David Wood: Philosophy

David Wood is British philosopher, born 1946. Explore interesting quotes on philosophy.

David Wood: 34 quotes0 likes

“Like literature, philosophy is not distinguished from other subjects by a specific approach to a subject-matter independent of it. Chemistry deals with chemicals, biology with life and astronomy with very large, very distant objects. Philosophy can boast no such definite subject-matter.”

Source: Philosophy At The Limit (1990), Chapter 4, Philosophy As Writing: The Case Of Hegel, p. 69

“After Hegel, philosophy confronts the possibility of its own death, and in some sense has to do so if it is to remain the most fundamental kind of thinking.”

Source: Philosophy At The Limit (1990), Chapter 4, Philosophy As Writing: The Case Of Hegel, p. 88

“Philosophy in its very act is a process of translation!”

Source: Philosophy At The Limit (1990), Chapter 4, Philosophy As Writing: The Case Of Hegel, p. 81

“Philosophy is an everlasting fire, sometimes damped down by setting itself limits, then flaring into new life as it consumes them. Every field of inquiry is limited, but philosophy has an essential relation to the question of limits, to its own limits.”

Introduction, p. xiii
Philosophy At The Limit (1990)

“To say that all philosophy is writing is, minimally, to say that it is never the transparent expression of thought.”

Source: Philosophy At The Limit (1990), Chapter 3, Deconstruction and Criticism, p. 46

“Philosophy is said to have taken the 'linguistic turn' in this century. One hundred years ago, a philosopher would think in terms of mind, spirit, experience, consciousness; now the by-word is language.”

Source: Philosophy At The Limit (1990), Chapter 2, Metaphysics and Metaphor, p. 26

“The point is that philosophy is seen to have come full circle, and to have exhausted itself.”

Source: Philosophy At The Limit (1990), Chapter 5, Nietzsche's Styles, p. 95

“Nietzsche's problem is how to be a philosopher once he has grasped the finitude of philosophy.”

Source: Philosophy At The Limit (1990), Chapter 5, Nietzsche's Styles, p. 96