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"The world is all that is the case." - Ludwig Wittgenstein
"The world is also things not the case." - Joe Dobzynski Jr.

     In the frenzy of philosophical pursuit, we seem to have fallen into a bit of a problem. Long standing theories concerning all branches of philosophy have fallen to the might of scientific realism or have been dismissed as unnecessary pursuits of thought (ethics and aesthetics to name two). If we can’t compartmentalize the world into little rules for here and now, then we lack the ability to explain and must abandon the mode of thought. We have lost sight of the rational and empirical combination of thought and have moved to one swing of the pendulum or the other.

     It’s a bit of a problem.

     Moving forward in philosophical thought has also become a problem. We are getting stuck arguing over definition, language, and find out what is only verified by empirical science. The times of great philosophical thought are gone. Everyone has overspecialized so that those arguing language can’t argue ethics, those arguing philosophy of mind cannot argue metaphysics.. There has not been a great unifying theory like in olden days - disregarded as wild goose chases.

     The time has come to discuss the problem of philosophy in a frank sense. I will begin by looking at four types of philosophy - explanatory, critical, shaping, and creative. Following this, I will look at some contemporary issues with philosophy in general, stating the issues with post-modernism, compartmentalization, and the general state of philosophers for academia.

Explanatory Philosophy
     I define explanatory as the first philosophy to come into existence. This form of philosophy is dedicated to exploring the world and understanding it through thought. We use philosophy to explain the world in some sense or another. This was the most prevalent philosophy of the early thinkers. Theorists such as Pythagoras and Anaxoras used many different approaches to explain the world around them, and while some of these theories seem absurd today, they are nevertheless philosophical modes of thought.

     Explanatory philosophy can be subdivided into answering two questions: "How?" and "Why?" Rarely are these two questions asked independently. To illustrate this subdivision, let us take a simple example. Isaac is sitting underneath a tree and an apple falls on his head. Immediately, we ask the question "How?" This is, of course, answered by the stem of the fruit breaking at that particular moment, and the force of gravity bringing it down on top of Isaac’s noggin. Next, we ask "Why?" We answer this by appealing to scientific laws of gravity, rotation of the earth, and the age of the fruit above his head. Maybe it was extra-terrestrials that zapped the stem. Perhaps it is the great Hegelian teleology that necessitated the law of gravity to be explained. Following all this speculation, we find that by proposing more and more questions of "Why?", we start to change our answer for "How?" If we accept that it was punishment from God, then we add a form of agency into the explanation, adding to this more elements for the "How?"