Source: A New Model of the Universe (1932), p. 33
Context: Philosophy is based on speculation, on logic, on thought, on the synthesis of what we know and on the analysis of what we do not know. Philosophy must include within its confines the whole content of science, religion and art. But where can such a philosophy be found? All that we know in our times by the name of philosophy is not philosophy, but merely "critical literature" or the expression of personal opinions, mainly with the aim of overthrowing and destroying other personal opinions. Or, which is still worse, philosophy is nothing but self-satisfied dialectic surrounding itself with an impenetrable barrier of terminology unintelligible to the uninitiated and solving for itself all the problems of the universe without any possibility of proving these explanations or making them intelligible to ordinary mortals.
“The Study of philosophy is not that we may know what men have thought, but what the truth of things is.”
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Thomas Aquinas 104
Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catho… 1225–1274Related quotes
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“What we need is not truths that serve us but a truth we may serve.”
Source: Degrees of Knowledge (1932, Notre Dame Translation), p. 4.