What's the Purpose of Philosophy?
It's not to discover how to live a good life, and that's okay
Nigel Warburton had an interesting exchange with Jules Evans about the purpose of philosophy. Warburton’s position is that philosophy is mainly about seeking understanding, so it’s mainly an activity of inquiry. Evans’ position is that the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Indians viewed philosophy as therapy and even developed effective, practical techniques. Evans finds it important to communicate this to raise philosophy’s standing and relevance in the world.
I’ve had similar discussions with some of my friends about the purpose of philosophy. Some think the goal is to figure out how to live a good or virtuous life, so philosophy that’s not practical is pointless.
This is not my impression. I think the point of philosophy is to attain philosophical truths, and truths themselves do not have to be practical. And I’m not alone. According to a PhilPapers survey in 2020, many more philosophers believe that the aim of philosophy is truth, knowledge, or understanding than it is wisdom, happiness, goodness, or justice.
Why do I think this is the purpose of philosophy? Because this is what I see philosophers doing (and have been doing). I’m generalizing here, but I’d say that more than half of philosophy is not about how to live a good life, at least not directly. I’m thinking mainly of metaphysics and epistemology. Moral philosophy is certainly about how to live a good life. Political philosophy is somewhere in between.
What’s common to all these subdisciplines, though, is puzzle-solving; there’s a lot of puzzle-solving in philosophy. How does this account of x harmonize with this person’s account of y? How can x be wrong if y is permissible and x and y are analogous? How can something come from nothing? What would this person have said about this other person’s argument? What’s the nature of time? And my all-time favorite—what’s a hole?
These types of questions are attempts to acquire truth; they are not about how to live a good life necessarily. Of course, some truths are relevant to virtue and ethics, but most of them aren’t.
If I were to pick one other field to compare philosophy to, it’d be mathematics because only some of it is practical. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t think it’s a criticism of philosophy that much of it’s impractical, just like it wouldn't be for mathematics. I find truth to be valuable in itself, meaning I think it’s a noninstrumental good.
Furthermore, there’s plenty of practical and relevant philosophy out there. In fact, there’s philosophical work on virtually every important topic on how to live a good life. Peter Singer himself has written a lot on all sorts of practical issues, including veganism and donating to charity. There’s work on whether or not to have children. There’s work on what makes life meaningful. There’s work on what well-being is. There’s work on sexual ethics. Philosophers have explored literally every important facet of living a good life.
Now what you will not get is specific self-help advice. For example, Michael Sandel talks about how being a good parent requires you to have a balance between accepting love and transforming love. The former refers to accepting and loving your child for who they are whereas the latter seeks the well-being and excellence of your child. So think of a parent who’s okay with their child getting Fs vs. the parent who gets upset because their child didn’t get straight As. The distinction Sandel makes between the two types of love is important and relevant, but, as far as I know, he doesn’t give you step-by-step advice on how you can achieve and maintain a good balance between the two. For that, you’d need to talk to a counselor.
Another example would be this. There’s philosophical work on the ethics of pornography. Specifically, some philosophers debate whether it’s morally permissible to watch it. Suppose the conclusion is that it’s morally impermissible, that itself doesn’t give any guidance on how to fight against the desire and urge to watch it. Importantly, I suspect philosophers of pornography wouldn’t even try to answer that question. The “how to” needs to be answered by another expert.
And this is fine. Again, the purpose of philosophy is to attain truth. Accordingly, practical philosophy determines what the end should be but doesn’t necessarily (and mostly doesn’t) tell you how to get there.
But wouldn’t philosophy be better if it did? Yes, of course, just like it’d be better to be an expert on two things rather than one. However, this isn’t a shortcoming of philosophy and philosophers specifically; rather, it’s a criticism of specialization.
The fact of the matter is that almost none of us are geniuses and we have other stuff to do, so we’d be lucky to become an expert on one topic. Given this reality, it’s more productive for us to specialize. This is why almost no philosopher publishes in every branch of philosophy. Regarding myself, my knowledge is restricted to value theory, and my expertise is even more restricted to bioethics and even more restricted to assisted suicide.
We Already Know How We Ought to Live
Here’s another reason why it’s not a big deal that most philosophy isn’t about the good life. To a significant degree, we already know how we ought to live, so studying philosophy wouldn’t make that much of a difference to most of us.
In my case, I don’t think studying philosophy has changed the way I live my life too much. Of course, the fact that I’m passionate about the subject means that I dedicate much of my time to it, but learning about ethics hasn’t affected how I live. It’s not like I was murdering people before philosophy but then realized it was wrong because of something John Stuart Mill said. It’s not like I thought it was virtuous to hate one’s parents but then learned the opposite was true after reading Aristotle.
My experience is consistent with the findings summarized in a paper published by Eric Schwitzgebel and Joshua Rust, which states, “On average, professional ethicists’ behavior is indistinguishable from the behavior of comparison groups of professors in other fields.”
Another study in German-speaking countries had the same conclusion. It states, “Our results indicate a successful replication of the original effect that ethicists do not behave any morally better compared to other academics across the vast majority of normative issues.”
So what does this mean? I suspect one thing it means is that we would see better behavior if people simply did what they already believed to be right and didn’t do what they already believed to be wrong. Consider this: Do people truly believe that the best possible life is one that’s characterized by having more and more new shiny, material things? I doubt it. Do people truly believe that the good life is characterized by hating others? Probably not. Do people believe road rage is good? No. To a large extent, we already know what we ought to do. The problem is that we don’t do it.
Now, I acknowledge there are cases where ignorance can lead to less-than-ideal behavior. For instance, some people may not know how poorly factory farm animals are treated, and if they knew, they’d stop supporting that industry. Some parents may not know that by raising their children in a particular way, they’re setting them up for failure. And if they knew this, they would change their parenting style.
So ignorance can lead to bad behavior; however, these issues are caused by ignorance of facts, not ignorance of philosophy.
Honestly, I suspect the cases of philosophy leading to more ethical behavior are few and far between. That said, I of course acknowledge there are cases where people change their eating habits because of studying animal ethics. And there’s at least one person who donated a kidney after reading Peter Singer’s The Life You Can Save. But again, I suspect these cases are extremely rare.
Am I saying, then, that there aren’t any moral issues that need to be solved? No. There are particular issues where it’s not obvious what the right answer is—e.g., assisted suicide—and in these cases, philosophers do have something important to contribute. But what I’m saying is that we’d live significantly more virtuous lives if we simply did what we already believed to be right. There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit.
Motivation
I think the fundamental problem that’s preventing people from living a good life is not ignorance of philosophy but rather a lack of motivation, which I interpret as a lack of caring. In other words, it’s not a knowledge problem; it’s a drive problem. For example, I’m aware of the cruelty of factory farms, and I’m knowledgeable of animal ethics, but I still buy and eat meat from factory farms, due to convenience and cost. Of course, I could avoid these issues by becoming vegetarian or vegan, but I simply don’t care enough, and I like the taste of meat.
Here’s another example. I bought a new computer earlier this year. Did I need to do that? No. Could I have significantly helped others if I had donated that money to some cause? Probably. But I didn’t. Do I believe it’s morally better to help others significantly than to buy a new computer for myself? Of course.
Again, the problem is not ignorance of philosophy, it’s a lack of motivation.
There may be other reasons why people don’t do what’s right despite knowing what’s right. For instance, maybe they have mental health problems or maybe they’re blinded by revenge. In response, I still suspect that, in most cases, a lack of motivation is the main reason. And even if I’m wrong about that, my other point still stands, which is that studying philosophy wouldn’t realistically address those issues.
Michael Sandel was interviewed by Stephen Colbert once about his book, Justice. And Colbert said this: “I happen to think that the answer to ‘What is the right thing to do?’ is generally that thing that you least want to do.” While it may be an exaggeration, his comment touched upon a deep truth about the human condition.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any insights as to how to motivate people to live good lives. That’s a job for people who know more about psychology.
Does this mean that we need more motivational speakers and fewer philosophers? In the context of living a good life, and assuming they’re effective, I’d say yes. However, philosophers are needed to teach critical thinking. This is where philosophy has the most to contribute, I think. It’s not about knowledge of the good but the skill of how to reason.
Intellectual Virtue
There was a recent study that showed philosophy majors tend to cultivate their intellectual virtues more so than nonphilosophy majors. The study asked students to self-report how often they did several things on this “Habits of Mind Scale,” including
Evaluate the quality or reliability of information you received
Integrate skills and knowledge from different sources and experiences
Revise your papers to improve your writing
Support your opinions with a logical argument
This is what they found.
…we find clear evidence that philosophy majors enter college with more open-mindedness, curiosity, and a stronger tendency to be intellectually rigorous and reflective than non-philosophy majors. In addition, although both students generally show some growth in these traits, philosophy majors tend to grow more than non-philosophy majors in at least some of them. Although this difference in growth is not drastic, it remains noteworthy and suggests that philosophical education may uniquely enhance certain intellectual virtues.
I’m not surprised by the findings of this study. Critical thinking, which I think embodies many of these positive habits of mind, is one of the main tools, if not the main tool, that philosophers use to get closer to the truth. So it would make sense that studying philosophy would improve that skill. To be clear, I’m not committed to any particular definition of critical thinking, but I generally consider it to be a complex skill that encompasses being able to weigh different perspectives and evidence, being able to use reason to reach conclusions, revising premises when appropriate, etc.
So how does this relate to the good life? By helping us attain truth, and by helping us address personal and political problems. The virtues of rigorous analysis, logical thinking, epistemic humility, etc. are all conducive to understanding the human condition and implementing the changes we want to see in the world. Have a parenting issue? Critical thinking can help with that. Trying to figure out what you think about immigration? Critical thinking can help with that too. Honestly, I have a hard time thinking of problems where critical thinking wouldn’t be helpful. It’s almost like a near-universal problem-solving tool, comparable to how money is a near-universal exchange tool.
Importantly, note that exercising intellectual virtue is still contingent on the person being motivated to exercise that virtue. If people simply don’t care enough to be open to other perspectives, they won’t be open to other perspectives. If people don’t want to question their assumptions, they won’t question their assumptions.
Unfortunately, I’ve seen professional philosophers behave like this because they’ve fallen into the trap of tribalism. My team is good. Your team is bad. My team is right. Your team is wrong. People like this aren’t motivated to exercise intellectual virtue because they dislike the other team too much. This is my guess, at least.
Interestingly, philosophy can help out with this problem. One of the greatest works of philosophy, in my opinion, is On Liberty by John Stuart Mill. In this short book, he gives four reasons in favor of freedom of speech.
First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.
Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any object is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.
Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds.
And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience.
While these reasons are given in favor of freedom of speech, they also act as reasons to be willing to hear different perspectives. Hence, understanding Mill’s argument can help motivate someone to exercise intellectual virtue. The potential causal sequence, then, would be philosophy → motivation → intellectual virtue → better life.
Conclusion
So in the end, the point of philosophy is not to teach us how to live a good life, but it can contribute to it mostly by teaching us critical thinking. That said, its contribution pales in comparison to what can be achieved if people simply did what they already believed to be virtuous.