Criticism of Philosophy: Widespread Disagreement

In his clip Yasir Qadhi claims philosophy is useless because it's based on pursuing wisdom through unaided human reason and because there widespread disagreement among philosophers. Instead, he claims theology and religion provide the path to wisdom. What is unclear, however, is why disagreement among philosophers implies that philosophy is useless while disagreement among theologians does not imply uselessness.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Contradictions
• Philosophy
• Logic
• Critical Thinking

[TheFanwindow]

Also, he uses ancient Grecian philosophy mentioning forms and things as examples of what cannot be useful to him. First of all, there are many concepts that don't seem to directly help us live better lives but instead just provide understanding. Second of all, the importance of many concepts in philosophy is to understand the history of philosophy. There are many seemingly psychotic philosophical ideas in the past in our context today - of course they will seem useless.

[TheFanwindow]

I'm not sure you can come at philosophy as an outside observer. Also, his reference to Descartes' cogito, which seemed to be a joke, turned out to be a rhetorical quip that underlies his whole argument: that philosophers have lost track of reality. No. In his example, Descartes was trying to prove that he existed which ended up relying on his intuition.

Also, not understanding philosophical texts dressing yourself up as the "realistic everyday man" does not mean philosophy is useless.