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Why You Should Study Philosophy
Applying the wisdom of the ancient thinkers to the everyday problems of modern life
If you told someone you had discovered an operating system for being a good human being — how to solve the problems of life, how to manage our tempers, where to find meaning, and how to think about death — most people would perk up and lean in. Of course they would. Who isn’t interested in being a better person and living a better life? That’s what we’re all struggling to do, day in and day out, with this random quirk of existence we’ve been given.
If you told that same person that what you’d discovered had a name, and it was “philosophy,” all the excitement and possibility that perked them up initially would leave their body like air out of a balloon. They’d almost certainly turn back to whatever they were doing before you interrupted them. And who would blame them for this aversion? Almost anything is better than talking about philosophy.
I mean, look at the lead paragraph on the Wikipedia page for philosophy:
Philosophy (from Greek φιλοσοφία, philosophia, literally “love of wisdom”[1][2][3][4]) is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.[5][6] The term was probably coined by Pythagoras…
