What is Philosophy?

What could have been a better topic for the first philosophy club blog than “What’s Philosophy?” I have stumbled upon this question of “What exactly is a philosophical question?” quite frequently, especially during our meetings, thinking about whether the questions I am asking are philosophical. I tried to explore what exactly philosophers think about it.

There’s this book, “Philosophy Bites”, where the author interviews various philosophers. The book starts by asking them, “What is Philosophy”. After hearing all the answers, they concluded that “philosophy is an unusual subject in that its practitioners don’t agree on what it’s about.” Some of those responses were :

"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

"It’s 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 don’t know.” ~ Catalin Avramescu

"I don’t think it’s any one thing, but I think generally it involves being critical and reflective about things that most people take for granted.” ~ Allen Buchanan

"Most simply put it’s about making sense of all this… We find ourselves in a world that we haven’t 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

"[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 it’s 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 they’ll think about them for another two and a half thousand years if there are any of us left.” ~ Simon Blackburn

"I’m afraid I have a very unhelpful answer to that, because it’s only a negative answer. It’s 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 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

And my favourite! …

"I’m 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
(This statement reinforced that this blog indeed comes under philosophical discussion :p)

From all these statements, it was clear that the scope of philosophy is not concretely defined. Philosophy is about making sense of things and also thinking critically. It involves being aware and also not to be seek comfort with our assumptions of reality, rather it involves being able to challenge those assumptions and think critically about those beliefs. Recently Tejas shared a podcast discussing the thinking of Slavoj Zizek, who is a modern-day thinker infamous for posing controversial questions (https://open.spotify.com/episode/3Z88L2dtUKlf2sA29lyBie?si=b910315d83934bad). The idea that Zizek tries to make us aware of ourselves is how we perceive the world through ideologies. Cognitively it’s easy for us to view the world from a lens of ideology, consider it a truth and later build upon it. Zizek challenges this perception of “the truth”, and often poses a controversial question so that people are forced to rethink the fundamentals of their ideology, on which they have built their belief system so far upon.

Hence, I understand that Philosophy is the domain where you have to think continuously, sit with those contradictions, challenge your cognitive comfort, and attempt to search for meaning. Do share your thoughts on this and your interpretation of philosophy. You can comment on this post or reply in the mailing thread. We will try to curate those answers.

Happy Thinking!

References :

What is Philosophy? An Omnibus of Definitions from Prominent Philosophers

The improbable Slavoj Zizek