Concept

Philosophy

Overview

study of questions concerning being, thought, knowledge, and conduct for which no objective answers have been established, using logical reasoning

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Philosophy is discussed.

Similarly, the study of the human mind, which was a part of philosophy, has now been separated from philosophy and has become the science of psychology. Thus, to a great extent, the uncertainty of philosophy is more apparent than real: those questions which are already capable of definite answers are placed in the sciences, while those only to which, at present, no definite answer can be given, remain to form the…
Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
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In itself the Idea is really concrete, for it is the union of the different determinations. It is here that reasoned knowledge differs from mere knowledge of the understanding, and it is the business of Philosophy, as opposed to understanding, to show that the Truth or the Idea does not consist in empty generalities, but in a universal; and that is within itself the particular and the determined. If the Truth is…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy
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As we might expect, then, philosophy has generally been defined in ways which imply a certain totality, generality, and ultimateness of both subject matter and method. With respect to subject matter, philosophy is an attempt to _comprehend_--that is, to gather together the varied details of the world and of life into a single inclusive whole, which shall either be a unity, or, as in the dualistic systems, shall…
John Dewey, Democracy and Education
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The consideration that philosophy, if there is such a study, must consist of propositions which could not occur in the other sciences, is one which has very far-reaching consequences. All the questions which have what is called a human interest--such, for example, as the question of a future life--belong, at least in theory, to special sciences, and are capable, at least in theory, of being decided…
Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy
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But in the main philosophy has set up much more ambitious pretensions. To say frankly that philosophy can proffer nothing but hypotheses, and that these hypotheses are of value only as they render men's minds more sensitive to life about them, would seem like a negation of philosophy…
John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy
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