Jordan asked:

Often I am posed with the following question: why do you study philosophy -- what does it have to do
with the real world and its problems? My question is: what kind of understanding of experience and of
philosophy does this mentality come from? what does this kind of question reveal about society?

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Quite simply, where the question comes from is the state of mind where one has not seen what there
is in the problems of philosophy to be gripped by. The full and complete justification of philosophy is
that its problems grip us. We feel them to be important. Some people who 'have not seen' can be
helped to see. Others simply will not see. Their eyes are shut. What does that show about society? I
don't think that this is a new problem. At the time of Socrates (as Xenophanes' comedy 'Clouds'
amply testifies) many educated Greeks thought philosophers ridiculous, and their questions and
theories absurd.

Geoffrey Klempner