The Impact of Philosophy to Human Development

Abstract

Man’s make-up comprises culture and nature. Though nature is primordial to culture, but the two are essentially and existentially inseparable. However, every development in man’s life affects the two dimensions of man’s existence: nature and culture and such developments can influence him negatively or positively. This simply unveils the two types of development: the authentic development and the inauthentic developments. Howbeit, the essence of philosophy is to expose and give issues, problems and evidence their deserved weight by the use of logical reasoning. It is also to set standard, ground and criteria to judging of values in any development. Likewise, another impact of philosophy to development is that it unveils the appropriate meaning of concepts, thereby making appropriate conception of human development known to the general public through “public reason”. In summary, philosophy equips us with a hard look and critical attitude to see clearly the quality of human development, differentiating such from the instrumental development, and enabling us to abide by such. For example, the need for humanizing the actual development in the human society today which is likened to globalization is unfolded by the simple activity of philosophy.