Philosophy is Useless

An essay on the surprising value of philosophy.

If you read this newsletter, and especially if you pay for it, you're likely someone who already believes that philosophy is valuable. You likely aren't the sort of person who will argue that philosophy is useless. And so you might be a bit put off by the title of this essay.

Let me get the throat-clearing out of the way. I am not a self-hating philosopher or jaded former graduate student. I believe that philosophy is good. Philosophy is interesting — in the middle of an argument it can even be thrilling. Philosophy is valuable.

And yet, by a certain common standard, philosophy is useless. We should admit this. When we deny this outright and insist on the utility of philosophy, I think we are making a mistake.

The mistake is twofold. First, it is a rhetorical mistake. When someone asserts that philosophy is useless, they're inviting us to play a certain kind of linguistic game. When we immediately counter this assertion with a denial, I worry that we have accepted the rules of this linguistic game. In other words, we are now debating using the rules of our interlocutor. But in philosophy, and even in ordinary conversation, there is a significant element of metalinguistic negotiation.¹ So we should not just accept the rules that our interlocutors offer.

But first and foremost, it is a philosophical error. I say it is philosophical because one of the things that philosophy studies is the nature of value. And when we argue that philosophy is useful, we often aren't critically examining what we mean by 'useful' and what the relation is between utility and value.