Philosophy
Philosophy, according to Herbart, begins with reflection upon our empirical conceptions, and consists in the reformation and elaboration of these, its three primary divisions being determined by as many distinct forms of elaboration. Logic, which stands first, has to render our conceptions and the judgments and reasonings arising from them clear and distinct. But some conceptions are such that the more distinct they are made the more contradictory their elements become; so to change and supplement these as to make them at length thinkable is the problem of the second part of philosophy, or metaphysics. There is still a class of conceptions requiring more than a logical treatment, but differing from the last in not involving latent contradictions, and in being independent of the reality of their objects, the conceptions that embody our judgments of approval and disapproval; the philosophic treatment of these conceptions falls to Aesthetic.
Read more about this topic: Johann Friedrich Herbart
Famous quotes containing the word philosophy:
“Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a system of metaphysics. Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its beautiful morality.”
—W. Winwood Reade (1838–1875)
“Why does philosophy use concepts and why does faith use symbols if both try to express the same ultimate? The answer, of course, is that the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful.”
—Paul Tillich (1886–1965)