soon be questioning how models are idealised, whether the concept of utility is up-to-scratch, and whether agents should be assumed to be rational. Like it or not — you’re doing philosophy. 

Psychology is no different. Try studying the mind without doing any philosophy of mind, without asking yourself fundamental questions about consciousness, mental representation, and free will. Try getting your psychology dissertation approved without writing up an ethics report. That’s philosophy, baby. The physicists-in-training reading this — congratulations for getting this far — might still believe that their discipline is immune. They’re in for a rude awakening when they learn that neither can be neglected. 

Even seemingly distant fields like computer science and artificial intelligence owe a significant intellectual debt to philosophy. The foundational logic behind algorithms, programming languages, and computational theory derives from philosophical logic. Concepts central to artificial intelligence, such as consciousness, cognition, and decision-making, were initially philosophical inquiries into the nature of the human mind and rational thought. Alan Turing, a pioneering figure in computer science, explicitly engaged with philosophical questions about the nature of intelligence and the possibilities of machine consciousness. 

This enduring importance of philosophy isn’t new. Ancient civilisations recognised it as a critical educational pillar. Plato, in Republic, argues that a proper education should include arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music, and, ultimately, philosophy itself. Even centuries later, prestigious institutions such as the Charles University in Prague uphold compulsory philosophical education for all students. 

Still, one might be tempted to say that, if philosophy is everything, it might as well be nothing. You, the reader, might have dabbled in physics, psychology, or economics, all while appreciating art and loving your neighbours, or at least being a half-decent person, and yet rarely, if ever, did you have to engage with any philosophy, properly speaking — whatever philosophy when “spoken about properly” is. 

But here's the kicker: studying philosophy doesn’t just prepare students to debate abstract ideas — it cultivates fundamental skills essential across virtually all professions. Critical thinking, logical reasoning, clarity of thought, and nuanced communication are skills universally valued. Philosophy graduates are trained not only to question assumptions, but also to find rational solutions to intricate problems — skills that are as applicable to a surgeon in an operating room or an engineer designing sustainable cities as they are to a lawyer or a policymaker crafting ethical legislation. 

Indeed, philosophy courses regularly assess students based on their ability to articulate compelling counterarguments to their own critiques, thereby fostering an openness to dialogue and intellectual humility. This method of training actively combats confirmation bias, mental heuristics, and other fallacies that typically reinforce entrenched views and lead to intellectual echo chambers. In today's political landscape — characterised by polarisation, misinformation, and entrenched biases — this capacity to engage in meaningful, productive dialogue is not merely valuable. It is indispensable. 

Still, we sympathise with the skeptics. Much of philosophy can seem, and frankly just is, unnecessarily abstract and steeped in unhelpful convolution. Arcane and thus inaccessible philosophical jargon is all too often used to hide what are simply flawed arguments, and the more ridiculous the far-fetched hypotheticals, far-flung possible worlds, and far-out thought-experiments get, the less relevance they have to answering any of the questions the philosophers who gerrymandered them wanted them to in the first place — and so the less respect we believe they should be given. 

Philosophers, too, are a strange and not always agreeable breed. At their best, they’re a bit aloof, but loveable enough. At their worst, they are the absolute worst. Extraordinarily arrogant and positively uninterested in anything that they cannot immediately slot into the paper they’re currently writing, they might as well be self-licking envelopes whose contents, written in huge shiny red lettering, is not worth the paper it's written on. 

But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Beyond academia, philosophy has profoundly influenced modern society. Democracy, human rights, freedom of speech — none of these cornerstones of contemporary life appeared magically. They are the direct outcomes of rigorous philosophical inquiry. Institutions and practices we now consider indispensable, from constitutional governments to the scientific method itself, owe their very existence to centuries of philosophers relentlessly asking difficult questions and demanding rational justifications. 

So, please, call philosophy and philosophers out. Just remember not to trash it all. Some of it can, and often does, turn out to be rather useful and important. In any case, there’s no escaping it: all attempts at arguing the contrary constitute an exercise in the most philosophical of all pursuits — meta-philosophy, the art of philosophising about philosophy itself. 

Well done reader, you’re a philosopher, after all.

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