Perhaps there would be a big change for my research interests.

anyway.

Some years ago I changed to study philosophy for a quite simple reason. The practice or the craft of philosophy itself is beautiful. It is so beautiful that I want to do it. I want to learn to do it. I want to receive the training in order to do it. But I start to find this reason as inadequate. This reason is not false. But I would like to find some more fundamental reasons for doing philosophy. I wonder what kinds of value we tend to attach to philosophical pursuit. One of my classmates suggests that "philosophy provides direction to one's life (just like one finds his own position in a coordinative geometry plane". She is doing Chinese Philosophy. I tend not to agree with her, because I think philosophy seems to give you a variety of directions at a single moment. Then my classmate suggests that philosophy gives us "ultimate concern". That sounds quite counter-intuitive to me. Philosophy (or I should say - philosophical pursuit ) is a way (/one of the ways) in seeking the ultimate concern (if there is any). But I wonder if there is an element inherent in every philosophical pursuit which makes the practice being philosophical, just as the element of artistry makes every artistic pursuit being artistic. When we watch a piece of dance, a piano recital, a floor exercise of artistic gymnastics, the artistic element could in principle be separated from the technical element. We tend to do so sometimes. For example, if something is being left on our souls after watching a piece of ballet-dance, we wouldn't care about whether he/she has the perfect toe point or not.