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Articles

What Is This Thing Called Philosophy?

Bob Fitter asks what we are all doing, exactly.

Students of philosophy tend not to be as compliant as those unfortunate citizens of Athens who happened upon Socrates in one of his troublesome moods. (Yes Socrates, No Socrates, You’re right there Socrates). They not only ask questions like “What is philosophy?”, they expect an answer. Philosophers are expected to tackle a simple question from simple folk and provide a simple answer. Admittedly the question, the folk and the answer turn out to be not that simple, but philosophers will go to almost any lengths to avoid answering this particular question.

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