Questions and Philosophy

There is a sort of haunting question people ask that plagues philosophy: “What’s the point?” This is followed immediately by the statement: “It doesn’t give you any answers.” Both the question and the statement are frustrating in the extreme for those who pursue the study of philosophy, in large part because the question and the statement are only tangentially related. Moreover, it demonstrates the same lack of understanding that condemns all lawyers to suspicion when the vast majority of them do their jobs diligently and ethically. To say that philosophy does not provide answers is an equivocation on the grand scale. What people really mean when they say that is that philosophy does not provide the same sort of moral certainty as religion. Answers, however, come in many forms.
Logic, one of the foundational branches of philosophy, is entirely about answers. It is logic that says that an apple is an apple and not a parakeet. Mathematics, science, psychology, and medicine were all contained beneath the umbrella of philosophy at one point or another. It’s a much harder sell to say that none of those things provide answers. That said, what such statements about answers demonstrate is a confusion about the nature of the discipline. Philosophy is not about answers, as such. Answers are a hoped for end or, for some, merely a byproduct. Philosophy is driven, first and foremost, by the act of questioning. It is a discipline of curiosity and the pursuit of those questions.
Unfortunately, many of the questions philosophers ask are the same questions that religion, theoretically, answers. What is the good? What is the right? What is the nature of love, of friendship, or of freedom? People hear these questions asked and assume that philosophers and theologians are doing the same thing. They are not. You’ll know this because the theologian will assert the existence of God, revelation, holy texts, or enlightened beings, etc., as a foundational truth that lends their answer unquestionable authority and leave it at that. The philosopher will ask those questions, try to formulate an answer, or prompt one from another, and the very next thing out of his or her mouth (at least if he or she is doing honest philosophy) will be the question, “Why?”
There is a childlike curiosity that prevails in Philosophy. Philosophers want to know just what make something what it is, be it the mind, the soul, or the origin of the world. They do this through very intensive intellectual exercises, but without the curiosity, it wouldn’t happen at all. The point is the exploration. Philosophers are great explorers, as adventurous in their own ways as a Magellan, Drake, or Verrazzano. They test the world of the abstract, the unknown, the world of ideas with the same ambition and, sometimes, at the mercy of the same derision as their adventurer progenitors. They stand at the very edge of knowledge and ask, brave souls that they are, “Why is this knowledge?” “What makes this knowledge?”
In the final analysis, though, perhaps the most fundamental and potent questions at the disposal of the philosopher are the ones that begin with, “What if…?” Imagination and curiosity are the hallmarks of the active mind and lead to the most interesting answers. So I challenge you, look at the world, at something that doesn’t make sense to you and ask yourself a question. Make it one that begins with “why” or, better yet, “what if,” and see where it takes you. Talk to you soon.