The Value of Philosophy

The Value of Philosophy

The word “philosophy” is derived from two ancient Greek words, “philos” meaning ‘love of’ and “sophia” meaning ‘wisdom’. Philosophers are lovers of wisdom. They have had the time and resources to sit back and wonder about what things really are like when all the pieces are fitted into one final accounting.

The history of philosophy is generally divided into four stages or periods.

Ancient philosophy covers Greek and Roman philosophy.

Medieval philosophy deals with the great attempts by Christian, Jewish, and Arab thinkers to synthesize their religious faiths with Greek and Roman philosophy.

Modern philosophy includes the various philosophical attempts in the 17th and 18th centuries to react to the scientific revolution which took place during the 17th century. It culminates in the philosophical system created the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant.

Recent philosophy covers the 19th and 20th century philosophical movements which have developed in reaction to Kant’s philosophy.

“Practical” people often dismiss philosophy because they see it as vague and uncertain. One of the those people was Bertrand Russell (1872-1910) who made a major contribution to the development of logical positivism, a strong philosophical movement of the 1930s and 1940s.

Russell, British philosopher, mathematician, and Nobel Laureate, whose emphasis on logical analysis influenced the course of 20th-cneture philosophy. He , the grandson of Lord John Russell, a prime minister under Queen Victoria, was born in Wales. He studied mathematics and philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1890 to 1894.

He was a fellow at trinity from 1895 to 1901, and a lecturer in philosophy there from 1901 to 1916. Russell was dismissed...

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...osophy, and to try their own hand at constructing a comprehensive philosophy.

Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves;

Because these questions enlarge our conception of what possible enrich our intellectual imagination, and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.

Bibliography:

Bibliography

James A. Gould, Classic Philosophical Questions

Henry L. Ruf , Investigating Philosophy

Eugene Kelly / Luis E. Navia, The Fundamental Questions