Following this week’s Republican debate, I decided to write a piece about the value of philosophy.  Besides Marco Rubio saying welders make more money than philosophers and we need more of the one and less the other, both Ted Cruz and John Kasich treated philosophy as a term of insult.  I was on Facebook calling them out on it before I saw any of the subsequent philosophical backlash, but even after the defenders of philosophy rose up in polite rejoinder I thought there was more context to add.  Then the attacks in Paris occurred, and suddenly it seemed trivial to debate political views on the merits of majoring in philosophy.

I was a philosophy major in college, and can attest to the material as well as the less tangible dividends it has paid.  I understand Rubio was off on the economics, even if you just look at philosophy instructors as a profession.  But the central skills of philosophy as a discipline – critical analysis, deductive logic, reasoning from principles, building up arguments and tearing them down – have broad application in a variety of fields.  For me, it was excellent preparation for law school, as it involves the same mental rigor I use when writing an appeal brief.  Tech companies apparently hire a lot of humanities majors, probably because successful articulation is an asset in many arenas.  Add in fabulously wealthy philosophy majors like George Soros and Carly Fiorina, and it’s hard to make a case against it in monetary terms.

That’s the tenor of the rebuttal I’ve seen to the new War on Philosophy, but lends too much credence to the premise that success is measured solely in dollar impact.  Even law school is mediocre as vocational training, with little emphasis on the basics of operating a law practice, and instead the typical point is that law school teaches you to “think like a lawyer.”  At a higher level of generality, philosophy teaches you to think like a human being.

For example, every political campaign has a team of policy analysts and speechwriters.  What they do is exercise the basic skill set of philosophers.  I’m not sure what that pays as a career path, but apparently it’s important to the success of a political candidate.  The Founding Fathers, too, thought philosophy had value; the political philosophy of John Locke in particular contributed several pillars to the ideals of the American experiment.

In the broader context of another angle, this wave of philosophy-bashing falls in line with a grand tradition of anti-intellectual Republican rhetoric.  How many times have you heard a right wing politician complain about the intellectual elite?  “Elite,” so used, is not a compliment.  Spiro Agnew once decried the “effete core of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.”  At least he could turn a phrase.  Nowadays, “intellectual” is shorthand for “liberal” and deemed wrong without further proof.

Now, I went to a fancy university, and was surrounded by intelligent, motivated people determined to make something of themselves.  It is not intuitively obvious why education would be regarded as a badge of cluelessness.  Mind you, it is a mistake to equate formal education with intelligence, and I agree with Rubio that vocational training should not be stigmatized.  But it is also a fallacy to romanticize a lack of formal education as inherently a bounty of practical wisdom.  Very few parents want their children to fail in school.

So obviously, I went ahead and wrote about philosophy and politics, despite the horrific events in Paris.  In the face of that kind of incomprehensible brutality, it seems insensitive to take offense at a slight to your college major.  And yet, the circumstances indicate why the fundamental precepts of philosophy matter in today’s world.

The questions that naturally present themselves are philosophical in nature.  How can things like this happen?  What does it say about humanity?  How can civilized society react to such an outrage?  Where can we find meaning in the sacrifice of innocent lives?  Is it wrong to lash out in retaliation, when the immediate murderers have already been killed?  What is the alternative to perpetuating the cycle of violence?

I wish there were some formula of philosophical principles that would provide a clear path to understanding, or a simple set of aphorisms that would enlighten us all going forward.  But life is complicated and we shouldn’t expect easy answers.  Philosophy doesn’t tell us what to think, or how to feel, or what to do.  But if you think, and feel, and act, and you try to comprehend, and you care about what’s right, you’re engaging in philosophy.  It’s an element of humanity.