John Armstrong tries to answer, but I think that the discussion is meandering in a lot of respects, and excessively specific to what John Armstrong thinks, rather than what humanity might think about the importance of philosophy (not that one ought not to be interested in the ideas of a person answering a question, but one would expect that for a topic as wide-ranging as philosophy, the respondent would try to channel humanity’s voice, in addition to putting forth his/her own).
For me, the best answer to the question was found in the comments section:
TNLPhilosophy is about discovering, confronting, and acknowledging uncertainty. Particularly in areas where there was none.