Introduction

At the end of his Problems of Philosophy Bertrand Russell inquires ‘what is the value of philosophy and why it ought to be studied’. Surprisingly few philosophers ask these questions, though philosophers frequently find themselves being asked them. In this chapter we suggest possible answers and debate their various merits. For once again these are philosophical questions and, like all philosophical questions, they are open to debate, not least because what it is for some activity to have value and thus to be worthwhile is a quintessentially philosophical question. Obviously it is beyond the scope of this book to provide an answer to that big question. Anyway, to do so would unduly restrict the interest of any account of philosophy’s value based upon it, since such an account would then be acceptable only to those who shared the answer given to the big question, which, one can confidently predict, most philosophers would not. In this chapter, then, we try to clarify what we are looking for when we seek a value for philosophy, and we float various conceptions of it, noting their relation to general accounts of value where appropriate.

Yet, since the answers we give to Russell’s questions will also depend upon the account we give of the nature of philosophy it may seem as if we need to once more rehearse the possibilities and draw out the supposed value the subject has on each of them. If, for example we take philosophy to be a contribution to science then it will have the value that scientific knowledge has for those who possess it and of the utility of that knowledge for others. Alternatively, however, we might first ask what sort of value the subject could possess and allow our answers to influence our view about its nature. That is to say, we decide what we want from philosophy and let that shape our conception of it.