You might already know this: Philosophy comes from two Greek words — love (philia) and wisdom (sophia) — that translate to “love of wisdom.” The first precept of wisdom is knowing that you don’t know at the start of your inquiry. You will not seek that which you do not know that you do not know, so finding yourself lacking and wanting is key. A desire named Curiosity (about what we do not know) initiates our true inquiry.

Wittgenstein remarked how we seem to know a lot based on very little, “we” being humans collectively, I think. We actually know very little, we only think we know a lot, because we borrow a lot from tradition (what was handed down to us by our families and cultures), and faith (which is based on faith not experience or demonstration). So it is worth asking ourselves, at the beginning of our journey: What is that we know based on our own experiences, and how did we come to know it?

It is not an easy question. The question will undress you, ahem, intellectually. Tell me what you know in the comments below and I will try and challenge it. This is the agonistic game called philosophy, the testing and being tested about what we think we know. Be forewarned though, it can get you killed: The Death Of Philosophers.

Why play this game? Because remember how we need to know what we do not know in order to peak our curiosity? The process of disabusing ourselves of what we think we know, but in fact do not, is a necessary preparation for true inquiry.

“Knowledge is not for knowing: knowledge is for cutting.” - Michel Foucault

In the best sense, philosophizing is about making judgements and cutting distinctions in order to gain clarity of thought and action. And learning to be wrong about a lot of it, based on further testing it against the experience of others, and our collective human experience. As such, practicing Philosophy is necessarily political. Even those who claim that doing philosophy right is apolitical are taking a political stance — here’s looking at you logical positivists of the Anglo-American tradition.

As a discipline that has been practiced for a couple millennia, with a history and an account of itself and where it has been, Western Philosophy has defined a set of questions that define its scope: 1) What do we know and how can we know it, or epistemology. 2) What is reality and what is it comprised of, ontology or metaphysics. 3) How should we organize ourselves, politics. 4) How should we act, ethics. And 5) what is beauty, aesthetics. These are the five windows onto the world of Philosophy. Did we leave anything out?

P.S., This little jaunt was inspired by a comment I received, a comment that made me realize that I might want to define some of my terms. So, here ya go!