In high school, I shared the impression with many of my peers that philosophy was a dead field. Confined to the halls of academia, largely supplanted by the many fields of science, and seemingly only important to Ancient Greeks, philosophy never interested me very much. It is not too surprising considering how unappealing and narrow it initially appeared to me. Google the word “philosophy” and a stodgy definition appears: “philosophy is the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline."

When you further your google search and find synonyms of philosophy, the three words “thinking, thought, and reasoning” pop up. Truthfully, philosophy is basically deep thought. It can be done by anyone in any environment, and not only by a man with a pipe and tweed jacket. In fact, philosophy surrounds us in our daily lives. Do you have an opinion on abortion rights? Since abortion is an ethical dilemma, your opinion is likely grounded in philosophy. What about the Iraq War? What makes the Iraq war just or unjust is another ethical question. Or perhaps you have a position on what makes things funny, or what makes people happy? Philosophy, at its heart, is simply asking what makes certain things right or wrong, why things exist, or what purpose things serve. Honestly, philosophy surrounds us and most of us do not realize it.

During the summer of my junior year of high school, my father convinced me to take the intro course for philosophy at the Harvard Summer School. I imagined that I would have to read about white, bearded men like Plato and Aristotle or learn what complicated words like metaphysics meant. Yet, the first day was not at all what I expected. We were given a packet of puzzles and one was a thought experiment called the trolley problem.

The experiment involves you watching a train with broken brakes, which hurtles down a track toward five unfortunate construction workers. The workers are unable to escape because they are either tied down, or the track is surrounded by steep walls. Regardless, you know that if the situation does not change, five people will die. You notice however that there is another track connected to the main one. You could pull a lever and divert the trolley onto the spur, but you would still kill someone. Given no other options, do you pull the lever to save the five but kill the one?

The question does not have an easy answer; in fact, philosophers have been struggling with it for years. My intuitive answer was to pull the lever, but the solution is not so simple. Imagine another trolley problem. Same train, same five construction workers, but no lever. Instead, you stand watching the ordeal from a footbridge overlooking the track. You notice a particularly large man bending over the bridge to get a better view. With a slight shove, you could push the fat man onto the track. He is so large that the resulting collision would stop the train before it hit the five workers. Is pushing the man justified? Maybe if it is justified, it is obligated.

I instinctively believe it would be wrong to kill one person to save five, yet I struggle to explain what the difference is between the two cases. The trolley problem, among the many others in the packet, perplexed and excited me. Such ethical dilemmas force us to question whether humans have rights, whether morality is determined based on actions or consequences, and whether we should equally care about the results of our inaction and action. Soon, I began to see trolley problems everywhere. A Catholic friend of mine believes that life is sacred, and holds the view that abortion is wrong even when the life of the mother is in danger. He believes that killing one is not right, even if inaction would result in the death of two.

The recent Superman film, "Man of Steel," places Superman in a similar position to the trolley problem, where he can only save the life of an innocent family by breaking his sworn promise to never kill. The Dark Knight also faces a moral dilemma when the Joker places explosives on two boats, and provides both groups a detonator for the other ship's explosives. He claims that he will detonate both unless one group presses the button to save themselves. There is no clear solution in either scenario, highlighting the fact that learning more about philosophy leads to further application in everyday life.

Ultimately, philosophy is most of all a quest to answer life's most important questions. Science is useful, but it can never provide the meaning of life, or tell you what knowledge is. Science is based upon empirical evidence and experimentation, while philosophy utilizes reason and logic. However, a fundamental human desire to explore and discover the nature of both the universe and humanity drives them.

Philosophy is most useful for rationally challenging your internal biases. Many of us are liberal or conservative, but I often notice that we cannot adequately explain why we hold certain positions. For instance, I had difficulty explaining my political opinions and might as well have read directly from the Democratic Party platform. I was born into a liberal town with liberal parents and teachers. While I still identify as a Democrat, I credit philosophy for widely diversifying my views, and forcing me to think and often question my opinions. Since I enrolled in Harvard Summer School a few years ago, some of my opinions have grown far more liberal and other far more conservative. However, all have become much more nuanced.

I have also discovered that I am rarely offended by people's opinions anymore, even when they differ greatly from my own. Instead, philosophy has trained me to care far more about how people justify and rationalize those views. This seems much more important to me than whether someone agrees with me or not.

While I once scorned philosophy, I am now majoring in it. I have come to realize that philosophy provides the tools for us to become good thinkers, which is perhaps the most important skill there is.