Uses of Philosophy for Living: The Well Formed Mind

uses of philosophy for living what the hell does this mean um uh generally I want to what I want to do is over the course of the next eight lectures talk about what philosophy is why we need philosophy and then how you apply philosophy again for living so one way and not the only way to think about this uh I like to use an anecdote uh from when I was younger I was in high school but my next oldest brother had just gone off to college and he was your classic unbelievably broke college student and I was talking to him on the phone and he said well Wes you know I got to go because I got a bunch of people coming over to play poker tonight and I went oh chuck chuck my brother Chuck I said Chuck uh you know do you have the money to be playing poker I'm you know do what you want but I'm a little worried because I know you're broke and he goes oh well yes they don't count cards and I said and I said well knock yourself out you know you're you're going to have a very good and you know he did he did a fair bit of paying his way through college by playing poker with people who did not know how to count cards and and and my rough analogy for philosophy is philosophy is the counting cards of life you can't control the card you're going to be dealt you can't control the cards that other people are going to be dealt but how you respond to them how you understand the situation in which you find yourself and then and then how and why you respond in any given situation you can control and when you're playing cards or you're playing life you do a hell of a lot better if you're counting the cards than if you're not and so this this this this idea is is to me this is basically what philosophy is about now quick definition of philosophy we're going to spend a lot more time on this in in the next couple of lectures but I want to move on to the why of philosophy Tonight Tonight is really the why of philosophy oh I should mention tonight we're going to talk about the well-formed ...