“Philosophy is the discipline that is primarily concerned with conceptual crises.”

My conceptual crisis has been with the way of the world and human governance. I’ve been wondering why democracy and capitalism have become the dominant governing principles and the ones most sought after. What are the causes and mechanisms behind their ascendency? These are questions I sensed an answer to but didn’t have the wherewithal to answer. I didn’t find compelling enough the usual reasons given by scholars and historians. It is thus I turned philosophy as a possible means of discovery and explanation. Perhaps I was influenced by something Bertrand Russell wrote, that “that circumstances of men’s lives do much to determine their philosophy, but, conversely, their philosophy does much to determine their circumstances.” Could, then, philosophy be one of the factors behind why the world is as it is? One thing I do know is that philosophy has introduced me to concepts, powers of reasoning and lucidity of thought I would otherwise never have had.