Last night, around a neighbour's fire pit and after a friendly bar-b-q, a rather rustic yokel put a question to me - one I, as a professional philosopher and theologian, have encountered before. "Why would anyone want to study philosophy?" he lancinated, with more than a little animosity. I deflected his response, not wanting to incite a riot (there were other PhD's around the fire), and after all, he was several drinks in: "Perhaps a person might want to open a bait shop," I joked. "You know, a 'philosophy and bait shop'." Everyone laughed. But not my irritated friend. "I mean, what's the point!? What good does to anyone to ask questions and think about stuff like that? After all, no one agrees on the answers after thousands of years!" And he launched into a lengthy lecture outlining (very loosely) the reasons why philosophy and theology were too abstract and not worthy pursuits, all in the name of practicality and usefulness. The self-reflexive irony between his form and content did not escape me, nor did the self-referential incoherence of his argument.

Atypically, I remained silent - but continued a dialogue in my head. It was J.S. Mill, himself no enemy of utility and practicality, who declared that "It is better to be Socrates disatisfied, than a pig and be satisfied." Mill was distinguishing between a qualitative, higher order of pleasures and a lower, quantitative order. The life of the mind is a distinctly human activity and it's goods are intrinsic - not derived from quantitative aggregation, piling up the number, intensity and duration of stimulations. In other words, it is simply better to pursue intellectual questions of a philosophical and theological nature, even if one never arrives at a final and conclusive resting point, simply because pursuing such questions are good. Period. And this is doubly so for Christians who (presumably) agree with Jesus that the highest a human being can do is to love God with all one's being, particularly with one's mind (Lk 10:27).

Jesus' injunction should be enuf; but if someone questions the importance of Christians pursuing philosophy or theology, my response is: "It is important only if you wish to be human. If you want to be a pig, wallowing in the s!#%, go ahead and just live your life by stimulus-response."

Failing that, a simple, "At least one learns to articulate to oneself and others one's beliefs coherently" will suffice.