Why Philosophy?
Religion is a social institution. If you wish to argue for its apparent necessity, you can have your case; but this argument will never suffice for the truth. Because, as I see it, the truth depends nothing other than itself. Anything other than the truth, and even our striving to attain to it, is condemned to be divisive and will amount to bloodshed and turmoil. In science, with all its models and methods, there can only be a contrast to religion as humanity’s best attempt for objectivity: for religion postulates grandly, then makes amends, and science merely attempts to systematically confirm what we seemingly must logically infer about the world.
But yet, we feel something beyond the science that we trust, and in philosophy we have quibbled for civilizations over what that something is, whereas religion reduces its chief concerns to nothing greater than sectarian violence, intellectual depravity and socializing. And in these religions, so quick are their adherents to put a name on this awesome thing which they know nothing of through their reason; easily following is their worship and pursuit to the glory of its name. It becomes love or liberty or benevolence, terms that, to these minds, seem to exist in domains outside of reason. I feel no greater absurdity can be produced by the intellects of men and women.
After making these considerations and dwelling on them with sincerity, the only reasonable discourse I had discerned in which to direct myself, for the perfection of my own person, was philosophy; for in it only does one learn true humility and love.
Just in case you are wondering, “Well, why the hell did he switch his major to philosophy?” It may sound trivial that I speak of “love” and, as you might now have determined, “unity”; but these ideas are, as I consider them, the furthest from traditional forms of love and togetherness. In a most basic description: It is the sort of love one feels after attempting a difficult geometrical proof yet only applied to people, animals and things.
It’s feeeeeeeeeeelosophy.