I studied philosophy in college, as I mentioned in my last post. I went to college with the intention of studying philosophy, and I did so primarily for the love of it. I really enjoyed it, and I don't think there's anything else I would rather have studied. It's a personal passion of mine.
That's why I think it's pretty embarrassing how difficult it is for me to answer some basic questions like "what is philosophy?" and "what do you gain from studying philosophy?"
For the first question, the pithy but personally unsatisfying answer is something like "Philosophy is the art of thinking well." A true but personally irrelevant answer to the second question is that a philosophy degree is just about the most versatile humanities degree out there, and that philosophy majors tend to do quite well in post-graduate education and, on average, earn pretty good money over the course of their careers.
Who cares? Not me. I didn't decide to study philosophy to enhance my career prospects, and while "thinking well" is a pursuit of mine, that phrase says very little about what the study of philosophy actually entails, and does almost nothing to explain why I find it appealing.
I've heard many attempts to define or explain what philosophy is. Philosophy, they say, is "reasoning about reason," or "thinking about fundamental questions," or, heck, take the etymological approach and just say it's the love of wisdom. All of these are kind of right, and start to give a sense of the scope of philosophy.
Philosophy is a field that includes such diverse topics as the nature of morality, the nature of existence itself, the study of knowledge, the principles underlying science, the meaning of art, and so much more. It's this breadth, in large part, that drives me to philosophy. I sometimes tell people that I was drawn to philosophy because I had a lot of different interests, and whenever I prodded deep enough into those interests, I would end up at philosophy.
This, too, is a bit unsatisfying.
One thing you might notice if you examine the history of philosophy is that, in some ways, the purview of philosophy has shrunk over time. People who study physics, chemistry, and biology are no longer necessarily called "natural philosophers"; we now call them "scientists." There are, of course, philosophers in all of these fields, but these are philosophers of science. I have sometimes thought about philosophy as proto-science: reasoning about things which we can't, or can't yet, study by the hard, empirical, data-driven processes of science.
Many philosophers would disagree. This also runs into the problem of the field of experimental philosophy, which is, broadly, about taking the methods of science to the questions of philosophy.
Philosophy, I think, resists any clear delineation or definition. This is part of what I love about it. I studied it because it encompasses a lot of interesting, abstruse things that I find entertaining and puzzling. It can help you learn to reason and write better, but there are probably a lot of ways to do that. Philosophy is important, but as a broad field of knowledge, I think it's less important than science.
I would have written more, but unfortunately I broke my own rule and let this one sit in the drafts for too long, and I am now compelled to publish it in this state. Oh well.