Of course it can, since it has. Notice the historiless, contextless ignorance of the writer. As if the current situation hasn’t happened before, as if people have not used their philosophies to make it easier to deal with and face what, in the past, were often more regular and consistant nightmares. None of this - the fact that people have used various philosophies to reduce their anxiety, give themselves strength and so on in the past - means that their philosophies were right (or even that that’s the right way to think of the issue), but it is so truly ignorant to think that today’s situation - however outlandish it is for we moderns, doesn’t compare to the 1917 flu, certainly not yet, or the Black Plague, or what Christians might have experienced in Rome or what poor Buddhists in Burma may be going through now and certainly Muslims there or many people who have used Stoicism (not a philosophy I like, but that is beside the point) in circumstances vastly worse than the one facing most people now who read the New York Times. To sum it up as never having solved problems is confused on so many levels, since many people have felt that their philosophies aided them in crises most readers of the NYT just like getting off on in movies like Saw and other violence porn. It also carries on the confused Philosophy is here and other disciplines are here false image, since, for example, scientific epistemology is a philosophy or a portion of one, and that has sure generated a lot of solutions - and problems also, but seriously, duh.
I get it, I do. I am sure this person who perhaps took a couple of philosophy courses in college is to be empathized with. Good old Simon probably means that philosophy has not solved free will vs determinism or proved the existence or non-existence of God. Well, modern philosophy tends to try to help people think well, and past philosophers have certainly affected governmental styles, but then more relevant to the article, how people face things that trouble them.
Of course I haven’t read the whole article. But out of context we have this wonderful bemoaning and throwing up of arms and an enormous generality that Iamb adds to by sharing his doubt that it can help. When in fact there are likely people out there using their philosophies right now to reduce their anxiety, some of these having come out of philosophy proper, some from other sources, like religion or even folk psychologies, some from their own contemplation, no doubt affected by more formal philosophers, directly or indirectly.
Did dear old Simon think that people have just started dying and now the glaring weaknesses of philosophy are shown by today’s events.
I had a significantly older friend who lived through the blitz in London, which itself is much milder than say living through Nagasaki or what portions of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos went through in a bombing campaign larger than all of WW2. He lived in NY and was there on 9/11 and of course was shocked by the twin towers. But after awhile he realized that most Americans live in a historiless bubble. They seemed to think this was some utterly new kind of horror in the world, and that this entitled them to lash out, by proxy through their government and military, and end up killing even more of their own in Iraq, say, alone, let alone others.
Simon could use a philosophy or better yet some training in philosophy, where one learns to check assumptions, at the very least to question some of the implicit now and here and I am all that exist that gets projected outward by priviledged people like him.
He keeps it general, throws up his hands, and actually isn’t trying the least bit hard to find out if what he is saying - or implying which is the cowards way of saying - makes any sense.