When you hear the word „philosophy“ you might think of something ancient, the stone figures of Platon and Aristoteles or you are reminded to intellectuals from the past centuries that built their theories on the existance of god. But this image will change if I replace it by its actual meaning: „The love to wisdom“. Suddently it is sometning emotiomal, something that is not only for a small circle of intellectuals, but for everybody.
Our planet is changing faster than ever. In only 30 years the internet changed nearly everyones life fundamentally. I mean, who does not use the internet on a daily basis; no single Google search, no Whatsapp message, not even a song on Spotify, nothing? This new invention brought incredible possibilities but it also brought us a big stack of problems to solve, and as Edward Snowden says, the internet and especially social media are seriously questioning our freedom nowdays. Furthermore, we are facing the climate crisis. In germany we have already had an increase of temperature of 1,5 degrees since the preindustrial time, as the minister for environment recently said. These 1,5 degrees are the limit for global warming agreed by the nations of the world at the climate summit in Paris in 2015. Even though climate change obviously mainly is a physical toptic it is a philosophical topic, too. To stop global warming, we need a radical change in our economy system, but also in our western way to live, away from wasting resources and unnecessary consuming to a sustainable lifestyle. Facing all these big topics, we should ask ourselves what we actually want. Do we want to continue allowing big technology companies to collect and sell our datas just to use Google‘s tools for free? Do we want to continue wasting resources and polluting our planet just to not give up any comfort we have today until we have no choice anymore?
This brings me to the conclusion, that philosophy is fundamental for our society, simply because it is the only science that asks what really matters in life and how we want to live, personally, as a society and in our more and more globalised world also as a humanity. To deal with the big questions of our time pragmatic short term politics are not appropriate. What we need is a philosophy that gives our politics of today a clear direction.
Our planet is changing faster than ever. In only 30 years the internet changed nearly everyones life fundamentally. I mean, who does not use the internet on a daily basis; no single Google search, no Whatsapp message, not even a song on Spotify, nothing? This new invention brought incredible possibilities but it also brought us a big stack of problems to solve, and as Edward Snowden says, the internet and especially social media are seriously questioning our freedom nowdays. Furthermore, we are facing the climate crisis. In germany we have already had an increase of temperature of 1,5 degrees since the preindustrial time, as the minister for environment recently said. These 1,5 degrees are the limit for global warming agreed by the nations of the world at the climate summit in Paris in 2015. Even though climate change obviously mainly is a physical toptic it is a philosophical topic, too. To stop global warming, we need a radical change in our economy system, but also in our western way to live, away from wasting resources and unnecessary consuming to a sustainable lifestyle. Facing all these big topics, we should ask ourselves what we actually want. Do we want to continue allowing big technology companies to collect and sell our datas just to use Google‘s tools for free? Do we want to continue wasting resources and polluting our planet just to not give up any comfort we have today until we have no choice anymore?
This brings me to the conclusion, that philosophy is fundamental for our society, simply because it is the only science that asks what really matters in life and how we want to live, personally, as a society and in our more and more globalised world also as a humanity. To deal with the big questions of our time pragmatic short term politics are not appropriate. What we need is a philosophy that gives our politics of today a clear direction.
