You are viewing a single comment's thread from:

RE: What "is" a Philosopher? And do We Really Need Them?

in #philosophy7 years ago

Thanks shadow. And I agree, what drew me to steemit was the format for doing just what you suggest; the public square. What worries me, however, is how philosophy has come to mean "mere opinion" to many people; and that just does not seem right? Which is why I suppose Plato wanted to talk about the difference between knowledge and opinion. I teach Intro every year, and at the end of the course we are still asking that question. Round and round we go . . .

Sort:  

Ultimately I think we are confined to the subjective nature of the human condition. You may make an objective claim, and you may be right, but you can never be certain of it, let alone prove it to another. That's why there are so many differing philosophies, opinions, religions, etc.

So I should point out that grammatically there has never been a plural form of philosophy, until quite recently. Philosophia cannot be plural in attic Greek, its origin, as the love of wisdom always already embodied the goddess of wisdom; Sophia. Sophia cannot be plural, i.e., there is only one Sophia.

This carried over into Latin as well, and even as philosophy was divorced from the belief in the goddess per se, the idea that wisdom is "one" remained well into the rise of Existentialism. As early as the late 90's/turn of the Century, most spell checks would not allow for the term philosophies, it would be flagged as misspelled; something I see the spell check here does not do. There ya have it. Still, what happened? When did the goddess get torn asunder?