Philosophy: A Quick Overview Of The Fundamentals And Ideas

Fundamentals of philosophy
When we read or hear the word philosophy, the first thing that comes to mind is a stereotypical image of Socrates: a balding old man with a gray beard who sits on the steps of an ancient Greek building leading boring discussions of, well, philosophy.
But in reality, we are all philosophers. Every day we think about our lives, life in general, and the principles that guide our lives. The literal meaning of philosophy is the “love of wisdom” or “thinking about thinking”, but in practical terms we engage in philosophy when we discuss politics, religion, our jobs, family, and our lives as a whole.
Philosophy is broken down into a few different fields of study: The discipline concerned with questions of how one should live (ethics); what sorts of things exist and what are their essential natures (metaphysics); what counts as genuine knowledge (epistemology); what are the correct principles of reasoning (logic); what can life be like, or the study of art (Aesthetics); and the study of “force”, or what actions are permissible (politics).
As used by the ancient Greeks, the term "philosophy" meant the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, and comprised all areas of speculative thought, including the arts, sciences and religion.
Philosophy the power of ideas
For those not directly involved in the realm of philosophy, it is very hard to understand why anyone would want to devote his life to it. Many see philosophers as dreamy recluses confined within their own abstruse world of seemingly futile and impractical reasoning.
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are just marble busts pictured in history books, people from an ancient, faraway world totally detached from ours. However, in reality, philosophy touches every facet of every person, every hour of every day.
Far from being exclusive to Augustines and the Kants of this world, philosophy is something to be shared by all thinking human beings. Unlike other animals, humans are of a nature to ask questions about everything around him and seek answers to them. This eternal quest for knowledge is what philosophy is all about. Indeed, the word philosophy itself comes from the Greek words philia, which means love, and sophia, which means wisdom. Philosophy, love of wisdom, is fundamental to our humanity.
Today, philosophy is very different from the sciences, yet it is not uncommon for the names of philosophers such as Aristotle to crop up in readings about the history of these sciences. That is because during their time, philosophy was about everything that could possibly be studied by man. Sciences such as physics had even been known as natural philosophy. Philosophical thinkers then tried to know all they could about the structure of nature, the world, and the universe.
From this were born the modern sciences of physics, astronomy, and astrophysics. Other philosophers of the time studied human nature, body, mind, health, disease, pain, pleasure, and society. These studies gave rise to the fields of biology, medicine, psychology, sociology, political science, and economics. As a body of concrete information is formed for a certain field of inquiry, it becomes a science and is completely distinguished from philosophy. Nowadays, philosophy aims to answer those questions left unanswered by science, and to evaluate the facts generated by it. Yet there still remains the fact that the sciences we have today had sprung from the well of philosophy.
Fundamentals of philosophy
Each of us is touched by philosophy. Our ideas on things are our philosophies. A broad meaning of philosophy is our set of views and beliefs. That is “having a philosophy.” Having is different from doing, however. “Doing philosophy” is reflecting and criticizing our most deeply held conceptions and beliefs. In thinking philosophically one should be critical, probing, free from prejudice, and open to both sides of an issue.