Subject – Philosophy

TOPIC –Role of philosophy in all aspects of human life & society

What is philosophy?

logic (the study of good reasoning), epistemology (the study of knowledge), metaphysics (the study of reality), and

ethics (the study of morality).

study

(1)it can help improve critical thinking skills and

(2) it’s a good way to know certain things. Even so, much more can be said—especially considering each specific thing philosophy can teach us.

Philosophy2 sense

Formal

the informal sense, as a personal

philosophy, whose focus is resolving

the existential questions about

the human

Informal

philosophy is an academic study of the fields of aesthetics, ethics, epistemology, logic, metaphysics, as well as social and political philosophy.

 Reasons why philosophy is important:

• All human beings orient their lives around ideas about what reality is like, that they believe explain their experiences, and ideas about what reality and human beings should be like, that they use to guide their behaviour. The first of these kinds of ideas is a metaphysical theory, the second an ethical or moral theory.

• Human beings seem to need metaphysical and moral ideas because they are not born with instincts that determine for them what they should think and want, and are born with the capacities to make up their own minds and to question any belief they have or meet.

• It is evident that most of the ideas in history that people have used to explain human experiences have been false or unfounded in many respects, and it is also evident that most of the ideas in history or direct human behaviour have been harmful to other human beings or to themselves.

• On the other hand, it is also evident that whatever adequate understanding people have of themselves, of others, and of their environments and possibilities, is based on the asking and answering of the type of general questions that are philosophical and scientific, and that there seems to be no way of being human without trying to ask and answer such questions.

• All ideas about philosophy or science, including those that ridicule or condemn philosophy or science, are themselves philosophical ideas, and such as declare all philosophy useless, trifling, or impossible are little better than a refusal to do any serious philosophical or scientific reasoning.

• The ideas people live and die for, go to war for and kill each other for, or let themselves be inspired to the making of great art or science, are all philosophical ideas.

• The lives people lead and the choices they make are the result of the philosophies they hold, whether they are conscious of this fact or not.

• Much of the history of the 20th century - "The Century of Total War", in Raymond Aron's apt phrase, which is the title of one of his books - is the more or less direct product of a small number of philosophical ideas and the philosophers who made them up: Marxism ruled the lives of more than a 1000 million people; Fascism destroyed the lives of millions of people and caused a World War; both Marxism and Fascism were opposed by men in the name of Liberalism, Democracy, Catholicism, Protestantism, or Science, each of which are themselves either specific philosophies or derived from more comprehensive philosophical systems.

• While men like Marx and Nietzsche in their own lives may be regarded as unsuccessful, their ideas and values, or rather what was made of these by -proclaimed followers, have in the 20th century created and destroyed civilizations and the lives of millions of human beings.

Ideology, religion and philosophy

• Literally millions of people have been murdered in this century and other millions of people have been sent to concentration camps for what were, in the end, crude philosophical ideas (of the Marxist or Fascist variety, often).

• All supposedly 'practical' men, whether they did the killing in the name of a philosophy or were the victims of men acting out a philosophy or stood at the side gawking while declaring all philosophy useless or nonsense, were as philosophical - in the sense of being moved by general arguments about what the world is and should be and how human beings should behave - as any man, except that these supposedly 'practical' men were less conscious of that fact.

Guides and misguides the lives of human beings, and every human being meets daily

with many philosophical ideas, and makes or avoids many of his daily choices by appealing

to and relying on philosophical considerations.

Philosophy's everyday appearance, which is a

political or religious ideology,

• In any case, it is an illusion to believe that philosophy only pertains to the goods of the mind or only is of importance to a few intellectually gifted and curious individuals:

• whatever happens in society and whatever human beings consciously do and do not do to others and for themselves is based on general ideas and values that are very properly speaking philosophical, and this has been so since human beings started to think.

• And part of the reason is that all men need to answer the questions what there really is, what they should and should not do, and why they believe they know things. These questions cannot be answered by any special science, and must be somehow answered by all human beings.

• Also, it is important to recognize that the philosophies that influenced much of the history of the 20th Century, Socialism and Fascism, were - at least in practice - dangerous delusions, and that indeed the same holds for religions, that tend to be beliefs that are held in irrational and fanatical ways, and tend to be very dangerous for those of a different belief. (This last fact should give people pause who believe in an all powerful and benevolent deity. It seems to me that the most a believer in God is entitled to claim, within reason, if this is possible, is that he believes in something that is totally beyond human understanding.

• A philosophy for everyday life is, in other words, an investigation of the raw reality of life, philosophy is necessary because—this is my claim or thesis—we still have not tasted life in all its richness. We tend to cling on to certain norms or ideals in a way that does not honour our own experience and intuition.

• At worst our life becomes an imitation, image or representation of more authoritative ideals. An image is a copy, that is, a simulation of the real reality. We have lost contact with life because we follow ideas or images of how life should be. We live our life as an imitation of a moral model, as if such a model was not just another human artifact.

A philosophy for everyday life tries to overcome seductive simulations and beliefs that the truth is certain,

unchangeable, and universal.

Conclusion

• Although many people are unconvinced that that philosophy is important, I think there are good reasons to think it is important.

• Philosophy can not only help improve critical thinking skills, but it can help provide us with knowledge of logic that can greatly help improve critical thinking.

• Moreover, I do not find the view that philosophy makes no progress and provides us with no knowledge to be plausible based on the fact that it seems clear that everyone knows something about at least one philosophical domain (logic), and some people know more about that domain than others.

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