Topics Philosophy

Question What makes a person a Philosopher? I have to write a paper asking any Philosopher in history, dead or alive, two questions. I'm just curious as to what a Philosopher is. Is it a self-proclaimed title? Do you have to go to school and get a degree? Can I just find any random person who claims to be a Philosopher and assume they know what they are talking about? What about Jesus? Does he count?

Accepted:
April 19, 2007

Comments

Easier asked than answered. Philosophers are people who do philosophy, and so your question really amounts to what philosophy is. The problem is that what philosophy is is itself a philosophical question. Many grand disputes in the history of philosophy can be viewed as conflicts over how to proceed in philosophy, over what the rules of the game are, over what philosophy's method and central problems ought to be. So, I suppose one "definition" of philosophy might simply be the discipline which takes as its subject its own nature.

Of course, that has a circular whiff about that as well. Philosophy is a little like pornography: hard to define, but one knows it when one sees it.

But really, most concepts are like pornography in that respect: there's pretty widespread agreement about how they apply, but little hope of working out independently intelligible definitions. That fact itself is something of great philosophical interest. But don't ask me to define precisely what I mean by "philosophical"!