Hm, good metaphilosophical question. ;D
This'll be an introductory blog into a series of blogs of mine about various aspects of, important people in and branches of philosophy.


Defining what philosophy is.... is hard... well, it's what philosophers do!


But more seriously, philosophy is the widest possible scope in which to come at, well, anything. It comes from the Greek word "philosophia", appropriately meaning "love of wisdom", making philosophers wisdom lovers. It really got its start in various cities on the banks of the Mediterranean about 2500-ish years ago, chiefly by the philosophers: Thales of Miletus, Parmenides, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle; those last 2 are perhaps the most important of the bunch. It was they that extensively dove into questions about reality, and it is from they that nearly EVERY problem in philosophy can be found. Alfred North Whitehead once claimed that the entire history of western philosophy was but "a series of footnotes on Plato". Heck, Aristotle formalized LOGIC for crying out loud. Both of their philosophical work had a huge impact on the beliefs in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, namely Plato's Theory of Forms and Aristotle's conception of a "Prime Mover" and his creation of the cosmological argument as support. Their brilliant work in all manner of learning from mathematics, biology, astronomy, logic and so on, influenced intellectual endeavors for millenia, for better or worse as the case may be.

But back on track. A lot of what philosophy is and has been is an investigation into concepts of all sorts. These range from free will, to language, to the mind and so on. Oftentimes these investigations are aimed at clarification of the concepts or dispensing with them by showing them to be incoherent. This is something that Socrates did. He was Plato's teacher (who in turn was Aristotle's teacher) and many of Plato's works (his "Dialogues" are stories involving Socrates in conversation with someone and showing that they really don't know what it is they mean by things like courage, or why something is "good". Though, the Athenians eventually executed Socrates via poison but that's beside the point.

So, philosophy spans basically all topics. It's main branches include the:

philosophy of mind (what, if anything, is the mind and what's its relation to the world? Is there a Self?)

ethics (moral philosophy; what ought we do?)

political philosophy

epistemology (theories of knowledge)

philosophy of science (why does science work and what justifications does it have for some of its workings and assumptions?)

philosophy of religion (are there gods and what is their relation to us and various other concepts?)

metaphysics (what is the nature of various aspects of reality, like causation or free will?)

philosophy of language (what is language, and how can/does its peculiarities lead us astray?)

...to name a few.

So, you may be wondering, "What is the use of philosophy?" Well, aside from promoting solid critical thinking, it helps develop clear communication skills and openess to other viewpoints and discussions with people who hold them. It is the wellspring of philosophy that lead to the eventual development of the sciences (which used to be grouped under the term "natural philosophy", pretty much every branch of it (especially psychology) and science is still properly a subset of philosophy. It also can make delving into other branches of learning that you're not necessarily adept at easier, and philosophers are often pretty knowledgeable in various disciplines besides their own.


Well, that's it for my (somewhat disjointed) introduction to my series of blogs on philosophy.

The next blog in the series will be about, I dunno, probably either the philosopher David Hume and his ideas & work, or Ludwig Wittgenstein and his ideas & work. Stay tuned, and tell me your thoughts.