Philosophy

Philosophy is a discipline or field of study involving the investigation, analysis, and development of ideas at a general, abstract, or fundamental level. It is the discipline in search for a general understanding of values and reality by chiefly speculative rather than observational means. The term covers a very wide range of approaches, and is also used to refer to a worldview, to a perspective on an issue, or to the positions argued for by a particular philosopher or school of philosophy. The phrase "a philosophical attitude" is often used to refer to a stoical approach to life. This article concerns philosophy as a discipline.

Related Topics:
Reality - Worldview - Stoical

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Historically, definitions of philosophy have been hard to construct, as most (if not all) fail to cover all the works that are traditionally categorised as philosophy. Introductions therefore usually refuse to try to offer a neat definition, preferring instead to present a set of examples of philosophical problems and discussions, and a list of approaches which are not philosophical. These often include such questions as "what is knowledge?", "could human beings have free will?", and "of what sorts of thing is the universe made up?" The philosophical approach to these questions is not, for example, an appeal to authority (either from the past or the present), nor an examination of what most people believe, nor (usually) an examination of what is most useful or practical; it involves, rather, an examination of the relevant concepts and their relationships with other concepts and theories.

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