How is one truly a philsopher?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

what the question says. I’ve heard several remarks about people that walk arond talking about ideas and calling themselves philsophers even though they’re in effect posers. What makes them posers? in other words…what’s the criteria to be a philsopher?

i don’t know the criteria and i’ve only started my study of philsophy on my own for a few years which i plan to continue into college( which is why i can only claim to be a dilettant). This was part of my reason for coming to this site… learning from others responses. For example the very interesting thread about morals and ethics that opened my eyes up to questioning what i had not bothered to question before. I’ll respond after a few responses come in. I’m here as an observer and learner and this question has been bothering me lately.

2

there are no set criteria - it’s like jogging - what’s the criteria for being a “jogger”? - if you only run around the block twice a month, does that mean you’re a poser if you say you like to jog? anyone who can think and reflect upon their thoughts can philosophize, and anyone who likes to philosophize is a philosopher - it’s not an elite club or fraternity - it’s just a way of describing someone who spends portions of their time and energy in a certain way.

3

philosophers as noted in many text begin in doubt.
If you wonder, if you doubt, if you do not have certainity, you are a philosopher.
If you have faith, if you believe, if you have certainty, you are not a philosopher,
you are something else.

Kropotkin

4

Only if you take five shots of jack daniels will you ever truly become a philosopher. :laughing:

(Followed by taking a sixth shot off of this woman’s chest) =P~ :laughing: :stuck_out_tongue: =P~

( Followed by taking a seventh shot off her nipple.) :laughing: :laughing: =P~ :evilfun:

5

As I understand it, a philosopher is usually an eccentric social critic who systematically questions and answers abstract notions such as purpose, meaning, existence, art, value, virtue, justice, mind, perspective, ethics, morality, etc.

6

If you have to ask you will never know.

7

From here:

A philosopher is there to disturb the indolence of the mind
View quotes by John Stuart Mill

Of what use is a philosopher who doesn’t hurt anybody’s feelings?
View quotes by Diogenes

One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another. (Maybe not for Descartes!)
View quotes by Rene Descartes

We are what and where we are because we have first imagined it. [Not sure a philosopher would agree with this claim!]
View quotes by Donald Curtis

There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.
View quotes by William James

Live life to the fullest, like it’s your last. Enjoy what’s around you and what’s given to you. [everyone’s a philosopher these days]
View quotes by Emily Parr

Can an ass be tragic? To perish under a burden one can neither bear nor throw off? The case of the philosopher.
View quotes by Friedrich Nietzsche

My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher.
View quotes by Socrates

I think a future flight should include a poet, a priest and a philosopher we might get a much better idea of what we saw.
View quotes by Michael Collins

I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but, I don’t know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in. (In James Boswell Life of Samuel Johnson)
View quotes by Oliver Edwards

To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.
View quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.
View quotes by Sir Thomas Aquinas

It is decidedly not true that ‘nice guys finish last,’ as that highly original American baseball philosopher, Leo Durocher, was alleged to have said.
View quotes by Alan Greenspan

A philosopher might find the general work unsophisticated, and scientists are often bemused by esoteric talk of zombies, supervenience, and possible worlds.
View quotes by David Chalmers

The negative cautions of science are never popular. If the experimentalist would not commit himself, the social philosopher, the preacher, and the pedagogue tried the harder to give a short-cut answer.
View quotes by Margaret Mead

Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.
View quotes by Henry L Mencken

A man who leaves home to mend himself and others is a philosopher; but he who goes from country to country, guided by the blind impulse of curiosity, is a vagabond
View quotes by Oliver Goldsmith

However great an evil immorality may be, we must not forget that it is not without its beneficial consequences. It is only through extremes that men can arrive at the middle path of wisdom and virtue. [Thus speaks the great philosopher]
View quotes by Wilhelm Von Humboldt

The philosopher creates, he doesn’t reflect. [Did he reflect on that statement?]
View quotes by Gilles Deleuze

8

It appears to me that all answers to this question are predicated on the belief that the next philosopher will be something like all the last philosophers when what is obvious is that new times should call forth new men and new minds with new ideas.

9

recently I encountered a Thoreau quote:

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. (Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854)

though I don’t think that’s the only definition, it’s a good one.

i agree. Then the only real defining characteristics would be an aptitude for questioning the given explanations and finding new explanations. other judgemnets depend all on situation and what time period the philsopher lived in.