Still_mind,
I think your friend had a good answer, albeit a not so clear one. It is true, as your friend said, that philosophers search for truth. It is also true that philosophers search for the fundamental questions in life or otherwise, and investigate, and justify their answers as best they can while using Okham’s Razor. There is also a sense in which people view philosophers as complainers, people who are never happy. When they are done ripping their hair out with one problem and finally come to terms with it, they merely move onto the next one to do it all again. Philosophers are always analysing and questioning, which usually leads to finding the paradoxes and unfair treatments or sytematic uses of people and their lives - and they move to think of a better way. You may have noticed that most philosophers are, what I will term, fixers. Each philosopher gives his most sincere attempt at fixing the problems they see present before them.
One of the over-arching themes within all philosophers and philosophies is method. Philosophy is a method, I will go so far as to say that it is an extreme method by which one lives. An extreme that is actually a mean between vices. I say extreme because it is not easy to be a philosopher, many people don’t like philosophers, the way of life we have come to grasps with doesn’t react well to philosophers. Hence, maybe extreme wasn’t the right word, instead it can be interchanged with ‘radical’.
There is another over-arching theme within all philosophers and philosophies in that philosophy acts as a machine gun, grenade, missile launcher, lazer guided bomb dropper, and mine digger to any all ideas, thoughts, and acts. I’ll clarify, philosophers take whatever it is that interests them, whether it be morality, religion, society, economy, business, or what have you - they stand this thing up and proceed to go through their arsenal and throw everything they have against this thing. If the thing is left standing, they grin, drop the arsenal and proceed to accept and hug that which has survived the onslaught. In fact, I would say that 80% of everything I have had to say on this message board has been simply doing this very thing. When someone says something, a view, I take that view and stand it up and then proceed to hurl everything I got against it until I see which one of my weapons it was that got through. Once I find it, I post about this weapon that I witnessed penetrating through this view, and I try then to think of possible ideas as to how we might make it immune to this weapon - or I try to suggest a new theory which is immune to this weapon, and so on. In a sense, philosophy is the evolution of thoughts ensuring that only the fittest survive.
For this reason, philosophy is the last line of defence. Often times there are policies or laws put forth into our society that everyone fails to question and they simply accept it for what it is without even questioning it. Philosophy comes along with all of it’s arsenal and gives a hard time to this policy or law and exposes all its weaknesses. Once people hear or read about philosophies discoveries of these weaknesses these people begin to open their eyes and they too sometimes move to do something about it. This is why some people say that philosophy doesn’t give answers, it only dusts away the sand from the path to the answer, it brings about questions. One of my professors favorite definitions of philosophy is “What is X” - I like another version better “Who/What/When/Where/Why/How is X”
I hope this helped.