It’s difficult to define philosophy – and there’s a number of people who have tried.

If it’s just navel-gazing, wise-sounding claims and statements without much sense or reason behind them, then I could get a lot of “philosophy” from reading my horoscope every morning.

Not long after starting the class, I was given a book called Porcupines: A Philosophical Anthology, which is comprised of a number of short readings and fragments from established philosophers (with context included). The introduction says:

The philosopher is the person who submits [themselves] day in and day out to the test of sentences. He is one who has trained [themselves] to think clearly about what they mean and has become adept at sifting true ones from false ones, using criteria which he constantly revises. He is imaginative in drawing out the logical implications of sentences and in giving a rigorous and intelligible shape to his commentaries.

Is philosophy intensive reading, thinking, comparison and testing of sentences then? Looking through the book, a number of claims about what constitutes philosophy stand out:

Ordinary people seem not to realise that those who really apply themselves in the proper way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death. – Plato, Phaeda, 63e-64a.

Cheerful stuff…

Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry the progress, ignorance the end. – Montaigne.

So, don’t give up?

All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense; but some are greater nonsense than others. – Samuel Butler.

Philosophy is the sifting of what is best out of a lot of bad ideas?

The various opinions of philosophers have scattered through the world as many plagues of the mind as Pandora’s box did those of the body; only with this difference, that they have not left hope at the bottom. – Jonathan Swift.

…So I should not be hopeful about finding answers to any of my big questions as a student of philosophy, then?

And one that has passed into common pop-culture knowledge, thanks to a film called “The Matrix”:

Know thyself. – Thales of Miletus.

It’s also in the picture at the top of this blog-post – taken at the University of Western Australia’s Art Building.

Let me know what quotes you’ve found – and check out the rest of the series at www.365daysofphilosophy.com.