Why philosophy is having a moment
A world of clever machines is making it newly relevant.
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As technology upends what society needs, philosophy is staging a royal comeback.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: PEXELS
The Economist
In the past two decades, philosophy seemed passe. History had ended, and an increasingly materialistic world had no use for students of materialisms. The sciences, offering a path to a lucrative career in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street, reigned supreme. Their queen had been dethroned.
The number of philosophy degrees handed out by American universities declined from close to 8,000 in 2011 to less than 6,000 in 2024; in computer science it more than doubled to over 100,000. In 2015, Japan’s education minister asked the country’s universities to take “active steps to abolish” social science and humanities departments “or convert them to areas that better serve societies’ needs”.
