Academic “disciplines” are defined and constituted by their methodologies,[2] but philosophy does not have a “methodology” as such; it is a way of life, a modus vivendi ("mode of living"), a pursuit of truth in the broader sense, or the “love of wisdom” in the ancient and restricted etymological sense. Wherefore philosophy is not a “discipline” since philosophy as such transcends methodology qua modus vivendi.
“Schools of philosophy” may be considered “disciplines” since very often “schools” are defined not just by their founder or his works, but by his methodology, or by the methodology of extracting his thoughts and his way of thinking from his texts.
But such a narrowly-construed “philosophy” is dubitably philosophical, for in so reducing Philosophy to this-or-that methodology—and thereby creating a “philosophical discipline” properly so-called—the movement away from the “mode of living” has already been completed, for Philosophy is relegated to the solitary confinement of the academic department, cut off from communication with the broader world of wanderers, tourists, and pilgrims on their journey to the truth.
Only a way of living in pursuit of truth that transcends academic disciplinary methodology is worthy of the name Philosophy.
[1] Original fragment composed 25 March
2016, ~12:55-1:17am PST (Good Friday).
[2] This was a notion I argued
for and discussed in my Theology 401 final essay, reproduced on Philosophical Living as “The
Propriety of Magisterial Authority in Academic Theological Discourse”.
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