Abstract

Since the end of the 18th century philosophy has been going through an identity crisis which threatens its very existence. This crisis is due to the emancipation of the empirical sciences in the course of which philosophy has lost nearly all its traditional objects. We fi rst examine four traditional ways to overcome this crisis: philosophy as the all embracing universal science, philosophy as a priori knowledge, philosophy as common sense, philosophy as small talk. We show that these conceptions have grave shortcomings and therefore are not convincing. Instead we propose the following conception of philosophy: philosophy has to put and to answer radical questions, questions that spring from the conditions of human existence itself. We fi nally justify this conception by a refl ection on the history of philosophy and an analysis of the deep motivation of its founder, Socrates. This leads us to the insight that to engage in moral philosophy is itself a moral duty.