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Philosophy

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Philosophy

   The Death of Socrates, by Jacques-Louis David (1787) depicts the
   philosopher Socrates carrying out his own execution.
   Enlarge
   The Death of Socrates, by Jacques-Louis David (1787) depicts the
   philosopher Socrates carrying out his own execution.

   The word philosophy comes from the ancient Greek words philo-, to love
   or to befriend, and, -sophia, to be wise. It can be construed then
   either as the love of wisdom or the wisdom of love. The answer to the
   question "what is philosophy?", has almost as many varieties as there
   are philosophers.

   In the contemporary English-speaking world it is often used implicitly
   to refer only to analytic philosophy and, on the other hand, in
   non-English speaking countries, it often refers implicitly only to
   continental philosophy. This modern-day division of analytic and
   continental philosophy (confined largely to academia) is problematic
   for understanding the current use of the word,philosophy since both of
   these two areas talk of philosophy in general but are often only
   referring to that school. The easiest clue to indicate which of these
   philosophies is being referred to by the word philosophy is to note the
   language used. But modern usage of the term is much broader than this
   rather academic division.

   Since the ancient Greeks discovered many of the ideas of logic, math,
   and geometry that are often associated with classical ideas of
   philosophy, it behooves us to ask what they meant by it. Human
   curiosity and the compulsion to ask questions has always existed. But
   the ancient Greeks were perhaps the first to explicitly ask: Is the
   world (of which we are also a part) intelligible? And if so, how? They
   answered in the affirmative through the human capacity to reason. Their
   view of reason rested in the creation of concepts using the deductive
   method operating on the data provided by the senses as its basic
   material, and then reasoning further from this conceptual base. They
   invented the concept of philosophy to designate the whole endeavor of
   making sense of all aspects of existence. As a consequence the ancient
   Greek philosophers identified philosophy with rationalism. But
   rationalism is only one possible answer to the question of
   intelligibility. Throughout the history of human thought since the
   ancient Greeks many thinkers have argued that aspects of reality are
   not intelligible in a strictly rational sense. A range of answers to
   philosophical questions were subsequently proposed that fall somewhere
   on a spectrum between the two poles of rational and non-rational. As a
   consequence modern usage no longer limits the term philosophy to the
   original ancient Greek idea but has broadened the concept as covering
   the entire spectrum of thought on these questions.

   Mankind only began to philosophise, Aristotle considered, after all of
   the normal necessities of life had been achieved. For him then it is a
   non-practical kind of leisure activity. However, Socrates before him
   considered it to be the most valuable and, in that sense, most
   practical activity.

   Philosophy as a concept and a subject encompases all of knowledge and
   all that can be known including the means by which such knowledge can
   be acquired. The ancient Greeks organized the subject into five basic
   categories: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics and aesthetics.
   This organization of the subject is still largely in use today and can
   be profitably used regardless of where one's answers to specific
   philosophical questions lie.

   Metaphysics is concerned with the nature of existence in the most
   fundamental sense. It attempts to answer the question as to what are
   the most fundamental attributes that all existing things share, if any,
   as well as fundamental questions concerning how they relate to one
   another. Epistemology is concerned with the nature of knowledge and how
   man can know things. As such certain aspects of the functioning of
   man's mind is included -- his rational faculty (particularly his
   conceptual capacity) and how it functions as well as his emotional
   nature. Ethics is concerned with the nature of values and in particular
   how this concept applies to man and his relationship to the external
   world and to other men. Politics is concerned with the behaviour of men
   toward one another in the social context. Hence the first question of
   politics as a philosophical subject might be: how should men deal with
   one another in such a social context? Thus it can be seen that politics
   is really a sub-category of ethics since ethical criteria must be used
   in order to answer its questions. Aesthetics is concerned with man's
   artistic creations. It also involves choice, i.e., value criteria and
   as such can also be viewed as a sub-category of ethics.

   There are a number of broad approaches to the subject as a whole which
   vary according to the traditions of people all over the world. One
   notable approach is that of Western philosophy, a school of thought
   originated by the Greeks and developed in the West (discussed above).
   Eastern philosophy is considered its counterpart since subjective
   non-rational criteria are largely used to evaluate and resolve issues.
   The methodology of philosophy is itself debated within the field of
   metaphilosophy and epistemology.

Origin

   The term philosophy comes from the Greek word Φιλοσοφία ( philo-
   sophia), which means "love of wisdom." If one were to ask ancient Greek
   philosophers for the meaning of " wisdom", their answers would have
   dwelt on virtue, the quest for genuine knowledge, and the eradication
   of false opinions. Many of Plato's complete philosophical dialogues
   have been passed down to us, and Plato is often considered to be one of
   the first great philosophers, along with his teacher Socrates, and his
   pupil Aristotle. For them, philosophy was seen as a questioning of
   first principles, and a search for methods to obtain true first
   principles. They studied the deductive method of logic, mathematics and
   geometry, and the inductive method of natural philosophy, biology, and
   astronomy. Plato introduced the Intelligible method, and the theory of
   the divided line, as well as the allegory of the cave, as a basic
   introduction to the philosophical way of life that he taught. Plato and
   Socrates would have defined philosophy very differently than we do
   today. Now the term "philosophy" is notoriously difficult to define
   (see definition of philosophy) because of the diverse fields of study
   to which it has been popularly applied, similar to the various schools
   of ancient Rome, or the schools that competed with Plato's Academy. The
   Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy defines it as the study of "the most
   fundamental and general concepts and principles involved in thought,
   action, and reality". It goes on to observe that philosophy differs
   from science in that philosophy's questions cannot be answered
   empirically, and from religion in that philosophy allows no place for
   faith or revelation. However, these points are called into question by
   the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, which states: "the late
   20th-century spirit of the subject [...] prefers to see philosophical
   reflection as continuous with the best practice of any field of
   intellectual enquiry" . Indeed, many of the speculations of early
   philosophers in the field of natural philosophy, geometry, mathematics,
   logic, and astronomy eventually formed the basis for the modern
   scientific method and several kinds of modern scientific explanations.

Branches of philosophy

   There is no universal agreement about which subjects are the main
   branches of philosophy. In The Story of Philosophy, Will Durant lists
   logic, aesthetics, ethics, politics, and metaphysics. He is clearly
   following the Greek structure with the exception of logic. The Greeks
   viewed logic as only one aspect of epistemology. Issues such as the
   basis of logic (i.e., the self-evident axioms on which logic rests),
   the validity of the senses, the issue of free will, the nature of
   emotions, the nature of the subjective and the objective and others are
   also included. Nevertheless, there are many places where these subjects
   overlap (particularly in metaphysics and epistemology), and there are
   many philosophical ideas that cannot be placed neatly into only one of
   these categories.

   Each branch has its own particular questions. Logic asks: How do we
   distinguish arguments from premises to conclusions as valid or invalid?
   How can we know that a statement is true or false? What kinds of
   questions can we answer? Aesthetics asks: What is beauty? What is art?
   Ethics asks: What are values? Why does man need them? Are values
   absolute or relative? Is there a difference between morally right and
   wrong actions, values, or institutions? Which actions are right and
   which are wrong? What is happiness? Is there a normative value on which
   all other values depend? Are values 'in' the world (like tables and
   chairs) and if not, how should we understand their ontological status?
   Politics is the study of social organization. It asks such questions
   as: How should men interact in society? What is law? What is
   government? Do men need law and government? What is Justice? What is
   freedom in the political context? What is the nature of production and
   trade? How do they function within the various forms of government?
   Professor Durant focuses on the nature of government and describes
   "monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, socialism, anarchism & feminism" as
   the "dramatis personae of political philosophy". And metaphysics asks:
   What is reality? What exists? Do things exist independently of
   perception? (See Solipsism, the idea that only perception exists.)

   Outside these five broad categories are other areas of philosophical
   inquiry such as religion or theology.

History of philosophy

   The history of philosophy is often divided into three periods: Ancient
   philosophy, Medieval philosophy, and Modern philosophy. Eastern thought
   has been, for most of its history, independent of ancient and medieval
   philosophy. Some philosophers have argued that human civilization has
   passed into a new, " post-modern" period. Others believe that there is
   a distinction between "Modern" philosophy and Contemporary philosophy,
   but there is great disagreement about the content of this difference.
   It is important to note that ancient Greek and Roman philosophers never
   thought of themselves as "Western" philosophers, and it would be
   historically inaccurate to claim this. Many classical Greek texts were
   actually preserved in the Middle East, and forgotten and lost in the
   specific areas of Italy and Greece until the Renaissance. In this way,
   an alternative understanding of the history of philosophy is in terms
   of such trans-periodic traditions as Aristotelianism.

Western philosophy

   St. Thomas Aquinas
   Enlarge
   St. Thomas Aquinas

Greco-Roman philosophy

   Ancient Greek philosophy may be divided into the pre-Socratic period,
   the Socratic period, and the post-Aristotelian period. The pre-Socratic
   period was characterized by metaphysical speculation, often preserved
   in the form of grand, sweeping statements, such as "All is fire", or
   "All changes". Important pre-Socratic philosophers include Thales,
   Anaximander, Anaximenes, Democritus, Parmenides, and Heraclitus. The
   Socratic period is named in honour of the most recognizable figure in
   Western philosophy, Socrates, who, along with his pupil Plato,
   revolutionized philosophy through the use of the Socratic method, which
   developed the very general philosophical methods of definition,
   analysis, and synthesis. While Socrates wrote nothing himself, his
   influence as a "skeptic" survives through Plato's works. Plato's
   writings are often considered basic texts in philosophy as they defined
   the fundamental issues of philosophy for future generations. These
   issues and others were taken up by Aristotle, who studied at Plato's
   school, the Academy, and who often disagreed with what Plato had
   written. The subsequent period ushered in such philosophers as Euclid,
   Epicurus, Chrysippus, Hipparchia the Cynic, Pyrrho, and Sextus
   Empiricus.

Medieval philosophy

   The medieval period of philosophy came with the collapse of Roman
   civilization and the dawn of Christianity, Islam, and rabbinic Judaism.
   The medieval period brought Christian scholastic philosophy, with
   writers such as Augustine of Hippo, Boethius, Anselm, Robert
   Grosseteste, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas,
   John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Nicholas of Cusa, and Francisco
   Suárez. A female Christian philosopher of the period was a student of
   Abelard named Heloïse. The philosophers in the scholastic Christian
   tradition and philosophers in the other major Abrahamic religions (such
   as the Jewish philosophers Saadia Gaon and Maimonides, and the Muslim
   philosophers Avicenna, Al-Ghazali, and Averroes) were each aware of the
   others' works. These religious traditions took on questions about the
   relation of man to God. The philosophy of this period is characterized
   by analysis of the nature and properties of God; the metaphysics
   involving substance, essences and accidents (that is, qualities that
   are respectively essential to substances possessing them or merely
   happening to be possessed by them), form, and divisibility; and logic
   and the philosophy of language.

   Many of these philosophers took as their starting point the theories of
   Plato or Aristotle. Others, however, such as Tertullian, rejected Greek
   philosophy as antithetical to revelation and faith.

Modern Western philosophy

   Modern philosophy is generally considered to begin with the work of
   René Descartes. His work was greatly influenced by questioning from his
   correspondences with other philosophers. For example, the prodding of
   Pierre Gassendi and Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia obliged Descartes to
   try to formulate more cogent replies to the mind-body problem.

   Medieval philosophy had been concerned primarily with argument from
   authority, and the analysis of ancient texts using Aristotelian logic.
   The Renaissance saw an outpouring of new ideas that questioned
   authority. Roger Bacon (1214–1294?) was one of the first writers to
   advocate putting authority to the test of experiment and reason.
   Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) challenged conventional ideas about
   morality. Francis Bacon (1561–1626) wrote in favour of the methods of
   science in philosophical discovery.

Analytic and Continental

   The late modern period in philosophy, beginning in the late 19th
   century and lasting to the 1950s, was marked by a developing schism
   between the "Continental" tradition and the "Analytic" tradition
   associated with many English-speaking countries.

   What underlies the analytic tradition, especially the early analytic
   tradition, is the view (originally defended by Ockham) that much
   philosophical error arises from misunderstandings generated by
   language. According to some analytic philosophers, the true meaning of
   ordinary sentences is "concealed by their grammatical form", and we
   must translate them into their true form (understood as their logical
   form) in order to clarify them. The difficulty, so far unresolved, is
   to determine what the correct logical form must be. Some philosophers
   (beginning with Frege and Bertrand Russell) have argued that
   first-order logic shows us the true logical form of ordinary sentences.
   Other analytic philosophers, such as the late Wittgenstein, rejected
   the idea of logical form; and this issue of logical form figured
   prominently in early analytic philosophy. These debates over logical
   form are no longer as central to analytic philosophy as they used to
   be, and analytic philosophy now tends to address the full range of
   philosophical problems with all available philosophical methods. Today
   analytic philosophy's essence lies more in a style of writing and
   argumentation (that is, it aims to be clear and rigorous) than in its
   subject matter or ideas. An emphasis on carefully analyzing language to
   reveal philosophical errors still remains; but the “analysis” that
   figures in the name “analytic philosophy” is now just as likely to
   refer to the analysis of ideas, arguments, social institutions, and
   presuppositions.

   "Continental" philosophy is most closely identified with the
   phenomenological movement inaugurated by Edmund Husserl and the various
   reactions to and modifications of Husserl's work. Phenomenology is
   primarily a method of investigation. As Husserl conceived it, to
   investigate phenomenologically is to examine the contents of conscious
   experience while bracketing all of the assumptions we ordinarily make
   concerning the existence of objects in the world. He believed that we
   could arrive at certain knowledge by deducing the necessary features of
   our conscious experience. Perhaps the most important such feature
   deduced by Husserl was called intentionality, which denotes the
   character of consciousness by which it is always directed at some
   object or other. The phenomenological method is an important
   alternative to the way that analytic philosophy typically proceeds.
   Instead of taking linguistic data as the starting point and linguistic
   analysis as the primary method of philosophy, phenomenology takes
   conscious experience as the starting point and the detailed analysis of
   such experience – that is, "phenomenological analysis" – as its method.
   Some important figures in the analytic tradition such as Wilfrid
   Sellars and Hector-Neri Castaneda have argued that linguistic analysis
   is actually a kind of phenomenological investigation because it appeals
   to our experience as language users to answer philosophical questions.
   In effect, they have argued that analytic philosophy is but one kind of
   phenomenology, the implication being that analytic philosophy can
   ignore the tradition that commences with phenomenology only to its
   detriment.

   While Husserl placed great emphasis on consciousness and took up an
   idealist position motivated largely by a firm distinction between a
   conscious ego and its objects, the subject-object distinction was
   deeply critiqued by Husserl's student, Martin Heidegger. Heidegger's
   1927 book Being and Time was not only a critique of Husserl, but of a
   way of thinking that he believed infected the entire Western
   philosophical tradition of which Husserl was the latest expression.
   Arguably, Being and Time was the single most revolutionary work of
   twentieth century philosophy. Though Heidegger radically revised
   phenomenology, he still considered himself a phenomenologist. With him,
   phenomenology became existential phenomenology, which focused on
   producing a "hermeneutics of facticity" – an interpretation of the
   human condition as lived by real human beings. Heidegger was followed
   in this effort most famously by Jean-Paul Sartre in his book Being and
   Nothingness, which carried Heidegger's analysis further and applied it
   to concrete situations. Maurice Merleau-Ponty critiqued Sartre while
   still continuing on the path marked by Heidegger's emphasis on our
   practical engagement with the world as opposed to the Husserlian focus
   on explicit conscious awareness. The hermeneutical strand of
   Heidegger's work was developed by Hans-Georg Gadamer in Truth and
   Method. Together, hermeneutics – the theory of interpretation in the
   most general sense – and phenomenology constitute the main concerns of
   continental philosophy. These concerns tend to require a great deal of
   systematic thinking to make progress in them, and thus continental
   philosophy tends to look more often at the "big picture" and to deal
   more directly with everyday human concerns than does analytic
   philosophy – though like any stereotype, this generalization admits of
   many exceptions and should not be read to the letter.

Eastern philosophy

   Many societies have considered philosophical questions and built
   philosophical traditions based upon each other's works. Eastern and
   Middle Eastern philosophical traditions have influenced Western
   philosophers. Russian, Jewish, Islamic and recently Latin American
   philosophical traditions have contributed to, or been influenced by,
   Western philosophy, yet each has retained a distinctive identity.

   The differences between traditions are often based on their favored
   historical philosophers, and varying stress on ideas, procedural
   styles, or written language. The subject matter and dialogues of each
   can be studied using methods derived from the others, and there are
   significant commonalities and exchanges between them.

   " Eastern philosophy" refers to the broad traditions that originated or
   were popular in India, Persia, China, Japan, and to an extent, the
   Middle East (which overlaps with Western philosophy due to being the
   origin of the Abrahamic religions).

Indian philosophy

   Hindu philosophy constitutes an integral part of the culture of
   Southern Asia, and is the first of the Dharmic philosophies which were
   influential throughout the Far East. The great diversity in thought and
   practice of Hinduism is nurtured by its liberal universalism.

   The origins of Hindu philosophy are to be traced in Vedic deliberations
   about the universe and Rta ("universal order"), the first of which was
   the Rig-Veda, composed in the 2nd millennium BC. Other major texts with
   philosophical implications include the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita,
   and the Brahma Sutra, from circa 1000 BCE to 500 BCE. The Indian epics
   Mahabharata and Ramayana also cover Indian philosophy in much depth. At
   about the same time, the shramana schools, including Jainism and
   Buddhism, also developed. It is notable that the Vedanta schools of
   Hindu philosophy are still living traditions today. Hinduism has no
   known founder or single, authoritative text .

   Hindu philosophy is traditionally seen through the prism of six
   different systems (called darshanas in Sanskrit). The six major Astika
   schools of thought are the Samkhya ( enumeration), Yoga (union), Nyaya
   (logic), Vaisheshika ( atomism), Mimamsa (investigation), and Vedanta
   (culmination of the Vedas) schools. The Vedanta school is further
   divided into six sub-schools: Advaita ( monism/ nondualism),
   VisishtAdvaita (monism of the qualified whole), Dvaita ( dualism),
   Dvaitadvaita (dualism-nondualism), Suddhadvaita, and Achintya Bheda
   Abheda schools.

   Buddhist philosophy is a system of beliefs based on the teachings of
   Siddhartha Gautama, an Indian prince later known as the Buddha, derived
   from the Sanskrit 'bud', 'to awaken'. Buddhism is a non-theistic
   religion, one whose tenets are not especially concerned with the
   existence or nonexistence of a God or gods. The Buddha himself
   expressly disavowed any special divine status or inspiration, and said
   that anyone, anywhere could achieve all the insight that he had. The
   question of God is largely irrelevant in Buddhism, though some sects
   (notably Tibetan Buddhism) do venerate a number of gods drawn in from
   local indigenous belief systems.

   From its inception, Buddhism has had a strong philosophical component.
   Buddhism is founded on the rejection of certain orthodox Hindu
   philosophical concepts, in which the Buddha had been instructed by
   various teachers. Buddhism rejects atheism, theism, monism, and dualism
   alike. The Buddha criticized all concepts of metaphysical being and
   non-being, and this critique is inextricable from the founding of
   Buddhism.

   Most Buddhist sects believe in karma, a cause-and-effect relationship
   between all that has been done and all that will be done. Events that
   occur are held to be the direct result of previous events. One effect
   of karma is rebirth. At death, the karma from a given life determines
   the nature of the next life's existence. The ultimate goal of a
   Buddhist practitioner is to eliminate karma (both good and bad), end
   the cycle of rebirth and suffering, and attain Nirvana, usually
   translated as awakening or enlightenment.

   Jaina philosophy, founded by Mahavira (599-527 BCE), is based upon
   eternal, universal truths, according to its followers. Over a period of
   time, these truths may lapse among humanity and then reappear through
   the teachings of enlightened humans, those who have reached
   enlightenment or total knowledge (Keval Gnan).

   Anekantavada is a basic principle of Jainism positing that reality is
   perceived differently from different points of view, and that no single
   point of view is completely true. Jain doctrine states that only
   Kevalis, those who have infinite knowledge, can know the true answer,
   and that all others would only know a part of the answer. Anekantavada
   is related to the Western philosophical doctrine of Subjectivism.

Persian philosophy

   The teachings of Zarathushtra (Zoroaster) appeared in Persia at some
   point during the period between 1000-588 BCE. His wisdom became the
   basis of the religion Zoroastrianism, and generally influenced the
   development of the Iranian branch of Indo-Iranian philosophy.
   Zarathushtra was the first who treated the problem of evil in
   philosophical terms. He is also believed to be one of the oldest
   monotheists in the history of religion. He espoused an ethical
   philosophy based on the primacy of good thoughts (humata), good words
   (hukhata), and good deeds (hvarshatra).

   Zarathushtra was known as a sage, magician and miracle-worker in
   post-Classical Western culture, though almost nothing was known of his
   ideas until the late eighteenth century. By this time his name was
   associated with lost ancient wisdom and was appropriated by Freemasons
   and other groups who claimed access to such knowledge. He appears in
   Mozart's opera "Die Zauberflöte" under the variant name "Sarastro", who
   represents moral order in opposition to the "Queen of the Night".
   Enlightenment writers such as Voltaire promoted research into
   Zoroastrianism in the belief that it was a form of rational Deism,
   preferable to Christianity.

   In 2005, the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy ranked Zarathushtra number
   two in the chronology of philosophical events. Zarathushtra's impact
   lingers today due in part to the system of rational ethics he founded
   called Mazda-Yasna. The word Mazda-Yasna is avestan and is translated
   as "Worship of Wisdom" in English. The Greeks later used a similar word
   to the Iranian one – the word "philosophy" in Greek literally means
   "love of wisdom".

   Throughout Iranian history, due to Greek and Arabic influence, a wide
   spectrum of schools of thoughts showed a variety of views on
   philosophical questions extending from Old Iranian and Zoroastrian
   traditions, to schools appearing in the late pre-Islamic era, to
   various Islamic schools. Iranian philosophy after the Arab invasion of
   Persia is characterized by different interactions with the Old Iranian
   philosophy with Greek and Islamic philosophy. The Illumination School
   and the Transcendent Philosophy are regarded as two of the main
   philosophical traditions of that era in Persia.

   Manicheism, founded by Mani, was influential from North Africa in the
   West, to China in the East. Its influence subtly continues in Western
   Christian thought via Saint Augustine of Hippo, who converted to
   Christianity from Manichaeism, which he passionately denounced in his
   writings, and whose writings continue to be influential among Catholic,
   Protestant, and Orthodox theologians. An important principle of
   Manicheism was its dualistic cosmology/ theology, which it shared with
   Mazdakism, a philosophy founded by Mazdak. Under this dualism, there
   were two original principles of the universe: Light, the good one; and
   Darkness, the evil one. These two had been mixed by a cosmic accident,
   and man's role in this life was through good conduct to release the
   parts of himself that belonged to Light. Mani saw the mixture of good
   and bad as a cosmic tragedy, while Mazdak viewed this in a more
   neutral, even optimistic way.

   In the Islamic era, various Persian philosophers contributed to Islamic
   philosophy. Al-Farabi discussed the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle
   elaborately. He hypothesized an "ideal state" in his work Al-Madina
   al-fadila. His ideas were not extreme, rather he often tried to unify
   many contradictory ideas. He accepted the supremacy of a creator, while
   admitting the absoluteness of creation. His idealized state-leader in
   Al-Madina al-fadila is an autocrat. This philosophy had an impact on
   centralizing then divided Feudal societies. He explicitly claimed that
   attaining ideal state is impossible, but the struggle should be
   encouraged.

   Avicenna (Ibn Sina) wrote extensively on the subjects of philosophy,
   logic, ethics, metaphysics and other disciplines. Most of his works
   were written in Arabic, which was the de facto scientific language of
   that time, while some were written in Persian. Ibn Sina's commentaries
   on Aristotle often corrected the philosopher, encouraging a lively
   debate in the spirit of ijtihad. His Logic, Metaphysics, Physics, and
   De Caelo, are treatises giving a synoptic view of Aristotelian
   doctrine. The Logic and Metaphysics have been printed more than once in
   Europe. Some of his shorter essays on logic take a poetical form, which
   was also later published in Europe. He wrote two encyclopaedic
   treatises dealing with philosophy, known as the Al-Shifa (Sanatio in
   Latin) and An-najat (Liberatio in Latin). He also wrote a Philosophia
   Orientalis, mentioned by Roger Bacon, which according to Averroes was
   pantheistic in tone. Arabic philosophy flourished after Avicenna's
   death, emerging from Avicenna's inflammatory pronouncements on all
   matters within the world, whether physical or metaphysical, such as the
   works of the post-Avicennian Baghdadi Peripatetics and
   anti-Peripatetics.

Chinese philosophy

   Confucius, illustrated in Myths & Legends of China, 1922, by E.T.C.
   Werner.
   Enlarge
   Confucius, illustrated in Myths & Legends of China, 1922, by E.T.C.
   Werner.

   Philosophy has had a tremendous effect on Chinese civilization, and
   East Asia as a whole. Many of the great philosophical schools were
   formulated during the Spring and Autumn Period and Warring States
   Period, and came to be known as the Hundred Schools of Thought. The
   four most influential of these were Confucianism, Taoism, Mohism, and
   Legalism. Later on, during the Tang Dynasty, Buddhism from India also
   became a prominent philosophical and religious discipline. (It should
   be noted that Eastern thought, unlike Western philosophy, did not
   express a clear distinction between philosophy and religion.) Like
   Western philosophy, Chinese philosophy covers a broad and complex range
   of thought, possessing a multitude of schools that address every branch
   and subject area of philosophy.

   In China, the Tao Te Ching (Dào dé jīng, in pinyin romanisation) of Lao
   Tzu (Lǎo zǐ) and the Analects of Confucius (Kǒng fū zǐ; sometimes
   called Master Kong) both appeared around 600 BCE, about the time that
   the Greek pre-Socratics were writing.

   Of all the Chinese philosophies, however, it is quite safe to say
   Confucianism has had the greatest impact throughout East Asia.
   Confucianism represents the collected teachings of the Chinese sage
   Confucius, who lived from 551 to 479 BCE. His philosophy focused in the
   fields of ethics and politics, emphasizing personal and governmental
   morality, correctness of social relationships, justice, traditionalism,
   and sincerity. Confucianism, along with Legalism, is responsible for
   creating the world’s first meritocracy, which holds that one's status
   should be determined by ability instead of ancestry, wealth, or
   friendships. It is arguable that Confucianism is most responsible for
   shaping the Chinese culture and state of China.

   Throughout history, Chinese philosophy has been molded to fit the
   prevailing school of thought in China. The Chinese schools of
   philosophy, except during the Qin Dynasty, have been relatively
   tolerant of one another. Instead of competing, they generally have
   cooperated and shared ideas, which they would usually incorporate with
   their own. For example, Neo-Confucianism was a revived version of old
   Confucian principles that appeared around the Song Dynasty, with
   Buddhist, Taoist, and Legalist features.

   During the Industrial and Modern Ages, Chinese philosophy had also
   began to integrate concepts of Western philosophy, as steps toward
   modernization. By the time of the Xinhai Revolution in 1911, there were
   many calls, such as the May Fourth Movement, to completely abolish the
   old imperial institutions and practices of China. There have been
   attempts to incorporate democracy, republicanism, and industrialism
   into Chinese philosophy, notably by Sun Yat-Sen (Sūn yì xiān, in one
   Mandarin form of the name) at the beginning of the 20th century. Mao
   Tse-Tung (Máo zé dōng) added Marxism, Stalinism, and other communist
   thought. The current government of the People's Republic of China is
   trying to encourage a form of market socialism. Although, officially,
   the Communist Party of China does not encourage, and have even forbid,
   some of the philosophical practices of Imperial China, the influences
   of past are still deeply ingrained in the Chinese culture. As in Japan,
   philosophy in China has become a melting pot of ideas. It accepts new
   concepts, while attempting also to accord old beliefs their due.

   Chinese philosophy has spread around the world in forms such as the
   so-called New Confucianism and New Age ideas (see for example Chinese
   traditional medicine). Many in the academic community of the West
   remain skeptical, and only a few assimilate Chinese philosophy into
   their own research, whether scientific or philosophical. However, it
   still carries profound influence amongst the people of East Asia, and
   even Southeast Asia.

   Related Topics: Korean philosophy, Bushido, Zen, The Art of War, Asian
   Values

African philosophy

   Other philosophical traditions, such as African philosophy, are rarely
   considered by foreign academia. Since emphasis is mainly placed on
   western philosophy as a reference point, the study, preservation and
   dissemination of valuable, but lesser known, non-Western philosophical
   works face many obstacles. Key African philosophers include the Fulani
   Uthman Dan Fodio, founder of the Sokoto Caliphate of Northern Nigeria
   and Umar Tall of Senegal; both were prolific Islamic scholars. The
   Kebra Negast contains not only a source of the Kings of Ethiopia but a
   window into African philosophy, as the text undergirds the beliefs of
   Ethiopian Christians and Rastafarians.

Philosophical topics

Metaphysics and epistemology

Rationalism and empiricism

   René Descartes
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   René Descartes

   René Descartes, who is often called the father of modern philosophy,
   proposed that philosophy should begin with a radical skepticism about
   the possibility of obtaining reliable knowledge. In 1641, in
   Meditations on First Philosophy, he used this method of doubt in an
   attempt to establish what knowledge is most certain. He chose as the
   foundation of his philosophy the famous statement Cogito ergo sum ("I
   think, therefore I am"). He then attempted to rebuild a system of
   knowledge based on this single supposedly indubitable fact. His
   approach became known as a species of rationalism; it attracted such
   philosophers as Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, and Christian Wolff.

   In response to the popularity of rationalism, John Locke wrote An Essay
   Concerning Human Understanding in 1689, developing a form of naturalism
   and empiricism on roughly scientific principles. Hume's work A Treatise
   of Human Nature (1739-40) combined empiricism with a spirit of
   skepticism. Other philosophers who made major contributions to
   empiricism include Thomas Hobbes and George Berkeley (Bishop Berkeley).

   During this era, religious ideas played a mixed role in the struggles
   that preoccupied secular philosophy. Bishop Berkeley's famous idealist
   refutation of Isaac Newton is a case of an Enlightenment philosopher
   who drew substantially from religious ideas. Other influential
   religious thinkers of the time include Blaise Pascal, Joseph Butler,
   and Jonathan Edwards. Other major writers, such as Jean-Jacques
   Rousseau and Edmund Burke, took a slightly different path. The
   restricted interests of many of the philosophers of the time foreshadow
   the separation and specialization of different areas of philosophy that
   would occur in the twentieth century.

Kantian philosophy and the rise of idealism

   Immanuel Kant
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   Immanuel Kant

   Immanuel Kant wrote his Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787) in an
   attempt to reconcile the conflicting approaches of rationalism and
   empiricism and establish a new groundwork for studying metaphysics.
   Kant's intention with this work was to look at what we know and then
   consider what must be true about the way we know it. One major theme
   was that there are fundamental features of reality that escape our
   direct knowledge because of the natural limits of the human faculties.
   Kant's method was modeled on Euclid, though he eventually acknowledged
   that pure reason was insufficient to discover all truth. Kant's work
   was continued in the work of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich
   Schelling, and Arthur Schopenhauer.

   Kant's philosophy, known as transcendental idealism, would later be
   made more abstract and more general, in the movement known as German
   idealism, a type of absolute idealism. German idealism rose to
   popularity with G. W. F. Hegel's publication in 1807 of Phenomenology
   of Spirit. In that work, Hegel asserts that the aim of philosophy is to
   spot the contradictions apparent in human experience (which arise, for
   instance, out of the recognition of the self as both an active,
   subjective witness and a passive object in the world) and to get rid of
   these contradictions by making them compatible. Hegel wrote that every
   thesis creates its own antithesis, and that out of the two arises a
   synthesis. This process is known as the "Hegelian dialectic".
   Philosophers in the Hegelian tradition include Ludwig Andreas
   Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and sometimes the British
   idealists.

American Pragmatism

   William James
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   William James

   The late nineteenth century brought about the rise of a new philosophy
   in the Americas. Charles Peirce and William James are considered to be
   the co-founders of loosely allied schools of pragmatism, which
   introduced what would later be called instrumentalism, the idea that
   what is important for a good theory is how useful it is, not how well
   it represents reality. Thinkers in this tradition included John Dewey,
   George Santayana, and C. I. Lewis. Though not widely recognized under
   the term "pragmatist", philosophers like Henri Bergson and G. E. Moore
   shared many of the same foundational assumptions with the pragmatists.
   Pragmatism has recently been taken in new directions by Richard Rorty
   and Hilary Putnam.

The prominence of logic

   Gottlob Frege and the early Edmund Husserl were interested in the
   philosophy of mathematics. Husserl's work Philosophy of Arithmatic,
   inspired by the teachings of Weierstrass, hoped to show that the
   concept of the cardinal number was the foundation of arithmetic. The
   prospects for this project dwindled as Husserl entertained more and
   more doubts in the final chapters of that same work, culminating in the
   abandonment of the project by the 1890s. Husserl's philosophical change
   may have been helped along to a modest extent by Frege's critiques of
   psychologism. Frege's own work, the Begriffsschrift, developed the
   concepts of modern predicate logic by making use of the notions of the
   object and the function, and which would provide one alternative to
   psychologistic accounts of number.

   Frege, and to a lesser extent, Husserl, influenced the logicians
   Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead. After the latters
   published Principia Mathematica (1910-1913), many philosophers took a
   renewed interest in the problems of mathematical logic. With this
   increased interest in mathematical logic came the rise in popularity
   for the view known as logical positivism and related theories, all of
   which shared a commitment to the reliability of empirical tests.
   Philosophers such as Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach, along with the
   members of the Vienna Circle in general, considered only verifiable
   claims to be genuine philosophy; anything that could not be deduced
   from testable claims was considered mere superstition or dogma. Karl
   Popper's insistence upon the role of falsification in the philosophy of
   science was a reaction to the logical positivists.

Phenomenology and hermeneutics

   Edmund Husserl
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   Edmund Husserl

   At the same time that the analytic movement was coming to prominence in
   America and Britain, a separate movement occurred in continental
   Europe. Under the influence of Franz Brentano, the later Edmund Husserl
   developed a new method to study human problems in his Logical
   Investigations (1901) and Ideas (1913). The method, known as
   phenomenology, was used to examine the details of human experience and
   consciousness in order to observe the most basic facts of human
   existence; the examination included not just observations of the way
   the world appears but observations of one's own thoughts, and when and
   how they occur. This method was developed further in the work of Martin
   Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

   Heidegger expanded the study of phenomenology to elaborate a
   philosophical hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is a method of interpreting
   texts by drawing out the meaning of the text in the context it was
   written in. Heidegger stressed two new elements of philosophical
   hermeneutics: that the reader brings out the meaning of the text in the
   present, and that the tools of hermeneutics can be used to interpret
   more than just texts (e.g. "social text"). Elaborations of
   philosophical hermeneutics later came from Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul
   Ricoeur.

Existentialism

   Søren Kierkegaard
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   Søren Kierkegaard

   In the mid-twentieth century, existentialism developed in Europe,
   particularly in France and Germany. The most prominent exponent of
   existentialism is Jean-Paul Sartre, although existentialist thought
   received major impetus from the nineteenth century philosophers Søren
   Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, both of whom pre-date
   existentialism and whose contributions extend beyond existentialist
   thought.

   Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher generally considered the "Father of
   Existentialism", argued that "truth is subjectivity", meaning that what
   is most important to an existing being are questions dealing with an
   individual's inner relationship to existence. Objective truths (e.g.
   mathematical truths) are important, but detached or observational modes
   of thought can never truly comprehend human experience. Kierkegaard
   postulated complex ethico-religious philosophical premises, based in
   part on the three stages on life's way: the aesthetic, the ethical, and
   the religious. Nietzsche postulated complex aesthetico-philosophical
   premises, based in part upon the concept of the will to power.
   Existentialists sometimes view Nietzsche's thought as characteristic of
   existentialism, due to the manner in which it places high value in
   individualism and self-creation, or self-defining.

   Drawing on these ideas, existentialism rejects the notion of a human
   essence, instead trying to draw out the ability of each person to live
   authentically, which is to say that each person is able to define and
   determine his or her own life. Sartre's expression of existentialism in
   Being and Nothingness (1943). Other influential existentialists include
   Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Karl
   Jaspers. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, and other literary figures,
   although not usually considered philosophers, have also contributed
   greatly to this thought.

The Analytic tradition

   The tenor of mid-twentieth century philosophy in Anglo- nations was not
   as united behind a major philosophical idea as it had been in the past.
   Still, a general philosophical method can be abstracted from the
   philosophy that was going on at the time.

   Analytic philosophy developed as a reaction against obscure, vague, and
   neologistic pronouncements by Hegel and his followers. In 1921, Ludwig
   Wittgenstein published his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which gave a
   rigidly logical account of linguistic and philosophical issues. At the
   time, he understood most of the problems of philosophy as mere puzzles
   of language, which could be solved by clear thought. Years later he
   would reverse a number of his positions set out in the Tractatus, as
   revealed by the content of his second major work, Philosophical
   Investigations (1953). Investigations encouraged the development of
   "ordinary language philosophy", which was developed by Gilbert Ryle, J.
   L. Austin, and a few others. The "ordinary language philosophy"
   thinkers shared a common outlook with many older philosophers ( Jeremy
   Bentham, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and John Stuart Mill), and it was the
   philosophical inquiry that characterized English-language philosophy
   for the second half of the twentieth century. Still, the clarity of
   meaning was understood to be of ultimate significance.

   The implied outlook for "ordinary language philosophy" is that problems
   in one area of philosophy can be solved independently of problems in
   other areas of philosophy. Philosophy is thus not a unified whole but a
   set of unrelated problems. Great thinkers whose work indicates an
   acceptance of this general outlook include Albert Einstein, Sigmund
   Freud, P. F. Strawson, Donald Davidson, Hilary Putnam, Tadeusz
   Kotarbiński, John Rawls, Noam Chomsky, and the continental thinker
   Mikhail Bakhtin.

   Since then, a plurality of new movements has passed through
   English-language philosophy. Drawing on the metaphilosophical
   observation made by Wittgenstein in his second major work,
   Philosophical Investigations, in which he notes that a good approach to
   philosophy must itself be based on a careful examination of the meaning
   of language, a new group of philosophers have adopted a methodological
   skepticism. This is seen most prominently in the work of W. V. O. Quine
   and Wilfrid Sellars (but with ideas going back to Auguste Comte and
   Whitehead). The group's concerns converge on the ideas of naturalism,
   holism (in opposition to most of what is considered analytic
   philosophy), instrumentalism, and the denial of Platonic universals. A
   number of other perspectives have branched out from Wittgenstein's
   legacy. One of these is the reworking of Arisottelian moral and
   political philosophy pioneered by G.E.M. Anscombe and Alasdair
   MacIntyre, although most analytic philosophers currently working do not
   consider themselves affiliated with any particular school of thought
   and approach philosophy's problems in a more piecemeal manner than did
   their predecessors.

Ethics and political philosophy

Human nature and political legitimacy

   Thomas Hobbes
   Enlarge
   Thomas Hobbes

   From ancient times, and well beyond them, the roots of justification
   for political authority were inescapably tied to outlooks on human
   nature. In The Republic, Plato declared that the ideal society would be
   run by an aristocracy of philosopher-kings, since those best at
   philosophy are best able to realize the good. Even Plato, however,
   required philosophers to make their way in the world for many years
   before beginning their rule at the age of fifty. For Aristotle, humans
   are political animals (i.e. social animals), and governments are set up
   in order to pursue good for the community. Aristotle reasoned that,
   since the state (polis) was the highest form of community, it has the
   purpose of pursuing the highest good. Aristotle understood political
   power to be the result of natural inequalities in skill and virtue.
   Because of these differences, he favored an aristocracy of the able and
   virtuous. For Aristotle, the person cannot be complete unless he or she
   lives in a community. His two books, The Nicomachean Ethics and The
   Politics, are meant to be read in that order. The first book addresses
   virtues/excellences in the person as a citizen; the second addresses
   the proper form of government to ensure virtuous (and thus complete)
   citizens. Both books deal with the essential role of justice as a
   necessary virtue in civic life.

   Two millennia later, Niccolò Machiavelli, rejected Aristotle's (and
   Thomas Aquinas') view as unrealistic. The ideal sovereign is not the
   embodiment of the moral virtues; rather the sovereign does what's
   successful and necessary rather than what's morally praiseworthy.
   Thomas Hobbes also contested many elements of Aristotle's views. For
   Hobbes, human nature is essentially anti-social: people are essentially
   egoistic, and this egoism makes life difficult in the natural state of
   things. Moreover, Hobbes argued, though people may have natural
   inequalities, these are trivial, since no particular talents or virtues
   that a person may have will make them safe from harm inflicted by
   others. For these reasons, Hobbes concluded that the state arises from
   common agreement to raise the community out of the state of nature.
   This can only be done by the establishment of a sovereign, which (or
   who) is vested with complete control over the community, and is able to
   inspire awe and terror in its subjects.

   Many in the Enlightenment were unsatisfied with existing doctrines in
   political philosophy, which seemed to marginalize or neglect the
   possibility of a democratic state. One attempt to overturn these
   doctrines was that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who responded to Hobbes by
   claiming that a human is by nature a kind of " noble savage", and that
   society and social contracts corrupt this nature. In his Second
   Treatise on Government John Locke agreed with Hobbes that the
   nation-state was an efficient tool for raising humanity out of a
   deplorable state, but argued that the sovereign may become an
   abominable institution compared to the relatively benign unmodulated
   state of nature.

   Following the doctrine of the fact-value distinction, due in part to
   the influence of David Hume, appeals to human nature for political
   justification were weakened. Nevertheless, many political philosophers,
   especially moral realists, still make use of some essential human
   nature as a basis for their arguments.

Consequentialism, deontology, and the aretaic turn

   Jeremy Bentham
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   Jeremy Bentham

   One debate that has dominated the attention of ethicists in the history
   of the modern era has been between consequentialism (the idea that the
   consequences of a particular action form the basis for any valid moral
   judgement about that action) and deontology (that decisions should be
   made solely or primarily by considering one's duties and the rights of
   others).

   Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill are famous for propagating
   utilitarianism, which is the idea that the fundamental moral rule is to
   strive toward the "greatest happiness for the greatest number".
   However, in promoting this idea they also necessarily promoted the
   broader doctrine of consequentialism: that is to say, the idea that the
   morally right thing to do in any situation is determined by the
   consequences of the actions under consideration.

   In contrast to consequentialism, Immanuel Kant argued that moral
   principles were simply products of reason. Kant believed that the
   incorporation of consequences into moral deliberation was a deep
   mistake, since it would deny the necessity of practical maxims to the
   working of the will. According to Kant, reason requires that we conform
   our actions to the categorical imperative, which is an absolute duty.
   An important 20th-century deontologist, W.D. Ross, argued for weaker
   forms of duties called prima facie duties.

   More recent works have emphasized the role of character in ethics, a
   movement known as the aretaic turn. One strain of this movement
   followed the work of Bernard Williams. Williams noted that rigid forms
   of both consequentialism and deontology demanded that people behave
   impartially. This, Williams argued, requires that people abandon their
   personal projects, and hence their personal integrity, in order to be
   considered moral.

   G.E.M. Anscombe, in an influential paper, "Modern Moral Philosophy" (
   1958), revived virtue ethics, inspired by Aristotle's ethics, as an
   alternative to what was seen as the entrenched positions of Kantianism
   and consequentialism. Virtue ethics has since gained some adherence and
   has been defended by such philosophers as Philippa Foot, Alasdair
   MacIntyre and Rosalind Hursthouse.

Applied philosophy

   Though often seen as a wholly abstract field, philosophy is not without
   practical applications. The most obvious applications are those in
   ethics – applied ethics in particular – and in political philosophy.
   The political philosophies of Confucius, Kautilya, Sun Zi, Immanuel
   Kant, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Niccolò Machiavelli, Jean-Jacques
   Rousseau, Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, Mahatma Gandhi, Robert Nozick,
   and John Rawls have shaped and been used to justify the existence of
   governments and their actions.

   In the field of the philosophy of education, progressive education as
   championed by John Dewey has had a profound impact on educational
   practices in the United States in the twentieth century. Descendents of
   this movement include the current Philosophy for Children efforts. Carl
   von Clausewitz's political philosophy of war has had a profound effect
   on statecraft, international politics and military strategy in the 20th
   century, especially in the years around World War II.

   Other important applications can be found in epistemology, which aid in
   understanding the notions of what knowledge, evidence, and justified
   belief are. The philosophy of science discusses the underpinnings of
   the scientific method. Deep ecology and animal rights examine the place
   of humans in the moral configuration of reality as a whole. Aesthetics
   can help to interpret discussions of art. The work of Fernando Flores
   and Terry Winograd shows how the philosophy of J.L. Austin can be used
   to guide the design of an electronic mail program.

   In general, the various "philosophies of..." such as the philosophy of
   law, can provide workers in their respective fields with a deeper
   understanding of the theoretical or conceptual underpinnings of their
   fields.

   Often philosophy is seen as an investigation into an area not
   understood well enough to be its own branch of knowledge. What were
   once philosophical pursuits have evolved into the modern day fields of
   psychology, sociology, linguistics, and economics (among others).

Confines of Philosophy

   What should, and what should not, be counted as philosophy – and who
   counts as a philosopher – has been heavily debated. Historically,
   philosophy has been associated with certain subjects. Still, the search
   continues for a pattern which unites the disparate philosophical
   activities and interests of those who study those subjects. A handful
   of candidate explanations can nevertheless be assembled.

   Metaphilosophical relativists may claim that any statement can be
   counted as a philosophical statement, as there is no objective way to
   disqualify it of being so. Also, the very open-minded nature of
   philosophy makes many people skeptical when it comes to limiting the
   concept of philosophy to something tangible and not something
   open-ended. However, several philosophers or philosophical directions
   have had ideas about what philosophy is and what it should not be.

   Plato, or the protagonist in his dialogues, Socrates, held up a number
   of virtues for philosophers. Amongst other things, he rejected that
   rhetorics had a place in philosophy (most famously in Gorgias).

   The logical positivists denied the soundness of metaphysics and
   traditional philosophy, and affirmed that statements about metaphysics,
   religion and ethics are devoid of cognitive meaning and thus nothing
   but expression of feelings or desires.

   What constitutes sound philosophical work is sometimes summed up by the
   term Philosophical method. Also, it is often agreed upon that arguments
   should try to follow the rules of logic and avoid fallacies. It has
   also been argued that the scientific method should be followed as
   closely as the subject-matter allows. If a branch of philosophy at some
   point fully can start following the norms of the scientific method, it
   is no longer termed philosophy, but science.

   Disparaging terms have been created in order to provide examples of
   non-philosophers and non-philosophy. " Pseudophilosophy" is used to
   describe those activities which are not associated with a sensible kind
   of inquiry, and " philosophaster" is a term used to describe those who
   engage in pseudophilosophy.

Philosophers on Philosophy

   What is philosophy? Some would respond by listing its major subfields
   such as logic, ethics, and epistemology; on the other hand, it has also
   been said that "philosophy is the study of its own history" (viz., its
   own literature). However, some noted philosophers have attempted to
   address these issues central to philosophy's subject matter and how it
   is treated:

     ... [philosophy] is the acquisition of knowledge.

     —Plato, Euthydemus, 288d.

     ... [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

     To repeat abstractly, universally, and distinctly in concepts the
     whole inner nature of the world, and thus to deposit it as a
     reflected image in permanent concepts always ready for the faculty
     of reason, this and nothing else is philosophy.

     — Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol. I,
     §68

     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 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

     ... [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

     To grasp the limits of reason – only this is truly philosophy.

     —Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist (book), §55

     Philosophy, being nothing but the study of wisdom and truth...

     — George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human
     Knowledge, Introduction, §1

     ...for wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins
     in wonder.

     —Plato, Theaetetus, 155

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