The Domain of Philosophizing and the Criteria of its Multiplicity

Philosophizing is different from knowing philosophy. One whose profession is teaching philosophy does not need to be a philosopher. Of course, having sufficient philosophical information is a necessary condition for teaching philosophy. However, having philosophical information for a philosopher, whose profession is philosophizing, is merely a preparatory element. A philosopher is one in whose mind philosophical questions naturally arise when one perceptively faces different realms of reality such as objective, subjective, and linguistic ones. In other words, his mind would breed questions and seek to find responses to them. The process of occurrence of philosophical questions in philosophers, minds and their endeavour to find responses to them is called philosophizing. The issues and questions that philosophers delve into have a wide realm. The domain of philosophers, philosophizing is of the greatest extent in comparision with other scholars. This originates from the fact that philosophers, in addition to their attempts to know the facts, a common initiative of every scholar, seek to know the knowledge itself. Thus we would have philosophy of philosophy as we do philosophy of physics, philosophy of biology, and philosophy of logic. The present article deals with the domain of philosophizing within the field of philosophy, explaining the criteria of multiplicity in philosophy, and reporting philosophical realms which emerge consequent to the application of the above – mentioned criteria. Furthermore, it deals with the quality of philosophizing in these realms. This article may be considered supplementary to the article entitled "comparative philosophy: its concept and domain" published in "Name-Ye Hekmat" no. 1.