Talk:Definitions of philosophy

under construction

 * According to W. Windelband (p. 2), 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.


 * Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) is quoted as having asked the following question:

''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, ('Philosophy, An Introduction, (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1980) ISBN 0-87975-127-4), 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the general nature of things; and a view in which, typically, particular and ephemeral urgencies are seen in a somewhat withdrawn perspective and with a certain detachment."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.

Unsourced

 * 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