The Philosophical Method

When I mention to people that I’m a student and they ask me what I study, I find that the answer (“philosophy”) tends to produce one of three reactions. The first is a blank stare, sometimes accompanied by a nodding of the head, and followed a rapid attempt to change the conversation to something that the questioner actually knows something about (rather like what happens when someone asks you how you are and you actually tell them, rather than responding with the customary “Fine thanks, how are you?”). The second is a kind of derisory snort, as if to say “Yeah right, what use is that?”. The third and by far the most disturbing response is when the silent question mark spreading across the questioner’s face belies the fact that they have absolutely no idea what philosophy is, as distinct from say, psychology, or a vague kind of wondering about the world, such as one might undertake whilst sitting in the bath, staring into the night sky, or chatting with friends about the meaning of life and other ‘deep questions’ after a few too many beers. Even worse are those rare occasionally when the person actually asks the question that so obviously crosses their mind: “Just what is philosophy exactly?”. It is a question that I have come to dread, for having started out with a relatively clear idea of what philosophy is all about, and studying the subject at University for what seems like forever, I find myself at a loss to offer a satisfactory or even partially comprehensive answer to this apparently simple question. To make matters worse, the more I study philosophy, the less I am convinced that I know what it is, let alone what it is for — although that is an entirely different question. At the same time, I seem to have little difficulty in separating philosophy from non-philosophy, so there must be some criteria for what differentiates the two. It is all slightly embarrassing. I mean, scientists, historians, musicians and dentists don’t seem to have this trouble, so why should philosophers?

So, what is philosophy? Well, the first thing to note is that the question is itself a philosophical one. Not only that, but it is typical of philosophical questions in that it asks for some kind of definition, essence or criteria for what constitutes something being a particular kind of thing — in this case, ‘philosophy’. Whilst it is certainly true that philosophers are often asking questions of the form ‘What is x?’, where ‘x’ is a concept word, such as ‘language’, ‘knowledge’, ‘art’, and so on, but it is this what defines the discipline? Is philosophy basically a matter of enquiring after the meaning of certain words; an investigation into the essence of concepts? Well, such analysis is undoubtedly part of the story, but such questions also fall into the domain of empirical linguistics. Plus, there are many forms of philosophy enquiry — logic and ethics, to take just two examples — that don’t easily fit into this mould. Perhaps logic could, with some stretch of the imagination, be considered the study of the meaning of the concept of ‘truth’, and ethics an analysis of ‘the good’ (in the sense that Plato intended), to characterise them in this way seems to distort, rather than faithfully capture, their nature. So, whilst ‘What is philosophy?’ is a distinctly philosophical question, it is perhaps less of a model for what makes something philosophical and more of an illustration of one of its techniques, i.e. definition or conceptual analysis for the purpose of accuracy and concision.

So, if ‘What is x?’ is one examples of a philosophical technique then there must be others. Is philosophy perhaps a methodology; a collection of such techniques along with some rules for their application that may be used to gain knowledge and insight into the human condition — a toolbox, if you will, for the pursuit of truth and wisdom? Such a characterisation would fit in well with other disciplines. The scientist experiments and observes; the engineer designs and constructs; the artist expresses and creates; the philosopher thinks and reflects. Does the idea of a methodology not capture what philosophy is all about? Whilst it’s true that philosophers do think and reflect, perhaps more than most, so do all of the above professions. If we make thinking the exclusive province of the philosopher, then this would make us all philosophers (and, it might be argued, perhaps all the better for it).

Philosophy as a Historically Determinate Form of Thought

If thinking is too broad a term to capture the unique nature of philosophical enquiry, then perhaps we need to narrow the scope of our enquiry. The name and practice of philosophy originates with the Ancient Greeks, who were the first (so far as I’m aware) to consider it to be a separate discipline from, say, mathematical or practical reasoning. This is not to say that other civilisations, before and since, did not seek answers to similar questions or insights into the nature of the world, but prior to the Greeks, nobody had separated this off into a distinct discipline or activity in quite the same way as, for example, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, did. By comparison, the Buddhist tradition, which predates the ‘Golden Age’ of Greece by some ??? years, can only be called a philosophy in so far as one can extract a philosophy from it. It would be more accurate to describe it as an integrated form of life that contains philosophical, practical and spiritual elements within it, enmeshed to form a single coherent whole. Philosophy, on the other hand, is very much a distinct activity or enquiry that can be pursued alongside one’s everyday life without requiring acceptance of any particular tenets or beliefs. (Of course, most philosophers would profess a commitment to the logic and reason as a source of legitimacy underpinning their enquiries but, as discussed above, this can hardly be considered unique to philosophy, and is, in any case, not beyond philosophical scrutiny — Hegel, for example, considered logic to be a self-generating property of the universe.)

Based on the above evidence, perhaps it would be appropriate to characterise philosophy as a historically determinate form of thought; part of a tradition stretching back to Ancient Greece and beyond, and one that we participate in or emulate when we ‘do philosophy’. This may be true, but surely we could still do philosophy even if the Ancient Greeks had never existed? If all philosophical knowledge was lost — ‘consigned to the flames’, as Hume rather dramatically put it — and humanity had to start over again, then wouldn’t these particular questions and activities still constitute philosophy, regardless of whether they were called or recognised as such? Isn’t philosophy, to put it in a nutshell, more a matter of content and technique than some kind of historically constituted tradition, like the monarchy, cricket, and Morris dancing?

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