Although philosophy has a long legacy, and is arguably responsible for all things academic (the natural sciences coming from Aristotle, psychology and sociology being 'applied philosophy' from the 1800s i.e. Freud on the one hand, and Comte and Durkheim on the other, mathematics coming from the Ancient Greeks).
Basically, philosophy was first summarized to me as an attempt to answer three questions:
1) Who are we?
2) What do we know?
3) What should we do?
The first question is usually dealt with in metaphysics, the second in epistemology, and the third in ethics and political/social philosophy. But of course there is a vast overlap between the two. 'Are we ethical beings?' might be a question put to the first, and this directly affects how the third should be answered, although in all fairness putting such a question to the first is already having 'loaded' it.
But more so, it is amazing that bashing away at these simple questions for millenia has basically made the world how we see it today. We apply (3) in every daily activity whether it be sports or academia. And to the second question, a sceptic might say 'nothing for certain' (or, like Socrates, say 'the only thing that I know is that I know nothing'), and so one could say that we haven't even gotten off the ground and never will.
So why do we worry about these questions? Well surely if we didn't we would still be in our caves.
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