What is the Philosophical Experience?

Eldar Sarajlic philosophically considers what it is to do philosophy.

- Eldar Sarajlic

I am a philosopher and I think and write about various philosophical issues, both timely and timeless. Officially, I am a philosopher because I occasionally publish the results of these efforts, and also because I am a member of an academic community that recognizes me as such.

Being a philosopher, I presumably do philosophy, in the same way that carpenters do carpentry or dancers do dancing. If we want to know about the experience of doing carpentry, we need to look closely at what exactly carpenters do when they engage in carpentry. Carpentry seems to consist of a series of ideas about wooden constructions, and of actions that manipulate pieces of wood to create desired objects. But what exactly is the nature of philosophical activity? In other words, what does doing philosophy mean, exactly? Am I doing philosophy right now, while writing this article, for example? Or was it something I did last night when I first figured out how to answer the question in the title of this article?

Reflections & Judgments

Philosophy is an old discipline, and there is such a mountain of published philosophical work that no single human could manage to read it all in his or her lifetime. However, becoming a philosopher must involve getting acquainted with at least some parts of this written tradition. Indeed, the path to philosophy leads to a fair amount of reading: we have to read how others did philosophy before we can hope of doing it well ourselves. But merely learning philosophy does not make one a philosopher. You could have an immense knowledge of philosophical literature without actually doing philosophy, or being a philosopher.