Philosophy is tantamount with knowledge or wisdom. In Greek,φιλοσοφία, or philosophia, it means love of wisdom. It is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. This post will be concentrating on philosophy as it relates to spirituality and enlightenment.
Philosophy is any theory or attitude held by an organization, group of people or individual that acts as guiding principle for their behavior and their beliefs. It seeks to resolve critical questions about the human condition or experience through intellectual knowledge. By breaking down a larger body of thought, it can be broken down and examined at its core. That said, I took a philosophy class in college at the junior college level, and I did not at the time grasp what it was about. To this day I don’t understand how I received an A in philosophy. Family or friends would ask me upon learning I was in a philosophy course, what it was all about. I was not able to put it into words, though even at the time, at the tender age of 20 years old, I understood the concept of philosophy but was unable to adequately help someone else to understand what it meant.
Philosophy is simply any body of knowledge; more specifically, the pursuing of wisdom and living a thoughtful, principled, consistent, and examined life, which is the basis of spirituality in general. Philosophy as it relates to spirituality seeks to understand whether we exist. It seeks to understand the basis of all things, it is the “What is?” of our existence as a whole. Philosophy greatly relates to spirituality in that it is an examination of self. Philosophers seek to gain insight into improving our lives.
According to Philosophy is Not a Luxury, the biggest difference between spirituality and philosophy is
philosophy is an explanation of the way things are where spirituality is a description of a position that you as a human being should take in relationship to the way things are
Whereas philosophy deals with what’s real, the way things are while spirituality deals with taking a position about how we should be in relation to how things are. Philosophy attempts to understand basic questions about life by asking and answering questions which deeply examining those questions. Philosophy and spirituality are closely related in that philosophy answers the question about what life is all about from the outside using rational thought, whereas spirituality seeks to understand what life is all about from the inside out, and is different for each person.
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