What is Philosophy?

Inspiration for this post has not come from a profound answer that I happened to stumble upon during my nightly, deep ponderings of life (by nightly I mean rare to none. The latter actually), but from a hilarious joke and presentation from my philosophy professor of what philosophy is not. Here's how it went.

Our first assignment for the class was to ask three people "what is philosophy?" and we would discuss the answers in class. In our class, a common answer came up, which was that philosophy is the love of wisdom. Our professor then began a 30-minute lecture, as if he had been hoping and praying that this answer would come up in class, about how "love of wisdom" is not what philosophy is and that it in fact tells us nothing about philosophy. Now for the best part.

He began to break down why people would think that philosophy means "love of wisdom." It came down to this. If we look at the word philosophy from its Greek origins, we see that phil(o) = love and sophy = wisdom/knowledge. Sometimes, this kind of breakdown of a word from its origin helps us to understand and get a good grasp of what it might mean, but not in this case. Then came the best example I have heard in my life.

He presented us with this scenario: He needed a babysitter for the night while he and his wife enjoyed a nice dinner together. They were discussing who they should hire for the job. "Hey! The perfect guy for the job is Steve, from down the street. He's a pedophile" (ped = child/kid, phil = love, thus a kid lover or person who loves kids). Perfect, right? ... Wrong!

Awesome.