Philosophy of __________;

__________ of Philosophers

"Know Thyself" "The unexamined life is not worth living." -- Socrates [I don't think this is to be taken as meaning that a life without psychoanalysis (or depth analysis) is not worth living; rather what he meant is that a life without rational discussion is not worth living. Andrew Chrucky]

Introduction

If you look at the back cover of any of the books in the Prentice-Hall's Foundations of Philosophy Series, you will notice that the majority of the titles have the form "Philosophy of ________", with the blank filled in with some suitable word; for example, Philosophy of Religion.

In fact, you can fill the blank by the names of the various departments of knowledge (or names of departments in the arts and sciences at universities). Sciences (in a broad sense) can be divided into the a priori (non-empirical) and the a posteriori (empirical) sciences. The a priori sciences include logic and mathematics; the a posteriori sciences include the subcategories of the natural and the social sciences.

However, from a general perspective, the problems of philosophy fall into three areas:

(1) What exists? (Metaphysics, Ontology)

(2) How do I know? (Logic, Methodology, Epistemology)

(3) What is valuable? (Axiology, Ethics, Aesthetics, Praxiology)

From a still different perspective -- suggested by Curt Ducasse, all areas of philosophy deal with values; so that philosophy is best characterized as composed of normative studies.

By a suitable rephrasing, these divisions of philosophy could be made to fit the "philosophy of _______" schema. For example, metaphysics would become "philosophy of being"; epistemology, "philosophy of knowing"; ethics, "philosophy of doing."

Interesting as such a classification is, let us, for the sake of experiment, try to reverse the terms in the general formula to "_________ of Philosophy"; e.g. Religion of Philosophy. Well, as this example illustrates, this is an incoherent combination. Philosophy is a study and cannot have a religion, only people can have religions. So the formula should be altered to "Religion of Philosophers." The reason why the word "philosophy" has to be replaced with "philosophers" is as follows. Philosophy, as a normative endeavor, is interested in critically examining the propositions of religions; whereas to speak of a religion is to speak about the propositions which are in fact held by a person or groups of people. So, philosophy, as a normative undertaking, is interested in actual and possible propositions in an area of inquiry, such as, religion; but to speak of a religion, for example, is prima facie to speak about the actual religious beliefs of a person or persons. And since this is true for the other things that can fill the blank is "philosophy of _____", it is more to the point to speak of the ______ of a philosopher or of a group of philosophers, rather than the "________ of philosophy."