Philosophical questions are not primarily question...
In asking philosophical questions,we are not asking for facts;at least,not for the sort of facts that we get when we ask a historian or a physicist a question.There are indeed facts about philosophy,such as the fact that Plato wrote the Republic and that Kant died in 1804,and the student of philosophy usually wants to know some of these facts.But when someone asks you that your philosophy is,you answer not in terms of that definitions or historical facts you know or that specific information you have.Rather,you try to express the meaning of what you know and believe.
Philosophy,from the etymology of the word,is not “love of knowledge”（facts）,but “love of wisdom”.Wisdom is more than accumulated knowledge;the wise man may or may not be highly educated.Wisdom is an attitude toward that we know or toward that we know we are ignorant of.It is an attitude of balanced judgment,of sound evaluation,of long-range perspective.Many men of great learning never achieve it;many a man or woman who is illiterate has achieved it.But,of course,wisdom is richer if it is based on broad experience and deep learning.One difference between the philosopher（as this term is used to praise and commend men of broad vision in whatever walk of life）and the professional philosopher at his best,is the wider knowledge that the latter is expected to be able to survey and integrate.The philosopher strives for wisdom as the main goal of his life;for most of us,if it comes,it comes as a by-product of our experience and character.
But philosophy makes no promises.Philosophy is not wisdom,but the love of wisdom.The philosopher is not always a wise man;he is the man who professes to seek wisdom.But the questions philosophy asks are questions that only a truly wise man could answer.The modest man will not presume to call himself wise;but there is no boast in professing to seek after wisdom—although there may be hypocrisy in it.Diogenes Lateritious,in his Lives of the Eminent Philosophers,one of the chief sources of our knowledge about ancient philosophers,tells us of the history of the word philosophy:
Pythagoras was the first person who invented the term “Philosophy”,and who called himself a philosopher… For he said that no man ought to be called wise,but only God.For formerly what is now called philosophy was called wisdom,and they who professed it were called wise men,as being endowed with great acuteness and accuracy of mind;but now he who embraces wisdom is called a philosopher.[1]