защо да си философ е добре?

Философия от гръцки означава любов към знанието. Този стремеж не е безполезен. Смятам практикуването на философия за полезно макар да не си спомням, да съм чел класически философски текст, но не така както е общото мнение за упражняване на тази наука.

Пол Греъм е написал есето “How To Do Philosophy”, което намирам за доста интересно. С цитати от него ще проследя основни положения, с които съм съгласен.

Каква е целта на философията?

Aristotle’s goal was to find the most general of general principles. The examples he gives are convincing: an ordinary worker builds things a certain way out of habit; a master craftsman can do more because he grasps the underlying principles.

 С какво е полезна философията?

It’s very valuable in practice to have a deep understanding of what you’re doing; even if you’re never called on to solve advanced problems, you can see shortcuts in the solution of simple ones, and your knowledge won’t break down in edge cases, as it would if you were relying on formulas you didn’t understand. Knowledge is power.

Какви са недостатъците на древната философия?

So he proposes there are two kinds of theoretical knowledge: some that’s useful in practical matters and some that isn’t. Since people interested in the latter are interested in it for its own sake, it must be more noble.

 

The real lesson here is that the concepts we use in everyday life are fuzzy, and break down if pushed too hard…In particular, they don’t seem to have fully grasped what I earlier called the central fact of philosophy: that words break if you push them too far.

 Наистина ли философията е древна наука?

judging from their works, most philosophers up to the present have been wasting their time. So in a sense the field is still at the first step.

The only way to say whether something is really old or not is by looking at structural evidence, and structurally philosophy is young; it’s still reeling from the unexpected breakdown of words.

Как според Греъм човек трябва да практикува философия?

Getting to general plus useful by starting with useful and cranking up the generality