By contrast, the Big Names thought of themselves as trying to answer a bunch of questions, both constructively by creating new theories, and critically by examining previous theories. Those questions are (roughly):
What Can We Know? (Epistemology)
How Should We Live? (Moral Philosophy and Wisdom Thinkers)
How Should the State be Governed? (Political Philosophy, Legal Philosophy)
What is Beauty and Art? (Aesthetics / Philosophy of Art)
What is the World Made Of? (Metaphysics)
How do we argue correctly (Logic) and how do we spot bad and deceptive arguments (Rhetoric)
Free Will
The Existence of God(s)
Minds and Bodies
Freedom, Rights and Obligations
All of those are still open questions. There may never be "final answers". The point is the development and criticism of (preferably ever-improving) theories about those things. Physicists resort to epistemology and metaphysics when the going gets tough. Lawyers debate the justification for laws, and what kind of things can or should be subject to law. Standards of beauty have changed throughout history, and today are politicised, or perhaps, marketing-ised.
In addition, there are "philosophies of": attempts to describe and understand the assumptions, practices, knowledge-claims, and justifications of a number of subjects: for instance, Art, Science, Mathematics, Law, Politics, and Language.
If you don't see why these are problems, or if these don't sound interesting, then feel free to leave philosophy alone. I'm not interested in chemical reactions, so I didn't do a Chemistry degree.
There are four types of answers to these questions
Classical Greek and Roman: Aristotle, Plato, St Augustine... Theological / Medieval Philosophy: St Anslem, St Thomas Aquinas, Abelard... Worldly: Descartes, Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Karl Popper, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Bachelard, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty... Political: Foucault, Derrida, Judith Butler, Karl Marx, Lenin, Avatal Ronell, Slavoj Zizek...
None of these are definitive. All contain assumptions we can produce reasons for disagreeing with, or arguments that don't quite compel the conclusion. Examining the assumptions and arguments, and developing one's own answers, is what creative philosophy is about.
The philosopher’s tools are propositional and predicate logic; statistical inference; rhetoric; and the myriad frauds, deceptions and fallacies used to befuddle and confuse us.
A philosopher can never have too much knowledge of the societies and economies of the world and their history. St Thomas Aquinas' thesis of the just war needs to be read in its historical context: there were no atomic bombs, drones, and sniper rifles that could kill at two miles available then. But war was still bloody, and killed at about the same daily rate as a modern conventional war. Philosophers who don't brief themselves on the historical circumstances of a writer are doomed to make some silly comments.
All of those are still open questions. There may never be "final answers". The point is the development and criticism of (preferably ever-improving) theories about those things. Physicists resort to epistemology and metaphysics when the going gets tough. Lawyers debate the justification for laws, and what kind of things can or should be subject to law. Standards of beauty have changed throughout history, and today are politicised, or perhaps, marketing-ised.
In addition, there are "philosophies of": attempts to describe and understand the assumptions, practices, knowledge-claims, and justifications of a number of subjects: for instance, Art, Science, Mathematics, Law, Politics, and Language.
If you don't see why these are problems, or if these don't sound interesting, then feel free to leave philosophy alone. I'm not interested in chemical reactions, so I didn't do a Chemistry degree.
There are four types of answers to these questions
Classical Greek and Roman: Aristotle, Plato, St Augustine... Theological / Medieval Philosophy: St Anslem, St Thomas Aquinas, Abelard... Worldly: Descartes, Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Karl Popper, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Bachelard, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty... Political: Foucault, Derrida, Judith Butler, Karl Marx, Lenin, Avatal Ronell, Slavoj Zizek...
None of these are definitive. All contain assumptions we can produce reasons for disagreeing with, or arguments that don't quite compel the conclusion. Examining the assumptions and arguments, and developing one's own answers, is what creative philosophy is about.
The philosopher’s tools are propositional and predicate logic; statistical inference; rhetoric; and the myriad frauds, deceptions and fallacies used to befuddle and confuse us.
A philosopher can never have too much knowledge of the societies and economies of the world and their history. St Thomas Aquinas' thesis of the just war needs to be read in its historical context: there were no atomic bombs, drones, and sniper rifles that could kill at two miles available then. But war was still bloody, and killed at about the same daily rate as a modern conventional war. Philosophers who don't brief themselves on the historical circumstances of a writer are doomed to make some silly comments.
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