🤔 Why Do Philosophy? (16 Reasons to Practice)

How to work on your wisdom.

Hi all,

Just a quick note that the format of this post was inspired by Italo Calvino’s excellent essay, Why read the classics?. I’d recommend reading that one and hope you enjoy this one too!

All the best,
Allan

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Why do philosophy?

Let’s begin by putting forward some definitions.

1. Philosophy is the thing that hides in plain sight, guiding each of us whether we’re aware of it or not.

The writer William Irvine says that if you try to live without a philosophy of life, you will find yourself extemporizing your way through your days.¹

In other words, without some kind of personal ethos, daily life is likely to be little more than a series of improvisations. Without a flexible framework to follow, we’re at the mercy of the chaos. All our actions are merely reactions: instinctive, unprepared responses to whatever happens to happen.

By this measure, we all have a philosophy, even if we don’t. Not having a philosophy is a philosophy in itself.

What we also have, then, is a choice. Will we build our philosophy on a foundation of careful thought and honest questioning, or will we drift into a clutter of untested assumptions and borrowed doubts, a tangled wreck of confusion where there should’ve been space and freedom for our minds to think and thrive?

The doers of philosophy choose the former. To them, their task is clear. They’ve chosen to take responsibility for their own thinking, to free themselves from the common temptation to default to improvisation.

With a philosophy of life, we are better prepared for life. We experience a smoother flow of life as we follow its undulations, rather than be dragged by them.

Fast adherence to a philosophy won’t give us the good life instantly, however. We must respect the process. Getting better is an opportunity. Guidance is earned. Philosophy wants to be with us. But we must practice it.

And if we do, it will accompany us eagerly.

Which gives us another rather congenial definition:

2. Philosophy is a reliable companion.

Our individuality can make us suspect we’re stranded. Some like to say we’re born alone, we live alone, and we die alone because no one shares our unique experience of life. Some see this as confirmation of our isolation.

A human lifetime, regardless of length, is a moment. Marcus Aurelius described existence as a flowing stream, the soul as an aimless wanderer, and life as a sojourn in a strange land. But the one thing that can escort us safely on our way, he said, is philosophy.²

Seneca agreed. Life may be a gift from the gods, was his consolation, but living well is the gift of philosophy.³ It’s the useful guidance, the hand on the shoulder, the ever-present help.

Philosophy can be what makes us feel supported in times of duress. It helps us accept what happens, the things we can’t change, the lot we’ve been assigned. It encourages us to respond to our challenges with purpose, remembering that life is less about what we bear and more about how we bear it.

And yet, philosophy doesn’t demand that we rely solely upon it. It never suggests that it should be our only source of support. Another definition we can give therefore is:

3. Philosophy is helping and being helped.

We’re social animals. We’re naturally disposed to helping others and accepting the help of others. Mutual assistance is a big contributor to Seneca’s idea of “living well.”

This gift philosophy gives us isn’t just a set of practical techniques for responding to the challenges we each face in life. It’s also the recognition that our challenges may require help from fellow humans, just as their challenges may be made more manageable by the help we can provide.

Philosophy reminds us that wisdom includes knowing when to reach out and when to reach back. In this way, it connects us. Not only to ourselves, but to one another.

And so we could say:

4. Philosophy is what promotes the kind of kindness in the world that people will feel reassured is making it a worthwhile place for their children to grow up in.

5. Philosophy is training in humanity and compassion, the directing of our actions toward a common good.

We might not all share the same principles, but we all grow on the same trunk.⁴

6. Philosophy is daily practice.

For some, reading Stoic quotes once a week is enough. For others, going deeper means weaving this wisdom into the fabric of everyday life, building the habit that makes philosophy real when life tests us.

That’s what led me to create Micro Morning Meditations—short daily Stoic reflections that help readers move from occasional inspiration to a grounded, daily habit.

7. Philosophy is what enables us to understand, to tolerate, and to keep acting justly ourselves, even if we don’t approve of what other people are doing.

Fellow-feeling is the promise of philosophy. But returning to ourselves for a moment:

8. Philosophy is training oneself to live freely and consciously, which is less about having the freedom to do certain things and more about having freedom from certain things.

For ancient teachers like Musonius Rufus, this meant⁵:

• Instead of enduring hardships for the sake of money, to train oneself to want little

• Instead of giving oneself trouble about getting notoriety, to give oneself trouble how not to thirst for notoriety

• Instead of trying to find a way to injure an envied person, to inquire how not to envy anyone

Relying on the external world for the sum of money, the level of reputation, or the interpersonal victory that will make us happy means desiring things that don’t depend on us. It means our own happiness is almost always out of our hands.

Living freely and consciously entails a decision to take responsibility for our thinking, our development, and ultimately our contentment. It involves a decision to commit to our training.

And that very training is what enables us to give up desiring that which doesn’t depend on us and is beyond our control, so as to attach ourselves only to what depends on us: actions which are just and in conformity with reason.

By indulging in excess, we can never achieve fulfilment—we learn only to crave more and more. The result is that our self-restraint diminishes. And if we’re unable to control our desires, our self-respect is at risk too.

Once we transgress the boundaries of what is truly necessary, we stray into the territory of excess. Living freely is paying greater attention to what we need.

The less we go beyond that measure, the less damage we’ll do to ourselves and the more fulfilled we’ll feel.

This leads us to another form of philosophical freedom:

9. Philosophy is a considered freedom from the past and the future, and a greater attention on the infinite value of each present instant.

We can learn from the past while learning to let go of it. We can prepare for the future while learning not to obsess over it. The result of these attitudes is that we learn to live in the present.

This snippet from Goethe’s Marienbad Elegy explains it adequately:

Hour by hour, life is kindly offered us
We have learned but little from yesterday
Of tomorrow, all knowledge is forbidden,
And if I ever feared the coming evening,
The setting sun still saw what brought me joy.
Do like me, then: with joyful wisdom
Look the instant in the eye! Do not delay!
Hurry! Run to greet it, lively and benevolent,
Be it for action, for joy or for love!
Wherever you may be, be like a child, wholly and always;
Then you will be the All; and invincible.

The Stoics, likewise, “advise us against attaching too much importance to the distant future, to the neglect of the present moment, because the future is both uncertain and beyond our immediate control. The true locus of our control, and therefore our primary concern, is the here and now, from moment to moment. It is in the present moment that lessons are learned from the past, and preparation is made for the future.”⁶

Attitudes, intentions, and actions like these are reassuringly dependent upon ourselves. Which gives us another definition:

10. Philosophy is the ability to say clearly to oneself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control.

For this we are indebted to Epictetus. Was he a theorist who broadcast this kind of advice without rigorously testing it in the field? No. He was born into slavery. He had his leg permanently damaged early in life.

And yet, Epictetus went on to teach from experience that it isn’t our location or physical abilities that determine our well-being, it’s how we apply our minds.

His philosophy is to bear in mind the distinction between what is and isn’t ours. We needn’t ever lay claim to anything that isn’t ours. There are priveleged places and there are punishing ones. The lofty and the low. But, in whichever of the two we find ourselves, our will is unchanged if we’re prepared to keep it unchanged.⁷

To reiterate, the only things we are in complete control of are our judgements and our actions. Everything else in life—including things like wealth, health, and other people’s opinions—depend to some extent on external circumstances. We can try to influence these things but ultimately we do not have complete control over them.

Philosophy tells us that our job is then to develop the wisdom to distinguish what things are and what things are not within our control.

We should then—if we want to save ourselves a huge amount of unnecessary disturbance—focus on what is within our control and work on accepting what is not.

This directs us back to the topic of time:

11. Philosophy is the recognition that we are not immortal, that we can’t afford to be complacent about the amount of time we have left to live. Because there’s always the real possibility that it’s less than we think.

Before death catches up with us, we think we’ll get to fulfill all our long-term plans, pass on lessons to those who look up to us, and tell our loved ones how we really feel.

But time often runs out before people get around to these things.

Age isn’t relevant to this discussion: It’s not about having as much future time as possible. No one truly knows what’s ahead, no matter how long they’ve lived.

Philosophy teaches us that it’s about the present. The perspective of death enables us to become aware of how important right now is.

It might seem extreme, but before we do anything we might consider asking ourselves some questions, such as: Do I find this acceptable? Might I not come to regret it? In a short time, I will be dead, and everything will disappear. If what I’m doing now is proper to an intelligent and social being, what more could I want?⁸

We know we’re not immortal. But philosophy tells us it’s no reason to despair.

It’s reason to rejoice at the value of now. Because that’s all any of us have and will ever have. Each present action could be our last. When we acknowledge this, why would we want to waste an instant?

And if we want to explore philosophical comfort applied to death further, we should think about this striking definition:

12. Philosophy is learning how to die.

That was Cicero’s conclusion.⁹ The idea resonated so much with the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne that he wrote a masterful essay under that exact title.

Montaigne suggests that all the wisdom in the world basically boils down to one thing: teaching us not to be afraid of dying.¹⁰

And if we’re to do that the philosophical way, our task is to deprive death of its strangeness. It’s to frequent it, get used to it, have it regularly in mind. The goal is to tame the fear of death by repeated handling of the idea of it. It’s a natural process that no one is exempt from.

Of equal importance is learning how to use life. If we live fully, we’ll have had our fill, and we can depart satisfied.

There can be no doubt that living fully requires courage:

13. Philosophy is how we develop the courage to continually give up on the old us, enabling us to stand each day on the threshold to a completely new world that we can inhabit as a new and improved person.

When we form an opinion, we also tend to implicitly declare undying loyalty to that opinion and prepare to defend its honor from anyone who would challenge it.

But what if that opinion was formed as a result of inexperience or simply copied from someone else? What if it was part of a phase that we have moved on from?What if we need to let go of the opinions of our former selves in order to grow?

The spell of familiarity must be broken, and this is best done by looking at the great range of responses to the same things that have come to seem natural to people in different conditions.¹¹

In other words, what we are used to seeing others do, and what we’re used to doing ourselves, can make anything seem normal.

Convention and habituation can affect our judgments and opinions, making us feel like we came up with them ourselves and that we are inextricably attached to them. These ingrained patterns make us rush to interpret new occurrences through the lens of our old opinions.

Whenever something happens, we decide what it means. It’s good or bad. We should celebrate it or get upset about it. We assimilate it into our existing inner narrative. Then we react, not so much to the event itself, but to the meaning we’ve given it. Philosophy sees this habit as a trap.

If we want to break free from our old opinions, or at least confirm if they are still valid, we must be willing to accept that our way of seeing things might not be OK as it is.

We must be willing to examine judgments, let go of long-held views, and potentially give up on an outdated version of ourselves.

As all physicians and poets know, to paraphrase Nietzsche, to make an end requires more courage than to make a new verse.

And building this courage is exactly what practicing philosophy helps us do:

Philosophy calls us to master our own thoughts, and in doing so, to break free from the illusions and attachments that quietly shape our lives.

14. Philosophy is cognitive strength that entails the acquisition and use of knowledge; it includes creativity, curiosity, judgment, perspective, and the ability to provide counsel to others.

This is how Massimo Pigliucci defines the virtue of Wisdom.¹²

And this essay would be incomplete without providing a literal translation of the Greek word philosophia:

15. Philosophy is the love of Wisdom.

And finally:

16. Philosophy is our means of reconnection to our soul, our deeper, inherent nature, our clearest vision of what is important in life, and our shared humanity.

A commitment to practicing philosophy is a decision to choose Nature as our guide. If philosophy is the love and pursuit of Wisdom, then that pursuit entails following Nature's path. It means living in accordance with her law, her example.

To the ancient philosophers, the wise life was the happy life. Such a life is in harmony with its own nature. That premise is a simple one, but not easy to achieve without habitual realignment toward the aforementioned path.

Seneca noted four essential prerequisites for achieving this wise and happy life in accordance with Nature¹³:

1. The mind must be sound and constantly in possession of its sanity.

2. The mind must be brave and vigorous.

3. The mind must be capable of endurance, adapting to every new situation, attentive to the body and to all that affects it, but not in an anxious way.

4. The mind must concern itself with all the things that enhance life, without showing undue respect for any one of them, taking advantage of Fortune's gifts, but not becoming their slave.

The result of all this is the sensible scorning of pleasures and pains. It's a considered indifference to externals, those things that are trivial and fragile and because of their noxious effects, harmful.

Anything else is contrary to Nature.

Our Nature tells us that such things are neither good nor bad in and of themselves, but it's only our use of them that makes them so.

Through the choice to follow Nature, Seneca promises, we'll experience a joy that is steadfast and constant, then peace and harmony of mind and the greatness that goes with benevolence, because every impulse to cruelty is born from weakness.

And a sound mind that is brave, capable of endurance, rationality, and kindness is surely a strong one.

This is why we do philosophy.

1. William Irvine, The Stoic Challenge

2. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.17

3. Seneca, Letters 90.1

4. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.8

5. Musonius Rufus, That One Should Disdain Hardships

6. Donald J. Robertson, The Philosophy of CBT

7. Epictetus, Discourses 2.6.24

8. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.2

9. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations

10. Michel de Montaigne, To Philosophize is to Learn How to Die

11. Ward Farnsworth, The Practicing Stoic

12. Massimo Pigliucci, The Quest for Character

13. Seneca, On the Happy Life