What is Philosophy?

So what is philosophy?

What will you be studying if you’re taking a philosophy class, and what’s the purpose of looking at philosophy? 

Defining the 5 Features of Philosophy

Well, we’re gonna define philosophy with five features. And first, we’ll see that philosophy is foundational to the rest of the academy. What that means is that philosophy asks the most basic questions that can be asked. Really, these questions are assumed by the other disciplines in the university. The three fundamental questions of philosophy asks are, how do I know? This is called epistemology; and what is real? This is called metaphysics; and what ought I to do? This is called ethics. Sometimes these basic questions are called the big questions, but I like to call them basic questions, because they’re questions that we all ask. And so that’s what makes philosophy foundational. It’s the first and the most basic of the disciplines in the academy. These three basic questions and their study give us the attitude of philosophy. Philosophy has an attitude that we can see in the very word itself, the love of wisdom. And if we love wisdom, we would study these three questions and think about the way as they affect our life. The love of wisdom is contrasted with two other attitudes: The attitude of the fool, and the attitude of the simple. The fool is someone who thinks he knows but he doesn’t know; and the simple is someone who doesn’t care to know, doesn’t care to study these three questions.

Philosophy is also a critical examination of our assumptions.

So we use philosophy to test for meaning. We can look at the questions, these basic questions I have identified, and think about what they mean, think about what our answers mean, and use reason to critically examine our answers to see if they are meaningful or not meaningful. This study of meaning comes before we study if they’re true or false, because before something can be true or false, it has to have meaning. In critically examining our assumptions, we’re really living out the motto of philosophy, sometimes called the Socratic dictum, which says that the unexamined life is not worth living, or is not human life, is less than human existence. If we’re to have the love of wisdom, then we have to examine our own lives and think about, what answers are we given to these questions? What does it mean to critically examine our own answers before we begin critically examining others’? 

We use philosophy to build a whole worldview

And finally, we use philosophy to build a whole worldview. These basic questions are the foundation of a worldview, and each person has a worldview, they may or may not be very conscious of their worldview or consistent in their worldview, but as we begin to see how someone lives and we ask questions about their choices, we can begin to see the worldview they’re operating out of. So philosophy teaches us to know ourselves by knowing what is clear to reason at the basic level, and how we’ve approached these fundamental questions.