Philosophy is quite a mysterious subject that most people don't know anything about. The average school doesn't teach it, the average adult does not understand it, and the whole subject can seem odd and kind of unnecessary. That's a real pity because in fact, philosophy has a lot to teach everyone, whatever their age. It might even be the most important subject you will ever study. This book wants to open the door for you-- to show you what philosophy is all about, and how it can help you to understand life. The word 'philosophy' itself gives us a bit of a clue as to why the subject matters. It's originally a word from Ancient Greek: the first part, philo , means 'love' (philately means the love of stamps). The second part, which comes from the word sophia , means 'wisdom'. So, when you put the two parts together-- philo-sophy --it literally means 'the love of wisdom'. Philosophy helps us to live wise lives. But what does 'wisdom' mean? It's not very obvious, at first. Is being wise just about being clever? No, it's much more than that. It's about being sensible, kind, calm and accepting of how life can sometimes be (which isn't always perfect, and sometimes really quite hard). To get a better idea of what wisdom might involve, we can think about its opposite: not being wise. Imagine that your mum loses her keys. There are unwise ways she might deal with this. Maybe she starts shouting at other people: 'Who moved my car keys?' (even though probably no one did move them). Or maybe she gets into a panic and throws herself onto the sofa, moaning that she's a complete idiot and that her entire life is ruined. Poor mum! What would a wiser mum do? Instead of ranting and raving, or starting to panic straight away, she would think: 'Well, car keys do tend to get lost from time to time. I must have put them somewhere... maybe they're in the coat I was wearing yesterday.' She could ask (calmly) if you had seen them, and she might even laugh about how silly she was to forget where she'd put them. There are lots of situations where you can see the difference between unwise and wise ways of dealing with stuff that happens. There are lots of problems, both big and small, in everyone's life--including yours, too, of course. We can never get rid of them entirely (though we try hard), but we can all get better at how we deal with our problems. We can try not to get angry so often, try to shout less, and try not to panic or hurt the people we love. Philosophy tries to help us act more wisely when facing the problems in our lives that we can't do much about. Excerpted from Big Ideas for Curious Minds: An Introduction to Philosophy by The School of Life All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
