2 ms·

Was gonna write my disagreements with this article, but i think this quote sums it up: "There’s no better way to spend your time than studying philosophy."

• brutusborn 4y ago
  I don't like the quote either, but if you expand the reasoning it makes sense. Spending time on philosophy is valuable because it can prevent you from wasting time on things that don't matter. It is like an investment, spend 2 days on philosophy now and save yourself 10 days of pointless activity. Like an investment, it can result in negative returns if not managed well. Everyone uses some form of reasoning to guide their decisions, even in the absence of philosophy. Most people take whatever philosophical / religious system they are given at birth (which is likely to be suboptimal) or invent their own from scratch and figure out the downsides the hard way. The point made in the article is essentially: "Why reinvent the wheel when you can read wisdom of people who spent their whole lives thinking about this stuff" E.g. people who try base their life on Hedonism (sex, drugs and rock'n'roll) often overindulge and eventually find it to be 'empty' in some way. If they had read some of the Stoics or Epicureans they may have discovered the reason for this emptiness and avoided the downsides of overindulgence.