There are at least two senses in which the term philosophy is used: a formal and an informal sense. In the formal sense, philosophy is an academic study of the fields aesthetics, ethics, epistemology, logic, metaphysics, as well as social and political philosophy. One's "philosophy of life" is philosophy in the informal sense, as a personal philosophy, way of life or Lebensphilosophie  whose focus is resolving the existential questions about the human condition.

Lebensphilosophie ("philosophy of life") is a philosophical school of thought which emphasises the meaning, value and purpose of life as the foremost focus of philosophy. Inspired by the critique of rationalism in the works of Arthur Schopenhauer, Søren Kierkegaard, and Friedrich Nietzsche, it emerged in 19th-century Germany as a reaction to the rise of positivism and the theoretical focus prominent in much of post-Kantian philosophy.