What Is, and to What End, Do We Study (Western) Philosophy?

This present text originated in a talk given to students from Beijing Normal University visiting Berlin in January 2024. The task was to give a concise and compact but also sufficiently illustrative survey on what is generally called “Western Philosophy”. As far as we can see, texts that deal with such a survey are particularly rare in the philosophical literature, where elementary text books are usually absent rather than a common instrument for clarifying the main lines of conceptualization and argumentation as they have been utilized within the historical development. Hence, the opportunity has been seized to provide an at least modest version of this project.