Bertrand Russel The Value Of Philosophy

I chose to analyze “The Value of Philosophy” by Bertrand Russel because it led me to start thinking about this class and philosophy in general. Along with thinking about this class it got me to think about school curriculums. In college, there are all these general education requirements that we have to fulfill in order to receive a degree in our major. Whether we study Computer Science, Criminal Justice, Business, or even Biology, we are all required to complete general education courses. For the longest time, I thought these courses were a waste of time and money, but thinking about it, these courses do play an important role in our lives. For example, Public Speaking and English courses teach us important communication skills that we will

It teaches us how to analyze what others have said and it helps us come up with our own reasoning behind various topics. People may see philosophy as a difficult and pointless class, however may people don’t realize we use the same sort of logic or thinking processes that most of these philosophers do. We may not be asking how the world was created, but we do ask ourselves simple questions such as “what’s for dinner?” or “how do I get around this road construction?” We then go through a process of analyzing the situation. For example, with the road construction, we think about alternative routes to get to where we are going and we try to logically come up with the best route. We go through a thought process in our minds, or for some aloud, where we question ourselves and the decisions we are thinking about. This is similar to what philosophers do, they come up with a question and in their minds try to work out an answer to the question. There is more to it, but it’s similar to what we do every day. We ask and answer our own questions all the time and many people don’t realize that it’s the same process that philosophers go through, they may go into a more in-depth analysis, but it is still the same

There is no substantial amount of definite knowledge because if there were, people wouldn’t have their own opinions or ideas and everyone would think the same. He also talks about how philosophy may not provide practical outcomes, but it still provides a benefit to human knowledge. Philosophy teaches us to examine everything, some questions we can find an answer to, some we cannot. Even though we may not always be able to discover answers to our many questions, even the slightest bit of hope of discovering an answer drives us. We humans are curious creatures, always wanting to know more about ourselves, our surroundings, our past and our future, philosophy is a way of explaining ourselves. Despite philosophers having developed ideas about religion, human knowledge, and various other topics Russel believes that they are just statements. When looking at religion, it’s understandable because there are things that simply cannot be proven. Was the world created in the matter of a few days? Was there a man by the name of Noah with an Ark? These stories may have been written down in books, but can we really prove that they existed? Philosophy allows us to think differently and it’s because of this that we have different views of the world. The different religions have similar views, however the slight variations are what led to the creation of separate