Everyone has a "philosophy"

What does it mean for someone to have a philosophy? It seems to me there are two distinct things people talk about when they use the word "philosophy". In one sense, we can be talking about the academic discipline of philosophy, that being the pursuit of answers to philosophical questions through academia. In the other case, we use the word "philosophy" to refer to the many ways that these same questions can be answered. Questions around our existence, knowledge, truth, logic, reason, the mind and language. Many of these questions are so fundamental that we take them for granted.

Have you ever had someone tell you something they knew because they read it on the internet and you respond with some variation of "just because it's on the internet, doesn't make it true"? I imagine most of us have, and in that moment, without even realizing it, we appeal to a philosophy. We are declaring that a statement being on the internet doesn't make it true because truth isn't contingent on content on the internet. This is answering (albeit insufficiently) the question what is truth?

This is the kind of everyday philosophy so many of us engage in without even knowing it. When I tell people that I have an interest in philosophy, I find a great many people dismiss it as something that is irrelevant to their life. From my perspective however, it seems that philosophy is the a cornerstone of everyone's life.

No matter what you believe in, we all have some set of beliefs that we base our decisions on. It can be as dull as setting an alarm for work in the morning or as intense as the trolley problem- deciding who lives and who dies based on the flip of a switch. Regardless, it seems fairly uncontroversial to say that our actions are informed by our beliefs. This is, what to me, makes philosophy so important.

Let's take a mundane situation like choosing to go to work or not in the morning. Let's say you are scheduled for a shift, you woke up in plenty of time, and you are healthy. You may want to stay home for one reason or another, but more than likely you'll go to work because that is what you believe you should do. Let's take the same example but instead you have a fever. Now do you go to work or stay home? At the moment we are in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic here in the USA. In this particular case, it would seem that a great many people would choose to stay home for any number of reasons, one of those reasons is likely because they don't want to get others sick. This is the person's moral philosophy impacting their decision. They believe it would be wrong to knowingly expose others to their illness, so they choose to stay home. This is a physical expression of their moral belief. This is philosophy in our everyday lives.

To me- it seems obvious that we all want to do good. We all want a good life. But what does that mean? The question of what is good and what is a good life are both philosophical questions that each person has to answer for themselves. Everyone, even those who have never explicitly thought about it, have a concept of what is good and what is a good life. It seems to me that if we want to attempt to answer these questions, in whatever form that may take, we are engaging in philosophy.

This is why the academic study of philosophy has become so important to me. When I was religious, I found that nearly all the philosophical questions that I had were answered by my faith. Either by way of the Bible or the religious doctrine. During this time I didn't respect the academic discipline of philosophy much because the Bible seemed opposed to it- specifically in Colossians 2:8.

"See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ."

The Holy Bible - NIV 

At the time I didn't really know what philosophy was- I realized that it attempted to answer some of the most fundamental questions like what is reality, what does it mean to exist, who am I, why am I here, etc. I thought these were fascinating questions, and at least while I was a Christian, I didn't think any non-religious person could have any answers to these questions. I thought that, without the god I believed in, all answers were lacking.

It wasn't until I became an atheist that I realized that not only can the atheist answer these questions to their own satisfaction, but that Christians had been working within philosophy to answer these questions in the same way. Some of the most famous philosophers like Rene Descartes, Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, Cornelius Plantinga, etc. were all Christians who used the academic discipline of philosophy at the time to help them analyze scripture and develop their theology. This is something that I never really understood as a Christian- nearly all the theology we believed was the product of Christian philosophers like these men and others.

It seems to me, obvious now, that the verse in Colossians is not referring to academic philosophy we think of today because it isn't necessarily based on human tradition or elemental spiritual forces. At least when we discuss philosophy in either of the ways I described above, this verse only applies in specific situations- not to all of philosophy.

For this reason, I can understand why someone who had never given philosophy much thought would dismiss it out of hand. I can even understand why Christian friends of mine may oppose it entirely- but I think that this comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is. I think we need to engage with philosophical questions in a deliberate and critical way if we value meaningful and justifiable answers to them.

You may think that an appeal to an authority like a god or holy book bypasses this discipline, but it doesn't. It literally is philosophy. It doesn't require some tedious, dull, analysis to be engaging in . Anytime you answer one of the fundamental questions of philosophy, no matter how you got to your answer, you've done philosophy.

For this reason I spend a lot of my time trying to understand what philosophical theories I believe in. What do I think truth is? How do I think we can come to discover it? What justifies us in believing something is true? These questions, especially in a time as divisive as this, are essential.

I am not going to try to tell you what your answers to these questions should be. I'm not so audacious as to believe that I have all the right answers. I am asking that we not rule them out. That we consider what it is we believe and why. What justifies our beliefs? What is justification? It seems to me that if doing the right thing matters, then we need to make sure that what we do is informed by solid beliefs. This is exactly the purpose of philosophy.

Thanks for your time...