What is Philosophy?

- Philosophy Is the love of wisdom

- Philosophy is both the seeking of and the wisdom sought
- Philosophy is the logical analysis of language, clarifying the meaning of words and
concept. (an approach stressing on the analytic nature of philosophy)
- Philosophy is that department of knowledge dealing with ultimate reality, or with the
most general causes and principles of things (oxford dictionary)
- Philosophy is a process of reflecting on and criticizing our most deeply held concept
and belief (Harold Titus, Living issues in Philosophy)
- Philosophy is a bunch of head games

Six Branches of Philosophy - Epistemology, Logic, Metaphysics, Ethics, Aesthetics,

Political Philosophy. These branches originate from basic questions. What do I
know? How do I know it? Where do we come from? What is good? What is
beautiful? How do we act?

Epistemology - the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope
(including limitations) of knowledge. It addresses four main questions. 1) What is
knowledge? 2) How is knowledge acquired? 3) What do people know? 4) How do we
know what we know?

Logic – is the study of reasoning. Logic is often divided into two parts, inductive
reasoning and deductive reasoning. The first is drawing general conclusions from
specific examples, the second is drawing logical conclusions from definitions and
axioms.

Metaphysics – is concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the
world. Cosmology and ontology are the two traditional branches of
metaphysics. Cosmology seeks to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and
ultimate fate of the universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in
order. Ontology is the investigation into what types of things there are in the world
and what relations these things bear to one another. Ontology deals with questions
concerning what entities exist or can be said to exist, and how such entities can be
grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and
differences. Before the development of modern science, scientific questions were
addressed as a part of metaphysics known as "natural philosophy." The scientific
method, however, made natural philosophy an empirical and experimental activity
unlike the rest of philosophy, and by the end of the eighteenth century it had begun to
be called "science" in order to distinguish it from philosophy. Thereafter, metaphysics
became the philosophical enquiry of a non-empirical character into the nature of
existence.
Ethics – also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy which seeks to
address questions about morality; that is, about concepts like good and bad, right and
wrong, justice, virtue, etc.

Aesthetics – is the branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, taste,
and the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the
study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of
sentiment and taste.

Political Philosophy – is the study of concepts such as liberty, justice, property,

rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why (or
even if) they are needed, what makes a government legitimate, what rights and
freedoms it should protect and why, what form it should take and why, what the law
is, and what duties citizens owe to a legitimate government, if any, and when it may
be legitimately overthrown, if ever. Three central concerns of political philosophy
have been the political economy by which property rights are defined and access to
capital is regulated, the demands of justice in distribution and punishment, and the
rules of truth and evidence that determine judgments in the law.