What is philosophy?

Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

The most fundamental characteristic of we human beings is without a doubt our ability to question everything. It can even get to be annoying. Have you ever experienced a kid philosopher asking you why ad infinitum?

Annoying, yes, but mostly because the little kid or girl is asking you things that you already know, or take for granted that you already know, so it is boring.

Or…. maybe the questioning scares you. Because you realize that you don’t know and that coming up with an answer is hard.

I’ll give you an example. When I was still at school and around 13 years old, I found myself in biology class. The class was about what things were made of. I was extremely, genuinely interested in the topic. The teacher told us that animals were made of tinier things called cells, and that the cells had organelles, and that the organelles were made of atoms. That’s the farthest he got. I asked what were the atoms made of, and he said electrons I think, and when I asked what are electrons made of, he turned to look at me, and asked me: are you making fun of me?

What a champ right? What a great teacher, Jesus.

Anyway, back to my point. I’d argue that philosophy is only for the brave as well. It is interesting, profoundly, but you have to be willing to go down the rabbit hole and see where it takes you.

Back to Basics, vision, and arguments

Philosophy could be defined as the activity in which you figure out how to think about things right.

For example. In medicine, you can prescribe painkillers, because pain is bad, so we should kill it.

We now know that that is not a valid supposition, because it also causes addiction. But we need to question it in the first place to get somewhere.

Why would you want to question something that isn’t really important? It’d be just a waste of time. That is why, when you are doing philosophy, you need to have a vision. In this case, it would be human health. I believe we can all agree that we want to be healthy. Awesome we have a vision now.

Now, what’s the best way to go about it.

Arguments and conclusions