Philosophy (Meaning and Explanation)

We explain what philosophy is, how it originated and who the first philosophers were. Also, its characteristics, branches of study and more.

What is philosophy?

Philosophy is a academic discipline that works on a series of theoretical-practical problems through the use and invention of concepts and other interpretive, critical and transcendental tools.

The problems that philosophy deals with revolve around knowledge, being, existence, language, morality, life, art, truth, reason, the existence of God, the mind, politics and animality, among others. Each of these problems is worked on from a specific branch of philosophy. For example: epistemology, epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, ontology, philosophy of language, politics, aesthetics, logic, philosophy of mind, theology and philosophy of animality.

Thanks to this methodological division, and because philosophy is a problem in itself, It is difficult to characterize it in a decisive way. A philosopher defines his practice according to which philosophical current he ascribes to.

However, and in its diversity, philosophy always embodies its own way of problematizing the existential concerns worked onwhether through free reflection, a systematic methodology, conceptual analysis, speculation or even through dialogue and discussion as particular philosophical exercises.

Due to its own and particular methodology, the philosophy It is distinguished from other forms of knowledge such as mysticismreligion, science and mathematics. Even so, it is considered the basis of all sciences, since it has been the root and origin of the emergence of many other disciplines. In fact, many philosophers have dedicated themselves to more than one branch of philosophy, or even to other disciplines other than them.

From philosophers and scientists, such as Aristotle and Descartes, to theologians, such as Augustine of Hippo, or politicians, such as Massimo Cacciari (former mayor of Venice), philosophers They have taken their research and knowledge to different scientific disciplines and to practical life, even expanding what philosophy is in itself.

Etymology of the term “philosophy”

The word “philosophy” comes from the Greek philosophy (φιλοσοφία) and It is usually translated as “love of wisdom”. This word is made up of two parts: –philos (φίλος), meaning “friend” or “lover”, and –sophia (σοφία), whose most common meaning is “wisdom”.

The root of –philos is the verb philein (φιλεῖν), “to love”. There are numerous discussions about how this verb should be understood in conjunction with –sophia. It is generally translated as lover or friend and, depending on which one is chosen, the way in which philosophy is understood.

History of philosophy

The history of Western philosophy is divided into the following periods:

ancient philosophy. From the 6th century BC. C. to the 5th century AD. C., this period of philosophy is divided as follows:

Pre-Socratic philosophy. Philosophy begins in the 6th century BC. C. This is the period before Socrates. Its representatives are Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Thales of Miletus and Anaximedes.
classical greek philosophy. It is the period of the great Greek thinkers. Its representatives are Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.
Hellenistic philosophy. It takes place after the death of Aristotle and in the midst of the Hellenistic wars, which marked the decline of the Greek polis. Its representatives are Epicurus and Zeno of Citium.
Philosophy of late antiquity. It is the last period of Antiquity, in it we find the Epicureans, Stoics, Skeptics and Neoplatonists. Its representatives are Proclus and Plotinus.

Medieval philosophy. It takes place from the fall of the Roman Empire to the European Renaissance, and is characterized by the marked religious emphasis (Christian, but also Jewish and Islamic) of its doctrines. Its representatives are Augustine of Hippo, Boethius, Anselm of Canterbury and Peter Abelard.
Renaissance philosophy. It is the period of transition from the medieval world to modernity, and it occurred between the 15th and 16th centuries. Its representatives are Erasmus of Rotterdam, Thomas More, Michel de Montaigne and Francis Bacon.
modern philosophy. It takes place during the 17th and 18th centuries, and its main debates revolved around epistemology. Its representatives are René Descartes, David Hume, John Locke, Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibnitz.
19th century philosophy. This period can be considered part of modern philosophy. The most prominent thinker of the time was Immanuel Kant, who wrote the Critique of pure reason.
Contemporary philosophy. It is the most current aspect, started in the 20th century. Its representatives are Bertrand Russel, Karl Popper, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, among others.

Branches of philosophy

Philosophy works with different objects of study, each with one or more questions of its own. Depending on the concern with which one works, philosophy is considered to be divided into different branches. These are:

Metaphysics. Study reality, existence and being. Depending on which tradition one adheres to, one speaks of continental or analytical metaphysics.
epistemology. It studies the way we constitute knowledge and experience of the world. From it emerges, for example, phenomenology.
Logic. It studies rational procedures and modes of demonstration and inference, that is, the thought processes through which conclusions can be obtained from premises.
Ethics. It studies moral problems, virtue, duty, happiness and human codes of behavior. It is divided into three levels: metaethics, normative ethics and applied ethics.
Aesthetics. Study beauty and art, trying to find their meaning and rules of behavior.
Political philosophy. It is dedicated to the theoretical study of human relations in society: power, structures, forms of government, etc.
Philosophy of language. Study language as a phenomenon: what it is, what is its nature and, if it has one, what is its meaning.
philosophical anthropology. Study the human being from a philosophical point of view. Although she is discussed, accusing her of being trained in machismo, her main question is “what is man?”
Epistemology. Study what knowledge is, its origin and the way in which it is obtained.
Philosophy of mind. It studies mental parameters and behaviors in an interdisciplinary manner with some hard sciences such as mechanics or physics.
Philosophy of law. He studies law and justice from a philosophical point of view, often crossing paths with political philosophy and ethics.
Philosophy of animality. It is a recent and young branch, whose work is oriented towards animal studies and thinking about non-violent ways of coexisting with non-human natural diversity.

Main philosophical questions

Philosophy addresses different general problems whose analysis often depends on the historical and geographical context. Philosophy is not done today in the same way it was done two hundred years ago.nor was philosophy done then like in the medieval world or in Greece. However, there are some questions whose answers have not yet been satisfactorily formulated, and therefore transcend the time in which they were formulated. These are some of them:

The question of being. Why there is something and rather nothing is a question as old as philosophy itself. Since the beginning of philosophy, philosophers have wondered about the origin and reason of everything that is. Among the many unknowns that the question of being awakens is the polysemy of the word itself. As Aristotle says in book VI of Metaphysics“being is said in many ways,” and although after this statement, thinkers like Heidegger have said that being be fell into oblivion (by confusing the be with the entity), the question of being continued to be debated until today.
The question of causality. The relationship between cause and effect is also the question about time, about the origin of being, about the phenomenon. Causality maintains that every event The one who inaugurated the formal study regarding causality was Aristotle with Analytical secondsone of his treatises.
The question for the truth. The question of truth brings with it endless questions and concerns. What is the truth? Does truth really exist? Can we identify it? Under what criteria? What does it mean for something to be “true”? Do we say that something is “true” in the order of language or in the order of events? Can an event not be true? All these questions have been studied and discussed for a long time. Disciplines such as logic, ethics, metaphysics, the philosophy of language or epistemology study each of the aspects of this question.
The question for good. Asking for the good is one of the most important philosophical questions. Thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine and Levinas have asked themselves again and again what it means to do good, what is its relationship with evil, what is moral and immoral, among other things. The question evolved in such a way that it went from being a concern for perfection and virtue to being linked to the existence of God and, finally, to the behavior of human beings in society, whether or not there is God behind it.
The question of beauty. Asking about what is beautiful is difficult and necessary. For Plato, beauty had to do with the realm of ideas and perfection. As time went by, the question of beauty moved to the field of the arts, mainly thanks to the works of German idealism and the Criticism of the trial by Immannuel Kant. Aesthetics is the discipline that is responsible for studying what beauty is, how it can be known and if, perhaps, it can be created.
The question about God. To ask about God is to ask about the creation of the universe, to ask about its existence and its meaning. Has the world always existed? How was it created? Is there an absolute power outside the world? Or is that power with us and inhabits the world? Aristotle called the idea of God the “first mover,” because it was what gave impetus to existence. Along with metaphysics, theology is the discipline that studies what God is and what his possible characteristics are. However, other branches are also dedicated to working on the idea of God. An example of this is ethics, since it is possible to think of the idea of God as if it were a regulative entity, a way of normativizing social behavior, a way of giving it a direction.

Important philosophers

Throughout history many people dedicated themselves, in one way or another, to philosophy. This is a list of those whose contributions had a substantial impact on this discipline.

Tales of Miletus (624-548 BC). A pre-Socratic philosopher, Thales is considered by many to be the first philosopher of the West. He maintained that the origin of existence was in water.
Heraclitus of Ephesus (540-480 BC). Natf of Ephesus, Heraclitus, pre-Socratic philosopher, postulated the idea of becoming governed by the Logos, as well as fire as original matter.
Pythagoras (569-475 BC). Philosopher and mathematician, Pythagoras is considered the first pure mathematician in history. He founded the Pythagorean school and influenced Plato and Aristotle.
Parmenides of Elea (VI-V century BC). Considered by many to be the founder of Western metaphysics, Parmenides is thought to have been the first to open the way to the question of being.
Socrates (470-399 BC). Classical Greek philosopher, Socrates is one of the most important philosophers in all of history. He was Plato's teacher and inaugurated dialectics as a philosophical method.
Plato (427-347 BC). A disciple of Socrates, Plato changed the history of philosophy forever. He formulated the theory of ideas, the allegory of the cave and many other philosophical works that are still discussed today.
Aristotle (384-322 BC). Philosopher, polymath and scientist, Aristotle trained at Plato's Academy, alongside whom he is considered the father of Western philosophy. His philosophical treatises continue to be studied and rediscovered year after year.
Augustine of Hippo (354-430). Theologian and Christian philosopher, Augustine is one of the fathers of the Church. He is considered the “doctor of grace” and was the greatest thinker of Christianity in its beginnings.
Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274). The main representative of scholasticism, Thomas Aquinas is an obligatory reference for systematic theology, as well as the person responsible for reintroducing Aristotle to the West.
Rene Descartes (1596-1650). French philosopher, mathematician and physicist, Descartes is famous for having found hyperbolic doubt as a method, as well as for having written Discourse of the method and Metaphysical meditations.
John Locke (1632-1704). Locke is one of the most important philosophers of English empiricism, as well as the father of classical liberalism and one of the first empiricists influenced by Francis Bacon.
Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677). A philosopher of Dutch origin, Spinoza is one of the three great rationalists of the 17th century, a critical heir to the ideas of René Descartes.
Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716). German theologian, mathematician, logician and philosopher, Gottfried Leibniz is known as the “last universal genius.” The idea of metaphysical monads is his, as well as some considerations of the infinite.
David Hume (1711-1776). English philosopher, Hume is the greatest figure of English empiricism, skepticism and naturalism. He discussed the idea of innatism, as well as causality and the idea of rationalism as a form of knowledge.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). German thinker, Kant is known for having reconciled rationalism and empiricism in his three great critiques: Critique of pure reason, Critique of judgment and Critique of practical reason.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). Father of German idealism, Hegel is sometimes called the “conscience of modernity.” He postulated, among other things, absolute idealism and the dialectic of master and slave.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). German philologist, musician, poet and philosopher, Nietzsche changed the way of doing philosophy definitively. Probably one of the most impetuous philosophers in history, he was in charge of demolishing myths and philosophical totalities dragged down for centuries.
Gottob Frege (1848-1925). Father of analytical philosophy and mathematical logic, Frege's work became known thanks to the popularization work of Giuseppe Peano and Bertrand Russel.
Edmund Husserl (1859-1938). A disciple of Brentano and Carl Stumpf, Husserl discovered the path to phenomenology, a new way of thinking and knowing the phenomenon that changed the way of constituting knowledge.
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). Probably the most important thinker of the 20th century, Heidegger is an unavoidable point of contemporary philosophy. He rediscovered the question of the meaning of being and brought philosophy closer to its peak.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). Austrian linguist, logician, mathematician and philosopher, Wittgenteins is known for his two main works: the Tractatus logico-philosophicus and their Philosophical investigations.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980). Known as the father of existentialism, Sartre, a fervent reader of Heidegger, capitalized on the thinking of an era and an entire generation, and made philosophy a new way of living.
Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995). Lithuanian philosopher and writer based in France, Lévinas is known for his rereading of Heidegger's work and for having put a philosophical magnifying glass on the figure of otherness.
Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995). One of the most prominent French philosophers of the 20th century, Deleuze combined philosophy with politics, film, painting, literature and history.
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004). Father of deconstruction, Derrida is probably one of the most important and prominent philosophers of the 20th century. His work continues to be published posthumously, especially the courses he taught at the College de France.
Michel Foucault (1926-1984). French philosopher, historian, sociologist and psychologist, Foucault was a renowned French thinker who dedicated his life to research and teaching. His work is taken up in many sciences outside philosophy.

Women in philosophy

Like many other disciplines, Philosophy has a history narrated, mainly, by men. The works we have are by philosophers and very few names of female philosophers are known.

This does not mean, however, that women have not done philosophy. On the contrary, there are many testimonies, through letters and written comments, of the philosophical works of different women who wrote and thought at the same time as the great philosophers of the West.

Here's a rough list of some big names to keep an eye on:

Hipparchia of Maronea
Areta of Cyrene
Aspasia of Miletus
Hypatia
Mary Wollstonecraft
Margaret Fuller
Ayn Rand
Susanne Langer
Hannah Arendt
Simone de Beauvoir
Maria Zambrano
Julia Kristeva
Susan Haack
Celia Amorós

Many other philosophers, and some thinkers belonging to groups whose identity is identified as non-binary, continue to write and think to this day. Philosophy is not exclusive to the male gender, but its history has been told mainly by men.

What is philosophy for today?

The question about the usefulness of philosophy is as frequent as the difficulty of answering it. Most people imagine philosophers according to a romantic ideapreconceived, where they appear as lonely strangers who live isolated from society, often spending hours in silence and meditation.

However, Philosophy is a formal science as studied and applicable as any other. It serves to understand the phenomena of the social, political and economic life of people. Where science often cannot give a clear answer, philosophy emerges as a discourse that helps ask questions and think about possible answers.

It is not easy to say why philosophy is useful, nor is it easy to say what art is for. Even so, this serves as an example for us, since it shares with philosophy the fact of being not only important, but necessary for the survival and development of humanity. After all, the way we think is, many times, the way we live. What discipline is more useful, then, than that which, deep down, helps us understand how to live?

References

Marías, J., Zubiri, X., & and Gasset, JO (1941). History of philosophy (No. B94. M37 1974.). Madrid: Western Magazine.
Reale, G., & Antiseri, D. (2007). History of philosophy. San Pablo Editorial.
Hegel, GWF, & Terrón, E. (1971). Introduction to the history of philosophy. Aguilar.
Deleuze, G., Guattari, F., & Kauf, T. (2001). What is philosophy?. Barcelona: Anagram.
Lyotard, J.F., & Veiga, J.M. (1989). Why philosophize?: four conferences. Paidós.
Greek, D. M. (1967). Classical Greek-Spanish. Vox.
Heidegger, M. (2013). What is philosophy?. Herder Editorial.