A Critical Reflection on the Relevance of Philosophy in the Contemporary World

Abstract

It was Karl Marx, who once said that philosophers have only succeeded in interpreting the world in various ways; what is left is for them is to change it. It is precisely this type of perception that is serving as a catalyst to this paper. The man who has never sought the truth or one who thinks that he or she already possesses it never feels upset or disturbed. If the former is deficient in ambition, the latter is lacking in foresight. The essence of philosophy is metaphysical - the metaphysical urge to penetrate reality not the task of changing the world! This paper is an exercise in philosophical inquiry and reflections on the contemporaneous and typical question of relevance of philosophy to society and development in the contemporary world. We show the importance of philosophy to other disciplines and bring out its importance as an intellectual enterprise and show its mutual cross fertilization of ideas as the search for truth, knowledge, reality and value, which are the driving forces behind intellectual inquiry.