Can We Define Philosophy? Or Anything At All? | For the Love of Wisdom entry 2
Definitions of Philosophy and The Philosophy of Definition
“It is necessary with regard to the science that we are seeking that we should first address those puzzles that first arise… For those who wish to make good progress must start well; for subsequent progress depends on the resolution of the first puzzles…” -Aristotle, Metaphysics.
Welcome to the second installment of For the Love of Wisdom: An Ever-Deepening Introduction to Philosophy. This is my digital, dynamic introduction to philosophy. I’m calling it ‘dynamic’ because you’ll be able to interact with the posts, leave feedback, ask clarifying questions, and shape the form and content of future entries through your feedback.
I’ve been studying philosophy for a long time and in this series I’m going to introduce you to the field and eventually drag you into the deep-end. It’s going to be great!
In the first installment I discussed my pedagogy and gave a cursory/stipulative working definition of philosophy to help us get going. Here it is:
Philosophy =def. a branch of human inquiry that attempts to generate, examine, and answer life’s most fundamental questions. Philosophy is demarcated from other disciplines in that it studies the general principles undergirding and connecting the special sciences and it prioritizes reason and argument above other tools of inquiry.
If you haven’t read that installment yet, definitely check it out:
In this post, I’m going to take you a bit deeper—a lot deeper—into the definition of philosophy and the philosophy of definition. This is a much longer post and you won’t be able to read the full thing on your email so just follow the prompts to read it on the website or app. I don’t like to do that, and I will usually keep them short enough for you to read right in your emails. I mean it, this post is very, very long. But I’m hoping you get a lot out of it. I think it will set us up for the rest of the series.
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Philosophy and Definition
Are definitions possible? Does our language sufficiently map onto reality? Are we capable of defining things as they really are? Can we define their essence? Or do we define things in name only? Or perhaps neither? Do we just define things according to our own purposes?
The problem of definition is a perfect place to start our introduction to philosophy because philosophy is especially concerned with definitions.