Face to face with nature and with himself, man reflects and endeavours to discover what the world is, and what he is himself. In the opinion of the present writer, the most exact and comprehensive definition is that of Aristotle. All of them affirm the eminently synthetic character of philosophy. The list of conceptions and definitions might be indefinitely prolonged. This idea of philosophy as the ultimate science of values (Wert lehre) is emphasized by Windelband, Déring, and others. For Wundt, the object of philosophy is "the acquisition of such a general conception of the world and of life as will satisfy the exigencies of the reason and the needs of the heart" "Gewinnung einer allgemeinen Welt und Lebensanschauung, welche die Forderungen unserer Vernunft und die Bedurfnisse unseres Gemüths befriedigen soll" ( Einleit. Many contemporary authors regard it as the synthetic theory of the particular sciences: "Philosophy", says Herbert Spencer, "is completely unified knowledge" ( First Principles, #37). For the numerous German philosophers who derive their inspiration from his criticism Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, Schleiermacher, Schopenhauer, and the rest it is the general teaching of science (Wissenschaftslehre). The many conceptions of philosophy given by Kant reduce it to that of a science of the general principles of knowledge and of the ultimate objects attainable by knowledge "Wissenschaft von den letzten Zwecken der menschlichen Vernunft". For Locke, philosophy is the true knowledge of things for Berkeley, "the study of wisdom and truth" ( Princ.). philos., preface) and he understands by it "cognitio veritatis per primas suas causas" "knowledge of truth by its first causes" (ibid.). Descartes regards philosophy as wisdom: "Philosophiae voce sapientiae studium denotamus" "By the term philosophy we denote the pursuit of wisdom" ( Princ. In general, modern philosophers may be said to have adopted this way of looking at it. Thomas, adopting the Aristotelean idea, writes: "Sapientia est scientia quae considerat causas primas et universales causas sapientia causas primas omnium causarum considerat" Wisdom is the science which considers first and universal causes wisdom considers the first causes of all causes" (In Metaph., I, lect. The Fathers of the Church and the first philosophers of the Middle Ages seem not to have had a very clear idea of philosophy for reasons which we will develop later on ( section IX), but its conception emerges once more in all its purity among the Arabic philosophers at the end of the twelfth century and the masters of Scholasticism in the thirteenth. These notions were perpetuated in the post-Aristotelean schools (Stoicism, Epicureanism, neo-Platonism), with this difference, that the Stoics and Epicureans accentuated the moral bearing of philosophy ("Philosophia studium summae virtutis", says Seneca in "Epist.", lxxxix, 7), and the neo-Platonists its mystical bearing (see section V below). Aristotle, mightier than his master at compressing ideas, writes: tên onomazomenên sophian peri ta prôta aitia kai tas archas hupolambanousi pantes "All men consider philosophy as concerned with first causes and principles" ( Metaph., I, i). Plato calls it "the acquisition of knowledge", ktêsis epistêmês (Euthydemus, 288 d). Without here enumerating all the historic definitions of philosophy, some of the most significant may be given. In its proper acceptation, philosophy does not mean the aggregate of the human sciences, but "the general science of things in the universe by their ultimate determinations and reasons" or again, "the intimate knowledge of the causes and reasons of things", the profound knowledge of the universal order. In the ninth century of our era, Alcuin, employing it in the same sense, says that philosophy is "naturarum inquisitio, rerum humanarum divinarumque cognitio quantum homini possibile est aestimare" investigation of nature, and such knowledge of things human and Divine as is possible for man ( P.L., CI, 952). This sense of the word survives in Herodotus (I, xxx) and Thucydides (II, xl). In the early stages of Greek, as of every other, civilization, the boundary line between philosophy and other departments of human knowledge was not sharply defined, and philosophy was understood to mean "every striving towards knowledge". This sense appears again in sapientia, the word used in the Middle Ages to designate philosophy. Is Progress in Philosophy Indefinite, or Is there a Philosophia Perennis?Īccording to its etymology, the word "philosophy" ( philosophia, from philein, to love, and sophia, wisdom) means "the love of wisdom". The Great Historical Currents of Thought.
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