Philosophy

Questions
What is philosophy, what does it do and where does it come from?

Is it best treated as a historical idea, an occupation or perhaps as a behavioral disposition... or maybe it's best understood as a method of inquiry?

Answers
At the very least Philosophy can be understood as critical thinking about thinking in general or, in a strictly classical sense, the love of wisdom. I take "the love of wisdom" as meaning something like appreciating and caring for valued insights and practices.

I take this understanding from the Attic Greeks such as Plato and Aristotle who supposed philosophy begins in wonder as argued in the Theaetetus and Metaphysics. In addition to my initial explanation being very general, I understand their explanations as unique from my own inasmuch as times have changed, we come from different cultures and speak different languages but it seems that we agree Philosophy involves the inquiry and investigation of a variety of topics because of human perplexity or curiosity... and I would add frustration.

Other thinkers on this include a nearly countless sea of names, no doubt, but Simon Critchley, for example, argues something like philosophy often begins in disappointment as a sort of negative sense of wonder. Alain Badiou, on the other hand, takes philosophy as more of the compossibility of poetry, mathematics, love and psychology.

Understanding an idea like philosophy can be thought of as something we each define collectively, having many noteworthy definitions according to various well attended conceptualizations or a formal tradition with important historical figures to consider and content highlights to be analysed. I don't see a reason to suppose any of these are false or that one is any more true than another... so maybe they are each the case in some respect making it a rich and full dialogue, certainly, but hardly incomprehensible as some would have us believe.

Philosophy is often related to or considered the source of ideas like ethics, linguistics, logic, classics, epistemology, metaphysics and pragmatism.

On What it means to be a philosopher:
A case where a person qualifies as a philosopher:  if a person claims to be a philosopher then that person is in this explicit sense a philosopher. This supposes that the person in question has the means to provide terms for the definition of philosophy. In any case where the definition provided is an approximate match to some other discipline or system then a distinction would have to be made or else it would be sensible to assume a simple conflation of terms. The quality of any philosopher could then be measured against any standard set by the definition.

Another case for who qualifies as a philosopher: if someone makes an effort to engage widely regarded examples of philosophy and works to progress the field in some respect then this person is a student of philosophy and in this explicit sense a philosopher. the quality of philosophy is typically judged by comparison and contrast to mainstream philosophical discourse or critical reviews provided by other philosophers, the more widely regarded the better.