“Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.”

— Thomas Aquinas

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Thomas Aquinas 104

Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catho… 1225–1274

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

if he does depart from his state of wonder, he has ceased to philosophize.
Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, pp. 105–106

“Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Theaetetus, 155d
Plato, Theaetetus

“Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.”

Plato book Theaetetus

155, The Dialogues of Plato, Volume 3, 1871, p. 377 http://books.google.com/books?id=4kQNAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA377
Theaetetus

“Poets are being pursued by the philosophers today, out of the poverty of philosophy. God damn it, you might think a man had no business to be writing, to be a poet unless some philosophic stinker gave him permission.”

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet

Letter to James Laughlin (14 January 1944), published in The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams (1957) edited by John C. Thirlwall, p. 219
General sources

“For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize; they wondered originally at the obvious difficulties, then advanced little by little and stated difficulties about the greater matters, e.g. about the phenomena of the moon and those of the sun and of the stars, and about the genesis of the universe. And a man who is puzzled and wonders thinks himself ignorant (whence even the lover of myth is in a sense a lover of Wisdom, for the myth is composed of wonders); therefore since they philosophized order to escape from ignorance, evidently they were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian end.”

Aristotle book Metaphysics

Metaphysics by Aristotle – Book 1, ClassicalWisdom.com
The second sentence is in Metaphysics A 2, 928<sup>b</sup> 17–20, Aristotle: Metaphysics Beta: Symposium Aristotelicum, Michel Crubellier & Andre´ Laks, eds. (Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 4.
Metaphysics
Variant: [And] one who experiences a difficulty and who feels wonder thinks that he does not understand..., so that, if it is to escape ignorance that they have practised philosophy, then it is clearly for the sake of knowing, and not for any practical purpose, that they have pursued understanding.

“No philosopher would be willing to accept the idea of philosophy as a way of escape, but might there not be a question of the philosopher being in duty bound to refuse to accept a world, like our real world here, of disorder and crime where the values of the mind and spirit can no longer find a home?”

Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973) French philosopher, playwright, music critic and leading Christian existentialist

Source: Man Against Mass Society (1952), p. 116

“The warfare between poetry and philosophy certainly started with Plato, who was both poet and philosopher.”

John Hollander (1929–2013) American poet

“Philosophy begins in wonder. And at the end when philosophic thought has done its best the wonder remains.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

“Poets are witnesses to Being before the philosophers are able to bring it into thought.”

William Barrett (philosopher) book Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy

Source: Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1958), Chapter Five, Christian sources, p. 105

“One could say that what differentiates ancient from modern philosophy is the fact that, in ancient philosophy, it was not only Chrysippus or Epicurus who, just because they had developed a philosophical discourse, were considered philosophers. Rather, every person who lived according to the precepts of Chrysippus or Epicurus was every bit as much a philosopher as they.”

Pierre Hadot (1922–2010) French historian and philosopher

trans. Michael Chase, p. 272
La Philosophie comme manière de vivre (2001)

“Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.”

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Thomas Aquinas 104

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