the love of wisdom

EDI 2000: Philosophy of Islamic Education

Philosophy and Life

When I was in primary school, I looked at the back of my notebook; I noticed there was a National Philosophy of Education instead of the time table 1 times 2 equal 2 or 2 times 2 equal 4, and I never interested to know what the meaning of that philosophy is. As I grown older, I realized for the first time I heard the word metaphysics from a symposium. I felt like floating in the air because I did not understand the discussion.

A couple months passed from that symposium, I learnt in class about Philosophy of Education where I started to know the literal meaning of philosophy is the love of wisdom. Day by day, I get the idea that philosophy is actually the discussion towards answering questions or understanding something that revolved in our life and it is an art of living, where finally it can be concluded as the five branches of philosophy- metaphysics, epistemology, logic, ethics and aesthetics.

Not to discuss the branches further we move to the application of philosophy in life. I tend to remember my 5-years old niece asking her mother, “Mom, why can’t I hold water?”, “Mom, why the ant walk in a line?”, “Mom, why the sky is blue?” and so many other questions. At this moment without we realized it or not we will use our reason or any common sense which is actually philosophy; to answer the questions in order for the child to understand. Not only that, family plays an important role to instill values in the child which is theoretically named as ethics in the discussion of philosophy. 

As the child grown bigger, he start to begin making choices what he belief is the best for him. The belief is what so called as philosophy actually because we are like the prisoners of our own thought. Our action is actually based on what we think is good. We help a blind to cross the road is a scent in philosophy because we believe inside our hearts that helping someone in need is a good action. We feed a cat is also a philosophy where we know that cat is also a creature like us who need food or water and love.

Each person is unique; we all have different ideas and opinions, we all practice different believes. Even we are in the same situation, for example riding a horse, I believe we will not have the same experience among us. We have a view from our side; we look at the other side of a coin, we view on different angle. That is because in philosophy, the experience from our senses is considered as one of the sources of knowledge which is called as empiricism.

There a quote that says, “Do not ask what the means of life is. You define it.” Once, I told a friend that life is like a big drawing paper, you colored your spot, I colored mine, suddenly we cross the same spot of drawing where we actually meet up for the first time. Maybe for some people that analogy is not logic but I read another quote from Albert Einstein that says, “Logic will get you from A to B, but imagination will take you everywhere.” So that is why I said before, we own our own mind and we set our own rules, we are the prisoners of our mind. That is also philosophy.

As a conclusion, knowledge is something that we obtained each second in life as a process of learning. As we grow older each day, we will understand that our reason has limit that is why in Islam we need the revelation that will guide us all the way to the hereafter. We indeed need to be fair in human being who has different battles in life and different believes.