The Mystical World of Philosophy

 

Can you tell me why you do what you do? Why do you think what you think? Why do you feel what you feel? Some may say these are the same type of questions that I have asked before, in that case, let me rephrase it: Like, is the world just made up of matter and energy, or is there something else going on? And if it is just matter and energy, then where did it all come from? Is there a God? And if so, what is he, she, or it like? And for that matter, when you’re asking about the world, can you also be asking about the nature of yourself, as a citizen of the world. So what kind of being am I? Do I have a soul? Is there something immaterial about me that will survive after I die? Twenty-five hundred years after the ancient Greeks first brought them up, philosophers still love asking these questions, oftentimes, the same questions, and they don’t mind that they never get an answer.

Hey guys! How have you been? Hope you are all well, So lately we have been discussing Science a lot, that’s why I decided to take a detour to the mystical world of Philosophy, and the philosophers all over the world would be smirking at me realizing the irony of the phrase: 

“the mystical world of Philosophy”,

and you will realize this as well in a few.

So, companions, you and I are going on an adventure. An adventure of inquiry, into the entire world. With an end goal to sort out: what gives it meaning, what makes it excellent, where its evils come from, and eventually, what is the very nature of reality itself. And along the way, we’re going to question every aspect of your own personal life.

You may say, we can respond to this load of questions by Science. What's more, it's valid: Science can assist us with understanding our thoughts, sentiments, and activities simply by hormones or neurotransmitters, by personal experiences, or inherited conditions. However, in this specific section, we will investigate parts of the human condition that can't be clarified by Science. Since those organic or non-organic compounds and encounters that make us what our identity is can really arise as many issues as they reply to. Like, if each of my choices truly is only the aftereffect of, say, how I was raised, and what chemicals I have streamed in my cerebrum, then, at that point, are any of my decisions in reality free? What's more, in case I'm not genuinely allowed to settle on my own choices, or pick my own behavior, then, at that point, how might I be considered responsible for them?

Rather than just observing nature and describing what we see, as we do in Science, we’ll be evaluating it. We will take nothing as a given, or at the least, attempt to and give a valiant effort to consider the world to be as though we've never seen it before. Also, we’ll try to answer unanswerable questions, and puzzle over paradoxes that have tormented geniuses for millennia. It’s going to be hard, and enlightening, and frustrating because we are discussing Philosophy.

Nowadays, people utilize "Philosophy" to portray some assessment they may have, or the methodology they take to a specific subject. However, we will utilize this word more narrowly; to describe a way of approaching the world that follows its underlying foundations back to old Greece, 500 years before the Common Era. This was a period of extraordinary scholarly development all throughout the planet. Buddhism and Jainism were developing in Asia; the simultaneously philosophical idea was arising in Greece. There, scholars were tangled up in a distinction they were just beginning to make between Philos and Mythos or what we’d now roughly call Science and Storytelling. And now you know why the phrase “the mysterious world of philosophy” was so ironic…

Homer

At that time, there were bards, like Homer, who were trying to understand and explain the world through stories. Well, Homer was the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the two epic poems written on Greek’s invasion of Troy. While at the same time the earliest philosophers were using methods that were more analytical and scientific, although they didn’t really have the slightest notion of “science” back then.

So philosophia literally "the love of wisdom” and why it is referred to as such we shall discuss sometime later, was a new way of trying to make sense of the world. When the earliest philosophers used the word “philosophy,” they basically meant, “the academic study of anything.”

However, at what we may call the first colleges in the western world – Plato's Academy, and its opponent, Aristotle's Lyceum — math, science, physical science, verse, political theory, and cosmology were completely viewed as Philosophy. In the long run, researchers started thinking about these fields diversely as discrete disciplines. Studies that had solid empirical components came to be viewed as Science: "a quest for answers."

But philosophy came to be understood more as a way of thinking about questions. Now you might be able to make a solid distinction between philosophy and science. Science is the way we find answers and philosophy be the methodology of asking questions.

If you are thinking that you are about to enter a new field of science, then let me assure you, you are already an expert in this subject because you have already done philosophy, even though you might not realize it. You do it in pretty much every part of your life. Each time you argue with your folks or keep thinking about whether you should confess your feelings for somebody, or choose to eat a Roti over Big Mac, you are doing philosophy, Because you're contemplating the world and your place in it. You're sorting out what you value, why you value it, and what you ought to do about it.

So here’s our philosophical methodology, Of course, we’re going to learn about the major fields of philosophy later, but here we learn that philosophy is all about posing questions and considering possible answers along the way. And each time, we will use a two-step method:

First, we’ll really try to understand. You’re not going to agree with all of the ideas that are presented to you but that’s not the point. The point, in step one, is to really try to get inside of an idea to understand it as charitably as possible.

Then, at that point, in step two, you'll subject your understanding to some genuine basic assessment. Fundamentally, you'll attempt to thump down what you think you think about a specific perspective on the world. And you'll do this even if you do not agree with the view. Why? Since: Only when you challenge your comprehension of how certain individuals see the world, would you be able to choose for yourself in case theirs is a view worth having?

You see Philosophy isn't your typical field of study. It won't be telling you a collection of information where achievement implies you know a lot of stuff. Achievement, in this subject, will imply that you realize how to think. The sum total of what we have are questions and a mind. And the goal of philosophy is for you to use your brain to come up with the answers that make the most sense to you. You'll figure out how to support your answers, so you can clarify why you believe you're right. Which, if you've ever been on the Internet, you know is something that not many individuals are good at. That might be the reason why we feel that we are inferior to ancient nations, though we are scientifically advanced, deep down philosophically we are still immature.