defending philosophy
Just as there are snooty philosophers, there are snooty anti-philosophers. Neil DeGrasse Tyson had an interview where he said that “figuring out the meaning of ‘meaning’ is useless” (paraphrase)
I mean, that’s a weird sentiment to me, because if you’ve ever thought about something intelligently, if you’ve ever just… “had opinions on things”, then you’re doing philosophy. Most anti-philosophers probably don’t think about this basic stuff as ‘philosophy’, but like how hard do you have to think about something before it goes from ‘important thoughts about my life’ to ‘useless armchair philosophy?’
Maybe that’s a bit uncharitable. It is clear that there’s a big difference between ‘figuring out your own thoughts on Justice’ vs ‘spending all day thinking about what Justice really means’
