The etymological analysis of the word philosophy has never satisfied me for many reasons. As 'the discipline to unite all disciplines,' or so I've often considered it, academic philosophy seems hardly appropriate enough in and of itself to deserve the title 'love of wisdom,' let alone be bestowed with something better. My very uninformed assessment (I studied undergrad for four years...) of the higher academic levels is that they're a bunch of pandering ninnies preying on corpses of dead idols.
as per online etymological dictionary:
c.1300, from O.Fr. filosofie (12c.), from L. philosophia, from Gk. philosophia "love of knowledge, wisdom," from philo- "loving" + sophia "knowledge, wisdom," from sophis "wise, learned."
and the omniscient god Wiki, philo- and -sophia:
Philo-, a prefix form of -phil-, from the Greek for "love of", e.g. philosophy
Sophia (Σοφíα, Greek for "wisdom") is a central term in Hellenistic philosophy and religion, Platonism, Gnosticism, Orthodox Christianity, Esoteric Christianity, as well as Christian mysticism. Sophiology is a philosophical concept regarding wisdom, as well as a theological concept regarding the wisdom of God.
The undergraduate courses and all other professors could easily be called philosophers by this definition, but, these constituent parts could not contain the whole of what I experienced in my interaction with the ideas presented in the upper level philosophy classes of two particular professors. I was getting more out of it than I was supposed to, methinks, because my ideas were growing too rapidly to be presented within the limited parameters of twenty page term papers. I wanted to be working on an honours project that would sum up my undergraduate learnings in an expressive and explicative way, and I tried to get it going, but the faculty wasn't ready for that. What they told me was that I'd better keep my focus on the classes at hand and not write about psychedelics any more because it's not appropriate at the graduate level, and that's what they're there for was to get their students ready for grad school. This tirade is not to blame them for my leaving academia, because that's one of the best choices I ever made, but to put into context that their academic pursuits were just that, academic pursuits, and would not or could not compromise the essential political nature of institutionalized realities. I had more to do with my mind and life.
Somewhere along the way I've reinterpreted how I define philosophy.
That Sophia was goddess from some time and we have a particular fascination with it does not suffice my awe and wonder with the mysteries of consciousness.
And what is the suffix -philia generally associated with? Negatively sexual words like corprophilia, the 'love' of shit, necrophilia, pedophilia... So is philosophilia like fucking an old dead goddess or something? Hardly appropriate.
And now, for something completely different, I have a new way of philosophizing (eww, that's sick bro) that will show us out of this etymological maze.
Let's consider the world comprised of three distinct parts instead of two:
[philo-] and [-sophia] becomes [phi-], [-lo-], [-sophia]
phi is the golden ratio, a transcendental number of a ratio found everywhere in nature from the proportions of the human body to the shape of the spiral arms of the galaxy, 1:1.618.......
This ratio is encoded in the logarithmic spirals of shells and tornadoes, the dimensions of credit cards and many corporate logos, the teachings of mystery schools since the first Egyptian dynasties (and I think before, too...) to name only a few amongst many. I would bet that lifetimes have been spent trying to examine this phenomenon without ever coming close to exhausting the multifarious manifestations of this essential fractal pattern. If you're interested in starting it out I'd recommend looking up 'sacred geometry' as it's a more than compelling idea that reaches out far and beyond what is able to be entertained in academic circles. The circles of sacred geometry constitute the foundation of our experience called reality.
Well, if we've got a place to start to look at the basis of life, the universe, and everything, and it's a simple-enough starting point like the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet, and been known by humans for thousands of years, well, let's get started? I've only just begun,
and,
- lo - and behold,
I find myself on the path to -sophia. Instead of postulating fantastical fictions based on outdated moral relativities, let's look at something that can be found at every level of our experience as consciousness! Doesn't this seem like a better foundation for an attempt towards wisdom than a sickly fetish with dead ideas?
Philosophy, to me,
Φ, behold, wisdom...
perspectives that include this most intrinsic of ratios are better equipped to withstand the awe and wonder imparted by experiencing the beatific wisdom contained therein.
peace...
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