Philosophy is just one of the liberal arts. This idea has declined in popularity in recent years but I still think there's a lot to be said for possessing a liberal arts education. If you have a good one your understanding of the world around you gets broader and deeper. You recognize why things are the way they are. In the long term you may spot opportunities you wouldn't have otherwise, or be able to solve problems that would have seemed intractable. Maybe most importantly you end up developing a sophisticated moral framework that's grounded in history and all the things that eventually led up to you existing and living the life you live.
You don't have to major in a liberal art or even go to college to get one, you can just read books. You also don't have to learn it all in your early 20s. You can just incorporate the great works into what you read throughout your adult life. It's very easy to find lists and recommendations online for what you should read if you want a broad-based liberal education. The general idea is simply to be informed about and understand the foundational concepts in philosophy, economics, political science, psychology, history, sociology, law, and so on. There is no need to go deep in any one them, unless you find it interesting and wish to do so. Someone who reads one or two foundational works in each of these subjects will have a wildly better understanding of the world than someone who doesn't. To me this is what living an intellectually rich life is and it's very rewarding. If nothing else, due to my liberal arts education I will never be bored in retirement, there are thousands of books that I would find it interesting to read.
I don’t have a problem with having a good understanding of classics (liberal arts is a category that far encompasses more than just classical education, though).
I do have a problem with blindly assuming Plato/other ancient philosophers were some sort of omniscient super-intelligence we should blindly follow, which I do see happen with some regularity in my own life.
Plato et al might’ve been the start of our modern understanding of ethics, but the concept of a moral life or epistemology certainly didn’t stop with him!
> Philosophy is just one of the liberal arts. This idea has declined in popularity in recent years but I still think there's a lot to be said for possessing a liberal arts education. If you have a good one your understanding of the world around you gets broader and deeper.
Look no further than all the AI debates on HN: from the perspective of someone with a couple of college classes on philosophy (not even a minor), it’s looks like a bunch of five years olds debating particle physics. Complete ignorance of what the academic precedent is, retreading ideas that philosophers have moved on from hundreds of years ago.
Why shouldnt people on a message forum explore "ideas that philosophers moved on from hundreds of years ago?" It seems to suggest philosophy is more about the conclusions than the process. I cant think of an academic field where that is less true.
Yes, people are going to be ignorant of things they haven't studied previously. So, people exploring the ideas and debating them for the first time might look amateur to you, but why is that a bad thing?
This is a social media site; people can shoot the shit about whatever they want and there’s nothing wrong with that.
But… what’s the point? It’s like going into a thread about modern chemistry and debating about the four basic elements of ancient Greece. Sure you can have fun shooting the shit about what is essentially a historical novelty, but if you really want to debate about chemistry you need to open a high school textbook and get up to speed on at least the first few chapters.
The only difference is that nerds look down at philosophy and not chemistry; and the former is rarely taught in high school after which the arrested development seems to set in. No one blinks an eye telling flat earthers that they don’t know what they’re talking about.
>If you have a good one your understanding of the world around you gets broader and deeper.
The problem is, is it _unique_ to liberal arts? That is what must be true to give it some purpose. If you can just read a bunch of books or study something else with additional positive benefits why do liberal arts?
I am a liberal arts and computer science degree holder. I don't think liberal arts is _worthless_. I do think its a terrible value proposition and that the positive side effects can be achieved while studying something far more marketable. Computer science has made me a much stronger general problem solver and a better critical thinker than liberal arts did. These are the primary skills touted by the liberal arts.
You don't have to major in a liberal art or even go to college to get one, you can just read books. You also don't have to learn it all in your early 20s. You can just incorporate the great works into what you read throughout your adult life. It's very easy to find lists and recommendations online for what you should read if you want a broad-based liberal education. The general idea is simply to be informed about and understand the foundational concepts in philosophy, economics, political science, psychology, history, sociology, law, and so on. There is no need to go deep in any one them, unless you find it interesting and wish to do so. Someone who reads one or two foundational works in each of these subjects will have a wildly better understanding of the world than someone who doesn't. To me this is what living an intellectually rich life is and it's very rewarding. If nothing else, due to my liberal arts education I will never be bored in retirement, there are thousands of books that I would find it interesting to read.