NikkolasKing posted:

So I have a bad habit of "dabbling" shall we call it. I'll find a topic I'm interested in, read a bit about it, then something new and shiny will show up and I go off to examine that instead. The result is I know a little about a lot of things but it all adds up to not much of anything. However one of the topics I've never really delved into whatsoever is philosophy. Topics I have read books about though are Religion, Politics and Psychology and what I'm curious about is if there's an overlap?

I think it's fairly well accepted that some theologians qualify also as philosophers. Say, Thomas Aquinas maybe. Meanwhile "political theorists" like Jean-Jacques Rousseau or Edmund Burke wrote quite a bit about human nature and its relation to society. Finally, for psychologists, you mainly need the psychoanalyst branch of thought and I know many do not hold that in high regard. However, not all schools of philosophy are probably held in completely high regard either so I don't see why they should be shut out just because they're unpopular. Your Freud's, Jung's and Lacan's were all attempting to understand the human condition too and it certainly wasn't in a very "scientific way." Although Freud at least I think tried for that to some extent.

So my question. Does philosophy encompass all these things? Is Freud or Burke a philosopher in the same way that Heidegger or Plato were? And again it has nothing to do with being right or profound - just that they can be called philosopher.