The perks of knowing philosophy as a student

“The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”--Abraham Lincoln

Philosophy according to the Free Dictionary is said to be the love and pursuit of wisdom by intellectual means and moral self-discipline. It is also an art of investigating nature, causes, or principles of reality, knowledge, or values, based on logical reasoning rather than empirical methods. But because of its complicated principles, philosophy remains as a mystery to most of the students.

For the record, philosophy first surfaced when Thales of Miletus, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher hypothesized about the nature of matter—that the originating principle of nature was a single material substance: water. Thales attempted to explain natural phenomena without reference to mythology and was tremendously influential in this respect and eventually lead to an essential idea of scientific revolution and because of his principles and hypotheses, he has been dubbed as the “Father of Science” though later on it has been argued that Democritus is more deserving of this title. Many philosophers have made use of Thales’ philosophy, among which is Aristotle. In his work in Metaphysics (and others), he usually use the phrase “According to the work Thales…” or “Thales said that…” which point toward that Aristotle have high regards to Thales as a philosopher and scientist as well. Most said that "Aristotle was the first genuine scientist in history... every scientist is in his debt." Well I could say by this that behind Aristotle’s brilliancy is a man named Thales, and Aristotle is in debt to him.

And then philosophy branched itself to different disciplines, from the philosophy of nature to others, to name the few are logic, philosophy of education, phenomenology, existentialism, linguistics and all the whatnots. It became viral and so the people became aware of what it is like.

Yet as to these days, we, students may regard philosophy as a minor subject that we need to pass, something of less importance in that case, little do we know, we are in continuous journey with it each and every day of our lives, might it be within the four corners of our school, in the streets, in our houses, and even in our thoughts. And then the query “Does philosophy has something to do with our studies?” comes in. We might have not notice it, or we might have ignore it but obviously and most probably, the answer is “Yes”, philosophy has a great impact in our studies. But how? 

The “answer”, is “the question itself” and the process of how we come up with the answer which is “thinking” because philosophy is a lifetime of questioning, discussing, and thinking. When we stop raising questions, we aren’t embracing philosophy. When we deny justifying our answers, we are not practicing philosophy.

If you still wonder what philosophy is doing in your life as a student, then you might as well want to start asking yourself because as I have said earlier, philosophy is just a mere ask-think-answer-justify your answer cycle. Begin with the question “What am I doing in this school?” and then the networks of neurons inside your brain will start to formulate for an answer (that is thinking) which will later end up with the answer “To learn and to be learned.” And you tend to justify your answer by studying well and doing what is appropriate as a student, and that’s that. Question answered, philosophy earned.      

Philosophy provides us with the idea that all human are rational beings, which connotes that we are being bequeathed with the gift of reasoning, it’s up to us to augment it or hold it back.

Now what is philosophy to you as a student?

The answer lies, only within you. Remember that your philosophy today will mold you to what you will become tomorrow. (Daryl Resurreccion, Mark Joshua Villa, Richard Antonio, Christian Tualla, James Cavin Mabini)