This question is the beginning, middle, and end of any pursuit of wisdom, knowledge, happiness, or meaning. Even asking the question engages the discipline. Whether you know it or not you need and use philosophy every single day of your life. One of the many great evils of the 20th-Century was that academic philosophy became obsessed with wonky obscure questions that really had little direct effect in the common person’s life. I could wax for hours on the causes and justifications for this fixation but to no real end.

The good news is that once every few centuries someone comes around and shakes the tree of the academy to loosen out all of the dross. And when that happens we philosophers remember why we all started our love of the greatest discipline in the first place. Philosophy makes people happy. Doing it, talking about it, sharing our findings and our failings, pondering the nature of beauty, and love, and ethics, and justice makes folks better. Philosophy is intrinsically valuable. While it’s not easy for everyone to learn, I am of the opinion and have evidence, with over 10-years of personal experience teaching philosophy at community college and at public high schools, that with the right teacher and philosopher anyone can do philosophy and thereby make their life better.

So I love this question and I believe that the answer is that we all do at different times in our lives. If its dealing with loss, or responsibility, or obligation. Thinking about what makes life worth living and being able to justify why. The skills that I have learned in my philosophical training have no limits on the good that they have provided in my life. My students regularly reach out to me to share how my seemingly impractical subject has improved their lives, college experiences, love lives, sense of citizenship and self, career and beyond.

Philosophical counseling with an APPA trained therapist is one way to approach philosophical thinking for those who missed the initiation of the academy. I would love to speak with you one-on-one about how philosophy can help you contextualize the world and your problems in it, and start you on the path of self-mastery and eventually the happiest version of yourself. The journey to self discovery starts with an intention to walk it, and as Siddartha would argue a single step.

Take that step and BOOK a session today.

-Think Well. Run Often. Be Happy.

Cecil