Post by Syrenna on Nov 30, 2006 7:27:49 GMT -5
The word, Philosophy, comes from the ancient Greek words 'philo', to love or to befriend, and, 'sophia', to be wise. It can be construed then either as the love of wisdom or the wisdom of love. The answer to the question, "what is philosophy?", has almost as many varieties as there are philosophers.
Since the ancient Greeks invented the activity known as Philosophy, it behooves us to ask what they meant by it. Human curiosity and the compulsion to ask questions has always existed. But the Greeks were perhaps the first to explicitly ask: Is the world (of which we are also a part) intelligible? And if so, how? They answered in the affirmative through the human capacity to reason. Their view of reason rested in the creation of concepts using the deductive method operating on the data provided by the senses as its basic material, and then reasoning further from this conceptual base. They invented the concept of philosophy to designate the whole endeavor of making sense of all aspects of existence. As a consequence the ancient Greek philosophers identified philosophy with rationalism. But rationalism is only one possible answer to the question of intelligibility.
Throughout the history of human thought since the Greeks many thinkers have argued that aspects of reality are not intelligible in a strictly rational sense. A range of answers to philosophical questions were subsequently proposed that fall somewhere on a spectrum between the two poles of rational and non-rational. As a consequence modern usage no longer limits the term philosophy to the original ancient Greek idea but has broadened the concept as covering the entire spectrum of thought on these questions.
Mankind only began to philosophise, Aristotle considered, after all of the normal necessities of life had been achieved. For him then it is a non-practical kind of leisure activity. However, Socrates before him considered it to be the most valuable and, in that sense, most practical activity.
Philosophy as a concept and a subject encompases all of knowledge and all that can be known including the means by which such knowledge can be acquired. The ancient Greeks organized the subject into five basic categories: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics and aesthetics. This organization of the subject is still largely in use today and can be profitably used regardless of where one's answers to specific philosophical questions lie.
From Wikipedia
Since the ancient Greeks invented the activity known as Philosophy, it behooves us to ask what they meant by it. Human curiosity and the compulsion to ask questions has always existed. But the Greeks were perhaps the first to explicitly ask: Is the world (of which we are also a part) intelligible? And if so, how? They answered in the affirmative through the human capacity to reason. Their view of reason rested in the creation of concepts using the deductive method operating on the data provided by the senses as its basic material, and then reasoning further from this conceptual base. They invented the concept of philosophy to designate the whole endeavor of making sense of all aspects of existence. As a consequence the ancient Greek philosophers identified philosophy with rationalism. But rationalism is only one possible answer to the question of intelligibility.
Throughout the history of human thought since the Greeks many thinkers have argued that aspects of reality are not intelligible in a strictly rational sense. A range of answers to philosophical questions were subsequently proposed that fall somewhere on a spectrum between the two poles of rational and non-rational. As a consequence modern usage no longer limits the term philosophy to the original ancient Greek idea but has broadened the concept as covering the entire spectrum of thought on these questions.
Mankind only began to philosophise, Aristotle considered, after all of the normal necessities of life had been achieved. For him then it is a non-practical kind of leisure activity. However, Socrates before him considered it to be the most valuable and, in that sense, most practical activity.
Philosophy as a concept and a subject encompases all of knowledge and all that can be known including the means by which such knowledge can be acquired. The ancient Greeks organized the subject into five basic categories: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics and aesthetics. This organization of the subject is still largely in use today and can be profitably used regardless of where one's answers to specific philosophical questions lie.
From Wikipedia
