Everyone is a philosopher as we all seek wisdom in whatever we're doing. Thieves want to be more successful etc etc so the term is really useless.

He's lugubrious
Reads all the way from John to Publius.

What is necessary for someone to call themselves a philosopher? — TiredThinker

The minimal entry requirement is to have the skills of critical thinking. That ought to cover both analysis and synthesis, or deductive reasoning and inductive belief.

But maybe I'm just old school. Others may believe that feeling now trumps thinking. Or the hermeneutics of approved texts is where it is at.

No wait. That just confirms critical thinking ought to be the price of entry to the club. :nerd:

So you don't have to look it up, from Wikipedia:

In a modern sense, a philosopher is an intellectual who contributes to one or more branches of philosophy, such as aesthetics, ethics, epistemology, philosophy of science, logic, metaphysics, social theory, philosophy of religion, and political philosophy. A philosopher may also be someone who has worked in the humanities or other sciences which over the centuries have split from philosophy, such as the arts, history, economics, sociology, psychology, linguistics, anthropology, theology, and politics.

As a retired mathematician, my profession is defined a bit more specifically, citing "using extensive knowledge of mathematics" to solve problems, etc.

My philosophy 101 teacher said that philosophy isn't merely a person's point of view or way of living. Is there anyone that can't call themselves a philosopher?

My philosophy 101 teacher said that philosophy isn't merely a person's point of view or way of living. Is there anyone that can't call themselves a philosopher? — TiredThinker

There are at least three OP's asking this question.

Generally they end up winding back to the position that a philosopher has a level of competence and understanding of the key problems in philosophy and how they have been answered.

If you are ignorant of philosophy, how can you be a philosopher? You can think philosophically or be philosophically inclined, but that does not make you a philosopher.

An Initial requirement is you have to have a pole up your behind. Think that saying goes in English too?

A self-acknowledged fool obsessively studying, and reflecting upon, foolery in order to unlearn (reduce) immiserating (maladaptive) habits of judgment & conduct, as a way of life, may be called a "philosopher". Especially posthumously (because I'm old sko0l).

An Initial requirement is you have to have a pole up your behind. — Ansiktsburk

A portrait of the earnest as a wrong man?

I like @180 Proof's conception of the philosopher as the self-acknowledged fool, and I'd like to maybe complement it with some grand(iose) passages that might paint an ideal more often than the reality that crawls after it.

...a philosopher: that is a man who constantly experiences, sees, hears, suspects, hopes, and dreams extraordinary things; who is struck by his own thoughts as if they came from the outside, from above and below, as a species of events and lightning-flashes peculiar to him; who is perhaps himself a storm pregnant with new lightnings; a portentous man, around whom there is always rumbling and mumbling and gaping and something uncanny going on. A philosopher: alas, a being who often runs away from himself, is often afraid of himself—but whose curiosity always makes him "come to himself" again.
<>
...to live in a vast and proud tranquility; always beyond... To have, or not to have, one's emotions, one's For and Against, according to choice; to lower oneself to them for hours; to seat oneself on them as upon horses, and often as upon asses:—for one must know how to make use of their stupidity as well as of their fire.
<>
...the genius of the heart, which teaches the clumsy and too hasty hand to hesitate, and to grasp more delicately; which scents the hidden and forgotten treasure, the drop of goodness and sweet spirituality under thick dark ice, and is a divining-rod for every grain of gold, long buried and imprisoned in mud and sand; the genius of the heart, from contact with which every one goes away richer; not favored or surprised, not as though gratified and oppressed by the good things of others; but richer in himself, newer than before, broken up, blown upon, and sounded by a thawing wind; more uncertain, perhaps, more delicate, more fragile, more bruised, but full of hopes which as yet lack names, full of a new will and current, full of a new ill-will and counter-current...
<>
...having been at home, or at least guests, in many realms of the spirit, having escaped again and again from the gloomy, agreeable nooks in which preferences and prejudices, youth, origin, the accident of men and books, or even the weariness of travel seemed to confine us, full of malice against the seductions of dependency which he concealed in honors, money, positions, or exaltation of the senses, grateful even for distress and the vicissitudes of illness, because they always free us from some rule, and its "prejudice," grateful to the God, devil, sheep, and worm in us, inquisitive to a fault, investigators to the point of cruelty, with unhesitating fingers for the intangible, with teeth and stomachs for the most indigestible, ready for any business that requires sagacity and acute senses, ready for every adventure, owing to an excess of "free will", with anterior and posterior souls, into the ultimate intentions of which it is difficult to pry, with foregrounds and backgrounds to the end of which no foot may run, hidden ones under the mantles of light, appropriators, although we resemble heirs and spendthrifts, arrangers and collectors from morning till night, misers of our wealth and our full-crammed drawers, economical in learning and forgetting, inventive in scheming, sometimes proud of tables of categories, sometimes pedants, sometimes night-owls of work even in full day, yea, if necessary, even scarecrows—and it is necessary nowadays, that is to say, inasmuch as we are the born, sworn, jealous friends of SOLITUDE, of our own profoundest midnight and midday solitude—such kind of men are we, we free spirits! And perhaps ye are also something of the same kind, ye coming ones? ye new philosophers? — Nietzsche

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4363/4363-h/4363-h.htm#link2HCH0009

"To live alone one must be a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both — a philosopher." ~Freddy Zarathustra

Yeah but that's circular which is why philosophy must be defined in general terms and not specific (what we call philosophy either academically or not).

Your teacher is just gatekeeping. Natural philosophy became science so very technically doing science is doing philosophy. Reapplying this to all that's applicable you see no reason to exclude anything.

Yeah but that's circular which is why philosophy must be defined in general terms — Shwah

Ok. I don't see how it is circular. I also defined it in general terms. Generally when someone calls themselves a practitioner, they have competence and expertise in the thing they practice. I can't really see a way around this. You can't be called a surgeon just because you enjoy cutting people open...

Calling a philosopher someone who has expertise in philosophy offers no real explanatory power. It's weird how you said that first paragraph bit then made the adverb-exclusion second paragraph.

Calling a philosopher someone who has expertise in philosophy offers no real explanatory power. — Shwah

So how does it not explain the idea to say that a philosopher is someone who is familiar with central problems and their proposed solutions in philosophy?

made the adverb-exclusion second paragraph. — Shwah

What's that?

If family resemblance (re heredity) is a fact, a philosopher's gotta look like Socrates (the father of Western philosophy) which is to say a philosopher has some Greek blood in him/her (Socrates was Greek, oui?), s/he's aesthetically challenged (have you seen Socrates' herm?), and should be annoying as hell (Athenian gadfly)!

You're effectively saying "a philosopher is a person who philosophizes correctly (philosophically)". You'd be using the same word in the definition which creates a recursive issue.

Sure. You don't think competence and key reading is relevant? I am saying there is a tradition and the philosopher is familiar with this tradition. I'm not interested in whether s/he is philosophising correctly - the tradition may well be (and often is) problematic. To just sit on your back step and think deep thoughts is likely not enough. But I am not a philosopher, so it's just my intuition.

Everyone is a philosopher as we all seek wisdom in whatever we're doing. Thieves want to be more successful etc etc so the term is really useless. — Shwah

If this is your view do you think there is good and bad philosophy? You seem to see it primarily as a method.

Sure I get your point but even saying competence and critical reading (both words that necessarily apply anywhere, kinda weasel-y words) in the tradition has a circularity where tradition refers to philosophy.

I meant that the study of wisdom naturally applies to all of us in every action and state (we're always and only seeking to do the most wise thing even if it's something very personal or petty even, we try to solve the issue how we best can).

I meant that the study of wisdom naturally applies to all of us in every action and state (we're always and only seeking to do the most wise thing — Shwah

That seems remarkably optimistic. Don't many people act without thinking and generally choose the low road and/or the easiest, most brutally efficacious path possible?

They choose what they think is the wisest track which may be, for a child, the easiest and most shortcut-y path.

“....The mathematician, the natural philosopher, and the logician—how far soever the first may have advanced in rational, and the two latter in philosophical knowledge—are merely artists, engaged in the arrangement and formation of conceptions; they cannot be termed philosophers. Above them all, there is the ideal teacher, who employs them as instruments for the advancement of the essential aims of human reason. Him alone can we call philosopher; but he nowhere exists. But the idea of his legislative power resides in the mind of every man, and it alone teaches us what kind of systematic unity philosophy demands in view of the ultimate aims of reason. This idea is, therefore, a cosmical conception, by which I mean one in which all men necessarily take an interest. (...) Even at the present day, we call a man who appears to have the power of self-government, even although his knowledge may be very limited, by the name of philosopher....”

Gotta be a lesson in there someplace.

Is a philosopher only a person with at least a master's in philosophy or who has certain published words, or who has created a whole logic system for world order? What is necessary for someone to call themselves a philosopher? — TiredThinker

Let's think of philosophy as a profession. What do other professions require? I was an engineer for 30 years. What standard did I meet?

• Appropriate education
• Experience as part of a professional community
• Competence with specific skills
• A sense of the responsibilities and ethics of the profession.
• Certification.

That doesn't really work for a philosopher, but it gets at some principles. Let's try this:

• Commitment of your life to practicing philosophy to the exclusion of other important aspects
• Ability to express your thoughts so other people can understand them
• Submittal of your ideas to other philosophers and competent laymen for evaluation
• Ability to competently defend your ideas

Generally, doing what we do here on the forum does not make you a philosopher. You have to put more on the line than we do. Again, that's a generality.

They choose what they think is the wisest track — Shwah

I would question this; especially the use of the word 'wisest'. I would suspect that many decisions made are instinctive or reactive (not chosen as such) and 'wisdom' is by-passed. Sagacity is not exactly bountiful.

which may be, for a child, the easiest and most shortcut-y path. — Shwah

For a child? Do adults not take short-cuts in decision making?

You have to put more on the line than we do. — T Clark

What does more on the line look like?

I think you're using very colloquial useage of the term wise (which is really a general word anyways). I'm using it more trivially in the sense, "man can only do that which they most want to do in the best way possible given the circumstances".

What does more on the line look like? — Tom Storm

More time, attention, effort, discipline. More risk associated with failure; e.g. loss of money, status, reputation. Just like any other profession.

Ok. I'm general, you're trivial... I get it. :wink: