Whenever I tell someone that I "majored" in Philosophy at college, there's a 38% chance they'll ask a question along the lines of "Who's your favorite philosopher?" or "So you've got it all figured out?" Another 20% of the time they can barely get an unbelieving "Why?" out of their mouth quickly enough.
In the former case, its a little bit of a tricky question for a few reasons. The first is that I never put any serious effort into remembering exactly who said what- "was it Locke who first developed the idea of the state of nature?"- I don't know. If your goal is to come off as the wistful, untouchable, deep and self-absorbed philosopher, I don't recommend this because if you can't name drop Spinoza or Hume you'll probably come off as a poser. Seriously though, I don't recommend this because without remembering who said what, its much harder to place ideas in their context, which the more I've learned about philosophy the more I've appreciated. Plus, you'll do better on exams.
Another reason that question is difficult is that despite my degree in philosophy, I've read barely a fraction of what's out there. This was driven home to me when I came to Vietnam and realized that the fact that I had never studied eastern philosophy left a gap 4 billion people wide in my qualifications as a philosopher.
The reason I didn't pay much attention to names was that I was intrested primarily in the ideas themselves, both the grand and minor trains of thought that woven together form the patchwork fabric of man's attempt to make sense of the universe. That's what science is, and all science originated as philosophy. You'll find the first phyiscs, biology, and physics in the likes of Aristotle, and only once we had a means of discovering facts about scientific subjects did they transition from philosophy to science. This works well for questions that DO have answers (go away, relativisists). There's a physical explanation for how plants grow, why you come back to earth when you jump (well, kind of. We still haven't reconciled General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, but we still have a pretty solid idea of what gravity is). For questions that don't (yet) have answers, well those you'll have to explore in the realms of philosophy. How do you physically explain the way you experience sounds, or tastes? What happens if you go beyond the edge of the universe? What does that even mean? And most relevantly, why are we here? What should we do with our lives?
Of course, there is no one answer to this last question, but you can acknowledge that and still believe that some ways of thinking about it are better than others. You might also recognize that exposing yourself to the different ideas out there will give you more armor and ammunition for when you blaze your own trail in pursuit of your answers. Which all is to say that my goal in studying philosophy was to immerse my mind in the thoughts themselves, in the hope of internalizing them so that I would be better equipped to figure things out myself.
This brings me to a last point, all going back to my explanation about why I find it difficult to answer the question "Who is your favorite philosopher?". Most (not all) of the philosophy you would study in school deals politics, or ethics, or morality, or existence, or the nature of the universe. It is nearly all abstract; abstract in that it won't give you a blueprint for exactly what to do, or it won't tell you exactly what to do, it will give you some abstract representation of what kinds of things you should do. In any case, they nearly often neglect to strike a balance that I find acceptable between a person's various needs. Completely understanding political philosophy won't make you a self-actualized person, nor will a fully-informed ethical code; its how it all weaves together and affects the way you actually live that is important.
Putting everything together and thinking about how you should or want to live your life is something you have to do for yourself. Its a never-ending process, but below you'll find a stab I took at outlining my personal philosophy. For one of my favorite classes during my senior year, "Engineering Dreams: Entrepreneurship and Good Work", the final project was to put together a framework that represented your approach to life. Below is the result of a semester's worth of knowledge, a lifetime's worth of experience, and about twenty-five hours of good ole' fashioned work.
