Philosophy: The Hate of Wisdom

Philosophy literally and etymologically means love of wisdom. However, any survey of what is generally considered philosophy reveals a pattern simultaneously strange and familiar. Philosophical reflection has often represented wisdom as an unattainable or self‑defeating state. This paper asks whether that pattern reveals a structural feature of philosophy itself, a self‑negating relation between knowledge and its subject, called misosophy herein. It is argued that recognizing this structure clarifies a constitutive ambivalence in the concept of philosophy, evident from mythic origins to modern thought.