By Associate Professor in Philosophy Morgan Luck (pictured, inset) in the Charles Sturt School of Social Work and Arts.

To help mark World Philosophy Day on Thursday 16 November, I’ve been asked to consider how philosophy has advanced civilisation.

To address this question, it’s tempting to point to some impressive things that philosophy can plausibly lay claim to, such as setting the foundations for science, mathematics, ethics and logic.

But would this show that philosophy has advanced civilisation? 

To demonstrate an advance of any kind, we must make a comparison.

For example, to show that wearing shoes improves the speed of a runner, we need to compare the speed of the runner with shoes, to the speed of the runner without them. If the runner is faster with shoes, then shoes improve her speed.

In the same way, to demonstrate that philosophy has advanced civilisation, we need to compare civilisation as it is with philosophy, to civilisation how it would have been without it.

So, let’s imagine a world in which there is no philosophy. That means a world in which no-one considers the big questions, such as ‘What is reality?’, ‘What is the meaning of life?’, or ‘How should we treat each other?’, for such questions lie at the heart of philosophy.

In some respects, this curiously incurious world may be better than our own – it’s a world free from existential angst, a world in which we are content to live unexamined lives.

Maybe you would find it pitiful to live such an unexamined life. But I suspect my cat would prefer to bask in a sunbeam than be burdened by the critical faculties required to argue that your pity is misplaced. 

Perhaps this world wouldn’t have some of the better by-products of our philosophical inquisitiveness – such as the pursuit of universal suffrage, human rights, or the scientific method.

But then it might not have some of the worse by-products either, such as the rise of fascism, eugenics or apartheid. It would be disingenuous to take credit for such achievements without also taking blame for such failures.

I’m not claiming that philosophy hasn’t advanced civilisation - I think that it has. But I need to do better than just point to some good things that philosophy has helped to bring about.

The problem is, that’s difficult, because it’s difficult to know what the world would have been like without philosophy.

Nevertheless, perhaps I can say this: given we have this itch, doing philosophy may be our best way to scratch it.

No doubt it’s led to a slurry of wrong answers to our big questions. But at least philosophy helps us to see this, to see the limits of what we know. Philosophy requires our reasoning to be laid bare; for our mistakes to be on full display.

In this regard, philosophy is different from many alternative approaches to the big questions – appeals to intuition, revelation, or faith – whose mistakes lie hidden behind the clouds.

So, insofar as we benefit from knowing how little we know, philosophy could be thought of as advancing civilisation.