A Definition of Philosophy

[Scotch78]

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For the [censored] Love of God it took this Stanley Goofball one hell of a long time to find a [censored] period. Jesus Christ on Roller Stakes; who does he think he is, Ralph Waldo Emerson?



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I once counted 27 punctuation marks in a single sentence by Michel Foucault.

Scott

[Zeno]

To flush out the full context of Max's salubrious words:

What this amounts to is that a reader who wishes to approach the thought of Marcus Aurelius in the right way should remember that the emperor’s frequent allusions to ‘philosophy’ always carry the kind of implications we associate nowadays with the word religion. For philosophy, to the man who wrote these Meditations, meant everything that a religion can mean. It was not a pursuit of abstract truths, it was a rule for living.

-Maxwell Staniforth, in his Introduction to Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius. The Folio Society, London, MMII

[Zeno]

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Jesus Christ on Roller Stakes [sic]; who does....

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Skates. [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]

-Zeno

[quinn]

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I understand it as a willingness to think not about something other than what ordinary human beings think about, but rather to learn to think undistractedly about things that ordinary human beings cannot help thinking about, or anyway cannot help having occur to them, sometimes in a fantasy, sometimes as a flash across a landscape; such things, for example, as whether others really know the nature of one's own experiences, or whether good and bad are relative, or whether we might not now be dreaming that we are awake, or whether modern tyrannies and weapons and spaces and speeds and art are continuous with the past of the human race or discontinuous, and hence whether the learning of the human race is not irrelevant to the problems it has brought before itself. Such thoughts are instances of that characteristic human willingness to allow questions for itself which it cannot answer with satisfaction. Cynics about philosophy, and perhaps about humanity, will find that questions without answers are empty; dogmatists will claim to have arrived at answers; philosophers after my heart will rather wish to convey the thought that while there may be no satisfying answers to such questions in certain forms, there are, so to speak, directions to answers, ways to think, that are worth the time of your life to discover.

-- Stanley Cavell, "The Thought of Movies"

Think about this the next time you're ready to write "It's not even close."

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Wow, you only have to read six words to know it's wrong. Philosophy is a willingness? I threw up in my mouth when I read that.

I think this is what you're looking for (dictionary.com):

Love and pursuit of wisdom by intellectual means and moral self-discipline

I blame a large share of the world's problems on people making up their own definitions of existing words.

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler" and it's not even close

-Einstein

[Zeno]

Ok - Now that the race down Highway 1 is off to its vainglorious genesis, I will offer up some sober words from worthy sources defining philosophy.

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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 still a good one, is that philosophy is thinking about thinking.

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 the conduct of life (ethics or theory of value).

-From: The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, edited by Ted Honderich [p. 666 (And no, I’m not making that up)].

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Specifically, philosophy means and includes five fields of study and discourse: logic, esthetics, ethics, politics, and metaphysics. ……These are the parts of philosophy; but so dismembered it loses its beauty and joy. We shall seek it not in its shriveled abstractness and formality, but clothed in the living from of genius; we shall study not merely philosophies, but philosophers; we shall spend our time with the saints and martyrs of thought, letting their radiant spirit play about us until perhaps we too, in some measure, shall partake of what Leonardo called “the noblest pleasure, the joy of understanding.” Each of these philosophers has some lesson for us, if we approach him properly. “Do you know,” asks Emerson, “the secret of the true scholar? In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him; and in that I am his pupil”

From: The Story of Philosophy, by Will Durant [p. 3 in case you were wondering]

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‘Philosophy’ is a word which has been used in many ways, some wider, some narrower. I propose to use it in a very wide sense, which I will now try to explain.

Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation. All definite knowledge – so I should contend – belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a no man’s land, exposed to attack from both sides; this no man’s land is philosophy.

From the Author’s Introduction: History of Western Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell [for the overly curious that’s p. xvii]


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Note that Russell’s wide definition of philosophy is fluid, in that, with changes in definite knowledge supplied by Science, the bounds of philosophy will be pushed up against theology, which naturally must narrow its field and thus lose some influence, or try and expand into...... The implications and ramifications of this I leave to the reader, but they are, in my opinion, most interesting and perhaps profound.

Also note that Will Durant has been contaminated beyond redemption from reading too much Emerson. It shows in his prose.

Lastly, from the OED:

Philosophy 1 Love, study, or pursuit (through argument and reason) of wisdom, truth or knowledge.

-Zeno

P.S. Is that a little better John?

[John Cole]

You object to a willingness to think? With Cavell, a practicing philosopher, it may help to know that his exemplars are, especially, Wittgenstein and Austin.

And if you blame a large share of the world's problems on people making up their own definitions for words, then you must somehow suffer from the illusion that words have definitions that are not conceived of by people. Where, then, do you find these definitions? (And don't tell me "in a dictionary.")

[John Cole]

Zeno, I do like Russell's conception of philosophy as a sort of mediating discipline, and that "no man's land" seems, to me anyway, the basic human condition.

Does it surprise you that Cavell is also deeply influenced by Emerson and Thoreau and regards both as preeminent American philosophers?

I think you might enjoy Cavell's most recent book in which he looks at a couple of Fred Astaire's dance numbers in The Band Wagon and what they have to do with America, or rather the American project/experiment.

[Zeno]

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Does it surprise you that Cavell is also deeply influenced by Emerson and Thoreau and regards both as preeminent American philosophers?


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No.

Thanks for the book recommendation. I'm in the middle of Hitchen's Thomas Jefferson Author of America but I may take a swing at Cavell, when I find the time.

I looked Cavell up on the internet and found a link that you may enjoy Converstations with a wiseguy

[img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

By the way, I like what he says. He seems worth reading.

-Zeno

[A_C_Slater]

Definition: The art of slick gibberish