This November 16 is World Philosophy Day, first introduced by UNESCO in 2002 to underscore the importance of philosophy both as a discipline and a tool through which we have been able to think about and confront the challenges facing humanity.
Sometimes cast aside as irrelevant, purposeless or circular, philosophy and engaging in the critical thought which it entails are rather uniquely valuable. Philosophizing begins with intuitions, plausible widely-accepted premises, and ends in arguing for controversial, potentially less certain conclusions. The primary aim of philosophy is not necessarily finding an assured Truth, but rather it is the sort of knowledge and understanding that philosophy brings forth which makes it a worthwhile pursuit in itself.
The philosophical project is one of understanding for its own sake - which does not entail that we find the (singular) answer or answers acceptable to most. Instead, philosophy investigates where the philosophical problem arises from, the conditions which surround it and why different answers seem compelling.
The beauty of philosophy is that it does not discriminate between plausible thoughts, casting some aside as unworthy of consideration while elevating others. In some sense, philosophy is a discipline of free speech (and interestingly, it may in a meta philosophical sense debate the very value and limits of free speech within the discipline). It puts into practice the intellectual open-mindedness Aristotle advocated for when he said, "the mark of an educated mind is to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
And while it is unconstrained in the scope of thoughts it entertains and considers, philosophy practices restraint is another sense: it is aware of the limits of human knowledge and of its own as a discipline (or at the very least, it places this debate over the limits and conditions of belief at the center of its project). This dimension of philosophy is captured by Plato’s Apology when Socrates says, “whereas I do not know, neither do I think I know, so I am likely to be wiser...to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know” (or as it is popularly remembered, “I know that I know nothing”).
I would suggest Gandhi’s thought that “anyone who says they are not interested in politics is like a drowning man who insists he is not interested in water,” extends beyond politics’ ever-present relevancy; one can ignore philosophical questions but it is difficult to dismiss them outright.
