• What is philosophical thought?
• Origin of philosophy
• Characteristics of philosophical thought
• Importance of philosophical thought

We explain what philosophical thought is, its importance and characteristics. Also, the origin of philosophy.

Philosophical thought starts from the continuous doubt regarding the universe.

What is philosophical thought?

Philosophical thought is a rational, critical and speculative form of reflection that allows the human being think about your own existence and that of the universe that surrounds it. In other words, it is the method of thought that proposes the philosophy, and through which the humanity has sought since ancient times satisfactory answers to the great enigmas of existence.

Despite being a method of rational, critical and orderly reflection, philosophical thought starts from the continuous doubt regarding the universe, or as Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, put it, starts from a condition of amazement at the unknown.

Its fundamental task is to try to explain existence from a generalist perspective, that is, addressing all things and all fields of knowledge equally. In fact, in its origins, philosophy was the science mother, that is, the discipline from which all sciences and specialized knowledge were born.

The themes that occupy philosophical thought, then, can be immensely varied. In general, his reflections are interested in universal or transcendent categories, that is, in what is at the base of all fields of knowledge, such as be, matter and form, the nature of weather and of consciousness, TRUE, the good and the bad, the Justice, and so on.

However, in reaching its conclusions, philosophical thought is guided by the logic and rationality, since it aspires to obtain demonstrable, transmittable conclusions that serve to enrich the fundamental understanding that we human beings have of the universe and of ourselves.

Thus, philosophical thought must be critical, restless, dissatisfied, but not empirical, but rather speculative: licenses and scenarios are allowed hypothetical, since it relies on human reason to approximate the essence of things, that is, to the ultimate truth of existence.

Origin of philosophy

Philosophy in the West was born in the Antiquity, specifically in the Greco-Roman tradition, which lasted nearly 1,100 years, from the 6th century B.C. C. until the VI d. C, approx. In this period, three great foundational periods are covered: the pre-Socratic period, the Hellenistic period and Roman philosophy.

• The pre-Socratic philosophers were, as their name indicates, those who existed in Ancient Greece before Socrates, around 600 to 400 BC. C. With them, the knowledge organization took an important step, leaving behind the mythological dimension to undertake rational reflection (the logo).
• The classical or Hellenistic philosophers were those who accompanied the school of Socrates (500 to 300 BC, approximately), as well as that of his most important disciple, Plato, and that of his disciple, Aristotle. These last two were the "major Socratics", and are part of the most important followers of ancient philosophical thought. Along with them, however, were also the sophists and the “minor Socratics”: the Megarians, the Cynics and the Cyrenaics.
• The Roman philosophers, for their part, cultivated a pragmatic philosophy, rather than a theoretical one, and considered themselves an "extension" of Greek philosophical thought. Some of its leading names from the classical era were Lucretius, Cicero, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius.

In any of these three cases, however, philosophy consisted of a critical and rigorous approach to reality, which sought to build in the mind the procedures and tools to better understand or question the real world.

It was a pre-scientific thought, but mathematics already played a fundamental role in the expression of the "language of nature", that is, it served to describe the proportions and relationships between things.

There were other very rich and vast philosophical traditions in the Ancient Age, alien to the Western tradition, such as Persian, Chinese and Indian philosophy, not to mention the Jewish, Egyptian or Mesopotamian tradition of thought. Many of these philosophical aspects gained prominence centuries later, absorbed by the doctrine christian or of Islam.

Characteristics of philosophical thought

Philosophical thought is dedicated to thinking in the abstract.

Philosophical thought is characterized, broadly speaking, by the following:

• It aspires to answer the great transcendental questions of humanity, those that lack a simple answer.
• To find his answers, he uses a critical and rational method, that is, he dedicates himself to thinking about things in the abstract, to try to find the answers through logic and theory. deduction.
• It is organized according to schools and traditions, depending on the presuppositions from which it starts and the mental procedures it uses.
• It is not empirical as the science, that is, it is not directly based on the experience and the observation of the facts, but rather values ​​the hypothesis and thought experiments.
• It studies the great unsolvable problems of humanity, through categories that in themselves are difficult to define and often controversial, such as good and evil, truth, justice, being, existence, and even God and the death.

Today it is organized on the basis of four large fields or branches:

• The metaphysics, which studies the fundamental nature of reality.
• The epistemology, which studies the nature of knowledge and beliefs.
• The ethics, who studies the good and the morality.
• The logic, which studies the formal procedures of thinking and obtaining conclusions from premises.

Importance of philosophical thought

Philosophical thought played a very important role in the construction of more complex forms of thought, such as the scientific thought, thanks to the attachment to reason and logic, instead of religious faith. In that sense, it has been the founding element of the great traditions of thought, from which the world as we know it has emerged.

Philosophical thought still serves the human being to find his own answers to a solitary existence in a silent universe, since there is no other intelligent species from which to obtain valid answers, at least for now.

In addition, philosophical thought offers us a path to the great transcendental issues that not even science can address, but that give meaning to our existence.

What is the point of existing? Why are we here? Where are we going? What is living a good life? Questions like these are the field of study of philosophy and cannot be approached - let alone answered - except by employing philosophical thought.