Why should anyone bother to read philosophy? Isn't it a nit-picking discipline with no real benefits? I used to have a stock riposte to such views, which I thought presented a pretty good defence.
First, philosophy provides an excellent training in clear thinking. The abilities to reason, to distinguish sense from nonsense and to construct strong arguments can serve one well in many areas of life. There also seems to be something valuable about critically scrutinising the important questions that confront us-as in the famous phrase, "the unexamined life is not worth living."
This engagement with deep issues could even contribute to increased happiness. Thinking philosophically requires one to stand back from things and this puts matters which otherwise might seem urgent and substantial into perspective. As Bertrand Russell put it in the last, rousing chapter of his The Problems of Philosophy, a life without this perspective is "feverish and confined," by comparison with which the philosophic life is "calm and free."
On this account, philosophy can make you think better, feel better and is essential to an honest confrontation with the big issues of life. What better answer to the sceptics who think it is hot air?
But I now think this case is much weaker than I once thought. While none of the supposed advantages philosophy brings are illusory, neither are they as indispensable as they once seemed.
Although it is true that philosophy helps one to think better, if your goal is to learn to reason more effectively, there are more direct means of doing so than reading Kant. It would be much more efficient to read a few critical thinking texts. While many of these are informed by the techniques and skills of philosophers, there is nothing essentially philosophical about them. Critical thinking programmes such as that developed by psychologists Michael Shayer and Philip Adey at the Centre for the Advancement of Thinking at King's College, London, have been shown to be effective in increasing examination performance across all subject areas. To study philosophy primarily to increase one's critical thinking skills would be like training for a marathon by an intensive programme of swimming.
I've also come to see the "unexamined life" line as a lazy defence of philosophy. While it may sound noble to examine one's own life, the idea that philosophy is the only, or even the best, means of doing so is arrogant and false. Indeed, it is possible to spend one's whole life studying philosophy and completely fail to put one's own self under the intellectual microscope. Philosophers are not, as a whole, any more blessed with self-knowledge than anyone else. They contain the same proportion of the deluded and the egotistical as any other section of the population. If the unexamined life is not worth living, the lives of many philosophers are worthless.
As to the idea that philosophy can make you happier, it took Alain de Botton's reductio ad absurdum to bring home its folly. De Botton's book and television series would have been unobjectionable if they had merely shown how the ideas of the great philosophers could be used to make you feel better. But it was the promotion of the idea that this is the primary purpose of philosophy which showed de Botton's project to be na?ve. Philosophy is about the pursuit of truth. We hope that the truth will make us happier, but it need not do so. For every Hume or Socrates who smiled all the way to their deathbeds, there's a Nietzsche or Kierkegaard to tell you that it is that bad, after all.
This last point is important because there is a growing movement of "consultant philosophers" offering counselling to deal with life's difficulties. Whatever the merits of this, if someone is clinically depressed, then the only proven ways of making them feel better are antidepressants and cognitive behavioural therapy.
My delusions rested on a common error: I had mistaken useful side-effects for the primary purpose. I remain certain that philosophy can improve your thinking skills. I am less sure, but still persuaded, that some of it can help us to live more examined lives and to feel more at ease with the world. But if one's primary goal is to think, feel and reflect on one's own life better, there are more direct means of doing so than investing in a library of philosophy's great works.
As for the cause of the error, it is probably down to no more than the usual human tendency to over-estimate the importance of whatever one's personal passion is. The opera buff knows that a life without Wagner is impoverished, the wine-lover thinks you haven't lived if you haven't tried a 1961 Bordeaux, and the foolish philosopher thinks everyone needs to read Aristotle. All are wrong. An individual can only have so many passions. If abstract thought doesn't move you, then you are right to let philosophy pass you by.
So what is the value of philosophy? The answer comes from Wittgenstein. The great Austrian philosopher loathed that chapter by his old friend Russell on the benefits of the philosophical life. One should study philosophy, he thought, only if one is troubled by philosophical problems. In other words, read philosophy for philosophy's sake.
