Why Philosophy?

Examined Life has two really good posts up on sufficiently different themes they seem to deserve separate posts. In a post about wrapping up the seminar he's teaching on Plato's Theaetetus, Scott Carson says this about why one should study philosophy:

If it accomplishes nothing else, philosophy will teach you about your own limitations, even as it illumines the limitations of others. You come to understand very quickly that, not only is there no such thing as progess in philosophy, but there is not really any such thing as progress at all, other than the banal sort that allows us to build better bridges or manufacture better textiles, machinery, and medicines. We are more technologically advanced today than the ancient Greeks were, but morally, psychologically, philosophically--in any really important sense, we are no further than they. In some ways, I imagine, we have yet to catch up with them.