Why Do We Study Philosophy? — Continued, Part Four

But is that really the case?

If Epictetus, a Roman slave who became a great philosopher, could see humanity today, would he be astonished only by our scientific and technological progress?

Would he not also be astonished by how many fewer people today welcome savage wars, cruel and unjust punishments, and brutal treatment of women and children?

Thirty years ago the well-known Australian philosopher Peter Singer wrote a book about the treatment of animals on farms. At the time many people thought he was mad, and even raising the question of farm-animal rights seemed ridiculous. Today people no longer laugh at Peter Singer.

The truth is that we change, and we change our world. Philosophy gives us the possibility of transforming our history not only into a history of scientific progress but into a history of the development of consciousness and freedom.

At the broadest level we can divide the world into the “world of things” and the “world of actions.” We can look at the world by asking what it is and what it is made of, which is what science does: the world of things—tables, chairs, natural substances, particles, molecules, animal and plant tissues, chemical reactions and the laws governing this world of things.

Or we can see the world as the stage of our actions, understand it in relation to ourselves and our decisions in life, and ask what each thing in the outside world means for us and what effect it has upon us. This is what philosophy does.

We are, of course, free to choose scientism and to regard only the world of things as real, adopting an entirely material and scientific view of the world. But this is not a way in which we can actually live.

At every moment of life we are compelled to act within the world of actions and to choose. We are continually searching for meaning in each moment of our lives within a world that appears completely meaningless if approached without philosophical inquiry.

For us as human beings, the world is not made only of “things.” It is also a field of action. Whether we like it or not, at every moment we must continue living within the world of actions and choose something to do that affects ourselves, others and the world around us.

We can regard the world as an accidental combination of matter, but this belief cannot eliminate our need to make decisions about our actions or the feelings we experience. For us, the world is not only a combination of “things and material particles” but a place in which to act. We are compelled to move from one point to another through time.

The “world of things” and belief in it do not help us understand the subjective world of values and actions or our unavoidable search for the meaning of life.

The truth is that the meaninglessness attributed to the world in modern scientific thought has made our own lives meaningless, and in making human life meaningless has also stripped our human suffering of meaning, even though the suffering itself remains.

In the modern world the human being becomes a statistical unit and a small cog in the enormous machinery of cities whose growth continually diminishes human individuality and the meaning of individual life.

The call to return to philosophy and to its meaning in our everyday lives is a call to recover a balance stolen from us by the speed of modern life.

Modern human beings claim to have no need of philosophy and therefore imagine themselves “without philosophy.” But just as we cannot avoid acting in the world of actions, we cannot avoid adopting some philosophical system through which to act in that world.

A little reflection on our own lives and those of our contemporaries will show that the contemporary person is not a person without philosophy, but a person governed by a philosophy of comfort—or Good-Feelism—in which the sole aim of life is to feel good, a goal reduced to consumption and to what we buy, wear and eat. Strangely, this person is still not happy, and depression and anxiety become widespread illnesses of the age.

Knowing is never equivalent to not knowing. An examined life is never equivalent to an unexamined one.

The aim of philosophy, as I understand it, is not to learn a range of philosophical theories but to create a personal philosophy that transforms our way of living from unconscious living into conscious living—one in which we can think for ourselves rather than remain consumers of ideas until the end of life.