True philosophy comes from daily thought and analysis of everything around us. There is no general agreement among philosophers on any of these answers, though. You should also spend time thinking about big, unanswerable questions, like what it means to live and what the point of existence is. The activity of the older man provided the starting point of Plato’s philosophizing. Plato did not have children, and it is assumed based on textual evidence that he never married. A notable artifact of the work of translators and scholars is a device of selective capitalization sometimes employed in English. Plato’s birth occurred near the end of the Golden Age of Athens, and he grew up during the Peloponnesian War. political science or sociology), the arts, and even the physical sciences (e.g. Still others do not use capital letters for any such purpose. (Indeed, the painting may be said to represent this continuity by showing the two men conversing amicably.) The quest for greater truths means that you will need to employ trial and error in your life (the successive approximations to those greater truths), and this means you may have the occasional pratfall. Plato’s emphasis on the ideal, and Aristotle’s on the worldly, informs Raphael’s depiction of the two philosophers in the School of Athens (1508–11). Rather, the philosopher is one who engages actively in critical thought about big questions that have no obvious answers. The word "philosophy" means a love of wisdom. Try another answer... Not necessarily! To create this article, 79 people, some anonymous, worked to edit and improve it over time. Yes because you will take your time and read texts slowly. Despite the seemingly abstract nature of the questions philosophers ask, the tools philosophy teaches tend to be highly sought-after by employers. Do humans praise beauty because it gives pleasure? The great Plato translation by Benjamin Jowett (1817–93), for example, was not intended as a tool of scholarship; anyone who would undertake such a study already knew ancient Greek. Paleontology combines geology and biology in the study of dinosaurs and other ancient life forms. Choose another answer! Examples include U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, U.S. Rep John Lewis and U.S. Supreme Court justices Stephen Breyer and David Souter. X This type of degree is geared toward individuals who not only have a knack for analyzing arguments and assessing their validity, but also possess the creativity and insight necessary to elevate a theoretical discussion about big ideas. Since the latter wrote nothing, what is known of his characteristic activity of engaging his fellow citizens (and the occasional itinerant celebrity) in conversation derives wholly from the writings of others, most notably Plato himself. A few of the philosophers report that the dim view of private industry inside academia can stifle an exploration of what else might be out there. Your College Major Does Not Define Your Career. In any case, the Academy did not impose a dogmatic orthodoxy and in fact seems to have fostered a spirit of independent inquiry; at a later time it took on a skeptical orientation. Plato was born in 428/427 BCE to a noble family and died in 348/347 BCE. Thus, the preparation of an edition of Plato’s works involves an enormous interpretive component. I'm an art student right now because I thought that was my passion, but lately I have an interest in philosophy. Philosophers often give and attend talks where ideas are presented, like works in progress or recently published papers, and they go to conferences on topics where lots of people present works in progress and talk things over with each other. His brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus are portrayed as interlocutors in Plato’s masterpiece the Republic, and his half brother Antiphon figures in the Parmenides. The true power of philosophy lies in the continuity of thought that you'll be maintaining in your writing. Philosophers do philosophy, which encompasses many things but definitely not the study of the norms in societies and so on. I am very happy for reading your article and expect to get more. The average application fee among these 62 schools is about $78, U.S. News data shows. Nevertheless, some philosophers have tried to establish criteria for what makes something academic philosophy, like "philosophy is whatever can be discovered without doing any experiments or other investigation into the world" - that is, you could sit in an armchair and discover all of academic philosophy if you thought hard enough - or "philosophy is the field that lays the foundations of science" or "philosophy is the most basic kind of inquiry."