“What’s so great about philosophy?”

A READER WRITES: “You keep banging on about philosophy, as if it were the solution to all our problems. What’s so great about philosophy? What is philosophy anyway?”

BB SAYS: The word “Philosophy” comes from the Ancient Greek philo-sophia, which literally means “love of wisdom”. A philosopher is a lover of wisdom – someone who seeks to attain the wisdom that he is aware he does not yet possess. But what is this “wisdom”?

A Wise Man possesses self-consciousness or self-knowledge. He knows what he is doing and why he is doing it. From the perspective of wisdom, the most important knowledge is knowledge of how to live. Self-knowledge, knowledge of human nature, teaches us how to live in order to be as happy as it is possible to be. It teaches how to live in order to have the experiences that bring us joy. For this reason, the proper study of man is man. Wisdom is expertise in the art of living – and that is the wise man’s speciality, and what the philosopher strives to attain – he strives to make progress in wisdom. From this perspective, philosophy is not a subject, nor a topic, nor a branch of knowledge. Philosophy is a way of life. It is the way of life of those who seek wisdom.

In the parable of the cave in Plato’s Republic, Socrates makes the classical statement of what a philosopher is. Humans are imprisoned in the cave, trapped by myths, ignorance, conventions, prejudices, ideologies, false beliefs, self-deceptions, superstitions, and the opinions that they have grown up with, which often originate in their families, societies or particular "tribes". People take these myths, these images on the wall of the cave, to be the truth. Consequently, they have a distorted view of reality, and of what they need to be happy. Reason liberates the philosopher from these myths and prejudices, and shows him how to escape the cave, and experience the bliss and joy that come from overcoming these myths, knowing the truth, and living in the real world - not living according to convention, but according to nature, as discovered by reason. The liberated, enlightened philosopher therefore fulfils his human nature in a way that those who accept conventions and myths do not.

The philosopher Leibniz says that "wisdom is the science of happiness. This is what we must study more than any other science, because nothing is more desirable than happiness". What is the means by which wisdom, and therefore happiness, can be attained? "We should make use of reason as much as is possible in order to know goods and evils, and in order to distinguish the great from the small, and the false from the true; in order to decide what should be done and not done in the course of this life. In a word, it is necessary to understand what reason commands, and from that comes wisdom".

This, in my opinion, is what philosophy entails.

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