Chapter 15, The Value of Philosophy Summary and Analysis

Russell has reviewed, briefly, some of the major problems of philosophy; he now wants to consider what philosophy's value is and why it should be studied. For some consider philosophy "useless trifling" and involving argument about matters that no one can know about.

To understand philosophy's value we must first free ourselves from the prejudices of the "practical man" who only sees his material needs and not the needs of the mind. Philosophy only generates goods of the mind. It aims primarily at knowledge, although it cannot really maintain that it has provided definite answers to certain questions. As soon as any definite knowledge is to be had in a branch of philosophy, it becomes science. Physics was once part of natural philosophy, for instance.

Philosophy may not definitively answer its core questions...