Throughout the years I have been engaged with philosophy, one thing has become clearer to me day by day: I cannot regard philosophy as a profession. There is no result-oriented dimension to it. Nor can I think of it as a duty, whether personal or social, or even as a moral necessity. You may ask me, then, why one should study philosophy at all, or become involved with it. My answer seems simple. Philosophy, before anything else, is a way of being, an endless search for understanding that never comes to rest in stasis or certainty.
You may ask why we should devote ourselves to something that never reaches certainty. I would answer that without philosophy, it is impossible to pursue meaningful questions in greater depth. To set out on the path of philosophy is like entering a river that has been flowing for thousands of years, carrying with it the reflections of countless minds. It is a journey in which questioning, doubt, searching, and the construction of concepts come together, continually redefining the boundaries of our knowledge. And this is something humanity has always needed, perhaps more than anything else.
Beyond this, everything we know today as knowledge, science, ethics, law, psychology, has its roots in philosophy. Before physics or systematic ethics emerged as distinct fields of knowledge, there was natural philosophy and philosophical reflection on virtue and vice. I should add that philosophy has not only laid the foundations for these fields; it continues to challenge the concepts within them so that they do not lose their vitality or lapse into dogmatism. Without philosophy, we would still be trapped within the rigid frameworks of myth, unable to criticize or move beyond our inherited beliefs. Philosophy has enabled us to question power and ideologies, to break them down, and to rebuild our world.
I remember that in childhood, perhaps when I was six or seven, I first encountered a kind of experience of “self-consciousness.” It was not a fleeting intuition or an illusion. It was, rather, a profound perception that suddenly thrust me into an awareness of my own presence in the world. I felt that I was in this world; I truly felt my being-in-the-world. And this being-in-the-world was accompanied by a deep fear.
In that moment, the seed of a question was planted in my mind. Gradually, it came to occupy my entire life and never left me: why do I exist rather than not exist at all? That experience marked the beginning of the philosophical journey of my life. Instead of chasing easy and certain answers, the kind people often assume to be true, I took a more difficult path, one in which answers come without certainty. Little by little, I came to understand that our beliefs, assumptions, and frameworks of thought are built upon foundations that must themselves be questioned.
Today, as we live in a world where technology is growing at an uncontrollable pace, I believe that philosophy remains the only force capable of saving us from the dangers of unbridled progress. Although philosophy is often neglected these days and appears to have been pushed to the margins, I believe it still bears a heavy responsibility toward humanity, given the uncertain course of our future.
Even now, with philosophy pushed to the margins, humanity will once again have to turn to it in order to confront its fundamental questions and, beyond them, the question of its own survival. For this reason, philosophy is not merely a relic of the past, but a force that shapes our future.