The Dawn of a Blog

Hello, my name is Brian Hillman, and thank you for coming to my blog. This blog has been a long time coming, and I believe that it is imperative that I explaim some things about myself. I am an aspiring philosopher and mathamtician with a passion for the arts and linguistics, and have an obsession with getting into a prestigious college. For my initial post I have chosen to post one of my short essays that is by no means complete or completely edited, but I feel it does some justice to my work.



The Beginning Works on what Philosophy is and What Philosophers are

It is very difficult to determine what a philosopher is, and what philosophy is. Etymologically, philosophy is the “love of wisdom”, from the Greek Φιλοσοφία. However, there are so many different definitions of what philosophy is, and what philosophers are, it has become clouded. In contemporary times, the ancient definition a lover of wisdom has no merit. A lover of wisdom and a lover of knowledge have become clouded, and we desperately need a new definition.

However, before we can pinpoint what a philosopher is, we must fist determine what philosophy is. Russell claimed that philosophy is what lies between religion and science. This is not a bad definition, but granted he clearly had a more complex definition of it. Philosophy is antiquity was the study of everything worth thinking about. The first philosophers were the Sophists, and they thought about everything from morality to natural science. So, until the fall of Rome, and maybe even as early as the death of Plotinus, the classical definition of one who thought about everything is a valid definition of a philosopher. However, since Boethius, the definition has been clouded. Boethius claimed that only Σωκράτης, Αριστοτέλης, and Πλάτων (Socrates, Aristotle and Plato, respectively) were true philosophers (he probably included all those who came before him, for example Anaxagoras and Parimenides, but granted he was angry at the time of writing), and the Stoics were not. That trio was true “lovers of wisdom”, and all the others who studied philosophy were not true philosophers. However, the entire concept of wisdom was never pursued so thoroughly since the time of Socrates, and so wisdom is not the main characteristic of philosophy.

As somewhat of a non sequetor, I will quickly skip to contemporary philosophy, and look backwards. What has characterized philosophy since the time of Thales (although I think philosophy may have started 400 years before him with the prophets, but another essay, another time) is aesthetics, metaphysics, morality, and ethics. Douglass J. Soccio claims that Epistemology should be in the discussion, and politics cannot be ignored. I should interject that I am a descriptivist when it comes to the definition of philosophy, and I believe that it changes with those who are “philosophers.” However, it will not work to call a philosopher one who studies policy, metaphysics, morality, ethics, (ignore God for now) and aesthetics, because maybe Hegel and Aristotle would be the only two philosophers! So, we have established the classical definition of a philosopher, the etymological definition, and what philosophers study, but we are only slightly closer to determining what philosophy is.

I would like to add that philosophers are free thinkers, and deal with pure thought, as opposed to actual brain activity, hence the field of neurology. However, before neurology was a dignified field, Hume, Locke as well as others dealt with what thought more in the sense of what idea is, as opposed to how the brain works. I must also add that just because one is a free-thinker, he is not necessarily a philosopher. In summation, philosophers are freethinkers who deal with thought.

Going back to the time of Boethius, philosophers have studied everything worth studying, and if the stoics should be considered in the conversations of who is a philosopher is in question. After Boethius, the next people who studied philosophers were the Arabs up to Aquinas. Al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Aviceena, Averroes and al’Arabi (to some extend, but his work in mainly as a theologian. Theologians as philosopher shall be discussed do not fear) are the main Arabic Philosophers. What they did was study the Greek philosophers, and expanded upon it, while injection some of their religion. Granted, the Hellenistic philosophers were polytheists, and the Arabs were monotheists, but theology did not mix too well with philosophy (just ask Philo). However, the Arabic philosophers were those who studied philosophy and commented on it. This will play a key role in the definition of philosophy.

After Aviceena, the next main Philosopher was Aquinas. Here is where we see the difference between theology. Aquinas as a philosopher can be considered in his work with Metaphysics, but not with theology. The break between philosophy and theology is when one stops questioning the existence of god, and takes a firm stance, and begins to study scripture. Aquinas’s commentary on the bible cannot be considered in the story of philosophy, because they are dogmatic, and deal with god, and not pure thought. This takes us to The Rambam, and he is even less of a Philosopher than Aquinas. Granted, he did contribute some to philosophy, but he mainly dealt with theology, hence the fact he is not considered a major philosopher. From this, we can see that philosophers appear to be those who study philosophy, but (just ask Boethius) that is not the case.

After Maimonides philosophy appeared again in the Renaissance, mainly with More and Erasmus. These humanists were philosophers to some extent, but their writings dealt mostly with theology. However More’s Utopia and Erasmus’s In Praise of Folly were truly philosophical. The former dealing with ethics and policy and the latter dealing with aesthetics (I have chosen aesthetics because I do not know how to categorize it, and human nature will not suffice. However, there were some dealing with aesthetics in the work, so I have categorized it as such). After them, the next important philosopher was Hobbes. This is where philosophy changed in the sense that philosophers became more political. It was not that prior to this philosopher did not write on the subject of politics (Aristotle, and Plato dealt with it in-depth), but it marked the beginning of the glory days of political philosopher. Locke, Rousseau, Voltaire as well as others dealt with thought and human understanding as well as politics. It was not until the time Hume and Kant where philosophy moved away from policy, and back to metaphysics and epistemology.

From Kant, we must look at philosophy after him as a whole. After him existentialism became the most popular subject in philosophy, and ironically philosophy has somewhat come full circle. In this time the philosophical branches of politics, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, morals and god have been thoroughly discussed and expanded upon. The one thing that may be added to philosophy is the study of linguistics and analytical philosophy, with the former being more important. The function of language has been greatly expanded upon thanks to Wittgenstein, but it was still discussed prior to him. However, he was the first philosopher who is defined by his linguistic philosophy.

So, after taking an immensely abbreviated course thought the history of philosophy are we any closer to defining what is philosophy: not really. The truth is that philosophy is more of a blanket term that changes through the eras of history. In antiquity it had a different definition than it did in the middle ages and in modern times. However, we are closer to determining what a philosopher are. Philosophers are those who study philosophy, expand upon it, a have a genuine desire to learn and understand (although Socrates would say that one cannot learn because one cannot definitely know anything). The definition is forever changing, and philosophy is indeed better for it. Through this entire essay I have not addressed eastern philosophy, because it is a completely separate entity from western philosophy. But back to what philosophy is. Philosophy, as we have seen, is best defined as the study of a group of concepts that philosophers discuss. However, what exactly should go into that group is not completely clear, but is does appear that metaphysics, morality, ethics, god (in terms of his existence and the ramifications, not scripture), and politics should be in that group. These definitions do show a clear link between what philosophy is and who indeed is a philosopher, which is an imperative necessity. Yet these do add loopholes. For example, should John Rodriguez, who read Aristotle’s Poetics in twelfth grade and wrote a reaction to it on which he received a D-, be considered a philosopher? Technically, judging by the definition, yes. However, it is clearly arguagable if he deserves to be among the likes of Sartre, Nietzsche and Foucault.

In conclusion I say that it is much easier to determine who a philosopher is than what is philosophy (paradoxically, how can we be more able to determine what is a part of a set than determining what the set is?). Philosophy, as it has hitherto developed has certain characteristics, but it is likely that the focus of philosophy will, in some capacity, change. Will this breed a new definition of philosophy? I say that it will change the definition of philosophy, but it will appear similar to what the present one may look like. All in all, we do not completely know who is a philosopher and who was a philosopher due to relativism (not relativity), but as philosophers we must at least attempt to determine a doctrine with which we identify ourselves.