If you thought philosophy had one definition, here’s a podcast you need to listen to and an article you need to read.
After interviewing dozens of philosophers, not one of them had the same answer to what philosophy is. What else would you expect when you ask philosophers a seemingly simple question?
The podcast, in particular, is what resonated with me as I learn best auditorily. One of the biggest things I was surprised by was how many different fields of study there were inside of philosophy. Philosophy isn’t just one thing that people do, there are many subcategories within it. To name a few: Philosophy of education, history, language, law, mathematics, mind, politics, and religion.
With so many different kinds of philosophy, the answers stretched the whole gamut from abstract to straight forward.
The Greek meaning of philosophy is philo — meaning “love.” And — sophos, meaning “wisdom.”
With this as the definition, I can totally get behind the idea of philosophy. I love the idea of getting deeper into the root of things and seeking to gain wisdom. However, the way that I would define philosophy, at least as I see it performed most, is that philosophy is: Human wisdom that sounds divine.
Philosopher are great minds who say “people think too small, we’re going to think bigger and expand our mind and ideas to a larger capacity.” The problem is, most philosophy removes God from the picture and relies solely on human intellect. As soon as you remove God you have put yourself in a bubble that can be expanded only so far. No matter how far you explore and stretch inside this bubble, you will still be trapped to ideas inside of it.
God is outside this bubble and therefore gives us the knowledge from outside. Things that we could not possibly know unless they are revealed to us from a source with greater understanding than our own mind.
Man can come up with high sounding knowledge and theory, but in the end, that’s all it is. Human knowledge and human theory.
Here are some of the philosopher’s answers that I really liked.
Philosophy is:
“An argument from things that seem perfectly obvious to a conclusion that’s extremely surprising. A way to try to get clear about the basic presuppositions of claims that we tend to take for granted.” ~ Terrance Erwin
“99 percent about critical reflection about anything you could care to be interested in” ~ Richard Bradly
“Thinking that’s obsessed with clarity” ~ Alex Neil
I love all of these definitions as they provide room for philosophy in everyday things. I love the idea of philosophizing in smaller problems. Things that most people don’t think about. Really getting down to the details and nuts and bolts of how things work. Don’t disregard the small things, philosophize about them. How can insignificant things be turned into big ideas?
“A mode of inquiry, rather than a particular set of subjects” ~ Janet Radcliff Richards
When philosophy is stripped down to just a “mode of inquiry,” I love it. I think the profitability of searching things thoroughly is incredibly important. Don’t settle for not knowing. Seek to understand. Seek to “love wisdom.”
All I believe is that we should first seek the wisdom from a source that is greater than man’s tiny intellect.