In Response to: Three Books: Avram Alpert on Living Well
I agree with Professor Alpert that philosophy should be about life and how to live, not about obscure ideas which are difficult both to understand and to utilize in some ways. I have known some philosophy teachers who actually did try to make philosophy useful, but I fear that most academic philosophers prefer to live in their own mental worlds without any reference to the usefulness of their field. Philosophy can be the path taken by people who are misfits in the real world. Compare Kant and Hegel to Voltaire and Rousseau, for example.