“Philosophical enquiry makes the entire planet better than it would otherwise be. It helps constitute the awesomeness of Earth. Philosophy needs no further excuse.”

So writes Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside), in an essay at Aeon.

Here’s a little excerpt:

Billions of years ago, some stars exploded. The resulting heavy atoms swirled together into planets orbiting new stars. Pieces of those planets came to life, opened their eyes. Some learned to talk. They learned to wonder about their place in the cosmos, and about themselves, and about their values, and about their capacity to wonder about the cosmos, themselves and their values. They peered past the limits of their knowledge, asking ambitious questions they could not fully answer, appreciating both the importance of those questions and their incapacity to fully answer them. Each of us, when we philosophise, become the means by which the Universe, after billions of years, wakes to itself, momentarily contemplating itself in doubt and amazement.

Read the whole thing here.

Then maybe send it along to your students. Or deans.

And there’s this other recent piece—also good—which takes a somewhat different tone:

How many times have I heard, “but why should our tax money go to philosophers? What do you produce?” Answer: we produced the modern world. 

From its conclusion: “Stand tall, philosophers. You are part of the most ancient and powerful tribe.”