This book aims to be a simple, but exhaustive and rigorous exposition of the concept of philosophy, as well as a criticism of the main misunderstandings and misunderstandings that, for centuries, have affected said concept to the point of making its understanding almost impossible. But this is not its only intention. The other great objective of the work is to show that the understanding of that attitude or intellectual disposition that since the 5th century BC. What we have been calling "philosophy" is the most direct path to understanding the essential form of our culture. As the author conscientiously shows, philosophy is not a contingent cultural product among several others of Western culture, but rather the feature that most essentially distinguishes it from every other known culture. It could even be said that it is rather Western culture itself that is the product or result of philosophy. In any case, it does not seem that a full understanding of what we call the West can be achieved without a prior understanding of that peculiar spiritual disposition adopted for the first time in Greece, twenty-six centuries ago. Thus, the author's purpose is to contribute to that understanding with this didactic "introduction to philosophy" that serves, at the same time, as a "prologue" to a story that is as old as our own culture.