WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY ANYWAY?
I. Defining Philosophy The best place to start in our attempt to define philosophy is with the etymology of the word itself. Most people are aware that the term is derived from two Greek words: philo (love) and sophia (wisdom). Philosophy, then, literally means “the love of wisdom.” We each have a sense of what love means, but what exactly is wisdom? Although there are many different ideas about what wisdom is, we can define it as “the proper understanding about the nature of reality.” The wise person, then, has a correct understand about his own nature, the nature of the universe and the nature of God (if, in fact, God actually exists). This understanding at the same time informs and influences the way he lives his life. A person is wise, in other words, if he has a correct understanding about how things actually are and lives his life accordingly. Philosophy has also been connected with the quest for the truth. The Greek philosopher Pythagoras, for example, maintained that unlike the
