Critical History of Philosophy

D I S S E R T A T I O Dissertation

Various meanings of philosophy.

The preceding text discusses the expansion of the term "philosophy." It flows from this, but the name of philosophy, just like that of wisdom sophia wisdom, has been taken in a broader sense. It encompasses not only those disciplines that exhibit the knowledge of divine and human things, but it has been extended to include the skill of human laws, the healing art medicine, and other parts of learning. Thus, grammar, rhetoric, and the art of criticism, and indeed history and poetry, were not excluded. This meaning, in its widest scope, prevailed primarily after the whole field of human learning was divided into four faculties. Furthermore, the name of philosophy was not even removed from the holier disciplines, and it was brought into the church, in which the Christian religion bore the name of a holier philosophy; ecclesiastical teachers and ascetics were also distinguished by the name of philosophers. original: "philosophorum nomine insigniti sunt" From these various acceptations of the word, philosophy and philosopher, to which others could be added if necessary, we are easily convinced how necessary it is to define the proper meaning of philosophy, lest we mix alien elements into a treatment that is already lengthy in itself, and longer things that have nothing to do with the matter, and, with the boundaries of the disciplines confused among themselves, wander without a certain goal.

Often in this matter, errors have been committed by writers of the history of philosophy who, deceived by the ambiguous name of wisdom, have referred to philosophy either the history of universal learning or the acts and fates of religion among the nations, and have fabricated a procession of philosophers. Among these, OTTO HEURNIUS and GEORGIUS HORNIUS clearly crossed the boundaries of philosophical history. The former referred the entire foolishness of the pagan priests to wisdom, or the philosophy of the barbarians; the latter, falling into juvenile precipitation, found philosophers in heaven and hell, in paradise, and where not? In the most recent age, however, an ANONYMOUS author, who composed a philosophical history in the French language, deliberately abstained from defining the limits of philosophy and determining its genuine sense; indeed, he established that such labor is impossible, because everything must be reduced to a universal notion of learning, and under it the theology of the ancients, jurisprudence, the sources of all sciences, and even the very origins of nations should be comprehended. In which matter it is manifest from what has been said that he is vehemently mistaken, since individual parts of learning, defined by their own domestic ends, differ from one another, and thus philosophy is also to be distinguished from the remaining disciplines of human learning. This matter, neglected with strange judgment, was of the greatest harm to its author. For by disregarding the definition of philosophy, he did not [merely fail to define] the true ones—

^7) Hence the name of the philosopher's stone. Compare Observations of Halle, Vol. VI, art. 22, § 2. And DIOCLES on Medicine, "Philosophy concerning health."

^s) APHTHONIUS p. 25. ISOCRATES passim, see p. 234, 248.
^t) Regarding which, it will be spoken of more fully in its own place. See IONS, on the History of Philosophers III, c. 4, p. 226, sq.
^u) One should by all means consult the celebrated HEUMANNUS, Acts of Philosophy, Vol. I, p. 65, seqq., regarding the homonymy of the words "wisdom" and "wise."

...they nevertheless arrogated to themselves a most insolent name, so that they alone were called seekers of wisdom, a title which neither the greatest emperors, nor those who were most illustriously involved in the councils of the greatest matters and the entire administration of the republic, ever dared to claim for themselves. Thus QUINTILIAN, prologue to the Institutes of Oratory, p. 4, ed. Obr.
^q) CICERO in Laelius and those whom PHILIP CAROLI praises in his critical observations on Gellius, Book IV, c. 1, p. 243.