Every man has a hobby. Some collect coins or stamps, others love handicrafts, others devote almost all of their spare time to some sport. But is there anything that should interest us all? Is there something that affects all people - no matter who they are or where they live? Yes, there are questions that should be addressed by all of us. What is the most important thing in life? If we ask a person from a country where hunger is, the answer will be - the food. We ask the same question to the one who is freezing, he will answer: the heat. Suppose all needs are satisfied - is there anything that people need? According to the philosophers - there is. They believe that man does not live only by bread. True, all people have to eat. Everyone needs love and care. But there is something else. We, people, feel the need to know who we are and why we live.

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In this sense, to be interested in why you live is not to the same extent a "casual" interest, such as the collection of brands. If you're excited about such questions, you're dealing with something that people have been arguing since we've been living on this planet. How the cosmos, the globe and life have arisen is an incomparably bigger and more important issue than who has won the most gold medals at the last Olympics. The best approach to philosophy is to ask philosophical questions: How is the world created? Is there a will or sense in what is happening? Is there life after death? How can we even find the answers to these questions? And most importantly: how do we live? In all ages, people have asked similar questions. We do not know a culture that has not stirred up questions about who people are or where the world originates. In fact, philosophical questions are not that many. We have already asked some of the most important. But history gives us very different answers to each individual question. So it's easier to ask philosophical questions than to answer them. To this day, everyone has to find their own personal answers to these questions. We can not refer to the encyclopedia of the existence of God and of life after death. The Encyclopedia will not advise us how to live. However, the thoughts of other people help us to shape our vision of life and the world. The hunting of the truth that the philosophers have taken is like a criminal story. Some think the killer is Peter , others point to Max. Some day the police may even uncover the crime. It is possible, however, never to unravel the secret. But the puzzle has a solution.

Therefore - even if it is difficult to answer a question - it is quite possible that it has one and only one correct answer. Or there is some existence after death or not. Meanwhile, science has solved many ancient puzzles. One of the biggest was the reverse side of the moon. The answer could not be found in a dispute, but it depended on the imagination of every person. Today, however, we know exactly what the reverse side of this planet looks like. And we can no longer "believe" that there lives a man or that it is made of cheese. One of the ancient Greek Philosophers who lived more than two millennia ago believed that people had created philosophy because they were astonished. Man finds life so strange that philosophical questions arise by itself, he thought. The ability to be surprised is the only thing we need to be good philosophers. It is clear that all young children without exception have this ability. In just a few months, babies find themselves in a completely unknown setting. But with age this ability seems to hurt. What explains this? Obviously, while our childhood lasts, we are gradually losing the ability to surprise the world. But we lose something important that philosophers want to revive. Because the thing inside us tells us that life is a big mystery. We have experienced this much before we think it. I specify: although the answers to philosophical questions affect every person, not all people become philosophers. For various reasons, the day-to-day affair of most of them, that the astonishment of life is pushed in some dark corner. For children, the world and everything in it is new, unfamiliar and astonishing. Not all adults react, however - for most of them, the world is normal. It is in this respect that philosophers are a worthy exception. The philosopher would never allow himself to get used to the world. Therefore, philosophers and little children have something in common - throughout their lives, the philosopher retains the receptiveness of the little child.

The mythological notion of the world

Philosophy originated in Greece around 600 BC. as a whole new way of thinking. Until then, only the different religions have responded to all of the people's questions, and these religious explanations have been passed down from generation to generation through myths. Myth is a story of deities that should explain why life is as it is. Over the millennia, a wild thicket of mythological explanations has evoked all over the world in response to philosophical questions. Greek philosophers have tried to show that people should not rely on them. In order to get into the thinking of the first philosophers, we need to realize what it means to have a mythological view of the world. All over the world, there are mythological notions about how the gods were created, how they then created people, and how each phenomenon has an explanation of the actions of this or that god. When the first philosophies arose, the ancient Greeks also had their myths about the world. For centuries every generation told the next about the deities. In Greece they were called Zeus and Apollo, Dionysius and Asclepius, Heracles, and Hephaestus. About 700 years before the new era, Homer and Hesiod recorded and created much of the treasure trove of the ancient Greek myths. A completely new situation - as soon as the myths were recorded, it became possible to challenge them. The first Greek philosophers criticized the Homeric traditions of the gods, because these gods reminded people very much. Indeed, they are selfish and inconsistent like us. For the first time in history, the assumption was that myths may be nothing more than human inventions.

An example of criticism of myths is found in the philosopher Xenophan, born around 540 BC. People, he says, created the gods in their own image and likeness but the mortals believe that the gods are born and have garments, voices, and always like them ... Ethiopians present their gods black and flattened noses, and the Thracians - blue-eyed and red-haired ... If the cows, horses, or lions had their hands and they were able to create with them like humans, the horses would have the horse-drawn, the cow-cows, and the lions - lions idols, and they would create images just like theirs. During this time the Greeks founded many cities in Greece and their colonies in southern Italy and Asia Minor. Here slaves did the hard work, and free citizens devoted themselves to politics and culture. Under such conditions of life, people's thinking made a leap: the individual could already ask his head how to organize society. In this way, the individual has the opportunity to ask philosophical questions without helping with the oral myths. We say that in that era a transition from the mythological way of thinking to thinking based on experience and reason was made. The aim of the first Greek philosophers was to find natural explanations for the processes of nature, in other words, in nature.