Richard Golian

1995-born. Charles University alum. Head of Performance at Mixit. 10+ years in marketing and data.

Castellano Français Slovenčina

Manage subscription Choose a plan

RSS
Newsletter
New articles to your inbox

Article

What is Philosophy? What Did I Actually Study and Why?

Philosophy from Plato to phenomenology
Richard Golian
Richard Golian · 2 357 reads
Hi, I am Richard. On this blog, I share thoughts, personal stories, findings — and what I am working on. I hope this article brings you some value.
Listen to this article
0:00 / 0:00

I’ll never forget my grandmother’s reaction when I told her I was pursuing philosophy for my master’s degree. She was bewildered, even disappointed. To her, philosophy seemed impractical, pointless. But to me, it made perfect sense. In an ever-changing world where fields of study rise and fall, philosophy stood out to me as something that had endured through the ages. It offered a timeless perspective.

When choosing a field that has stood the test of time, the options narrow: mathematics, physics, and philosophy. I’ve always admired certain aspects of mathematics and physics—concepts like the weak law of large numbers or the law of conservation of energy can profoundly shift one’s worldview. Yet, what transformed my perspective on life the most were certain branches of philosophy.

Philosophy’s first lesson is its own complexity. After thousands of years, humanity has yet to agree on its exact definition or boundaries. Is it the broad, rational exploration of the world, humanity, and their relationship, as seen in antiquity? Or is it the meticulous, language-focused analysis characteristic of 20th-century philosophy? For the sake of readability, I’ll simplify: philosophy is the love of wisdom.

The question of what philosophy is might be an excellent starting point for a newcomer to the field. However, I’ve reached a point where debating its definition feels less important. Philosophy, derived from Greek, translates to “love of wisdom.” Perhaps that’s the only definition it truly needs.

The journey of philosophy begins with an emotion

So, why study something with such ambiguous boundaries? Why devote myself to a discipline even its practitioners can’t define? The answer lies in curiosity—a curiosity sparked by reading works like Gorgias (Γοργίας) and The Defence of Socrates (Ἀπολογία Σωκράτους). If those texts awaken something in you, as they did in me, there’s no turning back. The opinions of others fade in the face of a lifelong pursuit of understanding.

Summary

I chose philosophy because it had endured through the ages. After reading Gorgias and The Defence of Socrates, there was no turning back. Philosophy's journey begins with an emotion — and that emotion matters more than any definition.

Common questions on this article's topic

What is philosophy?
Philosophy, from the Greek philosophia, means the love of wisdom. It is the systematic study of fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, values, reason, and language. Unlike sciences that investigate specific domains, philosophy examines the assumptions that underlie all other disciplines. The tradition spans from ancient Greek thinkers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle through medieval, modern, and contemporary thought — making it one of the oldest continuous intellectual traditions in human history.
What are the main branches of philosophy?
The five classical branches are: metaphysics (the nature of reality and existence), epistemology (the nature and limits of knowledge), ethics (what is right and wrong), logic (the principles of valid reasoning), and aesthetics (the nature of beauty and art). Most philosophical questions fall into one of these categories. In the article, the focus is on epistemology and phenomenology — branches concerned with how we perceive and understand the world.
What is the Socratic method?
The Socratic method is a form of inquiry developed by Socrates (469–399 BC) in which questions are used to expose contradictions in a person's beliefs, stimulate critical thinking, and arrive at deeper understanding. Rather than lecturing, Socrates engaged in dialogue — preserved in Plato's works like Gorgias and the Apology. The method remains widely used in law schools, philosophy seminars, and critical thinking education. In the article, reading these dialogues is described as a transformative experience.
Is philosophy practical or purely academic?
Philosophy has significant practical applications. Applied ethics shapes medical, legal, and business decision-making. Epistemology informs how organisations evaluate evidence and make decisions under uncertainty. Phenomenological methods are used in qualitative research, user experience design, and consumer studies. In the article, philosophy is applied in marketing, managerial decision-making, and investing — focusing on how people perceive and interpret information in complex environments.
Why has philosophy endured for thousands of years?
Because the questions it asks — What can we know? What is just? What is a good life? — remain relevant regardless of technological or social change. In the article, philosophy is grouped with mathematics and physics as the three disciplines that have stood the test of time. While specific fields of study rise and fall, philosophy continues to provide frameworks for thinking about problems that no other discipline fully addresses.
Richard Golian

If you have any thoughts, questions, or feedback, feel free to drop me a message at mail@richardgolian.com.

NEWSLETTER
What I write about, what I am working on, what I learned.
Sent the first Sunday of the month. Unsubscribe anytime.

Related articles

The Meaning of My Life

If I have learned anything from this experience, it is that my life is not driven by something predefined.

23 February 2025·1 928 reads
Doubt vs. Determination: Striking the Right Balance

Is it better to doubt or to act with determination?

15 October 2023·3 559 reads
How I became a child again

I ask: “Why?” Mom answers, and I ask again: “Why?” Mommy answers: “Because it is so.”

30 March 2019·6 756 reads

More articles

Europe Is Not Ready for Drone Warfare

Europe does not have the capacity to face a full-scale, mass drone war of the kind we see in Ukraine. Three dependencies weaken it: China supplies the physical material for defence systems, the United States supplies capabilities Europe does not have, and twenty-seven states cannot agree how fast, or who pays. Rearmament plans exist, but they are being carried out slowly.

31 May 2026·240 reads
Can AI Replace Human Judgement?

AI produces the graphic, the newsletter and the product page faster than a person. What is left for the one who used to do it is the judgement — knowing whether the output is good. But most people have worse judgement than AI. And whoever cannot judge quality cannot delegate either. How do you tell whether yours is the judgement a company relies on, or the kind it can replace?

30 May 2026·230 reads
What Determines a Stock Price?

In April, in the first part of this series, I wrote about an AI prediction system I had started building on my own machine. At the time the software was a few hours old and the prediction record was empty. The record since then has shown one thing — the system does not yet understand the market it is being asked to forecast. It can pull macro context, book value, earnings. But it cannot put those together into something that helps it understand the price.

23 May 2026·292 reads
Where the Money Goes When AI Takes the Work

Prague, 13 May 2026. On my way to work I started thinking about something that stayed with me for days. If most routine work on a computer disappears in the next ten years, and a large share of repetitive manual work disappears with it, what happens to the flow of money? Who pays whom for what? Which economic layers will exist, how large will they be, and what relationships will run between them? This is the six-layer map I sketched as an answer.

15 May 2026·812 reads
Building an AI Stock Market Prediction System That Grades Itself

I am building an AI system to predict the S&P 500. It runs on my own machine, uses free public data — yfinance, FRED, the Shiller dataset — and grades every forecast against reality. This series documents the build itself: the decisions, the methodology, the mistakes. What I will eventually share from the running system is a separate question, and an honest one.

26 April 2026·769 reads
AI sales forecast: 9 traps so far

Yesterday I could not tear myself away from the computer. When I lifted my head, it was half past eight in the evening. I had been sitting alone upstairs for about three hours.

25 April 2026·722 reads
Will AI take my job?

Will AI take my job? A certified Google trainer told me in June 2024 that my profession would cease to exist. Twenty-two months later, my job title has not changed — but ninety percent of what I do during the day is different. I have delegated more of my thinking to AI agents than I thought possible. I am not afraid. This is why, and what it means for anyone asking the same question.

23 April 2026·462 reads
€50,000 Quote vs. Two Hours with Claude Code

One hour. Fifty-five minutes. That is how long it took to build what a Czech software firm had quoted at over €50,000. I built it with Claude Code. Not a prototype. Not a proof of concept. A working tool — the one the company actually needed. By the evening of the same day, it was running on staging. This is not about Claude Code. It is about what Claude Code exposes.

18 April 2026·890 reads
Is AI Making Us Dumber?

I have conducted roughly one hundred and fifty practical interviews over the past four years. Fifty for data specialist roles. A hundred for advertising and performance marketing specialists. Almost every one of them involved sitting down with a candidate over a practical task — something close to a real problem we actually need to solve at the company. Not theory. Not trivia. Applied problem-solving. Over time, I started noticing a pattern.

14 April 2026·840 reads
What AI Hides From You

Before you can teach AI to understand anything, you need to see what it is hiding from you.

11 April 2026·859 reads
Full AI agents or fully offline.

Four days in Catalonia. No computer, no AI, almost no social media. I bought this notebook so that I could write down what I would think about, and what I would come across and learn on the trip.

10.5.2026·498 reads
NEWSLETTER
What I write about, what I am working on, what I learned.
Sent the first Sunday of the month. Unsubscribe anytime.