The Subject-Matter of Philosophy

Abstract

The expressions used so often to define philosophy, — e. g. philosophy is the study of reality; it is the attempt to understand the whole of our experience; it is the daughter of religion and the mother of the sciences,—require a philosophy in order to interpret them sensibly. I should like to maintain the view that philosophy is the continuously renewed interpretation of a certain subject matter,¹ but I am aware that this description, too, is ambiguous, since whatever it is that philosophy interprets and however it proceeds to make the interpretation have always appeared as changing questions. In a brief paper all the problems relating to philosophic interpretation can scarcely be broached. I shall limit myself to stating as well as I can what the subject-matter is which philosophy uses. In so doing I shall of course be using a technique and a doctrine of interpretation. Still it will be no part of the purpose of this paper to make this doctrine and technique explicit. It will be enough for the present if the datum of philosophy be adumbrated.