Page:History of Philosophy.djvu/23

 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY.

INTRODUCTION.

§ 1. The Name and Conception of Philosophy.

R. Haym, Art. Philosophie in Ersch und Gruber's Encyclopadie, III. Abth., Bd 24 W. Windelband, Praeludien (Freibuig i. B., 1884), 1 ff. [A Seth, Art. Philosophy in ''Enc. Brit.''] [G. T. Ladd, Introduction to Philosophy. N. Y. 1891 ]

philosophy present usage understands the scientific treatment of the general questions relating to the universe and human life. Individual philosophers, according to the presuppositions with which they have entered upon their work, and the results which they have reached in it, have sought to change this indefinite idea common to all, into more precise definitions, which in part diverge so widely that the common element in the conception of the science may seem lost. But even the more general meaning given above is itself a limitation and transformation of the original significance which the Greeks connected with the name philosophy, a limitation and transformation brought about by the whole course of the intellectual and spiritual life of the West, and following along with the same.

1. While in the first appearance in literature of the words φιλοσοφεῖν and φιλοσοφία the simple and at the same time indefinite meaning, "striving after wisdom," may still be recognised, the word "philosophy" in the literature after Socrates, particularly in the school of Plato and Aristotle, acquired the fixed significance accord- 1