Definitions of Philosophy

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Updated February 13, 2013

Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p. 43:

". . .philosophy is merely an elucidated experience."

Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, p. 5 [quoting Dummett]

Only with Frege was the proper object of philosophy finally established: namely, that the goal of philosophy is
the analysis of the structure of thought; secondly, that the study of thought is to be sharply distinguished from
the study of the psychological process of thinking; and finally, that the only proper method for analyzing thought
consists in the analysis of language. . . . The acceptance of these three tenets is common to the entire
analytical school . . . [but] it has taken nearly a half-century since his death for us to apprehend clearly what the
real task of philosophy, as concieved by him, involves.

William James
"Philosophy is the unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly."

G. E. Moore, gesturing towards his bookshelves:

"It is what these are about."

Wittgenstein, Tractatus,
4.0031 All philosophy is a 'critique of language' (though not in Mauthner's sense).
4.112 Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an
activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. Philosophy does not result in 'philosophical
propositions', but rather in the clarification of propositions. Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy
and indistinct: its task
is to make them clear
and to give them
sharp boundaries.
Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence, p. 6:
But philosophy is after all perhaps only the recognition of the abysses which lie on each side of the footpath
that the vulgar follow with the serenity of somnambulists.

McKenna, Andrew J.Violence and difference : Girard, Derrida, and Deconstruction.p. 50, quoting Derrida,
(Writing and Difference, 62):
"To define philosophy as the attempt-to-say-the-hyperbole is to confess-- and philosophy is perhaps this
gigantic confession-- that by virtue of the historical enunciation through which philosophy tranquilizes itself and
excludes madness, philosophy betrays itself (or betrays itself as thought), enters into a crisis and a forgetting of
itself that are an essential and necessary period of its movement. I philosophize only in terror, in the confessed
terror of going mad. The confession is simultaneously, at its present moment, oblivion and unveiling, protection
and exposure: economy"

Marx, Karl, Theses on Feuerbach, #11

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.
Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert; es kmmt darauf an, sie zu verndern.

Heraclitus:
Philosophy is a sacred disease.

Billacois, Franois, The Duel: Its Rise and Fall in Early Modern France, p. 158
For there had been a rumour that only one of them made a pious end, while his companion `died like a
philosopher... because he neither moved nor spoke [as he went to his death]'. This rumour was not unlikely.
Sguenot admitted that Condren had to work hard at the spiritual preparation of Bouteville, who received:
"things that were said to him with the strength of his mind and his courage and behaved more like a
philosopher than a Christian; for his mind was naturally of a rare and excellent cast, he was firm in his
reasoning, relying on his own maxims and distanced from common and popular sentiments, and he seemed to
have something of the ancient philosophers. All these are qualities that are not very favorable to that grace
which is only given to the small and humble.
For the society which saw Bouteville as a paradigmatic duellist, that duellist was (except for miraculous cases
of intervention by divine grace) a gentleman who placed all his confidence in his own virtue, a superbly
magnanimous man, closer to Epictetus than to the Imitation of Christ.

Habermas (Preface to Legitimation Crisis)

. . . clarification of very general structures of hypotheses.

From Ambrose Beirce's Devil's Dictionary:

PHILOSOPHY, n. A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
TRUTH, n. An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance. Discovery of truth is the sole purpose of
philosophy, which is the most ancient occupation of the human mind and has a fair prospect of existing with
increasing activity to the end of time.

Bradley, F.H. Appearance and Reality: p. xii:

I see written there [his notebooks] that `Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon
instinct, but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.
 Alasdair McIntyre :
The teaching of a method is nothing other than the teaching of a certain kind of history.

Davis, Grady Scott Warcraft and the Fragility of Virtue, p. 172:

Reading philosophy won't make someone good, it can only clarify how a person of practical reason deliberates
about actions.

Edie Brickell, "What I Am" from the album shooting rubberbands at the stars, 1986 Geffen Music, ASCAP:
Philosophy is the talk on a cereal box, religion is the smile on a dog;
Philosophy is a walk on the slippery rocks, religion is a light in the fog,

Dan Shannon
Those who either follow a rational method in their argument for discovery or who engage in the content of
philosophical speculation, specifically on the question, `Whether it is possible to gain knowledge of the
absolute?', would be eligible for the title `philosopher.'

Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

9 Philosophy is this tyrannical drive itself, the most spiritual will to power.
61 The philosopher as we understand him, we free spirits-- as the man of the most comprehensive
responsibility who has the conscience for the over-all development of man-- . . .

Hegel, Preface to The Philosophy of Right:

To comprehend what is is the task of philosophy, for what is is reason.

Robert Ginsberg :
Philosophy is a creative art of making problems.
. . . Philosophy probes problems. It tries to show what a problem is in the sense of what is problematic about it.
It explores alternative possibilities of dealing with the problem.

Hawaii Rent-All, message billboard, Honolulu, 9/95:

A philosopher has a problem for every solution.

Callicott, J. Baird. In Defense of the Land Ethic, p. 4-5

Today the need is greater than ever for philosophers to do what they once did-- to redefine the world picture in
response to irretrievably transformed human experience and to the flood of new information and ideas pouring
forth from the sciences; to inquire what new way we human beings might imagine our place and role in nature;
and to figure out how these big new ideas might change our values and realign our sense of duty and
obligation.

Dilworth, David, Translator s Preface to Nishida s Art and Morality, p. xi:

The emergence of an original, yet intrinsically coherent, interlocking vocabulary may be said to be the mark of
a philosopher. (Cf. Rorty and later Wittgenstein)

From the Web Page of Peter J. King

I take 'philosophy' to be an English word referring to a certain kind of thinking, a certain kind of approach to a
certain kind of problem. To explain those 'certain kind of's would take a book; the best I can do here is gesture
at what it is that English-language philosophers do. In most languages there are words that are translated into
English as 'philosophy' -- in European languages, those words often share the same Greek roots as the
English word. The activities to which such words refer have a history shared with philosophy, but at some point
after Kant there was a parting of the ways. The activities referred to by `philosophy' are different in various
ways from the activities referred to by words like 'philosophie', 'Philosophie', 'filosofia', etc.

James W. Heisig, Rude Awakenings, p. 270:

The perennial task of philosophy does not consist in transmitting accumulated knowledge but in reassuring the
love of truth. This demands a special relationship of mutual criticism between teacher and student for which
reason and not rank provides the basis.

John Dewey, Quoted by Cornel West in The American Evasion of Philosophy, p. 112
When it is acknowledged that under the disguise of dealing with ultimate reality, philosophy has been occupied
with the precious values embedded in social traditions, that it has sprung from a clash of social ends and from
a conflict of inherited institutions with incompatible contemporary tendencies, it will be seen that the task of
future philosophy is to clarify men's ideas as to the social and moral strifes of their own day. Its aim is to
become as far as is humanly possible an organ for dealing with these conflicts.

Aquinas, Aristoteles librum de caelo, XXII, 8:

(the study of philosophy aims not at knowing what men feel, but at what is the truth of things. )

The American Philosophical Association, Statement on Outcomes Assessment (Proceeding and Addresses
69:5, p. 66)
The APA calls upon administrators to recognize that philosophy is fundamentally a matter of the cultivation and
employment of analytic, interpretive, normative and critical abilities. It is less content- and technique- specific
than most other academic disciplines. The basic aim of education in philosophy is not and should not be
primarily to impart information. Rather it is to help students to understand various kinds of deeply difficult
intellectual problems, to interpret texts regarding these problems, to analyze and criticize the arguments found
in them, and to express themselves in ways that clarify and carry forward reflection upon them.

Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments, chapter XLII

Philosophers acquire needs and interests unknown to uneducated men; above all, philosophers do not recant
in the public forum the principles that they have upheld in private, and they acquire the habit of loving truth for
itself. A good selection of such men constitutes the happiness of a nation, but that happiness will be temporary
unless good laws augment their number so as to diminish the ever considerable risk of a poor choice.

Feuerbach, according to Marx in "Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic and Philosophy as a Whole"
Philosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, hence equally to be
condemned as another form and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man;

Cornel West, The American Evasion of Philosophy, p. 231:

For him (Gramsci), the aim of philosophy is not only to become worldly by imposing its elite intellectual views
upon people, but to become part of a social movement by nourishing and being nourished by the philosophical
views of oppressed people themselves for the aims of social change and personal meaning.

Rolf Ahlers, on hegel-l@bucknell.edu:

That is what philosophy is: Its time grasped in thought.

Wilfrid Sellars:
The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the
term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term.

Heidegger: An extraordinary enquiry into the extraordinary.

Chris Nagel:
My point is this: when I teach Introduction to Philosophy, I meet a great many students who are convinced that
going to college is a matter of purchasing a document that entitles them to certain societal benefits, and which
has almost nothing to do with what happens in classes. They so disrespect the institution of education (not the
college, but the cultural form) that they consider my efforts to prod them to think as quaint or insulting. Our
society rewards this behavior. It's odd to ask the question who is responsible, since this has become the
pervading cultural climate.

John Shand
Mon, 5 Jun 2000 on PHILOS-L@LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK
Philosophy is not, I think, a body of truths, but a way of thinking and living. It might not make you happy - but it
does embody that courageous openness and questioning that is perhaps the noblest feature of human beings.
Without philosophy, as far as one's basic beliefs are concerned one will just end up believing what one is
given. The duty of a philosopher is to free people to think for themselves.
So next time you're at a party, and someone asks you, having heard you're a philosopher, 'So what is
philosophy then?' - instead of shifting about looking for an excuse to leave or falling back on the old classic of
'well, that's best understood by doing it?errm, mind if I go and get another drink?', try: philosophy is what
happens when people start thinking for themselves.

Bernard Williams, in "Philosophy As a Humanistic Discipline"

I have already started to talk about philosophy being this or that, and such and such being central to
philosophy, and this may already have aroused suspicions of essentialism, as though philosophy had some
entirely distinct and timeless nature from which various consequences could be drawn. So let me say at once
that I do not want to fall back on any such idea.

Michel Foucault The Masked Philosopher, Le Monde, April 6-7, 1980

What is philosophy after all? If not a means of reflecting on not so much what is true or false but on our relation
to truth? How, given that relation to truth, should we act?

Jacques Derrida, Who's Afraid of Philosophy?, p. 7:

But can the same be said about the question "What is the philosophical?"? This is the most and the least
philosophical of all questions. We will have to take it into account. It is in all the institutional decisions: "Who is
a philosopher? What is a philosopher? What has the right to claim to be philosophical? How does one
recognize a philosophical utterence, today and in general? By what sign (is it a sign?) does one recognize
a philosophical thought, sentence, experience, or operation (say, that of teaching?) What does the
word philosophical mean? Can we agree on the subject of the philosophical and of the very place from which
these questions are formed and legitimated?"
These questions are no doubt identical with philosophy itself. But in accordance with this essential unrest of
philosophical identity, perhaps they are already no longer completely philosophical. Perhaps they stop short of
the philosophy they interrogate, unless they carry beyond a philosophy that would no longer be their final
destination.
Zeno of Citium, in Diogenes Laertius, VII:24
The right way to seize a philosopher, Crates, is by the ears: persuade me then and drag me off by them; but if
you use violence, my body will be with you, but my mind with Stilpo."
From: Jeremy Bowman
One of the reasons why philosophical disagreement looks nasty to outsiders is that philosphers are very
comfortable disagreeing with each other. In my experience, they are more comfortable disagreeing with each
other than physicists. In fact, I think it's the ONE thing philosophers really excel at!

About footnotes (4.00 / 1) (#82) by Pac on Wed Sep 11th, 2002 at 10:53:59 PM EST
It has been said that all of philosophy is just footnotes to Plato
In an article like that, one want to be really precise about this footnote business. Actually, German philosophy is
a footnote to Plato. French philosophy is a footnote to a bad translation of German philosophy. English
philosophy is a footnote rebuttal to a bad translation of French philosophy. American philosophy...as a matter of
fact, American philosophy is a footnote to the Wall Street Journal as understood by the Reader's Digest

William James, Some Problems of Philosophy

Philosophy, beginning in wonder ... is able to fancy everything different from what it is. It sees the familiar as if it
were strange, and the strange as if it were familiar. It can take things up and lay them down again. Its mind is
full of air that plays round every subject. It rouses us from our native dogmatic slumber and breaks up our
caked prejudices....A man with no philosophy in him is the most inauspicious and unprofitable of all possible
social mates.

Kwasi Wiredu, Philosophy and an African Culture, p. 20.

"It is a function, indeed a duty, of philosophy in any society to examine the intellectual foundation of its culture."

Erasmus, The Praise of Folly

But Counsel, you'll say, is not of least concern in matters of War. In a General I grant it, but this thing of Warring
is no part of Philosophy, but manag'd by Parasites, Pandars, Thieves, Cut-throats, Plow-men, Sots,
Spendthrifts and other such Dregs of Mankind, not Philosophers.

J.G. Fichte. "First Introduction to the Science of Knowledge." (tr. Heath and Lachs.) Gesamtausgabe I, 434.
What sort of philosophy one chooses depends, therefore, on what sort of man one is; for a philosophical
system is not a dead piece of furniture that we can reject or accept as we wish; it is rather a thing animated by
the soul of the person who holds it.
Marquis de Sade (1740 - 1814), Justine ou les Malheurs de la vertu
Le chef-d'uvre de la philosophie serait de dvelopper les moyens dont la Providence se sert pour parvenir
aux fins qu'elle se propose sur l'homme, et de tracer, d'aprs cela, quelques plans de conduite qui pussent
faire connatre ce malheureux individu bipde la manire dont il faut qu'il marche dans la carrire pineuse
de la vie, afin de prvenir les caprices bizarres de cette fatalit laquelle on donne vingt noms diffrents, sans
tre encore parvenu ni la connatre, ni la dfinir.

George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge

1. Philosophy being nothing else but the study of wisdom and truth, it may with reason be expected that those
who have spent most time and pains in it should enjoy a greater calm and serenity of mind, a greater clearness
and evidence of knowledge, and be less disturbed with doubts and difficulties than other men. Yet so it is, we
see the illiterate bulk of mankind that walk the high-road of plain common sense, and are governed by the
dictates of nature, for the most part easy and undisturbed. To them nothing that is familiar appears
unaccountable or difficult to comprehend. They complain not of any want of evidence in their senses, and are
out of all danger of becoming Sceptics. But no sooner do we depart from sense and instinct to follow the light
of a superior principle, to reason, meditate, and reflect on the nature of things, but a thousand scruples spring
up in our minds concerning those things which before we seemed fully to comprehend. Prejudices and errors
of sense do from all parts discover themselves to our view; and, endeavouring to correct these by reason, we
are insensibly drawn into uncouth paradoxes, difficulties, and inconsistencies, which multiply and grow upon us
as we advance in speculation, till at length, having wandered through many intricate mazes, we find ourselves
just where we were, or, which is worse, sit down in a forlorn Scepticism.
 Immanuel Kant, Opus postumum 22:489-90
It is important, too, to distinguish philosophical knowledge, including its principles, from philosophy itself (the
formal from the material aspect of philosophy). The philosophizer cannot be recast as a philosopher; the former
is a mere underlaborer (as a versifier is in comparison with a poet-- the latter must have originality).
Even if, as is proper, one takes account in the word "philosophy" of its concept as a doctrine of wisdom, the
science of the final end of human reason-- that is, of what is not just techincal-practical but of that which is
moral-practical, the keystone of the edifice--philosophy with its principles will still be subject to the concerns of
human reason, even where the latter's aim is scholastic (mere knowledge). It must set metaphysical
foundations prior to mathematical ones (although both are given a priori) for the former have in view the
unconditional employment [of reason]--the latter, however, only its conditional employment as a tool for a
particular purpose.
Adorno's 14th lecture from "Lectures on Metaphysics"
I once said that after Auschwitz one could no longer write poetry, and that gave rise to a discussion I did not
anticipate when I wrote those words. I did not anticipate it because it is in the nature of philosophy - and
everything I write is, unavoidably, philosophy, even if it is not concerned with so-called philosophical themes -
that nothing is meant quite literally. Philosophy always relates to tendencies and does not consist of statements
of fact. It is a misunderstanding of philosophy, resulting from its growing closeness to all-powerful scientific
tendencies, to take such a statement at face value and say: 'He wrote that after Auschwitz one cannot write any
more poems; so either one really cannot write them, and would be a rogue or a cold-hearted person if one did
write them, or he is wrong, and has said something which should not be said.' Well, I would say that
philosophical reflection really consists precisely in the gap, or, in Kantian terms, in the vibration, between these
two otherwise so flatly opposed possibilities. I would readily concede that, just as I said that after Auschwitz
one could not write poems - by which I meant to point to the hollowness of the resurrected culture of that time -
it could equally well be said, on the other hand, that one must write poems, in keeping with Hegel's statement
in his Aesthetics that as long as there is an awareness of suffering among human beings there must also be art
as the objective form of that awareness. And, heaven knows, I do not claim to be able to resolve this antinomy,
and presume even less to do so since my own impulses in this antinomy are precisely on the side of art, which
I am mistakenly accused of wishing to suppress.
Michel De Montaigne 1533-1592 (Trans. M.A. Screech)
Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do
at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it?

Charles Jones, on PHILOS-L@liverpool.ac.uk, Sept 28, 2007:

If there's consensus, it's not philosophy.
It's a religion or a science or a political ideology.
Philosophy is reports from solitary scouts somewhere beyond the front lines.

(Professor Angela Livingstone, University of Essex, cites)

Boris Pasternak: What is art if not philosophy in a state of ecstasy?

Epicurus, According to Porphyry in To Marcella 31:

 Empty are the words of that philosopher who offers therapy for no human suffering. For just as there is no use
in medical expertise if it does not give therapy for bodily diseases, so too there is no use in philosophy if it does
not expel the suffering of the soul.
Wiliam James, in Reflex Action And Theism
Philosophies, whether expressed in sonnets or systems, all must wear this form. The thinker starts from some
experience of the practical world, and asks its meaning. He launches himself upon the speculative sea, and
makes a voyage long or short. He ascends into the empyrean, and communes with the eternal essences. But
whatever his achievements and discoveries be while gone, the utmost result they can issue in is some new
practical maxim or resolve, or the denial of some old one, with which inevitably he is sooner or later washed
ashore on the _terra firma_ of concrete life again. Whatever thought takes this voyage is a philosophy.
Richard Hayes, in The Land of No Buddha, p. 149:
In the strictest sense of the word 'philosophy', as it was used in ancient Greece and in the Hellenistic age,
Buddhism is a philosophy, a love of wisdom. But the word has become so vulgarized that it hardly means more
now than either a set of opinions about something or a fondness for argument about matters that have almost
no bearing on how we actually live our lives.
David Hills , quoted by Jason Stanley in "The Crisis of Philosophy" in Inside Higher Ed,
the ungainly attempt to tackle questions that come naturally to children, using methods that come naturally to
lawyers."
John Rawls, The Law of Peoples, p. 123:
Some may find this fact hard to accept. That is because it is often thought that the task of philosophy is to
uncover a form of argument that will always prove convincing against all other arguments. There is, however,
no such argument.
J.G. Fichte, The Science of Knowing: 1804 Lectures on the Wissenschaftslehre, Walter E. Wright, trans., p.
23:
Without doubt: philosophy should present the truth. But what is the truth, and what do we actually search for
when we search for it? Let's just consider what we will not allow to count as truth: namely when things can be
this way or equally well the other; for example the multiplicity and variability of opinion. Thus, truth is absolute
oneness and invariability of opinion. So that I can let go of the supplemental term opinion, since it will take us
too far afield, let me say that the essence of philosophy would consist in this: to trace all multiplicity (which
presses itself upon us in the usual view of life) back to absolute oneness.
Josiah Royce, The Philosophy of Loyalty, p. 14.
We are to use our reason as best we can; for philosophy is an effort to think out the reasons for our opinions.
We are not to praise blindly, nor to condemn according to our moods.
Cuvier, quoted by Renan as related by Edward Said, Orientalism, p. 132.
To do philosophy is to know things; following Cuvier's nice phrase, philosophy is instructing the world in theory.
Slashdot, Feb. 13, 2013,
philosophy: The ability to bear with calmness the misfortunes of our friends.

What is Philosophy?

At its simplest, philosophy (from the Greek or phlosopha, meaning the love of wisdom) is the study of
knowledge, or "thinking about thinking", although the breadth of what it covers is perhaps best illustrated by a
selection of other alternative definitions:
the discipline concerned with questions of how one should live (ethics); what sorts of things exist and what are their
essential natures (metaphysics); what counts as genuine knowledge (epistemology); and what are the correct
principles of reasoning (logic) (Wikipedia)
investigation of the nature, causes, or principles of reality, knowledge, or values, based on logical reasoning rather
than empirical methods (American Heritage Dictionary)
the study of the ultimate nature of existence, reality, knowledge and goodness, as discoverable by human
reasoning (Penguin English Dictionary)
the rational investigation of questions about existence and knowledge and ethics (WordNet)
the search for knowledge and truth, especially about the nature of man and his behaviour and beliefs (Kernerman
English Multilingual Dictionary)
the rational and critical inquiry into basic principles (Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia)
the study of the most general and abstract features of the world and categories with which we think: mind, matter,
reason, proof, truth, etc. (Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy)
careful thought about the fundamental nature of the world, the grounds for human knowledge, and the evaluation of
human conduct (The Philosophy Pages)
As used originally by the ancient Greeks, the term "philosophy" meant the pursuit of knowledge for its own
sake, and comprised ALL areas of speculative thought, including the arts, sciences and religion.
Philosophical questions (unlike those of the sciences) are usually foundational and abstract in nature.
Philosophy is done primarily through reflection and does not tend to rely on experiment, although the methods
used to study it may be analogous to those used in the study of the natural sciences.
In common usage, it sometimes carries the sense of unproductive or frivolous musings, but over the centuries it has
produced some of the most important original thought, and its contribution to politics, sociology, mathematics,
science and literature has been inestimable. Although the study of philosophy may not yield "the meaning of life,
the universe and everything", many philosophers believe that it is important that each of us examines such
questions and even that an unexamined life is not worth living. It also provides a good way of learning to
think more clearly about a wide range of issues, and its methods of analyzing arguments can be useful in a
variety of situations in other areas of life.
Philosophy is such a huge subject that it is difficult to know how to break it down into manageable and logical
sections. Perhaps the most basic overall split at the highest level is geographical, between Eastern
Philosophy and Western Philosophy (with, arguably, African Philosophy as a possible third branch at this level).
This website is mainly concerned with an analysis of Western Philosophy.

By Branch / Doctrine

A philosophical branch is a broad division of the overall subject. A philosophical doctrine is a particular theory,
principle, position, system, code of beliefs or body of teachings. These are the famous -isms of Philosophy.
Within each branch, there are any number of related, similar or opposing doctrines covering different aspects of the
whole, although many doctrines overlap with, and may have repercussions in, more than one branch of
Philosophy. The distinction between philosophical doctines or theories, and the various movements or schools of
philosophy is sometimes blurred.
Philosophy as a whole is traditionally split into four or more main branches. The main four are:
Metaphysics Epistemology Ethics Aesthetics
(the study of existence and (the study of knowledge, (the study of how people (the study of basic
the nature of reality) and how and what we should act, and what is philosophical questions
know) good and valuable) about art and beauty)
In addition to these, two more branches are often added:
Logic Political Philosophy
(the study of good reasoning, by (the study of how people should
valid inference and demonstration) interact in a proper society)
In addition to these, there are other branches concerned with philosophical questions arising from other
disciplines, including:
Philosophy of Mind Philosophy of Religion Philosophy of Language
(the study of the nature of mind, (the study of the nature of religion, (the study of the nature, origins, and
consciousness, etc) God, evil, prayer, etc) usage of language)
Philosophy of Education Philosophy of History Philosophy of Science
(the study of the purpose, process, (the study of the eventual significance, (the study of the assumptions,
nature and ideals of education) if any, of human history) foundations, and implications
of science)
Many others could be added to this list such as Philosophy of Law, Philosophy of Sociology, Philosophy of
Mathematics, Philosophy of Ethnology (also known as Ethnophilosophy), Philosophy of Psychology,
even Philosophy of Philosophy (also known as Meta-Philosophy).

What is Philosophy? An Omnibus of Definitions from Prominent Philosophers

Philosophy is 99 per cent about critical reflection on anything you care to be interested in.
BY M A R I A P O P OVA
Last week, we explored how some of historys greatest minds, including Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan, Albert
Einstein, Marie Curie, and Isaac Asimov, defined science. Kant famously considered philosophy the queen of
the sciences whether or not that is true, philosophy seems even more elusive than science to define.
From Philosophy Bites, the book based on the wonderful podcast of the same name, comes an omnibus of
definitions, bound by a most fascinating disclaimer for, as Nigel Warburton keenly observes in the books
introduction, philosophy is an unusual subject in that its practitioners dont agree what its about.
The following definitions are excerpted from the first chapter of the book, which asks a number of prominent
contemporary philosophers the seemingly simple yet, as well see, awfully messy question, What is
philosophy?
Philosophy is thinking really hard about the most important questions and trying to bring analytic clarity both to
the questions and the answers. ~ Marilyn Adams
[P]hilosophy is the study of the costs and benefits that accrue when you take up a certain position. For
example, f youre arguing about free will and youre trying to decide whether to be a compatibilist or
incompatibilist is free will compatible with causal determinism? what youre discovering is what problems
and what benefits you get from saying that it is compatible, and what problems and benefits you get from
saying its incompatible. ~ Peter Adamson
Philosophy is the successful love of thinking. ~ John Armstrong
Its a little bit like what Augustine famously said about the concept of time. When nobody asks me about it, I
know. But whenever somebody asks me about what the concept of time is, I realize I dont know. ~ Catalin
Avramescu
(Cue in Richard Feynmans similarly-spirited answer to what science is.)
A few common themes begin to emerge, most notably the idea of critical thinking:
Philosophy is 99 per cent about critical reflection on anything you care to be interested in. ~ Richard Bradley
I dont think its any one thing, but I think generally it involves being critical and reflective about things that most
people take for granted. ~ Allen Buchanan
Philosophy is critical thinking: trying to become aware of how ones own thinking works, of all the things one
takes for granted, of the way in which ones own thinking shapes the things ones thinking about. ~ Don Cupitt
Another running theme sensemaking:
Most simply put its about making sense of all this We find ourselves in a world that we havent chosen.
There are all sorts of possible ways of interpreting it and finding meaning in the world and in the lives that we
live. So philosophy is about making sense of that situation that we find ourselves in. ~ Clare Carlisle
I think its thinking fundamentally clearly and well about the nature of reality and our place in it, so as to
understand better what goes on around us, and what our contribution is to that reality, and its effect on us.
~ Barry Smith
[Philosophy is] a process of reflection on the deepest concepts, that is structures of thought, that make up the
way in which we think about the world. So its concepts like reason, causation, matter, space, time, mind,
consciousness, free will, all those big abstract words and they make up topics, and people have been thinking
about them for two and a half thousand years and I expect theyll think about them for another two and a half
thousand years if there are any of us left. ~ Simon Blackburn
Also recurring is the notion of presuppositions:
Philosophy has always been something of a science of presuppositions; but it shouldnt just expose them and
say there they are. It should say something further about them that can help people. ~ Tony Coady
Philosophy is the name we give to a collection of questions which are of deep interest to us and for which there
isnt any specialist way of answering. The categories in terms of which they are posed are ones which prevent
experiments being carried out to answer them, so were thrown back to trying to answer them on the basis of
evidence we can accumulate. ~ Paul Snowdon
Philosophy is what I was told as an undergraduate women couldnt do* by an eminent philosopher who had
best remain nameless. But for me its the gadfly image, the Socratic gadfly: refusing to accept any platitudes or
accepted wisdom without examining it. ~ Donna Dickenson
I think it used to be an enquiry into whats true and how people should live; its distantly related to that still, but
Id say the distance is growing rather than narrowing. ~ John Dunn
Philosophy is conceptual engineering. That means dealing with questions that are open to informed reasonable
disagreement by providing new concepts that can be superseded in the future if more economic solutions can
be found but its a matter of rational agreement. ~ Luciano Floridi
Im afraid I have a very unhelpful answer to that, because its only a negative answer. Its the answer that
Friedrich Schlegel gave in his Athenaeum Fragments: philosophy is a way of trying to be a systematic spirit
without having a system. ~ Raymond Geuss
Philosophy is thinking as clearly as possible about the most fundamental concepts that reach through all the
disciplines. ~ Anthony Kenny
[A philosopher] is a moral entrepreneur. Its a nice image. Its somebody who creates new ways of evaluating
things whats important, whats worthwhile that changes how an entire culture or an entire people
understand those things. ~ Brian Leiter
(A good editor, then, is also a philosopher he or she, too, frames for an audience what matters in the world
and why.)
I think that philosophy in the classical sense is the love of wisdom. So the question then is What is wisdom?
And I think wisdom is understanding what really matters in the world. ~ Thomas Pogge
Im hard pressed to say, but one thing that is certainly true is that What is Philosophy? is itself a strikingly
philosophical question. ~ A. W. Moore
I cant answer that directly. I will tell you why I became a philosopher. I became a philosopher because I wanted
to be able to talk about many, many things, ideally with knowledge, but sometimes not quite the amount of
knowledge that I would need if I were to be a specialist in them. It allows you to be many different things. And
plurality and complexity are very, very important to me. ~ Alexander Nehemas
A number of philosophers are particularly concerned with teasing out the difference between science and
philosophy:
Philosophy is thinking hard about the most difficult problems that there are. And you might think scientists do
that too, but theres a certain kind of question whose difficulty cant be resolved by getting more empirical
evidence. It requires an untangling of presuppositions: figuring out that our thinking is being driven by ideas we
didnt even realize that we had. And thats what philosophy is. ~ David Papineau
I regard philosophy as a mode of enquiry rather than a particular set of subjects. I regard it as involving the
kind of questions where youre not trying to find out how your ideas latch on to the world, whether your ideas
are true or not, in the way that science is doing, but more about how your ideas hang together. This means that
philosophical questions will arise in a lot of subjects. ~ Janet Radcliffe Richards
(Though, one might argue, some of the greatest scientists of all time, including Albert Einstein and Stephen
Hawking to name but just two, were only able to develop their theories because they blended the empirical with
the deeply conceptual.)
Philosophy is reflecting critically on the way things are. That includes reflecting critically on social and political
and economic arrangements. It always intimates the possibility that things could be other than they are. And
better.. ~ Michael Sandel
Well, I can tell you how philosophical problems arise in my view, which is where two common-sense notions
push in different directions, and then philosophy gets started. And I suppose I also think that anything that
claims to be philosophy which cant be related back to a problem that arises in that way probably is empty.
~ Jonathan Wolff
I think the Greek term has it exactly right; its a way of loving knowledge. ~ Robert Rowland Smith
Philosophy Bites is excellent in its entirety, examining such diverse facets of philosophy as ethics, politics,
metaphysics and the mind, aesthetics, religion and atheism, and the meaning of life.
* The complete selection of answers in Philosophy Bites features 44 male philosophers and 8 female ones
it seems, sadly, many women took, and perhaps continue to take, the words of that token old-order eminent
philosopher at face value. What might Einstein say?

Introduction to the Five Branches of Philosophy

Philosophy can be divided into five branches which address the following questions:

Metaphysics Study of Existence What's out there?

Epistemology Study of Knowledge How do I know about it?

Ethics Study of Action What should I do?

Politics Study of Force What actions are permissible?

Esthetics Study of Art What can life be like?

There is a hierarchical relationship between these branches as can be seen in the Concept Chart. At
the root is Metaphysics, the study of existence and the nature of existence. Closely related
is Epistemology, the study of knowledge and how we know about reality and existence. Dependent
on Epistemology is Ethics, the study of how man should act. Ethics is dependent on Epistemology
because it is impossible to make choices without knowledge. A subset of Ethics is Politics: the
study of how men should interact in a proper society and what constitutes proper. Esthetics, the
study of art and sense of life is slightly separate, but depends on Metaphysics, Epistemology, and
Ethics.

Philosophy Index

Branches of Philosophy

Main branches of philosophy

Traditionally, there are five main branches of philosophy. They are:

Metaphysics, which deals with the fundamental questions of reality.

Epistemology, which deals with our concept of knowledge, how we learn and what we can know.
Logic, which studies the rules of valid reasoning and argumentation
Ethics, or moral philosophy, which is concerned with human values and how individuals should act.
Aesthetics or esthetics, which deals with the notion of beauty and the philosophy of art.
Other areas of philosophy

These five major branches of philosophy do not, however, exist in isolation. There are many other topics in
philosophy which deal with one or more of these branches. For example:

Philosophy of eductation
Philosophy of language
Philosophy of mind
Philosophy of religion
Philosophy of science
Political philosophy
Other divisions
There also exist other divisions in philosophy that focus on different philosophical traditions or schools, rather
than the branches of philosophical study. For example, there is a general divide between western philosophy,
which puts its origins in ancient Greece, and eastern philosophy.

Contemporary western philosophy can further be divided into two main areas or branches: Analytic philosophy
focuses on understanding and applying the logical, linguistic and scientific areas of philosophy, while so-called
contintental philosophy has a greater value on subjective experience. This division is somewhat difficult to
maintain, but is nevertheless still used in talk about philosophy.

Meanwhile, eastern philosophy can be divided into the philosophies of specific areas, such as Arab
philosophy, Asian philosophy, Indian philosophy, Hindu philosophy, Chinese philosophy and so on. These
areas have some overlap, of course. Some eastern traditions are rooted more firmly in religious ideas.

Divisions in philosophy focused on area are often confused or misnomers. There are prominent analytic
philosophers who lived in continental Europe. There are philosophers in Asia who are working on branches of
so-called western philosophy. The labels tend to reference early origins of traditions, rather than the current
geography of the philosophical landscape.

The Divisions and Definition of Philosophy

Nature of Philosophy

Divisions of Philosophy
Abstract: Philosophy, philosophical inquiry, and the main branches of philosophy are characterized.

I. What is Philosophy?

A. The derivation of the word "philosophy" from the Greek is suggested by the following
words and word-fragments.
philolove of, affinity for, liking of
philanderto engage in love affairs frivolously
philanthropylove of mankind in general
philatelypostage stamps hobby
phile(as in "anglophile") one having a love for
philologyhaving a liking for words
sophoswisdom
sophistlit. one who loves knowledge
sophomorewise and morosfoolish; i.e. one who thinks he knows
many things
sophisticatedone who is knowledgeable

B. A suggested definition for our beginning study is as follows.

Philosophy is the systematic inquiry into the principles and presuppositions of any field of
study.

1. From a psychological point of view, philosophy is an attitude, an approach, or a calling

to answer or to ask, or even to comment upon certain peculiar problems (i.e.,
specifically the kinds of problems usually relegated to the main branches discussed
 below in Section II).

2. There is, perhaps, no one single sense of the word "philosophy." Eventually many
writers abandon the attempt to define philosophy and, instead, turn to the kinds of
things philosophers do.

3. What is involved in the study of philosophy involves is described by the London

Times in an article dealing with the 20th World Congress of Philosophy: "The great
virtue of philosophy is that it teaches not what to think, but how to think. It is the
study of meaning, of the principles underlying conduct, thought and knowledge. The
skills it hones are the ability to analyse, to question orthodoxies and to express things
clearly. However arcane some philosophical texts may be the ability to formulate
questions and follow arguments is the essence of education."

II. The Main Branches of Philosophy are divided as to the nature of the questions
asked in each area. The integrity of these divisions cannot be rigidly maintained, for
one area overlaps into the others.

A. Axiology: the study of value; the investigation of its nature, criteria, and metaphysical
status. More often than not, the term "value theory" is used instead of "axiology" in
contemporary discussions even though the term theory of value is used with respect to
the value or price of goods and services in economics.

1. Some significant questions in axiology include the following:

a. Nature of value: is value a fulfillment of desire, a pleasure, a preference, a behavioral

disposition, or simply a human interest of some kind?

b. Criteria of value: de gustibus non (est) disputandum (i.e., (there's no accounting

for tastes) or do objective standards apply?

c. Status of value: how are values related to (scientific) facts? What ultimate worth, if
any, do human values have?

2. Axiology is usually divided into two main parts.

a. Ethics: the study of values in human behavior or the study of moral problems: e.g.,
(1) the rightness and wrongness of actions, (2) the kinds of things which are good or
desirable, and (3) whether actions are blameworthy or praiseworthy.

i. Consider this example analyzed by J. O. Urmson in his well-known essay, "Saints

and Heroes":

"We may imagine a squad of soldiers to be practicing the throwing of live hand
grenades; a grenade slips from the hand of one of them and rolls on the ground
near the squad; one of them sacrifices his life by throwing himself on the grenade
and protecting his comrades with his own body. It is quite unreasonable to suppose
that such a man must be impelled by the sort of emotion that he might be impelled
by if his best friend were in the squad."

ii. Did the soldier who threw himself on the grenade do the right thing? If he did
not cover the grenade, several soldiers might be injured or be killed. His action
probably saved lives; certainly an action which saves lives is a morally correct
action. One might even be inclined to conclude that saving lives is a duty. But if
this were so, wouldn't each of the soldiers have the moral obligation or duty to
save his comrades? Would we thereby expect each of the soldiers to vie for the
opportunity to cover the grenade?
 b. sthetics: the study of value in the arts or the inquiry into
feelings, judgments, or standards of beauty and related
concepts. Philosophy of art is concerned with judgments of
sense, taste, and emotion.

i. E.g., Is art an intellectual or representational activity? What would the realistic

representations in pop art represent? Does art represent sensible objects or ideal
objects?

ii. Is artistic value objective? Is it merely coincidental that many forms in

architecture and painting seem to illustrate mathematical principles? Are there
standards of taste?

iii. Is there a clear distinction between art and reality?

B. Epistemology: the study of knowledge. In particular, epistemology is the study

of the nature, scope, and limits of human knowledge.

1. Epistemology investigates the origin, structure, methods, and integrity of knowledge.

2. Consider the degree of truth of the statement, "The earth is round." Does its truth
depend upon the context in which the statement is uttered? For example, this
statement can be successively more accurately translated as
"The earth is spherical"
"The earth is an oblate spheroid" (i.e., flattened at the poles).
But what about the Himalayas and the Marianas Trench? Even if
we surveyed exactly the shape of the earth, our process of surveying would alter the
surface by the footprints left and the impressions of the survey stakes and instruments.
Hence, the exact shape of the earth cannot be known. Every rain shower changes the
shape.
(Note here as well the implications for skepticism and relativism:
simply because we cannot exactly describe the exact shape of the earth, the conclusion
does not logically follow that the earth does not have a shape.)

2. Furthermore, consider two well-known problems in epistemology:

a. Russell's Five-Minute-World Hypothesis: Suppose the earth were

created five minutes ago, complete with memory images, history books,
records, etc., how could we ever know of it? As Russell wrote in The Analysis of
Mind, "There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into
being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that
"remembered" a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection
between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will
happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes
ago." For example, an omnipotent God could create the world with all the
memories, historical records, and so forth five minutes ago. Any evidence to the
contrary would be evidence created by God five minutes ago. (Q.v.,the Omphalos
hypothesis.)

b. Suppose everything in the universe (including all spatial

relations) were to expand uniformly a thousand times larger. How could we ever
know it? A moment's thought reveals that the mass of objects increases by the
cube whereas the distance among them increases linearly. Hence, if such an
expansion were possible, changes in the measurement of gravity and the speed of
light would be evident, if, indeed, life would be possible.

c. Russell's Five-Minute-World Hypothesis is a philosophical

 problem; the impossibility of the objects in the universe expanding is a scientific
problem since the latter problem can, in fact, be answered by principles of
elementary physics.

B. Ontology or Metaphysics: the study of what is really real. Metaphysics deals with
the so-called first principles of the natural order and "the ultimate generalizations
available to the human intellect." Specifically, ontology seeks to indentify and
establish the relationships between the categories, if any, of the types of existent
things.

1. What kinds of things exist? Do only particular things exist or do general things also
exist? How is existence possible? Questions as to identity and change of objectsare
you the same person you were as a baby? as of yesterday? as of a moment ago?

2. How do ideas exist if they have no size, shape, or color? (My idea of the Empire State
Building is quite as "small" or as "large" as my idea of a book. I.e., an idea is not
extended in space.) What is space? What is time?

3. E.g., Consider the truths of mathematics: in what manner do geometric figures exist?
Are points, lines, or planes real or not? Of what are they made?

4. What is spirit? or soul? or matter? space? Are they made up of the same sort of
"stuff"?

5. When, if ever, are events necessary? Under what conditions are they possible?

II. Further characteristics of philosophy and examples of philosophical problems are

discussed in the next tutorial.
Further Reading:

Edward Craig on What is Philosophy? This interview on Philosophy Biteswith David Craig, editor of The
Routledge Encyclopedia, by David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton explains the nature of philosophy. Craig believes
the definition of philosophy has been too narrow in the past; he thinks it's better to think of philosophy in terms of
the vast range of different kinds of problems which are not answered by specific disciplines. Good philosophy can be
done by anyone and either involves reasoning or the explanations of reasoning. Good philosophy is not just a
question of personal preference in everyday thinking since everyday thoughts do not have the level of self-
awareness of reasoning processes.

The Nature of Philosophical Inquiry. A chapter from Reading for Philosophical Inquiry, an online e-text on
this site, summarizing the main divisions of philosophy as well as illustrating some introductory philosophical
problems.

Omphalos (theology). Wikipedia entry for several variations of the Omphalos hypothesisthe philosophical
problem of accounting for present state of the universe by purported evidence drawn from the past.

Philosophy. Useful encyclopedia entry from the authoritative 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica outlining the
branches of philosophy.

PhilosophyGeneral Introduction. Ralph Barton Perry's accessible introduction to philosophy and a

discussion of philosophy's relation to art, science, ethics, and religion are discussed in a lecture on the Harvard
Classics.

What is Philosophy Anyway? Summary article from M. Russo and G. Fair's Molloy College site discussing the
definition and main branches of philosophy.
Philosophy has no other subject matter than the nature of the real world, as that world
lies around us in everyday life, and lies open to observers on every side. But if this is so, it
may be asked what function can remain for philosophy when every portion of the field is
already lotted out and enclosed by specialists? Philosophy claims to be the science of the
whole; but, if we get the knowledge of the parts from the different sciences, what is there
left for philosophy to tell us? To this it is sufficient to answer generally that the synthesis of
the parts is something more than that detailed knowledge of the parts in separation which is
gained by the man of science. It is with the ultimate synthesis that philosophy concerns
itself; it has to show that the subject-matter which we are all dealing with in detail really is a
whole, consisting of articulated members. Philosophy, Encyclopedia Britannica(Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1911) Vol. 21.