ABSTRACT
Those philosophers who are content to define philosophy simply as ‘thinking about meaning’, tend also to stress that philosophy is easy; it is not a mysterious pursuit suitable only for wise gurus and sages. Anybody can do it, and in a sense everybody does do it some of the time, for everybody at one time or another applies his critical powers to some problem of meaning. There are, however, dangers in stressing the ease with which one may philosophise: the implication is that provided one questions, rather than passively accepts, one is doing the job. Even allowing that this is in some sense true, it is a further question as to whether it is easy to do the job well and whether all spheres into which one might choose to inquire by ‘thinking about meaning’ in them are equally easy to penetrate.
