Is Being Smart Worth the Depression? - Alex O’Connor & Joe Folley (4K)

Was philosophy always meant to be practically applicable, or is that some modern reinterpretation?

Ah, that's Joe question.

Oh, well, I mean, (laughs) I suppose one of the, uh, differences between, like, very broadly speaking, between something like ancient, uh, ancient Greek philosophy say, and the way that we conceive our philosophy today is that, you know, philosophy today is largely thought of in terms of different fields. You've got your kind of epistemologists who discuss questions like, you know, what is knowledge, and, you know, more importantly, like, how do we, how do we attain knowledge? Um, what are the kinds of systems and processes that produce reliable knowledge? That kind of stuff. And then there are kind of ethicists talking about, you know, what is the good life, you know, uh, vitally important question. Also, you know, what are, what are the right things to do? And then you've got kind of logicians talking about, um, you do, (laughs) do a lot of proofs and try to often model, uh, ordinary things, um, using formal s- mathematical or at least semi-mathematical systems. You've got philosophers of language, philosophers of science. But, um, suddenly, uh, for, uh, in the ancient world, these weren't as differentiated, (laughs) certainly, as they are today. And so, um, uh, you know, Aristotle wrote different treatises on these different topics. But, um, eh, even in his philosophy, everything is so interlinked, and if you go, you know, back before Aristotle, it's very, very hard to separate these. So for example, um, the Stoics, uh, although, you know, you know, in kind of popular discourse around Stoicism today, we talk a lot about Stoic ethics. Um, the Stoics thought that their ethics fell out of their metaphysics-

Mm-hmm.

... and their logic, which was their word for what we would call today things like logic and epistemology. And, um, so I think that's, that's, um, that's one major difference. In terms of practicality, I mean, yeah, the, uh, a lot of ancient philosophy is incredibly practical. You know, these are, especially, you know, the, the, one of the paramount, um, questions that are asked, that's asked by almost every, um, ancient philosopher is, you know, how to live a good life. The, the first, uh, philosopher, um, like, in, like, received wisdom is Thales. Uh, uh, he's a kind of ancient, ancient Greek philosopher. Um, but before that, there, there are lots of kind of, we have scraps of, like, ancient, uh, Egyptian, um, philosophies and things like that, and they're, they're often concerned with, you know, what's the good life? How do we live it? Um, so I, I, I think philosophy, philosophy is eminently practical. I also think, you know, maybe this is just my own bias showing, I, I think, I think that, I think that, um, today philosophy at its best is, is often very practical.

How... Has something gone awry? Is there some sense that modern philosophy, a lot of that is kind of like string theory in physics-