Over 2,400 years ago, a squat, snub-nosed old man named Socrates was put on trial and condemned to death. His crime? “Impiety” and “corrupting the youth” of his hometown, Athens.

Socrates was somewhat famous in his time, but he wasn’t wealthy or high-ranking. If anything, he was a little bit of a weirdo. He walked around barefoot (even in winter) and spent most of his days out in public striking up conversations with strangers, asking them thought-provoking, sometimes awkward questions about all kinds of topics. Over time, he managed to piss off enough people to turn himself into something of a public enemy. 

Today, we remember and venerate Socrates as one of the greatest philosophers of all time. Yet I’m tempted to believe that if he were to jump in a time machine to the 21st century, Socrates would annoy and frustrate just as many people today as he did back in ancient Greece, and for the very same reasons.

Humans are slow to change their views. They like to have answers to everything, and they don’t like having others challenge those answers.

The antidote to this problem, as Socrates understood, is philosophy.

We need philosophy in our turbulent times, just as the people of Athens needed it in theirs. Maybe even more so. But we can’t properly practice philosophy if we don’t understand what it is in the first place.

What Philosophy Is (and What It Isn’t)

Philosophy is loaded with some unfortunate baggage.

It evolved from being a simple thing in Socrates’ time that anyone could practice into an esoteric and confusing term. Think university professors reclining in their armchairs and desks piled with fat old books. “Ancient philosophy proposed to mankind an art of living,” historian Pierre Hadot tells us. “By contrast, modern philosophy appears above all as the construction of a technical jargon reserved for specialists.” ¹

And who has time for technical jargon when the world is on fire? 

Philosophy comes from a Greek word that means, quite literally, “love of wisdom.” This is the true meaning of the term: to love and look for wisdom. To search for answers – or at least possible answers – in the frontiers beyond science. ²

The stereotypical example of this is a person staring hard at a chair, scratching their head, wondering if, in fact, it is a chair (and how they can know that it’s a chair!). But consider this question that’s every bit as philosophical: “What matters more, helping humans or the environment?” Or, “How can I be sure this is the right candidate to vote for?”

In our technologically advanced age, we often look to science for answers, comfort, and authority. Science can tell us a lot about reality – from outer space to the human brain – but it will never be able to answer the deepest questions about how we should live. No microscope or sonar image can tell us what’s good and what’s evil, or whether those two things actually exist.

What we today often call “belief,” “values,” “opinions,” and “ideas” (all too often forming these in “autopilot” mode) all belong to the realm of philosophy. Philosophy isn’t just concerned with funky metaphysical problems; it’s concerned with our everyday behavior and thought.

Philosophy Helps Us Cope With Unanswered Questions

Why does the word “philosophy” seem to get so many people’s hackles up?

Maybe it has something to do with Anthony Storr’s observation: “The problems with which philosophers generally concern themselves are not susceptible of final, permanent solutions.” ³

We like answers. 

We like knowing that 2 plus 2 equals 4, especially when the rest of our lives (and the world) feel like they’re in chaos. 

Socrates rarely claimed to be certain about anything, but instead made it his calling in life to get people to reevaluate their own opinions and beliefs. “The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing,” was his bottom-line message. No wonder he annoyed some people.

But being a philosopher doesn’t mean being a contrarian. It means being curious and digging deeper into why we live and behave the way we do. It means we don’t simply accept something because “it’s always been done that way.”

“To philosophize means to withdraw – not from the things of everyday life – but from the currently accepted meaning attached to them, to question the value placed upon them,” said 20th-century philosopher Josef Pieper. ⁴ Being a philosopher means being comfortable with asking questions. Sometimes those questions will lead to better ways of living and thinking, but often there is no final answer. 

In a world that will always have more questions than answers, being a philosopher gives us the mental and intellectual discipline to cope.

Philosophy Is the Only Way to Figure Out Your Own Values and Life Purpose

We’re faced with numerous choices, every day.

These can be as mundane as where to order take-out, or as complex as what church or political party to join (or whether to join one at all). Much of the time we may not even realize that the things we do, think, and say are actually choices. Our brains have evolved to make decisions as quickly as possible, with as little effort as possible. ⁵

Family members, political and religious leaders, celebrities, and other public figures can and do influence our behavior and beliefs. When we’re young, this is all but unavoidable. As we get older, we have a choice: Who and what will we listen to, and why?

What will we believe, and why?

If we’re honest with ourselves and open to recalibrating, our beliefs will change over time. Every time we do, we’re engaging in philosophy – even if it’s on the barest level. We are becoming more intentional about how we live. To echo Pierre Hadot:

“Such is the lesson of…philosophy: an invitation to each human being to transform himself. Philosophy is a conversion, a transformation of one’s way of being and living, and a quest for wisdom. This is not an easy matter.” ⁶

No, not easy at all.

Nietzsche understood this as a young man when he was questioning the entire world around him and the religious beliefs he’d been raised with (upsetting his poor mother in the process).

The questions, doubts, and discoveries he made in his early life led him to consciously form his own life path and purpose. “The challenge of every great philosophy,” he wrote, “…as a whole says only: this is the picture of all life, and learn from it the meaning of your own life.” ⁷

Not all of us will be as lonely or intense as Nietzsche was (thankfully), but the principle is the same: without philosophy, we are not consciously living.

It’s not possible to go through life in a totally robotic fashion; most of us “do” philosophy to some degree without realizing it, but without deeper discipline and effort, we’ll do it poorly. 

And the consequences for our lives are all too real.

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1. Hadot, P. (1995). Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault (A. Davidson, Ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.
2. Today there’s an unfortunate dichotomy that’s arisen between science and philosophy, with the former often favored over the latter as being more valuable, lofty, and “accurate.” In reality, both disciplines aim at finding truth (or the next closest thing).
3. Storr, A. (2015). Solitude: A Return to the Self. Free Press.
4. Pieper, J. (2009). Leisure: The Basis of Culture. Ignatius Press.
5. An excellent book that explains this in depth is Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize for his research in human judgment and decision-making
6. Philosophy as a Way of Life
7. Nietzsche, F. (1997). Untimely Meditations (D. Breazeale, Ed., 2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.