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/fəlˈɑsəfi/ Listen

noun

Philosophy n. (pl. philosophies)

Literally, the love of, inducing the search after, wisdom; in actual usage, the knowledge of phenomena as explained by, and resolved into, causes and reasons, powers and laws. Note: When applied to any particular department of knowledge, philosophy denotes the general laws or principles under which all the subordinate phenomena or facts relating to that subject are comprehended. Thus philosophy, when applied to God and the divine government, is called theology; when applied to material objects, it is called physics; when it treats of man, it is called anthropology and psychology, with which are connected logic and ethics; when it treats of the necessary conceptions and relations by which philosophy is possible, it is called metaphysics. Note: "Philosophy has been defined: the science of things divine and human, and the causes in which they are contained; the science of effects by their causes; the science of sufficient reasons; the science of things possible, inasmuch as they are possible; the science of things evidently deduced from first principles; the science of truths sensible and abstract; the application of reason to its legitimate objects; the science of the relations of all knowledge to the necessary ends of human reason; the science of the original form of the ego, or mental self; the science of science; the science of the absolute; the science of the absolute indifference of the ideal and real."

A particular philosophical system or theory; the hypothesis by which particular phenomena are explained. "(Books) of Aristotle and his philosophie." "We shall in vain interpret their words by the notions of our philosophy and the doctrines in our school."

Practical wisdom; calmness of temper and judgment; equanimity; fortitude; stoicism; as, to meet misfortune with philosophy. "Then had he spent all his philosophy."

Reasoning; argumentation. "Of good and evil much they argued then,... Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy."

The course of sciences read in the schools.

A treatise on philosophy.

Philosophy of the Academy, that of Plato, who taught his disciples in a grove in Athens called the Academy.

Philosophy of the Garden, that of Epicurus, who taught in a garden in Athens.

Philosophy of the Lyceum, that of Aristotle, the founder of the Peripatetic school, who delivered his lectures in the Lyceum at Athens.

Philosophy of the Porch, that of Zeno and the Stoics; so called because Zeno of Citium and his successors taught in the porch of the Poicile, a great hall in Athens.

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Etymology of 'Philosophy'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Philosophy" Quotes from Famous Books

... officials vied with one another in forwarding rare and important works to Peking. The result was the great descriptive Catalogue of the Imperial Library, arranged under the four heads of Classics (Confucianism), History, Philosophy, and General Literature, in which all the facts known about each work are set forth, coupled with judicious critical remarks,—an achievement which has hardly a parallel in any ...

— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles

... daguerreotyped by a name given in infancy. There is not a little wisdom in the advice of Sterne to godfathers—not "to Nicodemus a man into nothing."—"Harsh names," says D'Israeli, the elder, "will have, in spite of all our philosophy, a painful and ludicrous effect on our ears and our associations; it is vexatious, that the softness of delicious vowels, or the ruggedness of inexorable consonants, should at all be connected with a man's happiness, or even have an influence on ...

— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... toward religious patience at the end of this hour. My task, let me say now, is practically narrow, and my words are to deal only with that metaphysical tedium vitae which is peculiar to {39} reflecting men. Most of you are devoted, for good or ill, to the reflective life. Many of you are students of philosophy, and have already felt in your own persons the scepticism and unreality that too much grubbing in the abstract roots of things will breed. This is, indeed, one of the regular fruits of the over-studious career. Too much questioning ...

— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... more reasonable to attempt the explanation of this story on the grounds of natural philosophy than of history. The poets, in their fondness for basing every subject upon fiction, probably invented the fable, to explain what to them appeared an extraordinary phenomenon. By way of embellishing their story, they tell us that Echo was the daughter of the ...

— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... with her face near his, and so childishly, or perhaps thoughtlessly, happy, that he could only admire her levity, and even the slight shock that her flippant allusion to his wife had given him seemed to him only a weakness of his own. After all, was not hers the true philosophy? Why should not these bright eyes see things more clearly than his own? Nevertheless, with his eyes still fixed upon ...

— Clarence • Bret Harte

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