What is being asked when one asks about what is philosophy

Abstract

As a discipline, philosophy is exterritorial, it recreates itself every time by introducing a whole series of new concepts in order to define its own position and purpose within a given society. The answer to the question ‘What is philosophy’ is located outside the realm of philosophy or philosophizing as such. This question can be placed on any of the various horizons of answer expectation, namely, the historic (age); historiographic (event); genealogical (origin and place); disciplinary (institution); affective (passion); or, finally, metaphysical (questioning as a principle) horizon. The metaphysical questioning is linked to politics viewed as an individual cause, as coming back to metaphysics through the freedom of choice understood as a political choice.