Let’s start off this post with a broad definition of philosophy. At its core philosophy literally means

“The Love of Wisdom”.

In its broadest sense it is an activity people undertake when they seek to understand fundamental truths about themselves, and the world in which they live. That seems to be at the core of RJsCorner, so maybe I am a philosopher? 😎 I certainly don’t have a degree in philosophy but, I don’t have a degree in software development but came to be fairly well recognized in that field during my time in the corporate world.

I have always been grounded in the love of wisdom and have spent much of my lifetime trying to understand truth as it pertains to my world. I have no idea what my particular field of philosophy might be, but I know there are literally hundreds of specialities around today. I don’t get bogged down in all that, I am too busy looking at all the mysteries of life to be concerned about classifying what school they might belong.

Less than 0.5% of college degrees annually are for philosophy, but that is still about 7,500 people. Many of those go on to careers as legal professionals, public administrators, and medical ethics experts. We still need philosophers today to grapple with the ethics of life that our rapidly advancing technology presents . Philosophy graduates are thriving in many career sectors.

To me, philosophy is more a way of thinking about the world, and maybe trying to figure out how we can survive our differences without destroying each other. It’s about getting people to think for themselves and to always question everything. At least that is what makes me a pretty serious armchair philosopher.

Perhaps my philosophy discipline is the “philosophy of philosophy”. I simply love to try to understand all the great minds in the field and why they believed as they did. It starts with Socrates and goes on to future writers of the 21st century. But I have chosen only a handful to follow to any degree, and I will be discussing them in this special project.

Unless you are serious about this subject, I don’t recommend that you delve into the field yourself. To me, about 95% of what is written on this subject is simply incomprehensible. One of my recent heroes in philosophy is Bertrand Russell. He became an authority in so many areas that I don’t care to know about, for instance the “philosophy of mathematics”. He was a very broad thinker! I will be telling you more about him in coming posts.

In closing this post, my goal for this series is to get you to think about the serious questions of life to make your understanding of the world a little broader and possibly a little happier. That is a big task, I know, but I kinda think I am up to it.

Question Everything, Think For Yourself, and Never Stop Learning