Hi! I am Ishi Laica Tan. A high school student who is actually graduating soon from high school. On the first day of my last year in high school, I encountered an unfamiliar subject called philosophy. I was afraid that I would fail this subject because I really did not know what this subject was and what its purpose was; however, after searching on the internet and listening to the discussions of my teacher, I now understand and know what philosophy actually is.
You must be wondering what philosophy means, so here it is. philosophy, starting from the word itself, is defined as “love of wisdom”. That is its literal meaning because the word philosophy is derived from two Greek words, philo, which means “to love”, and sophia, which means “wisdom”. In addition, do not forget that the goal of philosophy is still to attain wisdom. To further help you understand what philosophy is, according to Brown University, philosophy is the critical study of fundamental questions that arise in our everyday lives in which some of these questions is about the nature of reality.
Now, since we are about to head into the deeper and specific meaning of philosophy, let me tell you what happened on my first day of my last year in high schoool. On the first day of my senior year, my teacher in philosophy asked all of us one short but hard question. He said, “what is philosophy?”. No one really knew what to answer was which is why the teacher just discussed it to us. At the start of the discussion, the teacher said that philosophy’s literal meaning is “love of wisdom” and the goal of philosophy is to attain wisdom which is the same as I stated above; however, while going further he said that philosophy is also defined as “the science that by natural light of reason studies the first causes or highest principles of all”. This definition simply means that philosophy it follows a systematic process, makes use of reasoning, studies a wide range of topics, guides from which something proceeds in any manner, and acts as a starting point from which every chain goes back to.
After listening to the discussion of our teacher and searching about what philosophy is, I made my own conclusion about its definition. My definition of philosophy when based on the questions I saw philosophers asked is that philosophy is where people see things and just ask questions that would make them think very hard. These questions may somehow look dumb for others, but it is somehow really hard to answer. In addition, when answering these questions one must also give an acceptable reason why the answer is actually right. On the other hand, my definition of philosophy when based on my research and the discussion of my teacher is that it is a unique way of thinking about a topic and asking about its nature or its relation to something. Its goal is to end up with more and new knowledge.
As I was writing this blog, I realized that we actually need philosophy in our daily lives since this could help us practice our thinking skills and change how we usually see things. This could also help us think more which could lead to better decisions for our lives. For students like me, this is important because this would make us think deeper and not only memorize things we study which could lead to a better academic performance. In the case of politics, this is also great since this could help the politicians widen their thoughts and make better decisions especially for the people.
In conclusion, I think knowing what philosophy is and using is in our daily lives could really be helpful. I know that it could really make your head hurt because of the thinking but, it is actually very fun and interesting especially if the topic is something you have experience or is part of your everyday lives.
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