What is Philosophy?

 

"What is philosophy?" is a common and disturbed question for a beginner. It is even more puzzling to note 'what is philosphical question? And what is not?'. Here I would try to answer the question in a brief and simple way.

First of all, as far as the etymology of the word Philosophy is concerned, it is derived of two words: "Philo" means love, ans "Sophia" means wisdom. So, the term coined by a Greek philospher Pythagoras, Philosophy means "the love of wisdom". 

The attainment of wisdom is the end of philosphy. In every age, an attempt has always been made to get wisdom by questions. For example, the ancient Greek philosphers believed a careful, logical and deep consideration of any subject is philosphy. For them, philosphy was not an individual subject, but a method. This philosphical method helped them understand various branches of knowledge. 

As the core of philosphy is 'analysis through questions', we try to understand what kinds of questions are they? For example, if someone asks us, 'list the even numbers coming after 10', or 'what time is it?'. We can simply answer: 12, 14, 16 and so on for the first question, and second question can be dealt by looking at our wrist watch, or hanging clock. So, what is philosophical here? Not at all, is it so! Wait! 

If I ask what does it mean by 'number' or 'time'? Why do we attribute time to the needles of clock or the movement of stars like the sun? And furthur we ask questions like what is beauty? What is truth? What is freedom? What is morality? This is what we call being philosphical.

From the above discussion, we can conclude: there are basically two kinds of questions, the one which lie within our concepts or bleiefs (like we have concepts of time, beauty, moral obligations etc.). These questions are called "internal questions". The other type of questions lie outside our concepts or beliefs (like what is beauty, time, truth etc). Such questions are called "external questions". Philosphy deals with the latter.

Muhammad Abrar

(March 09, 2021)