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Philosophy is the critical study of the most fundamental questions that humankind has been able to ask.
Philosophers ask questions such as
- Metaphysics: What sorts of things exist? What is the nature of those
things? Do some things exist independently of our perception? What is the nature of space and time? What is the nature of thought
and thinking? What is it to be a person? What is it to be conscious? Is there a god?
- Epistemology: Is knowledge possible? How do we come to know what we
know? How can we know that there are other minds?
- Ethics: Is there a difference between morally right and wrong actions (or values,
or institutions)? If so, what is that difference? Which actions are right, and which wrong? Are values absolute, or relative? In
general or particular terms, how should I live?
Philosophy is paradigmatically concerned with fundamental concepts such as existence or being, morality or goodness,
knowledge, truth, and beauty; philosophers have often been particularly concerned with asking critical questions about the
natures of these concepts — questions which don't seem to be amenable to treatment by the special sciences.
Philosophical Methods
Philosophy is, perhaps, most clearly distinguished by the methodology that it uses to grapple with the questions that
philosophers pose. Philosophers generally frame problems in a logical manner, and then work towards a solution based on logical
processes and reasoning, based on a critical reading and response to previous work in this area. This series of responses and
counter-responses is a dialectical process.
It's a matter of considerable philosophical debate whether "solving" a philosophical problem is like answering a question in
the natural sciences: whether or not, for example, philosophical "solutions" are definitive, and whether they tell you something
informative about the structure of reality, or just get you more clarity or insight on the logic of our language. Closely
connected to these debates about philosophical method are debates over the relationship between philosophy and natural science,
and arguments over whether philosophy makes (or can make) progress in the same way that the natural sciences do. There is,
indeed, an entire field of philosophy which is concerned with the nature of philosophical problems, philosophical solutions, and
the proper method for getting from one to another: it is meta-philosophy, or (as it were) the philosophy of philosophy (cf.
pataphysics). The fact that such debates have their own specialized field does not mean that they are any less relevant to
philosophy as a whole: the nature and role of philosophy itself has always been an essential part of the philosophical project,
from the ancient Greeks onward. But it does mean that it is a lengthy debate beyond the scope of this article; and so such
questions are discussed elsewhere.
Non-academic uses of the word
Popularly, the word philosophy is often used to mean any form of wisdom, or any person's perspective on life (as in
"philosophy of life") or basic principles behind or method of achieving something (as in "my philosophy about driving on
highways"). This is also commonly referred to as a worldview.
To take another example, reacting to a tragedy "philosophically" might mean abstaining from passionate reactions in favor of
intellectualized detachment. That particular definition arose from the example of Socrates, who calmly discussed the nature of the soul with his followers while the hemlock (used to execute him in
accord with the decision of an Athenian jury) took effect. The Stoics and other schools
of philosophy in the ancient
world saw themselves as Socratic in this sense. But the use of philosophically in this adverbial sense is only a
distant relation of the contemporary academic usage. This article focuses specifically on philosophy as an academic discipline
rather than these usages.
Western and Eastern Philosophy
Members of many societies around the world have considered the same questions, and built philosophic traditions based upon
each other's works. Philosophy may be broadly divided into various realms based loosely on geography.
The term "philosophy" alone in a Euro-American academic context can misleadingly
refer solely to the philosophic traditions of Western
civilization, sometimes also called Western philosophy. In
the West, the term "eastern philosophy" broadly subsumes the
philosophic traditions of Asia and the East.
However, as the world becomes increasingly globalized, some believe
that the Eastern and Western philosophical divide will shrink or disappear altogether.
Western Philosophy
The Western philosophic tradition began with the Greeks and
continues to the present day. Famous Western philosophers include Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, René Descartes, John Locke, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, Friedrich
Nietzsche, Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein,
and Willard van Orman Quine. For more information, see Western Philosophy.
Eastern Philosophy
Eastern philosophy follows the broad traditions that originated from or were popular within ancient China and India. Famous
Eastern philosophers include Gautama Buddha, Nāgārjuna, Confucius, Lao Zi (Lao Tzu), Zhuang Zi (Chuang Tzu), Mencius, Xun Zi, Zhu Xi, Sankara, Ramana Maharshi, and Ramanuja. For more information on Eastern philosophies, see Eastern philosophy.
Applied philosophy
Though often seen as a wholly abstract field, philosophy is not without practical applications. The most obvious applications
are those in ethics -- applied
ethics in particular -- and in political philosophy.
The political philosophies of Confucius, Sun Tzu, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, and John
Rawls have shaped and been used to justify governments and their actions. Philosophy of education deserves special mention, as well; progressive education as championed by
John Dewey has had a profound impact on educational practices in the United States in the twentieth century.
Other important, but less immediate applications can be found in epistemology, which might help one to regulate one's notions of what knowledge, evidence, and justified belief
are. Philosophy of science discusses the underpinnings of
the scientific method, among other topics sometimes useful to
scientists. Aesthetics can help to interpret discussions of art. Even ontology, surely the most abstract and least
practical-seeming branch of philosophy, has had important consequences for logic and
computer science.
In general, the various "philosophies of," such as philosophy of
law, can provide workers in their respective fields with a deeper understanding of the theoretical or conceptual
underpinnings of their fields.
Moreover, a burgeoning profession devoted to applying philosophy to the problems of ordinary life has recently developed,
called philosophical counseling.
Some tentative generalizations about what philosophy is
Based on the ground covered above, it seems that philosophy is a discipline that does not make use of experimentation and
careful observation, though it may interpret philosophical aspects of experiment and observation. More positively, one might say
that philosophy is a discipline that examines the meaning and justification of certain of our most basic, fundamental beliefs,
according to a loose set of general
methods. But what we might mean by the words "basic, fundamental beliefs"?
A belief is fundamental if it concerns those aspects of the universe which are
most commonly found, which are found everywhere: the universal aspects of things. Philosophy studies, for
example, what existence itself is. It also studies value--the goodness of things--in general. Surely in human life we find
the relevance of value or goodness everywhere, not just moral goodness, though that might be very important, but even more
generally, goodness in the sense of anything that is actually desirable, the sense, for example, in which an apple, a painting,
and a person can all be good. (If indeed there is a single sense in which they are all called "good.")
Of course, physics and the other sciences study some very universal aspects of things; but it does so experimentally.
Philosophy studies those aspects that can be studied without experimentation. Those are aspects of things that are very general
indeed; to take yet another example, philosophers ask what physical objects as such are, as distinguished from properties of
objects and relations between objects, and perhaps also as distinguished from minds or souls. Physicists proceed as though the
notion of a physical body is quite clear and straightforward--which perhaps in the end it will found to be--but at any rate,
physics assumes that, and then asks questions about how all physical bodies behave, and then does experiments to find
out the answers.
How to get started in philosophy
It is a platitude (at least among people who write introductions to philosophy) that everybody has a philosophy, though they
might not all realize it or be able to defend it. But at the same time the word "philosophy" as it is used by philosophers is
nothing like what is meant by people who say "Here's my philosophy of life..." Such is the tension between pedagogy and
scholarship.
If you're already interested in studying philosophy, your reason might be to improve the way you live or think somehow, or you
simply wish to get acquainted with one of the most ancient areas of human thought. On the other hand, if you don't see what all
the fuss is about, it might help to read the motivation to philosophize, which explains what motivates many people to "do
philosophy," and get an introduction
to philosophical method, which is important to understanding how philosophers think. It might also help to acquaint yourself
with some considerations about just what philosophy
is.
Those who are new to the subject of philosophy are advised to study logic, metaphysics, philosophy
of mind, philosophy of language, epistemology, philosophy of science, ethics, and political philosophy as these are - arguably - the central
disciplines.
One of many useful introductory books is Think by Simon
Blackburn.
People who are inclined to study philosophy with others may wish to seek out organizations such as the non-profit Society for Philosophical Inquiry.
Quotations
"Believe nothing, O monks, merely because you have been told it … or because it is traditional, or because you
yourselves have imagined it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever,
after due examination and analysis, you find to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings—that
doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide. - Gautama
Buddha (attributed )
"Science is what we know and philosophy is what we don't know." - Bertrand Russell
"What is your aim in philosophy? To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle." - Ludwig Wittgenstein
"Philosophy is the peculiarly stubborn attempt to think clearly." - William James
"Philosophy, n. A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing." - Ambrose Bierce
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways; the point, however, is to change it." - Karl Marx
"Philosophy, which once seemed obsolete, lives on because the moment for realizing it has been missed." - Theodor Adorno
"Now you and I have, I hope, this advantage over all those clever new philosophers, that we happen not to be mad." -
G. K. Chesterton
Books suitable for beginners
- Grayling, A. C. (Ed.). (1995). Philosophy: A guide through the subject. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Grayling, A. C. (Ed.). (1998). Philosophy 2: Further through the subject. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Nagel, T. (1987). What does it all mean?: A very short introduction to philosophy. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Reference works
- Honderich, T. (Ed.). (1995). The Oxford companion to philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Routledge.
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