RE: What "is" a Philosopher? And do We Really Need Them?
Great post! One of my main interests in the steemit community is the platform which I think it provides for philosophy; sort of the ultimate modern day square of Athens! I studied philosophy in college and grew disillusioned in the end because of I felt it became more about the dogma of "who said what" than anything else.
I think we generally use the term philosopher to define someone who is able to make a living out of the study of philosophy, however personally, I would say that a philosopher is anybody that asks and contemplates the larger questions there are in life and discusses it with others.
Really anybody who pursues knowledge, in whatever field, is a sort of philosopher (hence the use of PHD 'Doctor of Philosophy' in all different subjects). While that may seem sort of silly now, the advancements of the sciences really developed from the very philosophical questions of why and how.
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 . . .
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?