Philosophy was born out of wonder and love--its parents, if you will. "A sense of wonder started men philosophizing, in ancient times as well as today," said Aristotle, echoing his teacher's teacher, Socrates, who called the feeling of wonder "the touchstone of the philosopher." Possessing this sense of wonder is not the sole ingredient for practicing philosophy, but it is a necessary one. The first thing I tell my philosophy students is that they must feed this sense of wonder before they can develop the skill we call philosophy. And love? Love is the second thing, the other parent, the love of wisdom, which is what the word "philosophy" means.
Looking back through the years of my life, I can see that I possessed a sense of wonder early. We all do. Call it the natural condition of the mind of the child. Everything feeds it, and everything within the child vibrates to it. Two things especially evoked my own sense of wonder--books of all kinds and the night sky. Edgar Allan Poe, dinosaurs, King Arthur, and the view of the Perseus cluster through a four-inch Newtonian reflector.
Philosophy had to wait till later. Oh, there was a lot of talk in my family about ideas--books, music, politics, lots of things--and a lot of dispute about them. When I got old enough, I participated, and many of my current precepts and beliefs and habits of mind undoubtedly were formed out of all that talk. I was actually learning to practice the skill of philosophy, but in no systematic way. Later, when I began to read philosophers, I believed that what I was reading was what philosophy was. Many of my students believe that, too--that what Plato or Kant wrote is what philosophy is. They think I am "teaching" them philosophy when I ask them to read Plato. I have to work to get them to realize that philosophy is not a body of work or a "content," at all; rather, it is a skill, a method of careful investigation, questioning and analysis, a habit of mind. And, like any skill, it will improve with practice. But I see that I'm already veering off into teaching, so I'll leave it at this.
You see, I am a teacher by trade and, I guess, by temperament, and I practice my trade at a small college in the densely wooded uplands of northern lower Michigan. There, among the stately red and white pines, and the seldom-stately jack pines, I direct the college's honors program and pursue my teaching and research interests--writing, literature, mythology, and, of course, philosophy, which are also, come to think of it, a list of my passions. But only a partial one. You must throw in amateur astronomy (the night sky still has hold of me), ancient history, classical music, computers, books (some things never change), and a few other things, before you will have a fuller sense of who I am.