Welcome people to my little corner of the main Asylum page. What is this all about? Something that I find fun and engaging. Something that some believe to be boring and banal. What is it? Philosophy, but wait, before you click away think about it for a minute. A column that examines ideas, that is what I am putting forward, nothing more nothing less. Ideas, as they say, make the world go round.

In the coming weeks and months I am going to go over the philosophy of a theorists and thinkers that have shaped the way we all see the world. The ideas generated by a few that have become second nature to the many. Ideas that have effected the way we think and shape our world view. And yes my good thinking friends, you will be able to comment on this in the suppository. So flame wars ahoy as you battle about ontology, phenomenology and whatever else we may discover on this journey into thought. So sit back and relax, its time to explore the nature of us and the nature of being. But where shall we start? Lets start at the beginning and ask the question.

What is philosophy?

To begin to answer this question, which is in itself ironic, given the subject matter, we have to ask some 'philosophical questions'. What are these questions? Well , What is being? What is the world? Why I am here? How ought I live my life? These are questions that we all ask over time, and that my friends, is the essence of philosophy. Philosophy is the art of asking questions. The ability to be questioning, and, at the same time is (to sum extent) what makes us human. We question. But why do we question? What kind of analogy can be used that describes why we question?

Lets put it as simply as possible. Imagine a seal. A seal that is in a circus. The seal performs trick for us; we watch the seal. We know that the seal only performs tricks because of the training that the trainer has given. We see past the showmanship of the exhibition and have the realisation of the deeper reality of the seals training. We see [know] the other elements to the equation of the seals tricks.

But, to understand philosophy we have to put ourselves in the place of seal. We are (that is the world) the seal. We do not know that we are trained to perform, we just do what we do. We are innocent, unexposed to ideas, and dormant as beings when we are the seal. But; if you remember. We want to know what the philosopher does and what philosophy is. How does the philosopher relate to the seal of our example? What is philosophy’s place in the analogy?

Imagine that the philosopher is (and all of us for that matter) some microscopic living element in the fur of the seal. We, the philosopher's (the people), are continually trying to climb up the strands of seal fur and see the outside world for what it actually is. This is the key to what philosophy is about.

So what is philosophy? Philosophy is the ability to ask questions. The action of asking questions about the world that we cannot answer instantly. The answering of questions that require further investigation. Philosophy is the historical origin of all human inquiry and thought.

And so my friends, now that we have the definition of our journey outlined, we can start to journey itself. A journey into the world of the self, the phenomenology of spirit, the ontology of life, and all those fascinating words we may hear people say but never truly understand.