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The Forum > Article Comments > What is the use of philosophers? > Comments

What is the use of philosophers? : Comments

By Pablo Jiménez Lobeira, published 7/10/2011

Philosophers perform the division of labour least practised and most needed today.

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"First, they can help articulate those questions that most of us have but that we find difficult to express. Fundamental, radical questions about life, love, suffering, death; good and evil; right and wrong; materiality and immateriality; culture and nature; and so on. The kind of question that come to us at certain extraordinary moments in life: the death of a close relative; a serious accident; falling in love. What am I doing here? What are the important things in life? Do we need to have a State at all? And others of that sort."

Nobody I know has any difficulty ARTICULATING questions like these. The problem is that philosophers don't seem to be any better at ANSWERING them than the rest of us.

I'm all for teaching people thinking skills, provided they put those skills to work on something that's useful to think about.
Posted by Jon J, Friday, 7 October 2011 9:09:42 AM
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Pablo Jiménez Lobeira,

Thank you.

At the end of my eight-sixth year, I finally have come to know that Philosophy is a trade that can be learnt at a University.

Sir, kindly, how much does your University charge for teaching this thing called philosophy?
Posted by skeptic, Friday, 7 October 2011 9:55:27 AM
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Come on Skeptic, you know universities are not places that teach philosophy.

They are places where people who like to refer to themselves as philosophers, among many others who have funny names for themselves, who could never survive out in the real world, can go & hide, while being supported by those "plain persons".
Posted by Hasbeen, Friday, 7 October 2011 10:11:56 AM
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Not a bad article. I, too, share some of these criticisms of philosophy departments. As someone who is currently doing a Ph.D in philosophy, I've become quite dismayed at the lack of connection many doctors and professors have with the "real world". I know the term "real world" is hotly debated in academia, but if we understand it in its usual sense, the world that "plain people" inhabit - working, parenting, making ends meet - then philosophy, sadly, brings little to the table.
Philosophy really, really, really, needs to make itself more practical, more pragmatic to the concerns of "plain people". At the moment, philosophers chatter amongst themselves on issues pertaining to microscopic interpretations of a particular section of a text. They argue back and forth on what "this particular line" means in an extremely pedantic manner, all the while "this particular line" has no relevance to anyone apart from the minute number of philosophers being concerned with it. While people starve to death, the suicide rate becomes disturbingly higher, alcohol related violence remains high, these philosophers take home a nice paypacket of $80,000-120,000 a year arguing over something that concerns maybe 6 people in the world.
I am all for philosophy, it has brought me some great insights, but it's got to get outside the world of "text" and into matters that can help provide solutions to real life problems.
Posted by Aristocrat, Friday, 7 October 2011 1:08:30 PM
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Tony Abbott has his masters in philosophy. Maybe we should ask him.
Posted by TrashcanMan, Friday, 7 October 2011 1:27:38 PM
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The author has only made a case for the practice of philosophy, not for it being paid for out of taxes. But public - translation: government - funding *always* raises the ethical question of the justification of the use of force or threats for the purpose in question, because the state uses force or threats to obtain funds by taxation. The author has not given any such justification, does not appear to be aware of the issue, and has offered us only a non sequitur (because good, therefore force and threats justified to obtain it) which I thought they would have identified as an error in any decent Philosophy 101.

Given that the teaching and learning of philosophy necessarily entails the interpretation of facts about the beneficence of the state, and that "professional" i.e. tax-funded philosophers are dependants on the state, how could such philosophy be anything but biased in favour of the state? Yet the author does not pick up on this issue and again seems completely unaware of it/. What is to stop the philosopher from being a mere shill for the state?

The state has always formed a symbiotic relationship with the intellectual class. The state is in permanent need of favourable public opinion on which depends the legitimation of its coerced expropriations which actions are serious crimes for anyone else. The intellectuals are able to gain from the state funding above the market rate for their services, which is low precisely because the plain people will not voluntarily pay for such services because they perceive their value to be low.

And so there is a systematic tendency in these state-dependent acolytes to preach that Pharaoh can do no wrong, to preach that government is a kind of benevolent institution that magically creates net social utility by what would otherwise be serious crimes. Habermas, anyone?

(cont.)
Posted by Peter Hume, Friday, 7 October 2011 6:42:16 PM
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