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The Value of Philosophy Essay

Decent Essays

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 …show more content…

Russell was a leader in the revival of the philosophy of empiricism in the large field of epistemology. He wrote Our Knowledge of the External World (1914), The Analysis of Matter (1927) and Human Knowledge, Its Scope and Limits (1948). He also wrote Principles of mathematics (1903), Principia Mathematica (with A.N. Whitehead; three volumes, 1910 – 1913), and Introduction to mathematical Philosophy (1919).
Russell agrees that philosophy deals with issues with uncertain answers. Yet in this uncertainty, he sees philosophy’s chief value – that in contemplating the great questions one is freed from narrow personal interest alone.
Let’s review the problems of philosophy, and then make conclusion, what is the value of philosophy.
In view of the fact that many men, under the influence of science or of practical affairs, are inclined to doubt whether philosophy is anything better than innocent but useless trifling, hair-splitting distinctions and controversies on matters concerning which knowledge s impossible.
This view of philosophy appears to result, partly from a wrong conception of the ends of life, partly from a conception of the kind of goods which philosophy strives to achieve.
Philosophy, like all other studies, aims primarily at knowledge. The knowledge it aims at is the kind of knowledge which gives unity and system to the body of the science,

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