哲
Symbols Mind
philosophy
ㄓㄜˊ zhé
Two versions of the same picture, and both are free with no account and no watermark. The first has no background at all, which is the one to send your artist — but a phone or computer photo viewer set to dark will show black strokes on dark grey and it can look like nothing downloaded. If that happens, use the second one: identical characters on a plain white background. Either way you get the characters on their own — the square and the faint guide lines you see above are not in the file. Each character is 1000px, so a two-character download is 2000×1000, and the script and layout are the ones you picked.
Script
Characters
Same in both
Layout
Rubbing mode: white on black, as a stone rubbing. The download is unaffected.
Thinking systematically about the basic questions. The modern Chinese word was coined in Japan and borrowed back.
Before you commit
Choose with care哲 alone means wise or a sage. It does not mean philosophy by itself, and a reader will take it as praise of a person rather than a field.
Japanese哲學 is written 哲学 in Japanese and the word was coined there. 哲 is also a common Japanese given name, read tetsu or akira.
At small sizesTen strokes, a wide top over a mouth. Well balanced and safe at small sizes.
Meaning
Wise, sagacious; a wise person.
The classical character for a sage. It means wise, not the academic subject.
Other characters for “philosophy”
What to do next
Pick the script and layout you want above, download the PNG, and send that file to your artist. Ask them to work from the file rather than redrawing the character freehand — that is where strokes go missing.
Related concepts