Does
god exist?
What’s
reality?
Do
we have free will?
What
happens after death?
What’s
the best moral system?
The list of
basic philosophical questions, answers to which philosophers have failed to give
even after two thousand and five hundred years of philosophising since Ancient
Greece, is long. Such is philosophy. It has never answered a question, never found
a solution to a problem.
Philosophy
is pretty useless… entirely useless. But then a great number of other grand
things in life are also pointless. Art is purposeless. Music is unavailing.
The very purpose
to engage in philosophy is to spend time with the very wisest, most perceptive,
and weirdest people to have ever lived among us. Also, it’s immensely
comforting to realise that however silly, half-baked, and witless the philosophical
questions sound, some genius philosophers have most likely discussed or asked
them before.
 |
| The School of Athens, representing philosophy, by Raphael |
Around two
millennia ago, Seneca said that philosophy casts and constructs the soul. It commands
our life and monitors our conduct. It sits in the driving seat and directs our bridleway
as we dither amid uncertainties. Philosophy reaches where science cannot. It
has a license to surmise about everything – from epistemology to metaphysics,
and in the process of doing it, philosophy comments on and attempts to
interpret some of the deepest existential questions.
Answering questions is not philosophy’s liability. Even if philosophy intends to answer something, it simply cannot be answered because there are questions that lie beyond the ambit of our comprehension. However, in Philosophical Progress: In Defence of a Reasonable Optimism (Oxford University Press, 2017), Daniel Stoljar contends that although we revisits the same philosophical topics again and again, the questions we raise about those subjects alter from one time to another, and are gradually being answered.
