philosophy (n.) is nothing but the true knowledge of things — yet learned jargon made it unfit for well-bred company and polite conversation.

John Locke on Philosophy

Almost Make Sense

Go Over Your Head

philosophy

professor

dad joke

philosopher

monk

Valentine's Day

Martin Heidegger

selfie

graduate

graduate study

one-liner

ethics

morality

ology (the study of)

cogito

sweet potato

analytic philosophy

science

absurdism

existence

contemplation

misogyny

philosophy major

Ned Hall, a professor and philosophy department chair at Harvard University, tells Quartz that a colleague describes philosophy as, 'Thinking in slow motion

Philosophy can be feigned, eloquence cannot.

dislikes gaudy dress, yet when it goes out in public it must stoop to wear the ordinary clothes of the country's language.

Recast in definition form from: “philosophy itself, though it likes not a gaudy dress, yet, when it appears in public, must have so much complacency as to be clothed in the ordinary fashion and language of the country, so far as it can consist with truth and perspicuity.”

owes it to its own modesty not to pronounce magisterially where it lacks the evidence that produces knowledge.

Recast in definition form from: “I am not here speaking of probability, but knowledge, and I think not only that it becomes the modesty of philosophy not to pronounce magisterially, where we want that evidence that can produce knowledge; but also, that it is of use to us to discern how far our knowledge does reach; for the state we are at present in, not …”

is nothing but the true knowledge of things — yet learned jargon made it unfit for well-bred company and polite conversation.

Recast in definition form from: “the learned but frivolous use of uncouth, affected, or unintelligible terms, introduced into the sciences, and there made an art of, to that degree that Philosophy, which is nothing but the true knowledge of things, was thought unfit or incapable to be brought into well-bred company and polite conversation.”

here pretends not to teach but to inquire, and the only passages of knowledge to the understanding that can be found are external and internal sensation.

Recast in definition form from: “I pretend not to teach, but to inquire; and therefore cannot but confess here again,—that external and internal sensation are the only passages I can find of knowledge to the understanding.”

began, for Locke, with a stalled conversation: before asking about the world, friends had first to examine what their understandings were fitted to deal with.

Recast in definition form from: “it came into my thoughts that we took a wrong course; and that before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see what OBJECTS our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with.”

in an age that produces the great Huygenius and the incomparable Mr. Newton has ambition enough in an under-labourer's clearing the ground a little and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge.

Recast in definition form from: “Newton, with some others of that strain, it is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge”

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