(no subject)
On the Uses of Philosophy
There is a pleasure in philosophy that every student feels until the necessities of physical existence drag him from the heights of thought into the mart of economic strife and gain.
We strive with the chaos about us and within; but we would believe all the while that there is something vital and significant in us, could we but decipher our own souls. We want to understand.
We want to seize the value and perspective of passing things, and so pull ourselves up out of the maelstrom of daily circumstance.
We want to learn to laugh in the face of the inevitable, to smile even at the looming of death.
"To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust."
~Thoreau
"Seek ye first the good things of the mind and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt."
~Francis Bacon
Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art.
Philosophy is a hypothetical interpretation of the unknown. It is the front trench in the seize of truth. Science is the captured territory.
Philosophy is not content to describe facts; it wishes to ascertain relations to experience in general; to get to meaning and worth.
To observe process and construct means is science; to criticize and coordinate ends is philosophy.
A fact is nothing except in relation to desire; it is incomplete except in relation to a purpose and a whole.
Science without philosophy, facts without perspective, cannot save us from havoc and despair.
~Will Durant
There is a pleasure in philosophy that every student feels until the necessities of physical existence drag him from the heights of thought into the mart of economic strife and gain.
We strive with the chaos about us and within; but we would believe all the while that there is something vital and significant in us, could we but decipher our own souls. We want to understand.
We want to seize the value and perspective of passing things, and so pull ourselves up out of the maelstrom of daily circumstance.
We want to learn to laugh in the face of the inevitable, to smile even at the looming of death.
"To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust."
~Thoreau
"Seek ye first the good things of the mind and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt."
~Francis Bacon
Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art.
Philosophy is a hypothetical interpretation of the unknown. It is the front trench in the seize of truth. Science is the captured territory.
Philosophy is not content to describe facts; it wishes to ascertain relations to experience in general; to get to meaning and worth.
To observe process and construct means is science; to criticize and coordinate ends is philosophy.
A fact is nothing except in relation to desire; it is incomplete except in relation to a purpose and a whole.
Science without philosophy, facts without perspective, cannot save us from havoc and despair.
~Will Durant