THE FLY IN THE BOTTLE

Why do we engage in philosophy? Again,it was Ludwig Wittgenstein who compared our situation to a fly in a bottle.The fly is trying to get out but does not know how.The function or aim of philosophy is to show the fly how to get out of the fly bottle.For us this means that,like the fly,we are trapped and have difficulty getting out.In our case,the fly bottle represents problems or questions that are difficult to solve and philosophy is what helps us find our way out.In ethics our question is “What should I do?” In politics we ask “Why should I obey?” In religion a major questions is “What can I believe?” The central question for metaphysics is “What is there?” All these questions grow out of our daily experiences,and we want some answers to them.At least,we want some help in finding our way about.

Let us look at these questions briefly through the eyes of some philosophers.Here we will get a first look at how they attempted to sort out some of the problems in our five areas of philosophy.