There is a common (mis)conception of philosophy, according to which it is the quintessentially “impractical” discipline; that its concerns are of interest primarily to nerdy elites with surplus time on their hands and to eccentric misfits; that the perennial philosophical questions are no more consequential to everyday life than they are answerable. At times in my adult life - much of which has, for better or worse, been devoted to studying, teaching, and “doing” philosophy - a combination of self-consciousness and social insecurity has led me to pay a kind of self-deprecating lip service to this pessimistic narrative (by, for example, making self-deprecating quips about the irrelevance and semi-absurdity of pursuing the very questions which preoccupied my restless mind). I now regret this; for reasons I will explain here, I think that, in fact, there is a sense in which philosophy is both inescapably and imminently
The Inescapability of Philosophy
The Inescapability of Philosophy
The Inescapability of Philosophy
There is a common (mis)conception of philosophy, according to which it is the quintessentially “impractical” discipline; that its concerns are of interest primarily to nerdy elites with surplus time on their hands and to eccentric misfits; that the perennial philosophical questions are no more consequential to everyday life than they are answerable. At times in my adult life - much of which has, for better or worse, been devoted to studying, teaching, and “doing” philosophy - a combination of self-consciousness and social insecurity has led me to pay a kind of self-deprecating lip service to this pessimistic narrative (by, for example, making self-deprecating quips about the irrelevance and semi-absurdity of pursuing the very questions which preoccupied my restless mind). I now regret this; for reasons I will explain here, I think that, in fact, there is a sense in which philosophy is both inescapably and imminently