What is Philosophy?

• There are three classes of people who attended the Olympic Games: Lovers of gain, Lovers of honor, and Lovers of knowledge or wisdom (philosophers), represented by Pythagoras.
• Superego (conscience) is the part of the psyche that represents societal morality and ethics.
• Ego (reality) is the part of the psyche that represents the real world.
• Id (internal desires) is the part of the psyche that represents internal desires.
• Philosophy, derived from 'Philos' (love) and 'Sophia' (wisdom), aims to question about our life and is a process for exploring certain kinds of questions.
• Doing philosophy is not about giving opinions, using logical analysis, speculating, investigating questions, or talking aimlessly.
• Socrates, a Greek philosopher from the Classical period, was more concerned with how people should behave and was the first major philosopher of Ethics.
• According to Socrates, "An unexamined life is not worth living."
• Plato, a student of Socrates, encouraged humanity to seek what is good, what is true and what is beautiful in the intellectual realm beyond the appearances.
• St. Augustine agreed that man is of a bifurcated nature, with an aspect of man dwelling in the world and being imperfect and continuously yearning to be with the Divine, and the other capable of reaching immortality.
• Thomas Aquinas, a classical proponent of natural theology, stated that man is composed of two parts: matter and form, with matter being the body and form or morphe being the essence of a substance or thing.
• Man is the only creature who governs and directs himself and his actions, who sets up ends for himself and his purpose, and who freely orders means for the attainment of his aims.
• Rene Descartes, the father of Modern Philosophy, conceived of the human person as having a body and a mind, and believed that the only thing that one cannot doubt is the existence of the self.
• David Hume, a Scottish philosopher, argued that the self is nothing else but a bundle of impressions.
• John Locke, the father of liberalism, stated that personal identity is a matter of psychological continuity, founded on consciousness(memory), and not on the substance of either the soul or the body.
• According to the theory of psychoanalysis, every individual is composed of the superego, ego and the id, with the main function of the superego and the ego to regulate and control the id.
• The self is a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.
• Ideas are considered to be the copies of expression.
• Every man is an end in himself and should never be treated merely as a means — as per the order of the Creator and the natural order of things.
• Merleau-Ponty's main articulation of the self-philosophy is existentialism, which places the current interpretation of reality dependent on the perception, consciousness and appreciation of an individual.
• Sigmund Freud's main contribution to the study of the self is his theory of psychoanalysis, which is about studying man via his unconscious mind and his unconscious mind is predicated on sex.
• Gilbert Ryle posited that there is a relationship between the body and the mind, and that the self is affected by the mind and by the body.
• Impressions are the basic objects of our experience or sensation.