Philosophy can be done by itself (primary) or to support other activities (secondary). It can help you do better problem solving and learning regarding any topic. So you can pursue philosophy as a means to other ends, or as an end in itself. (There are many types of philosophy; I'm mostly talking about philosophy related to rationality, critical thinking and knowledge.)
This paragraph is an example of the last paragraph i think. In the last paragraph ET talks about how there’s not that many philosophers that are good today. That and it’s hard to improve and if you improve to be good at it you’re already better than most people.
First sentence of the paragraph:
You’re saying it’s problematic to have to become the 700th best philosopher in the world just to use it well enough for your real interest. Problematic means there’s a lot of problems I think to it. I saw from oxford languages that it means presenting a difficulty or problem.
I think there’s problems that there’s not that much good material on philosophy and you can’t use that to improve really fast or well. It’s not like good cooking knowledge out there.
Another problem is like if you’re top 700th best philosopher how much better is that? Being the 50,000th best plumber sounds good cuz there’s so many out there that being top 50,000th may mean something well about your skill.
The first clause talks about how good you may be at philosophy. You’re pretty far up there already. It’s a good thing.
The second clause is being realistic. There’s not that many philosophers out there. The two clauses set up a problem and how you can think about the problem. You already are good at philosophy and there’s a problem about the shortage of philosophers.
The third clause says maybe you should do more of it. You can get even better at it and it may help you with your problems outside of philosophy. It’s not like you have a duty I guess to help the world, but it may be beneficial to you and everybody in the world. It can really help you if many people good at philosophy.
There’s something about the goal of being a top 1000 philosopher to consider. What are your goals on trying to move up the ranks on plumbing?
interesting breakdown. for the top 700 philosopher vs top 50,000 plumber comparison, do you read that mainly as a point about scarcity, like good philosophers are so rare that even being only somewhat good puts you unusually high? or more as a point about bottlenecks, where philosophy might be worth focusing on because it improves judgment/learning/problem-solving across other fields?