My Love for Philosophy

If you get a chance, read Bertrand Russell's "On the Value of Philosophy." I feel like he phrased everything perfectly.

You won't find answers in philosophy. When I took my first philosophy class, and we read passages from Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, etc., I went in thinking, well, maybe I'll get all straightened out. Interestingly, I didn't get straightened out in the sense I expected, but I feel much more at peace.

Did you know the study of space was once part of philosophy? Did you know the study of the human mind was part of philosophy? So basically, philosophy is the study of the unknown, for which we don't have the answers. Once we find those definite answers to those questions, they become placed in science, such as astronomy and psychology. So, philosophy isn't really as obscure or mysterious or profound as most people believe it to be.

Here is one of my favorite passages from Russell:

"Apart from its utility in showing unsuspected possibilities, philosophy has a value--perhaps its chief value--through the greatness of the objects which it contemplates, and the freedom from narrow and personal aims resulting from this contemplation. The life of the instinctive man is shut up from within the circle of his private interests: family and friends may be included, but the outer world is not regarded except as it may help or hinder what comes within the circle of instinctive wishes. In such a life, there is something feverish and confined, in comparison with which the philosophic life is calm and free. The private world of instinctive interests is a small one, set in the midst of a great and powerful world which must, sooner or later, lay our private world in ruins. Unless we can so enlarge our interests as to include the whole outer world, we remain like a garrison in a beleagured fortress, knowing that the enemy prevents escape and that ultimate surrender is inevitable. In such a life there is no peace, but a constant strife between the insistence of desire and the powerlessness of will. In one way or another, if our life is to be great and free, we must escape this prison and this strife."

"Knowledge is a form of union of Self and not-Self."

Just some food for thought.