Philosophy: Meaning of Philosophy

What is Philosophy? Philosophy’s literal meaning is “love for wisdom”. Wisdom is a lost thing for humans. If someone wants to live in this world. The only purpose that hinders their life struggle is not knowing worldly affairs. A person by birth has the curiosity for his/her aboutness. S/He wants to know what is happening in his/her world which is obvious to knowing it. He dwells to know all – all that is necessary. All that is knowable!

Man’s only purpose is knowing, academically speaking. If we keep our eyes open to understand worldly affairs. There are the answers that are hidden in those affairs. The only way is to decipher them through the lens of the philosophy. Philosophy does nothing but only gives tools and words to understand those affairs. These tools are epistemological, metaphysical, and axiological in domain. These three are the main philosophical fields to rationalize the problems.

In the ordinary life of men, problems are always understood as hefty and murderous. But for the philosophy, problems are encouraging elements to solve the hidden or buried stories. It helps to find the truth of the day. This means, that if someone has some question that blocking his mind, or having the ambiguity. After having philosophical food, the person could be enlightened with the relative truth for the time being. And those will be contextual truth that will open the story to a specific condition.

In meaning of Philosophy, Mostly asks the question of why philosophy is necessary. The answer only lies in freedom – freedom of man. Man, first and foremost dream is to achieve the apex of freedom. Freedom to express his or her emotions, feelings, and intentions openly to other human fellows. A man is made of love, for love and to love his true and beautiful wishes, beliefs and intentions.

It teaches us to question every domain and every dogmatic ideology. A person who indulges him/herself in the exercise of philosophizing never escapes him/herself to question the existing realities. With meaning of philosophy we can say that Philosophy is not specific to any domain; it works in natural sciences and social sciences.  The major areas of philosophy are given below.

Branches of Philosophy : Meaning of Philosophy

Having better philosophy ideas in the field of Education and Philosophy, following different branches of Philosophy are given below;

1. Metaphysics

It is the study of the nature of reality to structure it. How a concept should be? It deals with questions such as is God exists. What is a human? What is time? How mind works? Do we have free will? And so on.

2. Epistemology

It is the study of knowledge, and how to explain worldly affairs. It argues that what is knowledge? How do we know the world? Do I know or not? I know that I don’t know. I know that you know? And, I know that you know that I don’t know.

3. Ethics

It is the study to do things as they should do. It defines the goodness and badness of things according to social and cultural perspectives. It answers to such questions such as: what is good? Or, what is right? Moral values are objective or subjective?

4. Logic

It is grammar to study philosophy. How philosophy should be explained with arguments. An argument is the explanation of the truth. A strong argument always builds on logical tools and techniques. Without logic, it is not possible to win the argument at all levels.  It constitutes the reasoning for knowledge, good/bad, etc. And, more specifically it determines the way of thinking or cognizing to a particular field or domain.

5. History

Historically, it produced big names; Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Avicenna, Al-Farabi, Averroes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Russel, Wittgenstein, Chomsky, Habermas, and many others.

6. Areas

Philosophy works in every discipline and area, such as Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Language, Neurophilosophy, Feminism, etc.