What is Philosophy?
by Professor Bernard Gert Philosophy, like all other fields, is unique. But the uniqueness of philosophy seems more impressive. Whereas historians, physicists, etc., generally agree about what constitutes their proper field of study, philosophers do not. Some philosophers have even maintained that there is no proper field of study for philosophers. This extreme position fortunately is not held by too many philosophers, but it illustrates perhaps the most distinctive feature of philosophy, namely that it leaves nothing unquestioned. This explains why philosophers do not accept any authority but their own reason. Philosophers have even questioned whether it is possible to question everything. Indeed, this last question, whether some things are unquestionable, has proven to be of great value in philosophy. Philosophical questions of the sort that students like to consider such as “What really exists?” or “Can anything be known?” or “Are there any universal moral standards?,” have themselv
” is a reflexive question in the threefold sense: it is about philosophy, it is raised by philosophers themselves and, last but not least, it represents an old and difficult philosophical problem. This multiple reflexivity is the reason why trying to find out what philosophy is inevitably becomes not only a way of dealing with philosophy but actually the way of doing philosophy. Once we start discussing philosophy we cannot escape its intellectual grip. Even an explicit denial of philosophy remains within its spell – it is a kind of self-refuting philosophy at best, an un-reflected act of theory hatred (misology) at worst. In this sense one can talk about the inescapability of philosophizing independent from its potential benefits. Note: Notice that this kind of reflexivity and self-involvement does not occur in other disciplines. (For instance: “What is mathematics?” is not a mathematical question.
Quite literally, the term “philosophy” means, “love of wisdom.” In a broad sense, philosophy is an activity people undertake when they seek to understand fundamental truths about themselves, the world in which they live, and their relationships to the world and to each other. As an academic discipline philosophy is much the same. Those who study philosophy are perpetually engaged in asking, answering, and arguing for their answers to life’s most basic questions. To make such a pursuit more systematic academic philosophy is traditionally divided into major areas of study. Metaphysics: At its core the study of metaphysics is the study of the nature of reality, of what exists in the world, what it is like, and how it is ordered. In metaphysics philosophers wrestle with such questions as: • Is there a God? • What is truth? • What is a person? What makes a person the same through time? • Is the world strictly composed of matter? • Do people have minds? If so, how is the mind related to the
