Word Direct Answers

What does "philosophy" mean?

Philosophy: A particular philosophical system or theory; the hypothesis by which particular phenomena are explained. [Books] of Aristotle and his philosophie. Chaucer. We shall in vain interpret their words by the notions of our philosophy and the doctrines in our school. Locke.

Additional senses

  1. 2.Practical wisdom; calmness of temper and judgment; equanimity; fortitude; stoicism; as, to meet misfortune with philosophy. Then had he spent all his philosophy. Chaucer.
  2. 3.Reasoning; argumentation. Of good and evil much they argued then, . . . Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy. Milton.
  3. 4.The course of sciences read in the schools. Johnson.
  4. 5.A treatise on philosophy. Philosophy of the Academy, that of Plato, who taught his disciples in a grove in Athens called the Academy. -- Philosophy of the Garden, that of Epicurus, who taught in a garden in Athens. -- Philosophy of the Lyceum, that of Aristotle, the founder of the Peripatetic school, who delivered his lectures in the Lyceum at Athens. -- Philosophy of the Porch, that of Zeno and the Stoics; -- so called because Zeno of Citium and his successors taught in the porch of the Poicile, a great hall in Athens.

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