INTRODUCTION

THIS PAGE is a consolidation of the greatest questions man has ever asked. Ranging from ancient philosophers to contemporary politicians, the focus is to distil the intricate ideas of humanity’s most influential thinkers into a better understood and easily digestible narrative. It will span both Eastern and Western traditions.

The word “philosophy” like so much else in Western philosophy, is Greek in origin: the original word philosophia means “love of wisdom”, but while that might be a nice description of the subject, it doesn’t tell us much about what it actually is.

Perhaps it is best to think of philosophy as being “what philosophers do” – an activity, rather than a study – which is to use the human capacity for rational thought to pose and attempt to answer fundamental questions about the universe and our place in it. This may be a broad definition of a very broad subject, but it is a useful way to distinguish philosophy from other ways in which we try to make sense of the world we live in. At its heart, philosophy is thinking: thinking about why things are the way they are, how best we should live our lives, how we can be certain about what we know, and what meaning, if any, there is to our existence. The same questions are asked by religion and science, but while religion gives answers based on faith or belief, philosophy uses reasoning, and where science provides description, philosophy seeks explanation.

Philosophy as an academic subject studies the ideas of the great thinkers, and it is these that will dominate this page, but it is also something that almost everybody indulges in: we all spend some of our time wondering about the same questions addressed by the great philosophers through discussion or debate. Often, we will disagree, and just as often, we will find no definite answers – philosophers, too, have widely differing opinions, and frequently come up with more questions than answers. But throughout history philosophers have provided us with different ways of looking at these questions, and by understanding their thought processes we can learn how to organise our thoughts and arguments.