the ideas in philosophy are often general and "abstract". however, this does not mean that philosophy is not about the real world. for example, ethics talks about how to be good in our day-to-day lives. metaphysics questions how the world works and what it is made of. sometimes, people talk about how they have a ‘personal philosophy’, which means the way a person thinks about the world. this article is "not" about people's ’personal philosophies’. this article is about the ideas that have been discussed by philosophers (people who think and write about ways of thinking) for a long time.