What is Philosophy?

adequate theory of human reality is difficult to come by. This is why there have not been many who are able to dictate the course of theoretical thought for hundreds of years. And if history is any guide, even these must in the end also come to grief. <b>

        Looking back, it must be said that failure notwithstanding, the dominant philosophy of an era is representative of the metaphysical mentality of its time. It incorporates what the era deems to be matters of fact as well as what it does not really know. For this reason, evaluation of the past should always be accompanied by an appreciation for its knowledge and conceptual constraints. No generation should fall prey to the illusion that it has theorized or philosophized any better than its predecessors. Criticism from the benefit of hindsight alone is cheap. It is important to know where they were right and why they were right. It is just as important to understand where they had erred and why they had erred. What was it that made people reasoned the way they did? Given what they then knew and the conceptual bias they had, could they have thought otherwise? How could their theories be improved upon in the light of what we now know? To answer such questions is the basic function of philosophy. <b>

        As understood by its ancient practitioners, philosophy means the love of wisdom. It is not only the desire to know what is the case and how it is the case. It is also the desire to understand what is not the case, and why it could not possibly be the case. The former leads to knowledge, the latter to wisdom. A non-reflective life, as Socrates once said, is not worth

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