Phil 179S: Thinking Through Democracy

What Is Philosophy?

The Greek word 'philosophy' means literally the "love of wisdom" --- 'philo' being one of three Greek words for "love" and 'sophia' being the word for "wisdom. The word 'philo' means "familial love" as opposed, say, to erotic love ('eros'). Hence, the relationship with wisdom is meant to be developed over a long term as are family ties. Its modes of expression are subtle, being organized around consistency and support as opposed to the passions.

The word 'wisdom' is not a commonly used word in our society so we need to make some effort to locate its meaning. Plato considered a spectrum of dispositions running from opinion to justified belief to knowledge, and finally, to wisdom. Generally, opinions are reached more-or-less spontaneously and we can't particularly defend or clarify them. Justified beliefs, on the other hand, allow for amplification and defense; we can bring forward reasons. Knowledge is certainly based on whatever we can directly experience, though we tend, today, to confuse knowledge and justified belief. But what is wisdom?

While Plato and Aristotle did not agree on the basis of wisdom, they clearly did agree that wisdom is acquired with age and that it transcends mere knowledge about the objects surrounding us in the perceived world. Without stretching the issue too far, I also think it can be said that they agreed that wisdom, in the end, is fundamentally moral. It is not surprising, then, that contrasting wisdom with knowledge usually finds our examples of wisdom on the side of suggesting how something should be dealt with best. Consider a simple example. The courses in a particular department have been scheduled at specific times and in particular places. There is much in this matter that we can know or at least have justified belief about. We can know the scheduled times and places by reading in the official course schedule; and we can believe that the chair of the department got the assignments to the Registrar of the college on time so that they could be included in the schedule. On the other hand, whether or not the department has acted wisely in making these choices transcends the facts of the matter and requires deeper consideration of many issues. It should be clear, in saying this, that "acting wisely" means acting for the best.

How can we ever know what "acting for the best" is in a given situation? If we carry the example, above, a little further, we can get some ideas. The selection of a particular time for a class might preclude students from taking it. The selection of a particular room might exclude numbers of students wanting to take it, might exclude the possibility of using audio-visual materials, or might not be suitable to the atmosphere of this class. The character of studies involved might not be appropriate to an early morning time when students and faculty are just getting started. These are just a few of the factors, but we can already see that acting wisely requires us to examine specific choices in much wider contexts. Most of this examination brings us to other matters of knowledge and belief; thus, wisdom is not something fundamentally different from knowledge and belief. Wisdom is the way we put knowledge and belief together into ever wider contexts of action in order to reach the best choices.

Philosophy, therefore, is never content with merely knowing the status quo of something and it is always posing questions about how something may develop toward the best. When we consider the case of government, for instance, philosophy is never content to remain at the position of merely acknowledging "the way things are" but rather questions a wide variety of issues related to how government might be arranged for the best.

Updated on January 19, 2006; click here to return to My HomePage or here to return to Course Index Page.