"In the serious pursuit of knowledge - and wisdom - no area is off-limits, no important question unasked. Comtemporary philosophers Daniel Kolak and Raymod Martin capture this feature of philosophy especially well.
'There is a frozen sea within us. Philosophy is an axe. Everything you believe is questionable. How deeply have you questioned it? The uncritial acceptance of beliefs handed down ...by parents, teachers, politicians, and religious leaders is dangerous. Many of these beliefs are simply false. Some of them are lies designed to control you. Even when what has been handed down is true, it is not your truth. To merely accept anything without questioning it is to be somebody else's puppet, a second-hand person.
Beliefs can be handed down. Knowledge can perhaps be handed down. Wisdom can never be handed down. The goal of philosophy is wisdom. Trying to hand down philosophy is unphilosophical. Widsom requires questioning what is questionable. Since everything is questionable, wisdom requires questioning everything. That is what philosophy is: the art of questioning everything.' " Page 13
"Why do we go through the struggle to be educated? Is it merely in order to pass some examinations and get a job? Or is it the function of education to prepare us while we are young to understand the whole process of life? Having a job and earning one's livelihood is neccessary - but is that all? Are we being educated only for that? Surely, life is not merely a job, an occupation; life is wid...e and profound, it is a great mystery, a vast realm in which we function as human beings. If we merely prepare ourselves to earn a livelihood, we shall miss the whole point of life; and to understand life is much more important than merely to prepare for examinations and become very proficient in mathematics, physics, or what you will." Page 3
"The idea that devoting time to philosopy distracts us from 'practical' concerns is an old one. And, of course, the very suggestion that philosophy is not as 'useful' or 'practical' as other subjects or activities is itself a philosophical idea that requires justification. In the folllowing passage, the prolific philosophical historian Will Durant challenges the notion that being 'useful' is supremely important:
'The busy reader will ask, is all this philosophy useful? It is a shameful question: We do not ask it of poetry, which is also an imaginative construction of a world incompletely known. If poetry reveals us to the beauty our untaught eyes have missed, and philosophy gives us teh wisdom to understand and forgive, it is enough, and more than the world's wealth. Philosophy will not fatten our purses, nor lift us to dizzy dignities in a democratic state; it may even make us a little careless of these things. For what if we should fatten our purses, or rise to high office, and yet all the while remain ignorantly naive, coarsely unfurnished in the mind, brutal in behavior, unstable in character, chaotic in desire, and blindly miserable?
...Perhaps philosophy will give us, if we are faithful to it, a healing unity of soul. We are so slovenly and self-contradictory in our thinking; it may be that we shall clarify ourselves, and pull ourselves together into consistency, and be ashamed to harbor contradictory desires or beliefs. And through unity of mind may come that unity of purpose and character which makes a personality, and lends some order and dignity to our existence."
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