If you want the dictionary definition, then it goes as follows:
phi•los•o•phy [fi-los-uh-fee]
noun, plural phi•los•o•phies.
1. The rational investigation of the truths and principles of being, knowledge, or conduct.
This may seem a daunting subject; one that appears to be far removed from daily life and which many of you may find little to identify with. ‘I don’t care about questions which I will never know the answer to; I would rather live my life’ is the typical critique to Socrates’ controversial aphorism: ‘The unexamined life is not worth living’. What many of us fail to realise however, is just how much philosophy is a part of our everyday existence. Searching, longing and questioning are part of our human DNA, and people who take part in such avid questioning of life are taking part in a debate that has gone on since antiquity. If a ball is thrown, a dog will immediately run after it. A human will look to see where the ball came from. For many, the ability to philosophize is the factor that differentiates humans from animals- as the famous philosopher Aristotle once stated, ‘Man is essentially a thinking animal’.
At this point however, you may still not be convinced that philosophy is relevant to your everyday life. So let’s consider some of the issues that you are likely to face through the course of your life: love, friendship, betrayal, politics, morality and religion – the list could go on forever. Although these issues differ significantly in nature, they are very similar in the fact that they can all be analysed philosophically. With morality for example, we can examine the reasons for moral behaviour and can also aim to answer questions such as “Is behaving morally actually in our self interest?” with the analytical skills philosophy encourages. Author Simon Blackburn described philosophy as the ‘study of the structure of thought’, claiming it is ‘conceptual engineering’ as opposed to ‘material engineering’. What he highlights here is the fact that philosophy is an activity: it is a way of thinking. It deals with fundamental questions about the meaning of our existence. It takes a closer look at the ideas behind how we live our lives. What we think is true affects our view of ourselves and how we treat other people in the world. We all hold a mixture of ideas, but do we always know where these ideas come from? Until we examine the principles by which we live our lives, we can never claim that they are completely sound.
So how do we begin to examine the principles that we hold? Many would claim that it lies in our method of thinking; the ability to philosophize is a skill- one that is acquired with time and effort. Behind conversations, media, television, political opinions and education policy there are often whole philosophies which go unnoticed because people have never learned to think about things in this way. Philosophy teaches us to think critically and analytically; it encourages our minds to travel to different territories and to question what has never been questioned. We are victim to the manipulation of others more frequently than we would like to imagine. Even simple tasks that we take for granted such as reading a book, which we think serve only to provide us with objective, unbiased information are in fact bulging with propaganda. Just because they have been published and are read worldwide, it does not give them the right to rule over our own thoughts. The greatest gift humans have is our ability to think rationally and individually.
Philosophy is therefore not a subject deemed for the academics at Oxbridge who supposedly sit around endlessly pondering abstract thoughts whilst failing to deal with the practicalities of life. We all have the ability to question, and that is the only requirement of philosophy. Even if one believes that the fundamental ideas that uphold their life are completely well-judged, they may be impoverishing their life by not exercising their power of thought.
I shall leave you with one last quote by the Indian Humanist MN Roy, which summarises this article swiftly: “I appeal to you to be rational, critical; inspired with the spirit of enquiry … You shall never be free on this earth so long as you remain a voluntary subject to forces unknown and unknowable.”
By J.Y
grapevine 