On Responding to Disparagers of Philosophy
Cicero wrote that some people, even educated folks, find the whole business of philosophy distasteful. (See the first sentence of “On the Ultimate Good and Evil”, in On Living and Dying Well) Let’s call this the Objection. Cicero is right; there are such people, and moreover, this assertion is common today as it likely was in his time. If you are a philosopher and you’ve attempted to talk about philosophy with a non-philosopher but noticed his boredom with the topic, you know what I mean. But let’s think about the Objection.
Now, “distasteful” can be construed in at least two ways: (a) as a matter of dislike and (b) as a matter of objective disvalue. The former sense is wholly subjective. The person who objects in the sense of (a) is merely communicating a taste. One response to such a person is “So what? Why should your subjective dislike of philosophy bother me any more than your dislike of blue jeans or of broccoli? And moreover, broccoli has objectively good nutritional properties regardless of whether or not you like it.” Eating broccoli might be a hypothetical obligation for folks who seek healthy bodies, even if they don’t like how the green Brassica oleracea tastes. “If you want to be healthy, eat your broccoli, even if you don’t like it” as a good mother might say.
The latter sense concerns objective value, either intrinsic or extrinsic. Suppose philosophy has intrinsic value. This means that it is objectively worthy of our approval such that it would have value even if no one were to appreciate it. An apt response to the Objection construed according to (b) is that the objector is making a claim of philosophy, namely, that philosophy is not worth our intellectual energy. Why then is the objector spending his intellectual energy to make this claim? The fact that he articulates the claim suggests that he doesn’t really believe it, or that he wouldn’t believe it were he to understand it.