How do people

philosophize?
 Reasons of
Philosophizing
1. The Sense of Wonder

The Greek philosopher Plato

traced man’s need to
philosophize in his sense of
wonder. We ask questions to
try and make sense of our
world and experiences.
Philosophical wonder allows
the thinking person to
consider two opposing ideas
and attempt to make a new
2. Doubt
Rene Descartes (1596-1650),
a French philosopher, rejected
or questioned established
ideas during his time. More
so, he doubted his own ideas.
Yet for him while doing
critical thinking and analysis,
doubt makes a person thinks,
examines ideas and
perspectives as correct or true.
3. Experience
Karl Jaspers, 20th -century
Swiss German Philosopher, saw
the need to philosophize
because of experience. For him
philosophy provides us a means
to understand challenging
situations, to rise above them
and gain new knowledge and
perspectives.
Thus, experience directly affects
person’s ideas, reasons and
4. Love of Wisdom
According to Socrates “The
unexamined life is not worth
living.” Also, he is known
in his statement “I know that I
do not know…”. This statement
implies to acknowledge one’s
limitations or absence of
knowledge and considers such
state as a step to know and
eagerness to ask more
questions to probe a topic.
 Methods of
Philosophizing
 Dialectic
Method
Plato
 Pragmatic
Method
It was started by Charles S. Pierce (1839-1914),
popularized by William James (1842-1910) and
institutionalized in American culture by John
John Dewy Dewey (1859-1952).
 The
Phenomenological
Method

Edmund Husserl
(born in 1859)
 The
Primary
and
Secondary
Gabriel Marcel reflections
 Analytic
Method
Ludwig Wittgenstein
(1889-1951)
Fallacy