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Why Is Philosophy Important?

Updated: Nov 14, 2019

I am very much a novice to the world of philosophy. I have only in my late thirty's really seen it as having any real value. For my whole life up to this point, I saw it as the domain of the really smart. Something people with a great deal of money and free time did to fill their dull, boring days. Maybe I was too young or naive to see its true value.

Why did all that change?

The simple answer is my children got older and started asking questions. My oldest daughter was the main driving factor in this new curiosity I gained into this world of philosophy.

She is filled with questions. Often, they seem way beyond her eight years of life. She would often ask things that would make me have to pause and think for a moment before I could give her an answer. She is filled with this natural desire to learn and understand as much as she can.

Her need to question everything was amazing. She seemed to want to have a deeper understanding of the "why" of what was around her. Now I felt drawn to this need as well. The natural place to start this search was in the ideas presented in philosophy.

Philosophy values the question

Philosophy is just simply the love of wisdom. It is a way to organize, categorize, and search for knowledge. At least that is how I view it now. I no longer see it as a space to enter when you have nothing better to do. With my daughter's love of knowledge, I have found my own.

The question is often as much or more fun than the answer. That is where philosophy gets its value. It is focused on the question. It invites us, even celebrates, our desire to question everything. There is no idea or topic that philosophy finds taboo. It is this very willingness to explore it all that gives it value.

Philosophical ideas have shaped our government, our ethics, how we seek to understand things, even our theology. Much of what we know was first just a thought or concept that a philosopher wanted to find some answer to. As this answer was sought out it opened to door to other questions. I think this quote sums up well where these questions lead.

"Wisdom begins in wonder." Socrates

It is the very act of questioning that leads to wisdom. All I ask from everyone who comes to this site is please enter with an open mind. If you disagree with something posted here or on the podcast share what and why. It is in this way that you to can become a lover of wisdom and a seeker of knowledge. In other words a philosopher.

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