Why Philosophy? Marcus Arvan
Good philosophies make our lives and the world better.
What is philosophy to you?
Philosophy is everywhere. It underlies how we live our lives, the careers we pursue, how we treat people, living creatures, and the environment, which causes we support, who we vote for, how our governments and economies work, whether we go to war—and yes, it even sparks revolutions. Good philosophies make our lives and the world better, bad philosophies make things worse. History is an ample testament to this. Most of what we do, even if we’ve never articulated it, is a least implicitly based on some philosophy or other. So, to me, it’s critical to do philosophy well, and to do it in a way that has an impact outside of the academy. It is truly among the most important things in the world.
How were you first introduced to philosophy?
I took a summer school class on Philosophy and Literature with Taylor Carman at Stanford University before my senior year in high school. At the time, I was really into English literature but had no exposure to philosophy, so it sounded cool. We read Camus, Nietzsche, Sartre, Voltaire, Italo Calvino, and others I’m sure I’m forgetting—and it is to this day one of the best and most unique classes I’ve ever been involved in. I wrote a paper on the problem of evil, and found it exciting to think about problems like that for the first time in my life. Later, it helped me in working through grief after my grandmother’s passing. So I took to philosophy like a fish to water. I found it both fascinating and helpful in grappling with this wonderful but difficult and tragic adventure known as life.
How do you practice philosophy today?
For me, philosophy is very much a way of life, and a fundamental part of who I am. I do it in the classroom, when I read and write, when I think about things I’m struggling with in my own life, and of course, when I read the news. I just try to learn as much as I can from as many angles as possible—whether from simply living, listening to other people, the arts, sciences, humanities, current events, or new technologies—and bring it all to bear on problems that seem important to me. For example, I wrote my new book, Why It’s OK to be a Moderate, after listening to Matt Duncan’s Revolutions podcast, reading a lot of history, observing current events, reading up on science on political values and human behavior, and combining the findings with my philosophical work on prudence, morality, and justice.
What is a philosophical issue that is important to you?
Prudence, particularly its social and political dimensions. On the one hand, many of the worst horrors in human history seem to have emerged from something like this seductive line of thought: “If my side seizes political power, then we’ll fix things because we’re right.” This is simply imprudent. History and empirical science both confirm that power tends to corrupt, and that this line of thought reliably leads to very dark places. On the other hand, as I detail in Why It’s OK to be a Moderate, prudent politics requires winning and retaining willing allies—and here too, history and empirical science challenge seductive lines of thought. Winning and retaining allies tends to require finding common interests. Political prudence can be, and often has been, the difference between progress toward a better world, sabotaging the achievement of good ideals, or, worst of all, realizing hell on earth.
What books, podcasts, or other media have stood out to you as a philosopher?
I came across Matt Duncan’s Revolutions podcast during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it upended my political views. Duncan is a gifted (and very funny) storyteller who goes through the English Civil War and American, French, Haitian, Mexican, and Russian revolutions in exquisite detail. There’s the famous saying, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I think anyone who cares about realizing a better world without repeating the terrible bloodshed of the past would benefit from listening to it.
For similar reasons, I’ve been very interested in books that detail how dictators come to power, Volker Ullrich’s Hitler: Ascent 1889-1939, Peter McPhee’s Robespierre: A Revolutionary Life, and Alan Bullock’s Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. HBO’s miniseries Chernobyl also made a big impression on me.
Finally, I highly recommend Great Thinkers of the Eastern World: The Major Thinkers and the Philosophical and Religious Classics of China, India, Japan, Korea, and the World of Islam, edited by I.P. McGreal.
Marcus Arvan is Associate Professor of Philosophy at The University of Tampa. He works in moral and political philosophy, metaphysics, cognitive science, and AI ethics, and is the author of three books: Why It’s OK to Be a Moderate (2025), Neurofunctional Prudence and Morality (2020), and Rightness as Fairness: A Moral and Political Theory. He is also a husband, father, life-long musician, and songwriter who, in his spare time, moderates The Philosophers’ Cocoon and co-manages New Work in Philosophy with Barry Maguire and Willa Saadat.
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This resonated with me more than I expected. However, it was not because I came to philosophy the same way, but because I came to philosophy out of necessity and circumstance.
I wasn’t introduced to philosophy in a classroom. I was introduced to it in hunger, grief, and the dissonance between what I was told the world was and what I lived through. Where others found Plato in a syllabus, I found fragments of meaning in stolen library hours, late-night YouTube lectures, and notes scratched between shifts at work.
Philosophy didn’t feel like a field; it felt like a raft. When nothing else held, it gave me something to hold onto: not just answers, but the right questions. I’m not a professor, but I’ve built my life as a kind of philosophical witness. I write, I build, I question systems. And like you, I see philosophy as something that must reach beyond the academy and into the streets, into the commons, into our daily choices.
So I appreciated this piece. Thank you for showing how even through different doors, we may still arrive at the same house.
Check-out Barrett Culmback’s Substack! Philosophical/Spiritual ideas, often humorously presented!