what is philosophy? why we need philosophy? this is main question asked by new students from philosophy.Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence, of man, and of man's relationship to existence. … In the realm of cognition, the special sciences are the trees, but philosophy is the soil which makes the forest possible.
—A philosophy is a comprehensive system of ideas about human nature and the nature of the reality we live in. It is a guide for living, because the issues it addresses are basic and pervasive, determining the course we take in life and how we treat other people.
The topics that philosophy addresses fall into several distinct fields. Among those of fundamental concern are:
Metaphysics (the theory of reality).
Epistemology (the theory of knowledge)
Ethics (the theory of moral values)
Politics (the theory of legal rights and government)
Aesthetics (the theory of the nature of art)
The most widespread systems of ideas that offer philosophical guidance are religions such as Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Religions differ from philosophies not in the subjects they address, but in the method they use to address them. Religions have their basis in mythic stories that pre-date the discovery of explicitly rational methods of inquiry. Many religions nowadays appeal to mystical faith and revelation—modes of belief that claim validity independent of logic and the scientific method, at least for the biggest questions. But most religions are in their origins pre-rational rather than anti-rational, a story-teller's account of philosophic issues rather than a scientist's.
In Greek, "philosophy" means "love of wisdom." Philosophy is based on rational argument and appeal to facts. The history of the modern sciences begins with philosophical inquiries, and the scientific method of experimentation and proof remains an instance of the general approach that a philosopher tries to bring to a question: one that is logical and rigorous. However, while today the sciences focus on specialized inquiries in restricted domains, the questions addressed by philosophy remain the most general and most basic, the issues that underlie the sciences and stand at the base of a world-view.
Philosophy raises some of the deepest and widest questions there are. Addressing the issues in each branch of philosophy requires integrating everything one knows about reality (metaphysics) or humanity (epistemology, ethics, politics, and aesthetics). Proposing reasonable positions in philosophy is therefore a difficult task. Honest philosophers have often disagreed about key issues, and dishonest ones have been able to slip their own positions into the mix as well. For this reason, there is not one philosophy worldwide, as there is one physics. Instead, there are many philosophies.
Over the course of history, philosophers have offered entire systems that pulled together positions in each of the branches of philosophy. Aristotle, the father of logic, authored such a system in ancient times, teaching that we could know reality and achieve happiness. In more modern times, philosophers such as John Locke and Immanuel Kant have written systematic accounts of their thought. Most modern philosophers, however, have specialized in one area or another within philosophy, although some schools of philosophy have emerged that are marked by the general positions of their members on a variety of issues and the members' shared admiration for a chain of historical figures. These schools have included Pragmatism, Logical Positivism, and Existentialism, but are little-known outside of university classes in modern philosophy.
Today philosophic issues often enter public life through political or social movements, some religious in inspiration, such as Christian conservatism, and others secular, such as left-wing environmentalism and socialism. The ideas of such movements are often called ideologies. That term, "ideology," is another name for the systems of ideas we have been talking about. Though the focus of ideological movements is political, their political beliefs tend to be rooted in shared conceptions of reality, human nature, and values.
Everyone has a philosophy, even if we cannot express it in words.
We either act as if our eternal salvation depends on following the mandates of scripture, or we don't. We feel the need to believe in something and search for understanding, or we adopt the cynical view that the search is useless. We all have some sense of what is right, and what is wrong. We can see ourselves as noble beings worthy of happiness or as guilty transgressors against the environment, social justice, or God. We will all decide often what it is that constitutes our duty. We think we know art when we see it. And we adopt political principles and support politicians and parties.
All of these are philosophical issues.
Philosophical convictions are often subconscious or inarticulate. We experience them emotionally in what Ayn Rand called a "sense of life." Your sense of life reflects the fundamental ways you relate to the world and other people; it is your intuitive feeling of how things are and how they ought to be. Each of us needs to understand his own convictions consciously, to be able to put his sense of life into words. Otherwise we don't really have a clear idea of what we believe or what is motivating us to make our biggest decisions—or whether it is true. We need to know what we think on philosophical questions, because our answers can affect the course of our lives. And the sense of life that dominates nations or cultures can determine their fates.
We need a metaphysics (a theory of reality) because we need to know whether the material world of daily life is the only one that exists—which makes a difference between living for this life or some heavenly hereafter. We need to know whether the universe is lawful, or chaotic—which makes a difference between trying to improve things or viewing life as absurd and meaningless.
You take your car to a mechanic because the engine misfires in damp weather. Wouldn't it be strange if he were to shrug and say "Well, cars just do that sometimes?" But what's wrong with that? Why shouldn't you take that attitude to your own problems at home or at work? You need a philosophy to know the answer.
An epistemology is a theory of knowledge. It may seem that if you know anything, then you know it, so what's the issue? To have a clear grasp of one's own life and context, one needs to be able to sort out the mass of information, claims, and ideas we receive from others: that skill is based in epistemology. After all, at root, we need to know whether what we believe is really true. How do you know when someone has proven a point? That can be terribly important when the truth of a scientific theory, a doctor's diagnosis, or the outcome of a trial is at stake. Some people say that words are arbitrary and mean whatever we like. Does that mean it doesn't matter if someone uses words he can't define in down-to-earth terms? Should we worry if we don't feel like we have mystic intuitions, or should we worry if we do?
A neighbor comes to your door with a petition: pesticides from nearby farms are appearing in trace quantities in the town's drinking water. The neighbor wants them removed at all costs. "Nobody has proven that these chemicals won't ever hurt anyone," he says. But the farmers send around a flyer saying the chemicals have been scientifically tested and are proven to be safe. Both are talking about proof, but they don't seem to mean the same thing by it. How could you tell who is right? You need a philosophy to know the answer.
Ethics is the science we use to judge good from evil. We don't want to do evil, and we would like to do good if we can. But to do that, we need to know what it means to be good, and what kind of actions tend to achieve it. People make demands on us: what do we owe to others and what do we deserve for ourselves? To organize our moral views and take the right course in life, we need to avoid being torn apart by contradictory goals and principles.
You are working for a company and rising up to positions of greater responsibility. You try to work efficiently and you hope to make a lot of money, both in bonuses for yourself and in profits for the company. But you feel a little uneasy, and you wonder: are you doing good there, or are you just playing the game of life and going with the flow? After all, your religion teaches you that the best people live simply and serve others. Should you feel guilty about trying to make money, or feel morally proud of your success? You need a philosophy to know the answer.
We all know about practical politics, because we have to choose whom to vote for, and in which causes to invest our time and money. But though we argue about it, few people take the time to sort out their fundamental convictions about political issues. Is there a conflict between the social good and what's good for individuals? Is society responsible for supporting the poor? For inculcating character and values? For regulating the economy? In part, our ideas will depend on our ethical beliefs, but we also need a clear idea of what government is for and what kinds of activities it should be engaged in, if any.
It's election time. One party promises to ensure that every person has a decent job by passing a law setting fair minimum wages and restricting layoffs. The other promises to make sure we are all free, and says we will all be better off in the end even if there are layoffs and wages are set in the labor market. Which one is best? What do political slogans like "fairness" and "freedom" really mean, anyway? You need a philosophy to know the answer.
We all spend time and money on art: reading books, attending films and shows, listening to music, and so on. But unless we reflect on aesthetics, we can't understand clearly why we have this need and what it is about art that fulfills it. What is the difference between good art and bad art? Art provides the spiritual fuel we all depend on, and trying to consume it without knowing anything about its basic purpose and the standards of judging it is like trying to run a car on any old liquid.
A new object has appeared in front of a prominent building in your city. It consists of slabs of metal arranged to make a large and angular shape. The newspaper says it is a great new piece of art, but you wonder, if that is art, what isn't? What is a piece of sculpture supposed to be like? You need a philosophy to know the answer.
People often think of philosophy as a highly abstract and technical field, full of conundrums of interest only to academics. But in fact all of us depend on philosophic conclusions, and identifying one's own philosophy is a highly practical activity. We don't all need to be philosophers, any more than we all need to be mathematicians. But we all learn to add in school, and we all need to be able to do some basic philosophizing as well. That's how we know where we stand in the world and what we ought to do in life.
—A philosophy is a comprehensive system of ideas about human nature and the nature of the reality we live in. It is a guide for living, because the issues it addresses are basic and pervasive, determining the course we take in life and how we treat other people.
The topics that philosophy addresses fall into several distinct fields. Among those of fundamental concern are:
Metaphysics (the theory of reality).
Epistemology (the theory of knowledge)
Ethics (the theory of moral values)
Politics (the theory of legal rights and government)
Aesthetics (the theory of the nature of art)
The most widespread systems of ideas that offer philosophical guidance are religions such as Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Religions differ from philosophies not in the subjects they address, but in the method they use to address them. Religions have their basis in mythic stories that pre-date the discovery of explicitly rational methods of inquiry. Many religions nowadays appeal to mystical faith and revelation—modes of belief that claim validity independent of logic and the scientific method, at least for the biggest questions. But most religions are in their origins pre-rational rather than anti-rational, a story-teller's account of philosophic issues rather than a scientist's.
In Greek, "philosophy" means "love of wisdom." Philosophy is based on rational argument and appeal to facts. The history of the modern sciences begins with philosophical inquiries, and the scientific method of experimentation and proof remains an instance of the general approach that a philosopher tries to bring to a question: one that is logical and rigorous. However, while today the sciences focus on specialized inquiries in restricted domains, the questions addressed by philosophy remain the most general and most basic, the issues that underlie the sciences and stand at the base of a world-view.
Philosophy raises some of the deepest and widest questions there are. Addressing the issues in each branch of philosophy requires integrating everything one knows about reality (metaphysics) or humanity (epistemology, ethics, politics, and aesthetics). Proposing reasonable positions in philosophy is therefore a difficult task. Honest philosophers have often disagreed about key issues, and dishonest ones have been able to slip their own positions into the mix as well. For this reason, there is not one philosophy worldwide, as there is one physics. Instead, there are many philosophies.
Over the course of history, philosophers have offered entire systems that pulled together positions in each of the branches of philosophy. Aristotle, the father of logic, authored such a system in ancient times, teaching that we could know reality and achieve happiness. In more modern times, philosophers such as John Locke and Immanuel Kant have written systematic accounts of their thought. Most modern philosophers, however, have specialized in one area or another within philosophy, although some schools of philosophy have emerged that are marked by the general positions of their members on a variety of issues and the members' shared admiration for a chain of historical figures. These schools have included Pragmatism, Logical Positivism, and Existentialism, but are little-known outside of university classes in modern philosophy.
Today philosophic issues often enter public life through political or social movements, some religious in inspiration, such as Christian conservatism, and others secular, such as left-wing environmentalism and socialism. The ideas of such movements are often called ideologies. That term, "ideology," is another name for the systems of ideas we have been talking about. Though the focus of ideological movements is political, their political beliefs tend to be rooted in shared conceptions of reality, human nature, and values.
Everyone has a philosophy, even if we cannot express it in words.
We either act as if our eternal salvation depends on following the mandates of scripture, or we don't. We feel the need to believe in something and search for understanding, or we adopt the cynical view that the search is useless. We all have some sense of what is right, and what is wrong. We can see ourselves as noble beings worthy of happiness or as guilty transgressors against the environment, social justice, or God. We will all decide often what it is that constitutes our duty. We think we know art when we see it. And we adopt political principles and support politicians and parties.
All of these are philosophical issues.
Philosophical convictions are often subconscious or inarticulate. We experience them emotionally in what Ayn Rand called a "sense of life." Your sense of life reflects the fundamental ways you relate to the world and other people; it is your intuitive feeling of how things are and how they ought to be. Each of us needs to understand his own convictions consciously, to be able to put his sense of life into words. Otherwise we don't really have a clear idea of what we believe or what is motivating us to make our biggest decisions—or whether it is true. We need to know what we think on philosophical questions, because our answers can affect the course of our lives. And the sense of life that dominates nations or cultures can determine their fates.
We need a metaphysics (a theory of reality) because we need to know whether the material world of daily life is the only one that exists—which makes a difference between living for this life or some heavenly hereafter. We need to know whether the universe is lawful, or chaotic—which makes a difference between trying to improve things or viewing life as absurd and meaningless.
You take your car to a mechanic because the engine misfires in damp weather. Wouldn't it be strange if he were to shrug and say "Well, cars just do that sometimes?" But what's wrong with that? Why shouldn't you take that attitude to your own problems at home or at work? You need a philosophy to know the answer.
An epistemology is a theory of knowledge. It may seem that if you know anything, then you know it, so what's the issue? To have a clear grasp of one's own life and context, one needs to be able to sort out the mass of information, claims, and ideas we receive from others: that skill is based in epistemology. After all, at root, we need to know whether what we believe is really true. How do you know when someone has proven a point? That can be terribly important when the truth of a scientific theory, a doctor's diagnosis, or the outcome of a trial is at stake. Some people say that words are arbitrary and mean whatever we like. Does that mean it doesn't matter if someone uses words he can't define in down-to-earth terms? Should we worry if we don't feel like we have mystic intuitions, or should we worry if we do?
A neighbor comes to your door with a petition: pesticides from nearby farms are appearing in trace quantities in the town's drinking water. The neighbor wants them removed at all costs. "Nobody has proven that these chemicals won't ever hurt anyone," he says. But the farmers send around a flyer saying the chemicals have been scientifically tested and are proven to be safe. Both are talking about proof, but they don't seem to mean the same thing by it. How could you tell who is right? You need a philosophy to know the answer.
Ethics is the science we use to judge good from evil. We don't want to do evil, and we would like to do good if we can. But to do that, we need to know what it means to be good, and what kind of actions tend to achieve it. People make demands on us: what do we owe to others and what do we deserve for ourselves? To organize our moral views and take the right course in life, we need to avoid being torn apart by contradictory goals and principles.
You are working for a company and rising up to positions of greater responsibility. You try to work efficiently and you hope to make a lot of money, both in bonuses for yourself and in profits for the company. But you feel a little uneasy, and you wonder: are you doing good there, or are you just playing the game of life and going with the flow? After all, your religion teaches you that the best people live simply and serve others. Should you feel guilty about trying to make money, or feel morally proud of your success? You need a philosophy to know the answer.
We all know about practical politics, because we have to choose whom to vote for, and in which causes to invest our time and money. But though we argue about it, few people take the time to sort out their fundamental convictions about political issues. Is there a conflict between the social good and what's good for individuals? Is society responsible for supporting the poor? For inculcating character and values? For regulating the economy? In part, our ideas will depend on our ethical beliefs, but we also need a clear idea of what government is for and what kinds of activities it should be engaged in, if any.
It's election time. One party promises to ensure that every person has a decent job by passing a law setting fair minimum wages and restricting layoffs. The other promises to make sure we are all free, and says we will all be better off in the end even if there are layoffs and wages are set in the labor market. Which one is best? What do political slogans like "fairness" and "freedom" really mean, anyway? You need a philosophy to know the answer.
We all spend time and money on art: reading books, attending films and shows, listening to music, and so on. But unless we reflect on aesthetics, we can't understand clearly why we have this need and what it is about art that fulfills it. What is the difference between good art and bad art? Art provides the spiritual fuel we all depend on, and trying to consume it without knowing anything about its basic purpose and the standards of judging it is like trying to run a car on any old liquid.
A new object has appeared in front of a prominent building in your city. It consists of slabs of metal arranged to make a large and angular shape. The newspaper says it is a great new piece of art, but you wonder, if that is art, what isn't? What is a piece of sculpture supposed to be like? You need a philosophy to know the answer.
People often think of philosophy as a highly abstract and technical field, full of conundrums of interest only to academics. But in fact all of us depend on philosophic conclusions, and identifying one's own philosophy is a highly practical activity. We don't all need to be philosophers, any more than we all need to be mathematicians. But we all learn to add in school, and we all need to be able to do some basic philosophizing as well. That's how we know where we stand in the world and what we ought to do in life.
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