Why Study Philosophy

By Shlomo Maital

Aristotle

To: Prof. Agner Callard, U. of Chicago

    Prof. Callard, thank you for your honest, tell-it-as-it-is Op-Ed in The New York Times, December 2, 2023, “I Teach the Humanities, and I Still Don’t Know What their Value Is”. 

    I was a freshman at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, a long time ago,  in 1959.  All Arts & Science freshmen were required to take Philosophy 1 in their first year.  The professor was a brilliant, demanding Scotsman named A.R.C. Duncan.  The one-semester course had three parts:  Logic, Ethics, Metaphysics.  Logic:  How to think and draw conclusions.  Ethics;  What is right, what is wrong – and how to know.  Metaphysics:  What does it mean “to exist’, what does it mean “to know”?

   Since that first course, I took a great many courses, through an Economics Ph.D. at Princeton.  All the other courses put together taught me far less than Philosophy 1 from A.R.C. Duncan.  He taught me to think logically —  using logic operators like and/or, not/both, either/or.  He taught us how to deal with complex moral dilemmas involving right and wrong. We learned how the Greeks figured it out —  valid to this day.  (I learned about deontological intuitionism, meaning, I just know what is right, don’t ask me how!).   I learned how to think critically – and the crucial importance of truth. 

         All that was 64 years ago.   I remember that humanities course vividly and use it almost daily. 

           So, Prof. Callard —  what is the value of humanities?  Philosophy, art, literature, history, poetry?   To me it is clear.   The humanities help us be more human…. And to be better human beings.  To think clearly, and based on that, to act in a manner that is right and honorable.  

           Humanities are being shut down right and left, all over the US, and in my country, Israel, too.  As someone once said:  If we only glorify quantum physics, and demean moral philosophy, we will have neither science nor values that hold water.