The Poverty of Philosophy

Abstract

his article explores the essence of philosophy as a situation of authentic asking (poverty) which transcends the bounds of pragmatic knowledge. The poverty of philosophy is investigated in three meanings: liminality, abandonment, freedom. Liminality means that basic philosophical concepts are not ontologically given, they point to the openness of being, so docta ignorantia , learned ignorance is posited as the archetypal form of philosophy. Learned ignorance here means the knowledge of the whole (freedom, truth, God, soul, death, etc