Philosophy sucks, but it’s too useful to give up

Why you should read my essays

If you come across problems when striving to reach your goals, you should be willing to pay quite a lot¹ to learn how to philosophize well.

Huh? Philosophy? If you have any idea about what philosophers do today, you might scoff at this claim, alongside 23% of adults in the US in 2019². Rightly so, when the fuss is about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin³. The debate around such a question strikes us as useless and nonsensical:

• Useless because it doesn’t help us do anything, unlike a debate on socialized healthcare

• Nonsensical because argumentation can continue forever without making any ground, unlike arguments in physics which can be resolved by experiment

Moreover, you might think that all debates in philosophy are similarly useless and nonsensical. I disagree because there is also much genuine philosophizing in that tradition, discipline, and body of knowledge. Take a historical look:

• Socialized healthcare comes from ‘moral philosophers’ concerned with the role of the state. Only with time did political theorists and scientists get separated from philosophy.

• Physics began as a part of ‘natural philosophy’, and only eventually came to be a distinct endeavor.

All this said, I only find philosophy enriching when it helps with philosophizing. This is crucial. I don’t find most of philosophy useful; my point here is not to convince you to engage with philosophy. Instead, it is to urge you to care about philosophizing well, because philosophizing well is key to achieving your goals. Let me explain.

Gerald H. Thayer, Cottontail Rabbit

Goals are problems. Your New Year’s resolution to decrease time spent with screens, a goal, is equivalent to the problem of spending too much time with screens. But that’s quite negative, so why look at things that way?

The reason is that problems help us understand what goals are at a deeper level, one where we can understand what philosophizing is, what engineering is, how we can accomplish our goals, and more. (Just so you know, I will tackle engineering in a later essay, not this one.)

So, what is a problem? A problem is some part of the world that someone wants to get rid of. In the case of your New Year’s resolution, you spend too much time with screens. Since you want to get rid of that aspect of reality, it poses a problem. We know it is a problem because you keep getting bothered by it; it is problematic. When you work towards that goal and reduce your screen time, the problem resolves and stops bothering you. In a sense, problems are self-destructive, but that wording may lead to misunderstanding.

Since problems push you to get rid of them, they are actually constructive. They help change the world, usually creating many more problems in the process! When you reduce your screen time, for instance, you might regain enough time to want to learn the piano. This ambition technically poses a new problem that calls for change, for getting rid of itself. However, problems may never end: since you could always get better at playing the piano, the problem will never fully resolve. Instead, it will subtly transform as you resolve sub-problems such as not knowing how to play scales, chords, or pieces.

Another example of a problem: when I was drafting this essay, I ran into quite a few issues:

1. I had some idea of what I wanted to write, but getting words onto the page was crucifying. What’s more, when the words were finally written, they felt utterly inadequate.

2. I strongly desired to get rid of that feeling of inadequacy, which meant releasing a good essay written in a good way.

3. I resolved the problem by philosophizing, which is to say, by engaging in conceptual problematic exploration.

When you look online for ways to reduce your screen time, you are exploring different ways you could go about resolving the problem. In other words, you are exploring the problem, or engaging in problematic exploration. Philosophizing is just problematic exploration where the problems and/or explorations are conceptual. It might help to continue my example:

1. When I faced my problem of writing, I brought myself to understand the problem more conceptually: “I want to write this well, but I’m not.”

2. From there, I explored ways I might think about the whole project. It occurred to me that I could get clarity by thinking about what it means to write well.

3. Next, I kept thinking through questions that came to me—in the manner I have written about in a previous essay—until I had made a list of steps I could take to create what you are reading now.

This understanding of philosophizing is quite broad since it extends quite further from what is accepted as philosophy. That’s not an accident. Philosophizing occurs all the time in the hard, social, and interdisciplinary sciences, as well as the humanities, engineering, business, and countless other endeavors. Whenever you encounter problems and wrestle with them conceptually, you are philosophizing.

Furthermore, it should be clear how practical my philosophizing was. Philosophizing is always practical since it is always about the problems you actually encounter⁴. As such, philosophizing is about exploring meanings, possibilities, realities, and how one might live.

Moreover, since problems don’t always resolve cleanly, philosophizing doesn’t always come to an end. If you want to understand what it means to be a citizen, you might constantly be on the hunt for insights, developing your understanding as the very definition of your chase changes constantly. Philosophizing is not always problem solving, but always problem exploring. Even though problems are conceptualized negatively, they are at heart constructive and productive.

Gerald H. Thayer, White Flamingoes and the Skies They Simulate

Cool. But I still haven’t explained why you need to care so much about it. Can’t others philosophize, while you focus on applying what they figure out?

You need to care because philosophizing is always particular. The problems that bug you are always particular problems which must be resolved particularly each time. Even if somebody already found a solution to your problem, you must think the solution again if you are to actually have your problem resolved. You cannot let anybody else do it for you.

For example, I have been greatly influenced by the philosopher Gilles Deleuze. I would not be surprised if, in his book What is philosophy?⁵, he wrote about all the problems I tackle in this essay. Yet, I could never let Deleuze philosophize for me. I can only use his thinking and his problems when I find them problematic myself.⁶

The particularity of philosophizing is especially clear in my problem with writing. I have read many books and articles on writing, but in the end it is up to me to find what works for me. Here’s writer William Zinsser’s summary in his book On Writing Well:

there isn’t any “right” way to do such personal work. There are all kinds of writers and all kinds of methods, and any method that helps you to say what you want to say is the right method for you.

You can only learn which method is right for you by trying different methods out.

One last thing: you must philosophize well to achieve your goals. Philosophizing well means resolving your problems by reasoning and creating concepts. It involves making sense of things and holding yourself to the standards you and your problems set. If you do all that already, you already philosophize! Just imagine how much you could achieve if you worked at it more deliberately, improving it skillfully.

I won’t pretend to have mastered the art and science of philosophizing, but I think it is my strong suit. The philosophizing I did was essential to writing this essay satisfactorily. I know this to be true because I followed proven reasoning methods and saw through the problem by making concepts where there were none before. I continue to notice problems and philosophize about them, getting better and better each time.

The Immanent Essays I write are products of genuine philosophizing. With each essay I hope to help people philosophize well by showing how to explore problems, how to reason, and how to create concepts. Beyond placing tools in toolboxes, I also aim to provide sources of philosophizing which inspire philosophizing along similar lines, letting people find new paths through their own problems.

If you would like to better achieve your goals, please come back in the following weeks! I will release essays on how you can set yourself up to utilize problems on your journey through them.

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Are you left with problems and questions? Please share in a comment, email, or even a whole essay! Philosophizing well is an essential skill that requires practice to hone.

I leave you with some problems and questions of my own:

• How should we balance 1) digesting philosophical artifacts⁷ without much motivation and 2) philosophizing on our own?

• How important is philosophizing outside of philosophy?

• What might engineering be in terms of problems?

• What are the key differences between goals and problems?

• There are many respects in which philosophy education gets in the way of philosophizing, yet I feel that philosophizing should take center stage. Argh!

• Since philosophizing is particular, how are we able to build from our previous events of philosophizing, or even philosophical artifacts of others?

Some if not all of these will be addressed in future essays.

Thanks to Alex and Daniel for their most helpful feedback on earlier drafts!

1. Maybe… I don’t know, $5 monthly for Immanent Essays?

2. Compare that number to a whopping 10% and 14% of them that look at science and engineering unfavorably, respectively.

3. As far as we know, this wasn’t an actual question philosophers discussed, though it is representative of many people’s perspectives on philosophy, including burgeoning thinkers subjected to understanding debates they have no interest in.

4. People like to get on Plato/Socrates for interrupting discussions by asking questions like “You say you are courageous, but what is courage, really?” If we understand this as a genuine concern, Plato/Socrates face(s) a problem where they sense that there is some contention between somebody’s claims and their actions. Philosophizing, in this case, involves building up some sense about the concept in question and how people might relate to it.

This line of thinking was inspired by Ward Farnsworth’s The Socratic Method.

Car si le philosophe est l’ami ou l’amant de la sagesse, n’est-ce pas parce qu’il y prétend, s’y efforçant en puissance plutôt que la possédant en acte ?
(Qu’est-ce que la philosophie ? p.10)

5. For those of you who know your Deleuze: I am not at all faithful to Deleuze when it comes to philosophy or philosophizing here. At least, if I am, it is not out of faith!

6. I even feel that truth directly! When I read Deleuze and find his writing impenetrable, I know I am not connecting his thinking to problems that matter to me. It is only when I interpret his words as bearing on my own problems that his writing dances and inspires.

7. Philosophical artifacts are the products of philosophizing, like Deleuze’s works and my essays.