Six Definitions of Philosophy

The Russian page gives an excerpt from the book The Philosopher Twenty Years Later.

In that scene, the Philosopher names six answers to the question “What is philosophy?” and the characters recognize the authors behind them.

The six answers are:

1. Philosophy studies the most general laws of everything.
2. Philosophy is the art of asking questions.
3. Philosophy solves problems that everyone else has refused to solve.
4. Philosophy is the last thing that can help a person survive.
5. Philosophy corrects language, because bad language produces pseudo-problems.
6. Philosophy studies human mutual understanding: why it is absent, and how language must be changed so that it can appear.

The point is not simply that philosophers disagree.

The point is to justify the tuple.

If we see a new tuple of concepts, rules, questions, or answers, we must ask four questions:

1. Is the tuple homogeneous?
2. Is the tuple complete?
3. Is the order unambiguous?
4. Where did this tuple come from?

In the book, the six definitions are justified through a simple combinatorial model.

There are three possible sides in a philosophical conflict:

1. things;
2. the person;
3. the group.

A philosophical situation contains two sides. Repetition is possible, but order does not matter. This gives six possible pairs:

Thus the six definitions are not merely a random list. They form a justified tuple.

Read the Russian excerpt