Conceptualizing Philosophy as a Discipline and an Interdisciplinary Field

Monika Walczak

doi:10.18290/rf25732.4

Published : 2025-06-30

Vol. 73 No. 2 (2025)

Conceptualizing Philosophy as a Discipline and an Interdisciplinary Field

Monika Walczak

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1405-8855

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rf25732.4

Abstract

The point of reference for my analysis is the contemporary discussion on the metatheoretical and socio-intellectual status of philosophy arguing for its interdisciplinarity. The paper examines two ways of conceptualizing philosophy: as a (mono)discipline and as an interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary field. Introduction outlines the internal differentiation of philosophy and the basic approaches in the discussion of its status. Section 1, on philosophy as a (mono)discipline, presents the main criteria that characterize the metatheoretical-methodological and socio-institutional status of an academic discipline and points out some variability of the categorization of philosophy in several contemporary typologies of sciences (knowledge). Section 2 presents a critique of the thesis that philosophy is a discipline, offered in texts that postulate its interdisciplinary practice and organization. Section 3 introduces the basic ways of understanding interdisciplinarity used in the literature and, in this context, analyses and develops the thesis that philosophy can legitimately be conceptualized as a transdisciplinary field because of its three characteristics: radical generality, theoreticality, and synthesizing character. Conclusion draws out some metatheoretical and socio-institutional consequences of conceptualizing philosophy as a discipline and as a transdisciplinary field. The paper is the first text in Poland to categorize philosophy as an interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary field based on a discussion of disciplinary and interdisciplinary formations of knowledge.

Keywords:

philosophy, interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, (mono)discipline, metatheoretical-methodological status of philosophy, socio-institutional status of philosophy

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