Over Christmas, my uncle Jonathan and his family came to visit. They stayed for 5 days, and it was really nice to connect with them, even though I got the flu halfway through their visit. One night, while everybody else had gone to sleep, Jonathan and I stayed up talking about philosophy.

He had read my post on David Hume, and he had questions. We proceeded to meander through Hume’s general theory of knowledge. He challenged me as I was explaining the concepts to him, and we digressed over and over, bringing up extreme and outlandish thought experiments to make our points.

In the hours after my talk with Jonathan, I couldn’t stop thinking about the fun I had. So I started to brainstorm what it is about philosophy that continues to be so important to me.

Firstly, it’s fun and rewarding, although that may be obvious, as I am the one who runs the blog. However, there seems to be a concealed sort of fun that I have found in philosophy, as I don’t always enjoy reading. I’m typically averse to sifting through dense arguments, and I’m not always jumping at the opportunity to be confused. (which I constantly am).

The best way that I can describe my relationship with philosophy is with the analogy of exercise. When people exercise, they must commit themselves to a state of discomfort, and to properly exercise, it must be done routinely. Although over time, they are rewarded with results, they feel stronger, healthier, and they become familiar with struggle.

Philosophy allows me to grow with the same exchange. When I commit myself to reading challenging texts, analyzing arguments, and retaining ideas, I am rewarded with things like knowledge, a more diverse sense of understanding, literacy, and a sense of curiosity. These products constantly nourish me and, in effect, have caused me to fall in love with the process of philosophizing as a whole.

Philosophy is also powerfully relevant to me. People already operate under the conventions of various philosophies from birth. We are all raised to assume that knowledge is obtained in one manner, justice is served in another, and that pleasure is the highest good (or at least something is). Philosophy is, in a very real sense, all around us.

These assumptions are inherited, and they often remain unnoticed; they are boiled down and warped with time, but they shape our perception nonetheless.

Studying philosophy enables me to critically evaluate my own assumptions and gain insight into what others find important as well. In a more pragmatic sense, philosophy helps me to understand and positively change my environment.