Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Method or/and Mission of Philosophy


The purpose of philosophical enquiry is to pursue and understand life and life situations. As such, it stems from the experience with/in the world. Further, it attempts to understand the fundamental and most significant human activities by inquiring into their very nature and essence. Thus, philosophy is an activity that aims at understanding the principles that lie behind various aspects of life. It is then, a human task and responsibility. It develops in each age ideas and values, based on the preceding age, sometimes by way of rejection and change, and sometimes by conformity and development.  The philosophies and philosophers of every age consider the problems that are important and relevant to human being directly or indirectly by taking a critical approach towards reality. It is in this framework, every age has produced a philosophy and a philosopher that is relevant to the age: Ancient philosophers started their quest for discovering the cause for the origin of the universe, medieval philosophers turned their attention to God, the modern philosopher focused on reason and human person and contemporary philosophers paid attention to the Self.

            The Question that struck me was, Do we need a method to Philosophize? Is it possible to do philosophy spontaneously without any method? It is no doubt that arriving at philosophy through a particular and specific method will make philosophy rich and handy. Hence, through a method, philosophy can be made contextual. According to me the task of philosophy does not end here.

            But, going a step further, as a budding philosopher I believe that my concern should be how to influence the lives of the other with the particular philosophy. In other words, philosophy is a mission to be taken to the people who do not value philosophy although they are bound by particular philosophies. 

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