In Chapter Two of Philosophy For Dummies, author/professor Tom Morris quotes Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951): "Philosophy is not a theory, but an activity." Writes Morris,
Philosophy at its best is an activity more than a body of knowledge. In an ancient sense, done right, it is a healing art. It's intellectual self-defense. It's a form of therapy. But its also much more. Philosophy is map-making for the soul, cartography for the human journey. It's an important navigational tool for life that too many modern people try to do without. (Pg. 21)
Continues the author
Consulting the great thinkers of the past, as we draw our own maps for the present and future, is like stopping to ask a cabbie or a cop for directions, rather than just wandering around lost. (Pg. 22)
This analogy caught my attention because, seven christmases ago, Miss Mychael Inagaki-my Central YMCA girlfriend-gave me a sticker that I pasted at home, that reads "NOT ALL WHO WANDER ARE LOST." Its source is JRR Tolkien, writer of The Hobbit.
At the time, I was shaping my identity as Undercover/Rogue Messiah, guided in large part by the songs I heard on the radio.*L* One such song was an "oldie"- The Wanderer, by Dion, which celebrates the vagabond path of a rebel protagonist.^L^ Given my homebody ways (sometimes many days pass before I'll venture out into the world), I felt a bit hypocritical attaching to this song, but I guess it's not the physical world where I wander, but the metaphysical (that part of philosophy concerned with the study of the ultimate causes and the underlying nature of things).
In this manuscript, I shall interweave my self-perception as Rogue Messiah within a general overview of the study of philosophy, exploring ontology (study of being), epistemology (study of knowing), and ethics (study of proper behavior).
Even though you can think about these three different subjects...seperately, they all work together to make philosophy what it is. Different philosophies place different emphasis on these subjects. Most philosophers do their work by expanding on what they already think they know. Different philosophers identify different places to start- different foundational ideas on which to build their their thinking.(Idiots, pg. 7)*L*
I shall start off with the epistemology embedded in some of the "tools for the wisdom quest," that is, belief, truth, and knowledge.
" Self-knowledge is observation of your actions and knowing the right thing to do at any given moment."
Menander
As I have pointed out, my writing uses the work of other authors as the framework. I figure that this has given my manuscript its backbone strength. ^L^
ReplyDeleteAs far as reading "Philosophy for Dummies" as one of these works goes, hell, I only got a C- in Philosophy 100 thirty years ago, so that was a good starting point, I figure.