Why Philosophy Matters to You, Even if You Think it Doesn’t
Plato, Karl Marx, and Bertrand Russell each claimed that philosophy is essential to the good life
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I grew up in a Southern Baptist church that preached a fate of everlasting torment in a lake of unquenchable fire for those on the wrong side of God.
I believed that story and all that came with it for the first half of my life — I took for granted that Jesus died for my sins and that salvation from the burning loch lay in fealty to the Lord.
Problem was, I never felt “saved” — the Baptist term for true Christian redemption in Christ.
So, although I believed the church’s story, I never felt secure — I always feared that my faith wasn’t good enough and that my sins proved the illegitimacy of my baptism. It was a quietly terrifying way to live.
Thankfully, in my early 20s, I found French philosopher Albert Camus and his treatise on the metaphysical and historical development of revolution — The Rebel.
By the time I discovered that philosophical treasure, my faith was seriously flagging, and Camus guided me from separation to divorce from the church to my immense and enduring relief.
That’s why philosophy is personal to me
Following Camus, I devoured philosophical works with an insatiable appetite — everything from Bertrand Russell’s self-serving history on the subject to the ruminations of Plato, Kant, Nietzsche — and most every other philosopher celebrated in western academia.
And while my lifetime of wrestling with philosophy has produced no other revelation comparable to my experience with The Rebel, the pursuit of wisdom enriches my life daily by challenging me to continually rethink my point of view and to give due consideration to those who see things differently than I do.
Why philosophy should matter to you, too
So, you have my word that philosophy is supremely important and frankly, that should be good enough. I kid, of course — a good philosopher doesn’t take anyone at their word, even on the incomparable value of philosophy.
Luckily for us all, centuries of thinkers have made compelling arguments for the primacy of philosophy, and 3 in particular make that case perhaps more convincingly than all the rest. They are:
1.) Plato
In The Republic, Plato argues that justice concerns each individual “doing one’s own” — meaning that to produce an ideal state, everyone needs to fulfill the role they’re suited best for.
Plato contends that because philosophers lead a life of contemplation in the pursuit of wisdom, they are ideally constituted to serve as society’s ruling class.
He puts his point emphatically:
“There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.”
Given the pervasive imbecility of the US political class, one can readily appreciate Plato’s point.
Plato envisioned a benevolent oligarchy as the ideal form of government, though such notions sound sinister to most Americans and for good reason — history is rife with examples of violently repressive regimes with power concentrated in the hands of the few.
We Americans — along with a plentitude of other nationalities throughout the world — prefer government of, by, and for the people. We prefer democracy.
But surely wisdom is no less integral to a just democracy than it is to Plato’s ideal republic. And because every individual in a democracy is — at least hypothetically — a co-monarch with all others, every member of the polis has a duty to pursue wisdom above all else.
So clearly, philosophy matters intensely in the grand scheme of human society, regardless of whether the political order is totalitarian, oligarchic, democratic, or anything in between.
2.) Karl Marx
Whereas Plato asserts that strict class divisions are essential to a healthy state, Karl Marx contends that justice demands the abolition of social and economic classes and the establishment of total equality among persons.
Unfortunately, according to Marx, standing in the way of a worldwide egalitarian utopia are the ideologies of the ruling class that serve to delude the economic base into believing that the current mode of production (capitalism) is just and natural.
By disseminating such ideologies, the economic elite obscure the oppression of workers and foreclose revolutionary forces.
Marx sums up his theory of ideology in The German Ideology:
“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.
Marx saw philosophy as essential to breaking the spell of ruling class ideology and felt that the ultimate purpose of philosophy is radical social change designed to liberate oppressed classes.
Turning a Marxist gaze on America, broad working-class adherence to an “up by the bootstraps” ethos in the US betrays a collective “false consciousness” — meaning that American oppressed classes fail to see themselves as part of a group with a common interest in refashioning the economic order.
Universal critical thinking is necessary if we hope to slip the grip of capitalist ideology, so philosophy, for we Americans as much as Marx, is a prerequisite for perfecting a just society.
3.) Bertrand Russell
While Marx typically limits his critique to capitalism and its ideological underpinnings, 20th-century British philosopher Bertrand Russell broadens the philosophical field by examining “common sense” assumptions and “habitual beliefs.”
So, whereas Marx attributes a program of brainwashing to the capitalist elite, Russell fixes the responsibility for conditioned thinking in individuals. The antidote for both thinkers is the same, however: a steady diet of philosophy.
In The Problems of Philosophy, after remarking on philosophy’s power to dispel ideology, Russell also endorses a contemplative life as a sure path to tranquility:
“Unless we can so enlarge our interests as to include the whole outer world, we remain like a garrison in a beleaguered fortress… In such a life there is no peace, but a constant strife between the insistence of desire and the powerlessness of will. In one way or another, if our life is to be great and free, we must escape this prison and this strife. One way of escape is by philosophic contemplation.”
According to Russell, by dwelling on ideas and objects bigger than ourselves, we can achieve a humility much more pleasant than our default hubris.
So, in contrast to Marx, Russell celebrates philosophy’s beneficent effect on the human psyche instead of its role in achieving social justice and harmony.
For both of them, however, philosophy is indispensable to the good life. That goes for Plato, too.
Don’t take our word for it
Neither Plato, Marx, Russell, nor even Dustin T. Cox is reliable enough to merit anyone’s uncritical embrace. Philosophy matters to me and I think it is important for everyone — so did all the seminal thinkers listed above.
Still, we could all be wrong. Happily for me, though, the only way to make that case is to dig into philosophy and find whatever evidentiary cracks you can.
So, philosophy matters — even if all you want to do is prove why it doesn’t.
