Five Reasons to Love Philosophy

I love philosophy 🥰 

here are five reasons why:

1) Catharsis

Writing philosophy allows me to get things off my chest. Without doing that, all those words would be weighing me down. I'm nearly at 100,000 words on the blog -- thank goodness I'm not trying to hold all those words in! There's great relief in unloading my brain and getting it out in writing.

2) Trail of learning

Certainly I will get things wrong. Hopefully I will have a chance to correct my mistakes and leave behind a record of the evolution of my thinking. How cool that philosophy lets me do that! Then, if anyone wonders why I changed my mind, I can show them.

3) Cultivating intellectual virtues

I hate to say it, but I feel like a lot of normal jobs fail to cultivate any virtues in their workers. If anything, most jobs cultivate various vices instead. When I worked a 9-5 office job, I certainly noticed this being true of me, which was one of the many reasons I quit to pursue something I'm passionate about. I was surprised to discover how much my worldview was affected by my job, and I was sad to see how cynical and bitter I was becoming. It makes sense: you have a choice to line up your beliefs with your work or not. If you don't, you will be miserable working a job you don't believe in. But if you do, then your beliefs will be shaped by the culture of your job, for better or worse. Corporate culture is pretty awful.

Only a fool would quit their job to pursue philosophy, but I love philosophy so much that I realized I'd be happy to die trying and miserable to live having never tried at all.

Not only do the intellectual virtues of curiosity, bravery, discipline, and so on, make you a better person, but they make you a deeper, more interesting person too. Being well-read gives you something interesting to say on interesting topics.

4) Never-ending content

Philosophy is so big! There's always another question to explore. Even if I get tired or stuck on one topic, I can work on another area and come back to it later.

5) Legacy

No offense to the chefs of the world, but I'd hate to be a chef! All that work and it doesn't last a day. I'd have to do a cooking show or something. I deeply appreciate art's ability to capture time and to outlive the artist. Your philosophy gives you something to leave behind, allowing you to provide value from beyond the grave, and make a more permanent mark on the world. I know how much I've benefited from reading past philosophers. It's a beautiful thought that I could have a similar effect on someone from the future.