Philosopher

Someone who engages in the practise of philosophy is known as a philosopher. The word "philosopher" stems from the Ancient Greek word "o," which was then romanized as "philosophos." This word originally meant "lover of knowledge." Pythagoras, a philosopher from ancient Greece, is credited with having first conceived of the word (6th century BCE). It was not necessary for someone to discourse on theories or comment on authors in order to be considered a philosopher in the traditional sense. Instead, a philosopher was someone who adhered to a particular way of life and focused on finding answers to existential questions regarding the human condition. Those individuals who had devoted themselves to this way of life in the most strenuous manner would have been regarded as philosophers.

A philosopher in the contemporary sense is an intellectual who contributes to one or more subfields of philosophy. Some examples of these subfields include aesthetics, ethics, epistemology, philosophy of science, logic, metaphysics, social theory, philosophy of religion, and political philosophy. A person who has worked in the humanities or other disciplines that throughout the ages have become independent from philosophy, such as the arts, history, economics, sociology, psychology, linguistics, anthropology, and politics, may also be considered a philosopher.

In Greece around the 6th century B.C. was when the first steps were taken to separate philosophy and science from religion. Aristotle placed Thales, an astronomer and mathematician, as the earliest philosopher in the Greek tradition. Thales is known for his contributions to mathematics. Pythagoras may have been the one who first used the term, but Plato was the one who did the first known extensive research on the subject. In his Symposium, he comes to the conclusion that love is whatever is missing the thing that it desires. As a result, a philosopher is someone who strives to gain knowledge; once he or she does so, they are referred to as a sage. As a result, the definition of a philosopher in antiquity refers to a person who dedicates their life to the never-ending search for knowledge and who lives in line with that wisdom. There were several conceptions of what it meant to live a philosophical life, which led to disagreements. These differences of opinion led to the development of many Hellenistic schools of thought. As a direct result of this, the ancient philosopher reasoned in a conventional manner. During the time when the ancient world was being torn apart by philosophical argument, the competition consisted of trying to live in a way that would cause one's whole way of being in the world to change.