When the child was a child, it was the time of these questions:
Why am I me, and why not you? Why am I here and why not
there? When did time begin, and where does space end? Isn’t life
under the sun just a dream? Isn’t what I see, hear and smell only
the illusion of a world before the world? Does evil actually exist,
and are there people who are really evil? How can it be that I, who
I am, didn’t exist before I came to be and that someday the one
who I am will no longer be the one I am?
Wings of desire (movie)
And one way
of thinking about philosophy is that it is what happens when we deliberately
stand back from our ordinary habits and familiar routines, look at the world
afresh, and systematically try to answer questions like these.
Overall then, philosophy can be thought of as reflection on the basic
frameworks in terms of which we think about the world and ourselves. It
both critically examines existing frameworks of thinking, and plays a role in
creating new ones. Out of such philosophical questioning and reflection come
very general ways of making sense of our situation, various philosophical
accounts of the world and ourselves.
To do philosophy is above all to philosophize, to think about things
rather than simply take them for granted
