#1012 - Alex O’Connor & Joe Folley - Is Being Smart Worth the Depression?
Modern Wisdom
Chris Williamson
4.7 • 4.6K Ratings
🗓️ 27 October 2025
⏱️ 119 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | Was philosophy always meant to be practically applicable, or is that some modern reinterpretation? |
| 0:06.0 | Ah, that's a joke question. |
| 0:08.0 | Ah, well, I mean, I suppose one of the differences between, like very broadly speaking, |
| 0:13.0 | between something like ancient Greek philosophy, say, and the way that we conceive of philosophy today is that |
| 0:19.0 | in a philosophy today is largely thought of in terms of different fields. You've got your kind of epistemologists who discuss questions like, you know, what is knowledge and, you know, more importantly, how do we, how do we attain knowledge? What are the kinds of systems and processes that produce reliable knowledge, that kind of stuff? And then there are kind of ethicists talking about, you know, what is the good life, you know, vitally important question. Also, you know, what are the right things to do? |
| 0:40.6 | And then you've got kind of logicians talking about, you do a lot of proofs and try to |
| 0:45.0 | often model ordinary things using formal mathematical or at least semi-mathematical systems. |
| 0:52.2 | You've got philosophers of language, philosophy science. But suddenly, in the ancient world, these weren't as differentiated |
| 0:59.3 | certainly as they are today. And so, you know, Aristotle wrote different treatises on these |
| 1:05.0 | different topics. But even in his philosophy, everything is so interlinked. And if you go back before Aristotle, it's very, |
| 1:14.6 | very hard to separate you. So, for example, the Stoics, although, you know, in kind of popular |
| 1:20.5 | discourse around Stoicism today, we talk a lot about Stoic ethics. The Stoics thought that their ethics |
| 1:25.9 | fell out of their metaphysics and their logic which was |
| 1:28.8 | their word for what we would call today things like logic and epistemology and um so i think that's |
| 1:33.9 | that's um that's one major difference in terms of practicality i mean yeah the a lot of ancient |
| 1:39.1 | philosophy is incredibly practical you know these are especially you know the the one of the paramount |
| 1:45.5 | questions that are asked that's asked by almost every are, especially, you know, the, one of the paramount questions that are asked, |
| 1:49.6 | that's asked by almost every ancient philosopher is, you know, how to live a good life. The, the first philosopher, like in, like, received wisdom is Thaley's, is a kind of ancient, |
| 1:58.0 | ancient Greek philosopher. But before that, there, there are lots of, we have scraps of like ancient Egyptian philosophies and things like that. |
| 2:08.0 | And they're often concerned with, you know, what's the good life? How do we live it? |
| 2:12.0 | Sirai, I think philosophy is eminently practical. |
| 2:14.7 | I also think, you know, maybe this is just my own bias. |
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