Das eigens übernommene und sich entfaltende Entsprechen, das dem Zuspruch des Seins des Seienden entspricht, ist die Philosophie.

That’s a line from near the end of a talk Martin Heidegger gave in August 1955 in Cerisy-la-Salle, France. Here’s my own translation: “The expressly adopted and self-unfolding corresponding, which corresponds to the appeal of the Being of beings, is philosophy.”

Heidegger used both a French and a German lecture title. The German title he used Was ist das — die Philosophie? Given his audience, he tried with that title to approximate as closely as possible the French title of Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?   A corresponding English effort matching the German title would be What is that — philosophy?

The English translation of the essay by Jean T. Wilde and William Kluback, which came out early in 1958, less than three years after Heidegger first delivered his address, bore the more standard English title What Is Philosophy? However, I prefer the less standard English version, and have even tweaked it a bit more to use as the title of this post.  

Don’t take that to mean this post is about Heidegger. It isn’t. It’s about philosophy. Or rather, at least at the deepest level this post isn’t even so much about philosophy itself as it is simply about thinking. That, too, is in accord with Heidegger’s own way, and serves to acknowledge how indebted my own thinking is to his work.

Heidegger aside, perhaps the most descriptively accurate title I could have given this post would have been:

Philosophy? What’s that got to do with thinking?

The answer, I fear, is that all too often what has come to be called “philosophy” in academic circles has all too little to do with thinking—and in fact that remark comes closest to telling you what this post is about.

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ladder (n.): Old English hlæder "ladder, steps," from Proto-Germanic *hlaidri (source also of Old Frisian hledere, Middle Dutch ledere, Old High German leitara, German Leiter), from suffixed form of PIE root *klei- "to lean." 

                                                            — Online Etymological Dictionary

You might say that this post is about the degeneration that already long ago now began to beset philosophy in such a way as to separate philosophy from thinking. That was done above all by the academicization of philosophy, that is, by making philosophy into just one more academic specialty among all the others from algebra to zoology. 

However, once separated from thinking, philosophy in fact ceases to be philosophy at all any longer — at least in my own philosopher’s judgment. It ceases to be anything resembling “the love of wisdom,” which is etymologically and originally the meaning of that word, derived as it is from the Greek philo- “loving” plus sophia “wisdom.”

 A few decades ago, I had the unmitigated audacity to foreground a discussion of that etymology of the term philosophy to begin An Introduction to the History of Philosophy. That is what I entitled a two-volume work I wrote back in the mid-1980s. I wrote it solely for the purpose of using it as the text for the general education introductory philosophy courses I was regularly assigned as a faculty member in the philosophy department of the University of Denver. Two of my department colleagues also found my text to be worth using in their own introduction to philosophy courses. 

The text worked so well for all three of us that I decided to send it to a book publisher. The editor of that press followed standard procedures and sent my manuscript on to some other philosophy professor for review for possible publication. That reviewer recommended against publication, and the publisher accordingly declined to publish it, then attached the reviewer’s negative comments to my rejection letter.

The academically certified professor of philosophy who wrote the negative review of my two-volume work haughtily dismissed my guiding use in my text of the etymology of the word philosophy by writing that the etymology of that word was no more enlightening than was that of the word ladder, which ultimately derives from a root that means “to lean.” 

I remember thinking, when I read that comment, how revealing, in fact, that etymology of ladder actually is, contrary to what the reviewer was saying. After all, anyone who has ever used a straight ladder knows perfectly well that using it requires one to lean it against the structure up which one is trying to climb. Thus, only thoughtlessness would lead anyone to dismiss the etymology of ladder as irrelevant to that term’s current meaning.

I cannot speak for that reviewer or others of the same ilk, but I am happy to attest that in the way I have always used the term, philosophy is the provoking — literally, if I may be permitted reference to the etymology of that word, “the calling forth” — of thought, including any provocation thereof by exploration of the etymology of a word. For me, the answer to the question “Philosophy? What’s that?” is that philosophy is indeed the friendly love for, or loving friendship toward, wisdom. 

Such love always seeks the good of whom or which it loves for that beloved’s own sake — as Aristotle, for one, knew and said — and gladly communicates such loving friendship to others, also for the sake of the beloved as such. As I use the word, anything that truly provokes thought is indeed “philosophical”:  it is “of,” or “pertaining to,” philosophy itself, precisely in the etymologically original sense of that term. It is only in that original and originary sense of the word that philosophy has ever attracted any love from me personally, at any rate. 

So much for academic certification, I guess.