Why Study Philosophy
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Despite the adage that says, “Curiosity killed the cat”, it is always a good idea to question some things, to understand why they exist and what their implication means. In education, the trend is often the same, being inquisitive and wanting to know how certain things operate and why we spend a lot of time studying them has proven to be the efficient way of learning. Often are times when our curiosity face disappointment, maybe because we do not get answered or even there is no one to ask. Nevertheless, this should not be a scapegoat as to why we should stop being curious even within our mind. Philosophy just like any other field of study contains a lot of knowledge when studied well. The major question which often strikes not only my mind but also my colleagues’ minds is, why should we spend a lot of time studying philosophy? How is the knowledge gained through philosophy applied in real life? What are the major important areas of philosophy are worth studying? Is there any importance of studying philosophy? Such questions often go through my mind and this paper mainly addresses why the field of philosophy should be studied.
According to Warburton (2010), studying philosophy is quite fascinating, it is beyond doubt how philosophy is significant in various ways in our daily activities. Through philosophy, we get to know and understand the origin of some things which we had little knowledge about. Philosophy opens one’s mind as well as exposing an individual to philosophical ideas which are mainly true. Many works in philosophy have focused mainly on physics, logic, and ethics. In these areas, an individual gets to understand deeper why and how things are the way they appear to be. Block (2015), argues that many scientists rely on philosophy to make them decipher certain facts thus allowing them to expound more on the ideas they acquired from philosophy. There are many interesting areas or topics learned in such as epistemology (deals with knowledge), aesthetics (deals with the nature of art) and metaphysics (deals with reality). One of the outstanding philosophers I encountered during the study and his idea made me think most is a pluralist and eclectic philosopher known as Empedocles of Agrigentum who focuses majorly on the human race tolerating each other despite their differences in beliefs (Parry, 2013). He says that Birth and death are mixture and dissolution of determinate substances which are not born and are thus indestructible. Those substances include fire, water, air, and earth. In his outstanding philosophy, Empedocles argues out that through love, all these elements unite, on the other hand, hate causes all these elements to separate. He, therefore, uses his philosophy to advise the human race to love and learn to tolerate each other since through that, “the human race will be purified and then reborn into the noblest life and return to being gods among gods.” Philosophy just like any other field has some topics which on my side I find them to be least important and therefore not worth studying. An example of such a topic is atheism which majorly rejects the existence of gods or deities.
References
Warburton, N. (2010). Philosophy: the basics. Routledge.
Parry, R. (2013). Empedocles.
Block, N. (Ed.). (2015). Readings in the philosophy of psychology (Vol. 1). Harvard University Press.
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