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I. DEFINITION OF PHILOSOPHY

Etymology

According to its etymology, the word “philosophy” (philosophia, from philein, to love, and sophia, wisdom) means “the love of wisdom”. This sense appears again in sapientia, the word used in the Middle Ages to designate philosophy. 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 of the word survives in Herodotus (I, xxx) and Thucydides (II, xl). 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). 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. Without here enumerating all the historic definitions of philosophy, some of the most significant may be given. Plato calls it “the acquisition of knowledge“, ktêsis epistêmês (Euthydemus, 288 d). Aristotle, mightier than his master at compressing ideas, writes: tên onomazomenên sophian peri ta procirc;ta aitia kai tas archas hupolambanousi pantes — “All men consider philosophy as concerned with first causes and principles” (Metaph., I, i). 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). 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. St. Thomas, adopting the Aristotelean idea, writes: “Sapientia est scientia quae considerat causas primas et universales causas; sapientia causas primas omnium causarum considerat” — Wisdom [i.e. philosophy] is the science which considers first and universal causes; wisdom considers the first causes of all causes” (In Metaph., I, lect. ii). In general, modern philosophers may be said to have adopted this way of looking at it. Descartes regards philosophy as wisdom: “Philosophiae voce sapientiae studium denotamus” — “By the term philosophy we denote the pursuit of wisdom” (Princ. philos., preface); and he understands by it “cognitio veritatis per primas suas causas” — “knowledge of truth by its first causes” (ibid.). For Locke, philosophy is the true knowledge of things; for Berkeley, “the study of wisdom and truth” (Princ.). 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 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). Many contemporary authors regard it as the synthetic theory of the particular sciences: “Philosophy”, says Herbert Spencer, “is completely unified knowledge” (First Principles, #37). Ostwald has the same idea. 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. in d. Philos., 1901, p. 5). This idea of philosophy as the ultimate science of values (Wert lehre) is emphasized by Windelband, Déring, and others. The list of conceptions and definitions might be indefinitely prolonged. All of them affirm the eminently synthetic character of philosophy. In the opinion of the present writer, the most exact and comprehensive definition is that of Aristotle. Face to face with nature and with himself, man reflects and endeavours to discover what the world is, and what he is himself. Having made the real the object of studies in detail, each of which constitutes science (see section VIII), he is led to a study of the whole, to inquire into the principles or reasons of the totality of things, a study which supplies the answers to the last Why’s. The last Why of all rests upon all that is and all that becomes: it does not apply, as in any one particular science (e.g. chemistry), to this or that process of becoming, or to this or that being (e.g. the combination of two bodies), but to all being and all becoming. All being has within it its constituent principles, which account for its substance (constitutive material and formal causes); all becoming, or change, whether superficial or profound, is brought about by an efficient cause other than its subject; and lastly things and events have their bearings from a finality, or final cause. The harmony of principles, or causes, produces the universal order. And thus philosophy is the profound knowledge of the universal order, in the sense of having for its object the simplest and most general principles, by means of which all other objects of thought are, in the last resort, explained. By these principles, says Aristotle, we know other things, but other things do not suffice to make us know these principles (dia gar tauta kai ek toutôn t’alla gnôrizetai, all’ ou tauta dia tôn hupokeimenôn — Metaph., I). The expression universal order should be understood in the widest sense. Man is one part of it: hence the relations of man with the world of sense and with its Author belong to the domain of philosophy. Now man, on the one hand, is the responsible author of these relations, because he is free, but he is obliged by nature itself to reach an aim, which is his moral end. On the other hand, he has the power of reflecting upon the knowledge which he acquires of all things, and this leads him to study the logical structure of science. Thus philosophical knowledge leads to philosophical acquaintance with morality and logic. And hence we have this more comprehensive definition of philosophy: “The profound knowledge of the universal order, of the duties which that order imposes upon man, and of the knowledge which man acquires from reality” — “La connaissance approfondie de l’ordre universel, des devoirs qui en résultent pour l’homme et de la science que l’homme acquiert de la rémite” (Mercier, “Logique”, 1904, p. 23). — The development of these same ideas under another aspect will be found in section VIII of this article.