What for is philosophy?

I've had a few recent posts on this, so here's Levi Bryant. He says this much better than I:

"Put a bit differently, perhaps it could be said that a philosophy is not so much a representation or picture of the world as a map of virtual or potential actions or ways of doing things, and also a response to actions. The Platonist lives and acts in the world in an entirely different way from the Aristotlean and also has a different set of aims. The debate between, say, Badiou and Deleuze is thoroughly uninteresting and is purely academic. There's nothing more dreary than those who discuss philosophy as if what matters is whether you fall under the banner, the tribe, of Deleuzians or Derrideans or Lacanians, etc; as if what matters is these labels and texts. There's nothing more irritating and depressing that a philosophical discussion that takes the form of an abstract debate about whether or sides with Descartes's dualism or Spinoza's parallelism.


"What's interesting is the question of what difference these positions make, of how we'd live differently. For example, how would Spinozist parallelism lead me to think of something as mundane as diet differently? These names, rather, are sign-posts, intensive points, responding not to other philosophies-- though that too --but to problems in the world. What names denote are ways of living, forms of action, ways of perceiving. To be a Cartesian, for example, is not to pursue certainty or struggle with mind/body dualism, or attempt to prove the existence of God. No, to be a Cartesian is to let forth a scream of horror in response to the blood of the Thirty Years War and how it was inspired by an epistemological problem; namely, the indeterminacy of the indetermination of scripture that led to dozens of different religious sects all convinced they had the truth and that if we did not live as they demanded, more plague and famine would be sent. It was to let forth a scream of horror at the treatment of Galileo and Bruno and to express hope at the possibility of a way that peaceful consensus might be reached. Epistemology during this period wasn't some arid speculation, but was a form of politics in a world gone mad."