PHILOSOPHY177by Plato who promoted an allegorical
reading of the Hebrew Scriptures. He is
especially noted for his recognition of the
logos, a divine instrument of creation.
Philo’s view of the logos has a close resem-
blance to the Gospel of John’s view of the
logos except that the latter affirms the
identity (incarnation) of the logos as Jesus.
PHILOSOPHER, THE. Honorific title
for Aristotle.
PHILOSOPHER’S STONE. Turns base
metal into gold. While the term had a cen-
tral role in alchemy, one may also think of
the philosopher’s stone as that which can
turn ordinary or unfortunate events into
something valuable. A plausible candidate
for the philosopher’s stone is humility.
PHILOSOPHIA PERENNIS. Latin for
“the perennial philosophy.” The idea that
philosophy as a discipline has an endur-
ing set of themes such as: the Good, the
True, and the Beautiful; or the problem of
knowledge, being, and governance; or
Being and Becoming; or God and nature.
PHILOSOPHER. One who engages in
philosophical inquiry.
PHILOSOPHY. From the Greek philo +
sophia, meaning “love of wisdom.” Some
philosophers have treated philosophy
simply as the wisdom of love. There are
multiple definitions of philosophy, but
two have wide adherence:
(A) To have a philosophy is to have a
view of reality (oneself, the world,
God or gods, the sacred, good and
evil, and so on), including a view
on whether one can know anything
at all about reality. In this usage,
philosophy is difficult if not impos-
sible to avoid among mature persons
whether or not they have any formal
education.
(B) Philosophy is practiced when per-
sons engage in disciplined reflection
on one or more views of reality,
assessing which view (or worldview)
is more reasonable or likely to be
true or coherent or better. More spe-
cific demarcations of philosophy will
depend on which framework is
assumed.
So, for example, a philosopher in the
canonical tradition of Plato, Aristotle,
Kant, and so on would tend not to recog-
nize a social history of philosophy as itself
philosophical even if such a social history
shed light on the conditions in which
philosophy was practiced. On this view,
such a history would be a case of socio-
logy, not philosophy.
Philosophy has been practiced histori-
cally as a domain with its own questions
(What is truth? What is good? What
is beautiful?) as well as questions for
virtually every domain of inquiry. Thus
there is philosophy of religion, science,
histor y, literature, language, and so on.