Why philosophy matters.

Philosophy is the invisible force that moves the world. Every historical development since the dawn of human civilisation - every conflict, every culture, every political system, is the product of philosophy. It is philosophers, not politicians, who determine the course of history - the latter simply translate the preexisting philosophical undercurrent of a culture into its inevitable practical outcomes.

Every scientific, world-advancing discovery has its roots in the rational epistemology of Aristotle. Every religious, mystic cult has its roots in Plato. And every claim that knowledge is impossible to us, that logic and reality are opposites - these have their roots in the Greek Heracliteans and the German idealists (Kant, Hegel, Fichte, etc.)

Philosophy matters because it is the only science that investigates reality, including the human-life aspect, as a whole. It was the first intellectual endevour from which all fields of inquiry, beginning with mathematics, sprang and branched off. For this reason, a philosopher’s expertise (if one is a genuine, intellectually honest, philosopher) is universally applicable to work and life.

Philosophers are often accused of being conspicuously aloof, allowing their ideas to float above reality, rather than apply to it. I believe there is significant, but not complete, truth to this accusation. I have observed a reluctance to apply philosophical principles in practice in those who often profess them. Moreover, in “academic” philosophy (with which I have dealt for years, and of which I am increasingly sceptical), it is not primarily the quality of one’s contemplation for philosophical questions that counts, but the uniformity of one’s referencing (which no one ever reads).

But it is important to remember that this is a criticism of individual philosophers and prevailing academic trends, not philosophy itself. Philosophy itself is the pursuit of the human mind to apprehend reality, identify one’s values and the means to achieve them, practice a moral code, and reach the heights of one’s own happiness.

It is not surprising that Aristotle - the universal genius who invented deductive logic, the syllogism, the definition of a definition, the science of biology, and proved the existence of a single, objective, knowable universe - was a remarkably passionate individual:

In Aristotle, John Herman Randall Jr writes:

“[Aristotle’s] may well be the most passionate mind in history. It shines through every page, almost every line. His documents exhibit not ‘cold thought’ but the passionate search for passionless truth. For him, there is no ‘mean’, no moderation, in intellectual excellence. The ‘theoretical life’ is not for him the life of quiet ‘contemplation’, serene and unemotional, but the life of intelligence, burning, immoderate, without bounds or limits.”