What is Philosophy? The Open Question

Someone who has different views about the subject matter of a particular science is simply not engaged in that particular field. And although there is methodological debate during scientific revolutions, someone with radically deviant methods, who for example totally disregards observation and experiment in favour of aesthetic considerations, simply ceases to be a scientist. In contrast, disparate intellectual activities, tackling different problems by incompatible methods and with different aims are still called philosophy. There are, for example, philosophers who would maintain that philosophy should strive neither for knowledge nor cogency or argument but for beauty and spiritual inspiration.

– Hans-Johann Glock, What is Analytic Philosophy? (2008), p.7

Long time readers of this blog will no doubt be aware that I’m intrigued by the question, ‘What is Philosophy?’ A brief glance over to the subject list will show that the ‘metaphilosophy’ cloud looms large over its little portion of the sidebar. I think the reason why this question is so interesting to me is that if we are going to delineate philosophy from theology and then have a theory about why the former is of value (a project I am quite interested in), then we ought to have some kind of conception of what philosophy is.

The remark above from Glock is the right first step to take. The question, ‘What is Philosophy?’ is an open one, because philosophy seems to have the unique characteristic of academic disciplines in having surprisingly large and porous borders – there is much more activity which passes for philosophy, then there is which passes for astronomy or medical research. Philosophy, somehow, is able to traverse an enormous ground of subject matter (mind, matter, medicine, morals, meaning, just to mention the ‘m”s) and deploy extremely different conceptual instruments to get its work done.