philosophy?

Answer 1

yes, I agree with you

Answer 2

Yes, something which is known by only one person, and others just try to guess it.

Answer 3

The way you individually believe things should be done.

Answer 4

Of course, teach it early and well in life.

Answer 5

the stuff life's make off

Answer 6

ponder

Answer 7

think about it

Answer 8

Love and pursuit of wisdom by intellectual means and moral self-discipline.
Investigation of the nature, causes, or principles of reality, knowledge, or values, based on logical reasoning rather than empirical methods.
A system of thought based on or involving such inquiry: the philosophy of Hume.
The critical analysis of fundamental assumptions or beliefs.
The disciplines presented in university curriculums of science and the liberal arts, except medicine, law, and theology.
The discipline comprising logic, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, and epistemology.
A set of ideas or beliefs relating to a particular field or activity; an underlying theory: an original philosophy of advertising.
A system of values by which one lives: has an unusual philosophy of life.


philosophy
from Greek
This word originated in Greece

To the ancient Greeks we owe our love of wisdom. Or at least the word philosophy, which is the same thing, phil meaning "love" and sophy meaning "wisdom." Combined, the two elements mean both a love of wisdom and a desire for it. In English, philosophy first appears in writing as early as 1340, when it is explained for the benefit of readers unfamiliar with the word as "love of wysdome." Wisdom is a word native to English, but we had no term for the love of learning or the desire to gain wisdom. Like the rest of the Western world, we learned that from the Greeks.

Greek is one of the great contributors to English, and philosophy a great example of the Greek contribution. Like many other Greek words, it came to us not directly from the Greek but first through Latin and then through French, the two languages that have contributed even more than Greek to the English we know today.

The two parts of philosophy recombine themselves in numerous other words. Phil- is found, for example, in philanthropy, the love of humankind; philharmonic, loving music; philodendron, a plant that loves to hang around trees (dendron being tree); and Philadelphia, or the love of brother or sister. We are so comfortable with Greek that we can use it to make stunt words such as philopatrodomania, or the mania that comes from loving one's homeland, that is, homesickness. Phil with an added e also appears at the end of dozens of words from Greek like bibliophile, a lover of books; ailurophile, a lover of cats; oenophile, a lover of wine; Anglophile, a lover of things English, and Francophile, a lover of things French; and pedophile, one with a (perverted) love of children.

The soph part of philosophy also finds itself in English words, notably sophisticated, full of a certain kind of wisdom; and sophomore, combining the words for "wise" and "foolish" to represent the state of mind of a second-year college student.

It is thanks to the Greeks that we have schools and scholars in the first place; both of those English words are from the Greek. Even today, scholarly fields of study are named in Greek, using the suffix logy from logos meaning "word" or "discourse." The three hundred logys in present-day English include archaeology, discourse about old things; biology, discourse about life; oology, discourse about eggs; neurology, discourse about the nervous system; geology, discourse about the earth; psychology, discourse about the mind; theology, discourse about God; eschatology, discourse about the last days of the world; graphology, discourse about writing; cosmetology, discourse about cosmetics; terminology, discourse about terms; and criminology, demonology, ufology, and sexology, which need no introduction. And then, we have philology, the love of words, of discourse, of learning, the name formerly given to scholarship in language and literature.

English has many other words of Greek origin as well, everything from catalog (1460) to zeal (1382). All told, about 5 percent of the general English vocabulary comes from Greek. Even today, science and technology use elements of Greek and Latin to construct new English words. One hybrid example, is television, which uses tele (meaning "distant") from Greek and vision from Latin.

Like English, Greek is an Indo-European language. It is the sole member of the Hellenic branch. Modern Greek is spoken by about eleven million inhabitants of modern Greece. But it is the classical language, the ancestor of modern Greek, that is the basis for our philosophical borrowings.


philosophy [Gr.,=love of wisdom], study of the ultimate reality, causes, and principles underlying being and thinking. It has many aspects and different manifestations according to the problems involved and the method of approach and emphasis used by the individual philosopher. This article deals with the nature and development of Western philosophical thought. Eastern philosophy, while founded in religion, contains rigorously developed systems; for these, see Buddhism; Confucianism; Hinduism; Islam; Jainism; Shinto; Taoism; Vedanta; and related articles.
Distinguishing Characteristics

This search for truth began, in the Western world, when the Greeks first established (c.600 B.C.) inquiry independent of theological creeds. Philosophy is distinguished from theology in that philosophy rejects dogma and deals with speculation rather than faith. Philosophy differs from science in that both the natural and the social sciences base their theories wholly on established fact, whereas philosophy also covers areas of inquiry where no facts as such are available. Originally, science as such did not exist and philosophy covered the entire field, but as facts became available and tentative certainties emerged, the sciences broke away from metaphysical speculation to pursue their different aims. Thus physics was once in the realm of philosophy, and it was only in the early 20th cent. that psychology was established as a science apart from philosophy. However, many of the greatest philosophers were also scientists, and philosophy still considers the methods (as opposed to the materials) of science as its province.

Branches

Philosophy is traditionally divided into several branches. Metaphysics inquires into the nature and ultimate significance of the universe. Logic is concerned with the laws of valid reasoning. Epistemology investigates the nature of knowledge and the process of knowing. Ethics deals with problems of right conduct. Aesthetics attempts to determine the nature of beauty and the criteria of artistic judgment. Within metaphysics a division is made according to fundamental principles. The three major positions are idealism, which maintains that what is real is in the form of thought rather than matter; materialism, which considers matter and the motion of matter as the universal reality; and dualism, which gives thought and matter equal status. Naturalism and positivism are forms of materialism.

The History of Philosophy

Historically, philosophy falls into three large periods: classical (Greek and Roman) philosophy, which was concerned with the ultimate nature of reality and the problem of virtue in a political context; medieval philosophy, which in the West is virtually inseparable from early Christian thought; and, beginning with the Renaissance, modern philosophy, whose main direction has been epistemology.

Classical Philosophy

The first Greek philosophers, the Milesian school in the early 6th cent. B.C., consisting of Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, were concerned with finding the one natural element underlying all nature and being. They were followed by Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Leucippus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Democritus, who took divergent paths in exploring the same problem.

Socrates was the first to inquire also into social and political problems and was the first to use the dialectical method. His speculations were carried on by his pupil Plato, and by Plato's pupil Aristotle, at the Academy in Athens. Roman philosophy was based mainly on the later schools of Greek philosophy, such as the Sophists, the Cynics, Stoicism, and epicureanism. In late antiquity, Neoplatonism, chiefly represented by Plotinus, became the leading philosophical movement and profoundly affected the early development of Christian theology. Arab thinkers, notably Avicenna and Averroës, preserved Greek philosophy, especially Aristotelianism, during the period when these teachings were forgotten in Europe.


A study that attempts to discover the fundamental principles of the sciences, the arts, and the world that the sciences and arts deal with; the word philosophy is from the Greek for “love of wisdom.” Philosophy has many branches that explore principles of specific areas, such as knowledge (epistemology), reasoning (logic), being in general (metaphysics), beauty (aesthetics), and human conduct (ethics).


Meaning #1: a belief (or system of beliefs) accepted as authoritative by some group or school
Synonyms: doctrine, school of thought, ism


Meaning #2: the rational investigation of questions about existence and knowledge and ethics


Meaning #3: any personal belief about how to live or how to deal with a situation



Philosophy is a field of study that includes diverse subfields such as aesthetics, epistemology, ethics, logic, and metaphysics, in which people ask questions such as whether God exists, whether knowledge is possible, and what makes actions right or wrong. The fundamental method of philosophy is the use of reasoning to evaluate arguments concerning these questions. However, the exact scope and methodology of philosophy is not rigid. What counts as philosophy is itself debated, and it varies across philosophical traditions.

The term philosophy comes from the Greek word "Φιλοσοφία" (philo-sophia), which means "love of wisdom" or less commonly "friend of wisdom". The term is notoriously difficult to define (see definition of philosophy) because of the diverse range of ideas that have been labeled as a philosophy. The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy defines it as the study of "the most fundamental and general concepts and principles involved in thought, action, and reality". The Penguin Encyclopedia says that philosophy differs from science in that philosophy's questions cannot be answered empirically, and from religion in that philosophy allows no place for faith or revelation. However, these points are called into question by the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, which states: "the late 20th-century... prefers to see philosophical reflection as continuous with the best practice of any field of intellectual enquiry." Indeed, many of the speculations of early philosophers in the field of natural philosophy eventually formed the basis for modern scientific explanations on a variety of subjects.

Informally, a "philosophy" may refer to a general world view or to a specific ethic or belief.