WHY SHOULD VALUE OF STUDYING PHILOSOPHY?

Keeps our sense of speculation and curiosity alive

Philosophy keeps our sense of speculation and curiosity alive by making us aware that most of our prejudices, customs, and convictions are not rationally defensible. A man who has no tincture remains imprisoned in his common-sense prejudices and his habitual beliefs of his age or nation and convictions which have grown in him without the consent of his deliberate reason. To such a man the world appears definite, finite, obvious. Common objects arise more curiosity in him and unsuspected possibilities are rejected by him. The moment we begin to philosophize the most ordinary things we used to take for granted lead to problems to which only very incomplete answers are possible. Philosophy raises all such doubts and, though it is unable to provide definite answers to them, suggests many possibilities, thus enlarging our thoughts and freeing us from the tyranny of customs and snug beliefs. This uncertainty may be taken as the first value of studying philosophy because it removes dogmatism and arouses the spirit of curiosity by showing unsuspected possibilities.

Life becomes calm and free

The chief value of philosophy lies in freeing man from narrow and personal aims through the greatness of the object's philosophy contemplates. The life of the instinctive man is shut up in his own world and takes note of only that which helps or hinders his self-interest. He lives a feverish, confined life. In comparison, philosophic life becomes calm and free by escaping the prison of private life torn between the insistence of desire and the powerlessness of will. Philosophy does not divide the world into two camps; friends and foes, helpful and hostile, good and bad, etc, but tries to enlarge the self through an impartial examination of our problems.

Strength of emotion

A resultant value of philosophic contemplation may be mentioned. The mind which has become accustomed to the freedom and impartiality of philosophic contemplation will preserve such freedom and impartiality in his emotions and actions. In conduct, he will be just and in emotions a symbol of love because of his habit to view his purposes and desires as parts of the whole and not as a closed world of his own self-interest.

“Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our concept on of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination, and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest goal.”

Most people think philosophy to be a useless activity and a waste of time in answering problems impossible of solution. Philosophy is not mere hair-splitting about impossible problems. Whenever philosophy has a definite answer to a problem, the problem ceases to belong to philosophy and is set up as a separate science. Physics and Psychology were, not long ago, a part of philosophy. Thus at any given time what remains in philosophy is vague and uncertain. But the uncertainty of philosophy has a second source too. It results from the fact that philosophy raises questions that man cannot solve unless his powers of knowing drastically change enabling him to acquire definite answers to his questions say, concerning the purpose of the universe, nature of evil, reality of space, time, and so on. Naturally, then different philosophers come out with widely different answers none of which can be regarded as certain. But philosophy persists because by considering these questions, it makes us aware of their importance and the need to consider the various approaches to them. This keeps alive our speculative interest in the universe about which there is so much to know and so little can be known because we are not so well-equipped as we could wish.

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