Everything comes down to philosophy.
Take any field, any domain, any sort of knowledge system, and begin asking a few whys, and you will encounter some ‘presumed’ truths or axioms. This is the philosophy which that knowledge system is based on.
Thus, we can see there can be a lot of ‘philosophy of this’ and ‘philosophy of that’, but we also have ‘metaphysics’, which deals with fundamentals of life itself.
And, and if consider ‘importance’ of things, and start thinking about it deeply and clearly, then we can easily understand that philosophy ranks higher in importance than everything else.
Therefore, it’s not really a question of why philosophy, it’s more about what philosophy.
And, one very important thing to understand, is what becomes a consequence of philosophy? Does it become an intellectual pastime? Or does it lead to more fundamental changes in a human and society at large?
If we look at what is called ‘Indian Philosophy’, we can see that these philosophies are far from being intellectual pastimes. They have been experienced and lived. They have as a consequence led to a culture so vast and diverse and yet woven by common threads all over. In the Indian tradition, experiential knowledge has always been the main goal, and intellectual frameworks often become a pathway to reach there.
To some people, it comes naturally. As in, they often find themselves thinking on these lines, and arguing about abstract concepts do not trouble them. With such tendency, if we have a combination of a brilliant intellect and some self-confidence, we may see a person creating his own philosophy of things. This pattern is seen among the Western Philosophers.
But the world of ‘Eastern Philosophy’ is a bit different. Here, we do not see individuals working on their ‘individual philosophies’. We see individuals, but what they work on, has a common ground to which we have agreement from ‘other individuals’. The main difference arises because in the Eastern World, the Vedic literature forms the base on which and due to which further things start. Even if someone rejects the authority of the Vedas, still there is a lot of ‘common ground’ on which he must work on in his philosophy. This ‘common ground’ and ‘threads of continuity’ seem to be missing in the philosophies of the Western World.
But nonetheless, even if we forget all these historical and geographical considerations, what we have as philosophical arguments alone, that is worth spending our time and energy on.
Why? Haha, as soon as you start to explain it, it becomes philosophy.