Introduction to Philosophy

The simplest definition of "philosophy" is: the love of wisdom

The two root words are "philo" meaning love and "sophia" meaning wisdom.

Philosophy is not the same as wisdom. Philosophy is the love of wisdom.

There are many people who have a wisdom that they live by or believe in; many people have been indoctrinated into one creed or another. That does not make them philosophers. A philosopher is a person who personally loves to know the truth about the general principles of the world; a person who actively pursues the truth in such matters.

Using this basic definition of philosophy, one can understand what has motivated the countless number of famous philosophers down through the ages. Each one was on a personal search for the principles of the universe.

The history of western philosophy is marked by three revolutions in thought.

1. The revolutionary switch from religious or mythical ways of thinking to a rational way of thinking which occurred in ancient Greece and centers around the time of Socrates (470-399 B.C.)
2. The epistemological revolution which occurred around the time of Descartes (1596-1650). For a long time thinkers had been taking something for granted which they used in all their work - knowledge. They had assumed the reliability of the human mind. It was Descartes who called into question the very foundations of all knowledge by doubting the reliability of knowing. All philosophy since that time has had to deal with this issue.
3. The linguistic revolution occurred at the beginning of the 20th century. For a long time thinkers had been taking something for granted which they used in all their work - language. They had assumed the reliability of language. It was Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) who questioned the very purpose and function of language, and its use and misuse in philosophical discussions. Wittgenstein's philosophy is unusual in that his first major work, called the "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus", published in 1921, was a central vehicle in the view that philosophical problems were based on a misuse of language; and that a careful logical analysis would clarify the meaning of these issues. Then, Wittgenstein's second book, the "Philosophical Investigations", published in 1953 (two years after his death) was an attack on his previous work and proposed a new type of linguistic analysis, which proposed that a sentence is understood not by itself, but only in the context of its use.

NOTE TO THE READER: The above three revolutions in philosophy are greatly simplified and are given only as a bare outline. There were writers before the philosophers mentioned who began to recognize these problems. The revolutions were preceded by a gradual buildup of questioning on these issues. And of course I am only discussing western philosophy. There was philosophic activity in other cultures around the world as well.



SIX MAIN DIVISIONS OF PHILOSOPHY

While different authors divide philosophy differently, the following divisions include all the areas of philosophical problems:
1. Logic
2. Epistemology
3. Ethics
4. Metaphysics
5. Political Philosophy
6. Aesthetics