About the benefits and harms of philosophy for life

An essay

Abstract

The question posed in the title of the essay suggests a distinction between the contexts in which philosophy can be placed, namely its meaning and essence.

In terms of meaning, it creates a ‘scandalous multitude’ of definitions reflecting its potentialities or actual results as well as its relation to science, art, religion, morality and other languages of the Spirit. In the aspect of essence, as an individual ‘meaning of meanings’, the conversation about the existence of philosophy goes deeper to its fundamental nature, where the essence is understood as the awareness of your presence in the world, the authentic purpose of life and its free implementation. The interpretation of philosophical culture as a coincidence of the basic modalities of individual being, i. e., the ability to fulfill the desired, dispels the doubt of the benefit of philosophy in an individual’s social life. The emphasis on this possibility expresses the utopian principle of culture and philosophy as a true reality—the reality which is not reduced to the dream of a worthy human existence, but as a driver of his/her genuine existence in that capacity. Philosophy, capable of questioning itself (see the title of the essay), distinguishes between utopia and dystopia, acting as a measure of benefit and harm of the processes and results of human activity.