“Philosophy: Who Needs It?”

The title of this post is not original. It was borrowed from a book of philosophical articles written by Ayn Rand, because it captures well what I intend to do in this blog, which is to show that everyone needs philosophy — or better: everyone needs to philosophise.

I begin making an important distinction: it is one thing to read and study what other philosophers have done; it is an entirely different thing to philosophy. In the first case you are a consumer of somebody else’s philosophical ideas; in the second, you are a producer of philosophical ideas.

You may think that you are not able to philosophise, to create philosophical ideas: concepts, propositions, arguments. You may think that doing philosophical is something for professional philosophers, only, who have studied the history of philosophy and can ably discuss the views of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Russell, Popper, etc. Or of Ayn Rand, from whom I borrowed the title of this blog.

If you think along this line, I can assure you that you are wrong. And I will use the subsequent posts in this blog to show you why.

Keep coming back here and you will see why philosophy is for everyone.

São Paulo, Brazil, September 3, 2019