Philosophy has a major impact on the way that people make everyday decisions. From the thoughts we have, to the actions we take, whether it’s conscious or subconscious your philosophy plays a part in what you are doing. Philosophy gives everyone the opportunity to step back and get a better vision of where you are in life, where you have come from, and it will also give you a better idea of where you are trying to be in life.

Philosophy is such a broad and thought provoking subject, and it is important to understand that philosophy is a thought process you practice. Philosophy is not something you learn out of a text book. Everyone has to nurture this thought process sometimes referred to as critical thinking. The actual breakdown of the word has a Greek origin it is two Greek roots: philein, a word that means “love,” and sophia, a word that means wisdom. When you put the two words together, it means “the love or pursuit of wisdom”. Philosophy can be considered to be many different truths, depending on the person and the ideas they have embraced through time. With the different twist and turns that philosophy can take, there had to be some way of classifying the different approaches. The approaches were broken down into 6 areas to be able to classify what type of research was being done. Philosophers like Bertrand Russell brought to our attention that we are quick to embrace the scientific explanation of the world but the Metaphysics or the idea that there may be an afterlife cannot be proven with a microscope. Epistemology is the study of identifying what we know and why we know it. This is sometimes integrated with Metaphysics but has its own meaning. The main question in this study is what truth is, and what the sources of knowledge are. Ethics is the study of morals, values, and principals. Questions arise for these thinkers like how should we treat others,