The Benefits of the Partially Examined Life Mark Linsenmayer Brings Philosophy Back to the Mainstream
by Mark Linsenmayer
S
o why study philosophy? Studying philosophy sharpens critical thinking skills and enables you to cope with difficult texts and strange viewpoints. If you can read a difficult work of philosophy, you can read anything. For the full experience, you need to then go on and communicate what you’re thinking in reaction to what you’ve read or heard, which will both help you get your thoughts in order and improve your writing and speaking skills.
The Value of Philosophy
So those are reasons why philosophy is not at all the “useless” activity that many practically minded folks think that it is, but really, the biggest value of philosophy is that it should lead you to seriously question your life decisions, large and small: What should I be doing for a living? Should I get married, have kids, go to church, eat meat, give to charity, etc.? How should I vote, and should I vote at all?
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Putting Philosophy to Work
In many of these areas, I’m pretty conventional: I have a family, own a house, watch TV (just not commercials), do eat meat (occasionally), vote democratic, and don’t give nearly as much to charity as I think I should. I have drawn a line in the sand regarding the traditional job thing: I think that your time is the most precious thing you have, and that it’s worth some financial sacrifice to avoid any kind of job that sucks up so much of your energy that you can’t pursue anything you’re really passionate about. So I started with a plan to become an academic, became disillusioned with that prospect during graduate school due to the state of the academic job market, did work for several years in an office doing technical writing. I’m now a consultant in the area of transportation research and largely have the ability to set my own hours and work far less than full time at my discretion, which has enabled me to help build The Partially Examined Life LLC (PEL) slowly over the last several years into a healthy business that I hope to devote all of my energies to eventually.