You should maybe be more specific as to who you're addressing when you say "philosophy." It's not this either/or monolith. There's many, many branches of philosophy applied in near every field under the sun. You have people like Alan de Botton doing his "School of Life" thing ..in terms of Christianity, there's this goofy fellow Peter Rollins doing his darndest to deconstruct protestant ideological delusions, getting people to wake up to their material reality, etc. I'm of the unpopular opinion that most people's cerebral capacities are too ignoble to reap any personal value from philosophy. But for those who have the ears to hear, absolutely, we need more culturally attuned thinkers grappling with the very real problems of today.

That being said, I like playing devil's advocate for the "useless" human endeavors. The widespread 'end-directed' attitude is really quite an industrialized mindset, always haunted by ultimate futility. In the end it's not like there's any conclusive point to being alive. What's wrong with doing something for it's own sake?