What is Philosophy?

Philosophy, broadly speaking, is the seeking of knowledge, in so much as people ask questions and expect answers. Indeed, all the sciences are the descendants of philosophy, and I do sometimes refer to scientists as "natural philosophers" when I feel the need to point this out.

Nevertheless, philosophy proper is not a science. Scientists ask empirical questions for which there exists a method for determining the answers to those questions. This is not to say, however, that a scientist cannot philosophize, or that philosophizing is unhelpful to science. On the contrary, Albert Einstein did quite a bit of philosophizing in order to come up with the basic tenets of Special Relativity. Nor am I saying that philosophers do not have their methods, for they do, but not anything so cut-and-dried as the scientific method. Science also tends to create fodder for philosophy. Philosophers philosophize about the meanings of certain scientific discoveries and the paradigms of science.

Neither is philosophy a religion, although religion deals with many of the same questions as philosophy. Religions tend to simply state answers to these types of questions, and a real philosopher would never do that. But like science, philosophy and religion are often intertwined, and many philosophers concern themselves with questions about religion, and many religions were built upon philosophical thought.

So philosophy is neither science nor religion. It lacks a method for obtaining answers, but neither does it pretend pull answers from thin air. Philosophers have been struggling with certain questions for millennia, and are no closer to having answers. Quite the opposite, as philosophizing about these questions has brought up innumerable other questions for which we have no answers. Nevertheless, what we gain from philosophy is far greater than mere answers to questions.

Now metaphysicians and analytic philosophers (among others) are quite sure to disagree with what I am saying. And that is just as well, for I have abandoned both. What is gained, really gained, from philosophy is a greater understanding, of how misguided our questions are sometimes, of how great our misconceptions are sometimes, of how awe-inspiring this world is sometimes, etc. And that is nothing short of wisdom, for philosophy truly is, or at least is motivated by, the "love of wisdom".