Mental Masturbation
Philosophy is mental masturbation. Metaphysics, in particular, is closer to autoerotic asphyxiation.
I say this as someone who wasted their GI Bill on a philosophy degree.
It’s for insufferable types with a penchant for poverty and archaic diction to sit around and circle-jerk. Let’s be honest, Hegel is mostly incomprehensible, and you’re just pretending. Kierkegaard was a whiny altar boy, and Nietzsche was syphilitic.
At best, philosophy is a personal endeavor, a hobby. You want to ask the big questions? Go for it, but let’s not pretend you’re doing humanity some great service.
As a vocation, philosophy is long dead. I contend that it exists only to pad out humanities department budgets and provide a refuge for failed intellectuals to ramble in front of a captive audience.