From Wikiquote
| " [Philosophy is t]hat which grasps its own era in thought." |
| — [[ Hegel]], Elements of the Philosophy of Rights; 1821 |
| " [Philosophy is a]n interpretation of the world in order to change it." |
| — [[ Karl Marx]], Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (quoted by Jonathan Wolff) |
| "... [philosophy] is the acquisition of knowledge." |
| — [[Plato, Euthydemus, 288d.]], {{{3}}} |
| "... [that] philosophy only is the true one which reproduces most faithfully the statements of nature, and is written down, as it were, from nature's dictation, so that it is nothing but a copy and a reflection of nature, and adds nothing of its own, but is merely a repetition and echo." |
| — [[Francis Bacon]], The Enlargement of Science, 1. 2, ch. 3 |
| "... [philosophers] are not honest enough in their work, although they make a lot of virtuous noise when the problem of truthfulness is touched even remotely. They all pose as if they had discovered and reached their real opinions through the self-development of a cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic...; while at bottom it is an assumption, a hunch, indeed a kind of “inspiration”—most often a desire of the heart that has been filtered and made abstract—that they defend with reasons they have sought after the fact." |
| — [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], Beyond Good and Evil, Part One: On the Prejudices of Philosophers, §5 |
| "...for wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder." |
| — [[Plato]], Theaetetus, 155 |
| "Philosophy is the science by which the natural light of reason studies the first causes or highest principles of all things – is, in other words, the science of things in their first causes, in so far as these belong to the natural order." |
| — [[Jacques Maritain]], An Introduction to Philosophy, 69 |
| ""The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as to seem not worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it." " |
| — [[Bertrand Russell, quoted by John D. Barrow]], Pi in the Sky, 1992, p. 188 |
| "The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a theory but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. The result of philosophy is not a number of ‘philosophical propositions’, but to make propositions clear. Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred." |
| — [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]], Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 4.112 |
| " Philosophy is a way of think to which you take every aspect of a thought or idea and split it apart. Then you focus and think of how it was made, how it will affect things, and the reasons for it. In this way you may fully grasp its understanding. That, to understand things or ideas, is the definition of philosophy.
- Nate Brooks"
|
| — [[{{{2}}}]], {{{3}}} |
- According to W. Windelband[1], who published his second German edition in 1893 in the German language, when the word became a techical term, it meant exactly what science means in German.
[under construction]
What is the use of studying philosophy if all that it does for you is to enable you to talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic, etc., and if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life . . .? Quoted by Anthony Flew, p. vii.
- G. E. Moore (1873–1958) favored response to the quiry as to what philosophy is, was to point at his books stacked on his bookshelves, and to announce that it was what those books there were about. Told by Anthony Flew, p. 3
- Anthony Flew (b. 1923-), in 1980, begins his introduction to philosophy, in his opening chapter, On what philosophy is with an analysis of My own philosophy is, the more sex the better,[2], as a paraphrase of a "successful" American psychoanalyst. This kind of view Flew summarizes as follows:
In that most common understanding philosophy is a matter of a comprehensive view, usually embracing both value commitments and beliefs about the general nature of things; and a view in which, typically, particular and ephemeral urgencies are seen in a somewhat withdrawn perspective and with a certain detachment.
- However, Flew immediately side-steps this view as one which might be found in a How to book, and distinguishes the related discipline practiced in Departments of Philosophy within institutions of tertiary education.[3]
Most definitions of philosophy are fairly controversial,
particularly if they aim to be at all interesting or profound.
That is partly because what has been called philosophy has changed radically in scope
in the course of history, with many inquiries that were originally part of it
having detached themselves from it. The shortest definition, and it is quite a good one,
is that philosophy is thinking about thinking.
That brings out the generally second-order character of the subject,
as reflective thought about particular kinds of thinking — formation of beliefs,
claims to knowledge — about the world or large parts of it.
A more detailed, but still uncontroversial comprehensive, definition
is that philosophy is rationally critical thinking, of a more or less systematic kind
about the general nature of the world (metaphysics or theory of existence),
the justification of belief (epistemology or theory of knowledge), and
and the conduct of life (ethics or theory of value). Each of these three elements...
- Peter A. Angeles, 1981, in his Dictionary to Philosophy[5] gives six (6) distinct aspects of philosophy. First he notes that the meanings of philosophy are as diverse as philosophers are. His subsequent list of five "basic definitions" (of "attempts") as follows:
1. To give a speculative, systematic, complete view of reality;
2. To describe the ultimate, real, nature of reality;
3. To determine the limits, scope, source, nature, validity, and value, of knowledge;
4. The critical inquiry regarding the presuppositions, and claims,
made by the different fields of knowledge; and
5. A discipline to get you to "see" what you say and say what you "see."
[edit] Notes and references
- ↑ W' Windelband, ibid., p. 2
- ↑ Philosophy, An Introduction, (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1980) ISBN 0-87975-127-4
- ↑ ibid.
- ↑ ed. Ted Honderich, The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) ISBN 0-19-866132-0
- ↑ Peter A. Angeles, Dictionary of Philosophy (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1981) ISBN 0-06-463461-2, PA. 211
