Philosophy is divided into theoretical and practical (or "poietic"), pure and applied, philosophy of nature and philosophy of mind (philosophy of culture), epistemology and doctrine of principles. The philosophical disciplines are: logic and epistemology, metaphysics, cosmology, philos. Psychology, Ethics along with Philosophy of Law, Social, History, Aesthetics and Philosophy of Religion.

Philosophy, which has emerged from myth, partly in opposition to it, and from which most of the individual sciences have only gradually detached themselves, has long appeared as a universal science. Originally, the pursuit of knowledge means for its own sake (Herodotus and Thucydides). As a striving for knowledge, philosophy appears in Socrates, also in Plato, according to whom the philosopher stands in the middle between the ignorant and the absolutely knowing. Philosophy is the acquisition of knowledge; at its highest level it is "dialectics", a theory of ideas, which is at the same time a universal science of being. This is especially true according to Aristotle: the "first philosophy" is the science of existence as such and the "principles" of things.

According to this, philosophy is divided into theoretical (physics, mathematics, logic, rhetoric, "theology" or "first philosophy"), practical (ethics, politics, economics) and poietic philosophy (aesthetics, philosophy of art). Philosophy takes a turn to the practical in the Stoics (striving for virtue and wisdom; Cicero, Seneca) and Epicureans (striving for happiness), also among the Neoplatonists, who at the same time make them theosophical.

In more recent times, philosophy has emerged as a conceptual, abstract science — less emancipating itself from theology — which deals in particular with God, the world, the soul, man and his actions, and seeks out and discusses the ultimate reasons for the given (as in Descartes, F. Bacon and Hobbes). According to Christian Wolff, it is "a science of all kinds of things, how and why they are possible".

The philosophy of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and especially Kant, who contrasts dogmatism with criticism, is based on epistemology. According to him, philosophy is a priori knowledge of reason from mere concepts, the science of the presuppositions and conditions of cognition and action, and at the same time the "system of philosophical knowledge" (like transcendental philosophy, metaphysics). This is the "school concept" of philosophy. According to its "concept of the world" it is "the science of the relation of all knowledge to the essential purposes of human reason". The philosopher appears as the "lawgiver of human reason", as a "teacher in the ideal". The "pure" philosophy is "knowledge from pure reason", the "empirical" philosophy is "knowledge of reason from empirical principles". The "philosophy of nature" applies to everything that exists, the "philosophy of morals" to what should be there.

For Fichte, philosophy becomes the "science theory", the "knowledge that sees itself becoming", the "genetic knowledge" or the "knowledge of the whole of knowledge". According to Schelling, it is "absolute science", "science of the absolute", knowledge of things as they are in reason. Hegel also defines it as the "science of the absolute"; formally it is "thinking contemplation of objects". It is "the thinking idea, the knowing truth." It has to comprehend what is, the "timeless comprehension" of things (like natural philosophy). Their method is dialectics — According to Schopenhauer, philosophy is "science in concepts" whose task is "to repeat the whole essence of the world abstractly, generally, and clearly in concepts" (the world as will and representation). It is a "middle ground between art and science, or rather something that unites both" — According to Herbart, philosophy is the science of the "processing of concepts."

As a critique of knowledge or as a science of the principles of knowledge and action (of culture in general), philosophy is mainly determined by the "neo-Kantians". According to Riehl, it is "general scientific and practical wisdom teachings", and above all the "art of spiritual guidance". According to H. Cohen, it has the task of bringing science itself and culture to an understanding of its presuppositions."

As a general science of value of a critical-normative nature, the philosophers define Windelban ("critical science of universally valid values", "science of the principles of absolute judgment"), Rickert, J. Cohn and others — According to Nietzsche, the philosopher as legislator determines the "hierarchy of values".

In the history of philosophy is both the development of philosophical thought itself and the presentation of this development, of the teachings of philosophers, of their attempts to solve philosophical problems. The history of philosophy pursues the formulation and solution of problems, the development of the hypotheses and theories of philosophy, partly by itself, partly as elements of the world and life views of the thinkers of all times; these views depend in part on the character of the thinkers, on their nationality, their social environment, on the cultural situation, on historical traditions, but in addition to the psychological, social and cultural moments, there are above all purely logical motives and tendencies, some of which come to the fore over longer periods, and some of which reappear again and again in the course of time and in the competition of ideas with each other until the problems in question have been resolved as far as possible. In this respect, however, the process of philosophy and history is never completed, but is geared towards an ideal goal, which is always only approximately achieved, even if in the end full clarity and definiteness arises over the foundations and presuppositions of all philosophizing and cognition (as under criticism). In the history of philosophy, the will to comprehend and justify in a uniform way has been pursued by all kinds of detours and byways, with ever new approaches, as the realizer of the "idea", the reason immanent in all thinking, the principles of which gradually come to consciousness.

And it is precisely this awareness that forms the foundation of our Mystical Ladder.