What is Philosophy
The origin of the word philosophy
The word comes from the Greek and consists of two syllables, Philo - Sofia, meaning the love of wisdom. Historians have disagreed about the origin of this word, whether it was created by the Greeks or whether they benefited from neighboring civilizations. They also disagreed about the identity of the first philosophers, despite what has been said and known until now that Thales is the first Greek sages and the first philosopher in the technical meaning of the word throughout the history of philosophy. Victor Cousin believes that philosophy began with Socrates, not Thales...
Pythagoras
Pythagoras is said to have been the sage. It is true that he himself said that he was not a sage because for him wisdom is only given to the gods. But that didn't stop historians from recognizing him as one of the leading sages at the dawn of philosophy. This is because he used wisdom as the search for the truth of things. If we were to define the term philosophy and what it means, we would find that there are several distinct uses of the term.
Russell
In Russell's opinion, philosophy is intermediate between theology and science: It resembles theology in that it consists of reflections on topics on which it has not yet reached certainty, but it also resembles science in that it appeals to the human mind rather than being based on compulsion: whether that compulsion comes from the power of tradition or the power of revelation. Science is concerned with certainty, while theology, in Russell's view, relies on the firmness of faith, and its domain is the aspect that goes beyond the limits of certain knowledge. However, between theology and science there is a “free zone” that is philosophy.
Philosophy is the constant search for truth
It is in this zone that we find all the questions that science cannot answer and that intrigue contemplative minds more than anything else. To be of the kind that science cannot answer. Philosophy is the perpetual search for truth for its own sake; it is science itself as an end rather than a means. Philosophy is concerned with the whole rather than the part, with the general rather than the particular, for example, it is not concerned with the individual so much as with the human being. It is concerned with holistic perceptions rather than individual partial impressions. Philosophy also seeks a holistic explanation of the universe, as it aims to reveal the true, constant, and underlying causes.
What is Philosophy
Metaphysics
When we talk about philosophy, we mean metaphysics as the only branch of specialization that philosophy began with and that has survived among all other branches of knowledge. The modern era began with the aspiration of philosophers to establish a new philosophy that was based on reason, and the empiricists based it on observation and experimentation, and we noticed that ancient philosophy was concerned with researching existence, while modern philosophy tended to research knowledge and was interested in studying its nature, to determine the truth of the relationship between the forces of perception and moving objects.
Controversy
The fierce debate that took place between the doctrines of Idealism and Realism, and many epistemological discussions revolved around the tools and sources of knowledge, so the conflict was between the doctrines of rationalism and intuitionism on the one hand and the doctrines of empiricism and positivism on the other. The debate even extended to some moderns about the possibility of the existence of true knowledge, so the conflict was between the proponents of Scepticism and Dogmatism, although it can be said that ancient philosophy was concerned with existence and looked at knowledge through it.
The philosophy of the modernists reversed the verse by focusing on knowledge and looking through it to existence. For Francis Bacon, “the first of the moderns to preach empiricism,” philosophy was a descriptive interpretation of the universe through observation and experimentation, with the intention of controlling nature and controlling its resources, while for Descartes, “the owner of the rationalist trend in modern European philosophy,” it remained a science of first principles, and he likened it to a tree whose roots are post-natural, whose trunk is natural science, and whose branches are medicine, mechanics, and ethics, and Bacon shared, with their differences, in making philosophy a tool to achieve human happiness. It will be a long, long time before the written form of philosophy is smooth. It will be years before philosophers will be able to approach problems in a philosophical manner.
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