Welcome

Philosophy is the study of the ultimate reality, causes, and principles underlying being and thinking. It is often referred to as the works of major philosophers collectively; it can mean the academic exploration of various questions raised by philosophers; it can also mean a certain critical, creative way of thinking, and none of these meanings can be considered distinctly. Philosophy, in brief, has several connotations in common speech, but this article will focus on philosophy as a field of study.

Philosophers are usually concerned with concepts such as existence or being, morality or goodness, knowledge, truth, and beauty; historically most philosophy has also centred on religious beliefs, or coincided with science. Philosophers may ask critical questions about the nature of these concepts, questions typically outside the scope of science, and several major works of post-medieval philosophy begin by asking what philosophy itself should or does mean. Asking what philosophy is is itself a philosophical activity, though philosophers are more often motivated by specific questions such as:

* What is truth? How or why do we identify a statement as correct or false, and how do we reason?
* Is knowledge possible? How do we know what we know?
* Is there a difference between morally right and wrong actions (or values, or institutions)? If so, what is that difference? Which actions are right, and which wrong? Are values absolute, or relative? In general or particular terms, how should I live?
* What is reality, and what things can be described as real? What is the nature of those things? Do some t hings exist independently of our perception? What is the nature of space and time? What is the nature of thought and thinking? What is it to be a person?
* What is it to be beautiful? How do beautiful things differ from the everyday? What is Art?


In Ancient Greek philosophy, these five broad types of questions were respectively called analytical or logical, epistemological, ethical, metaphysical, and aesthetic. They are not the only ones, and Aristotle, who was the first to use this classification, also considered politics, modern day physics, geology, biology, meteorology, and astronomy some of the other branches of philosophical investigation. The Greeks, through of the influence of Socrates and his method, developed a tradition of analysis, dividing a subject into its components to understand it better.

Other traditions did not always use such labels, or emphasize the same themes. Though Hindu philosophy has similarities with Western philosophy, there was no word for philosophy in Japanese, Korean or Chinese until the 19th century, despite the presence of philosophy there over millennia. Chinese philosophers in particular had a different conception of categories from the Greeks, and their definitions were not based on common features, but were usually metaphorical and referred to several subjects at once [1] (http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/G001). However, there are no distinct boundaries between categories even in Western philosophy, and since at least the 19th century, Western philosophical works have more often addressed a nexus of questions without sorting them into distinct areas.

External links

Some of these websites contain links to online texts of philosophy:

* Philosophy Forums (http://www.philosophyforums.com) -- a place to discuss Philosophy with a discursive library on Philosophical topics.

* Philosophy and Science Forum (http://mind-brain.com/forum/) -- discuss Philosophy and Science in an innovative forum.

* Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Signpost articles free, others require subscription (http://www.rep.routledge.com/signpost-articles)

* The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/)

* Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/)

* Introducing Philosophy Series by Hugo Holbling (http://www.eblaforum.org/library/philosophy/)

* EpistemeLinks.com : philosophy resources on the internet (http://epistemelinks.com/)

* Philosophy in Cyberspace (http://www-personal.monash.edu.au/~dey/phil/)

* Guide to Philosophy on the Internet (http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/philinks.htm)

* Erratic Impact: The Philosophy Research Base (http://www.erraticimpact.com/default.htm)