UNDERSTANDING THE NATURE

OF

PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY
What is Philosophy?
By: Quentin
Lauer
It has become and modern times relatively easy to define prior to the
scientific investigation proper.
HOWEVER…

• We cannot define what is philosophy before doing it.

• Is itself a philosophical task, and so is understanding what

is it is.

• It is only in philosophizing that one could learn what

philosophizing is;

to define philosophy is to do it; to find out what it is that

doing.
• To define philosophy is to do it harm that is not
done to other disciplines when they are defined.

Philosophy is essentially a dynamic process; and to attempt to

define it is to stop the process.
By this criterion, then,

Philosophy is not so much of a discipline, or body

of knowledge; it is rather an attitude which human beings
bring with them in trying to come to terms with the reality in
the midst of which they live.

This attitude we might call as determination to know reality.

By this standard, then,

Philosophy is not a discipline, a method or body

of knowledge. It is more like a way of life, an attitude that
human beings bring with them in approaching reality – both
the reality they themselves are and the reality in the midst
of which they live.

Rather, it is a habit of responsible thinking in the situations

life presents.
• Thinking affects the very way we experience.

• Thinking not only interprets experience; it

gradually teaches us how to experience and
learning how to experience is a complex process.
INSIGHT
By: Roque
Ferriols
 A crucial element in thinking is INSIGHT.

a kind of seeing with the mind.

Two things to be considered with regard to an

insight:

A. The insight itself

B. What I do with the insight

The metaphor sharpens
the insight and fixes it in
the mind.
We abstract when we concentrate on
one aspect of a thing while
prescinding from its other aspects.
We prescind when we
neither affirm or deny,
we merely disregard.
Abstraction is one of the tools often used in the
analysis of insight.

an abstract thought is called

CONCEPT
an analysis by abstraction is called
CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS