more from this thinker     |     more from this text

Single Idea 3879

[filed under theme 1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 5. Aims of Philosophy / c. Philosophy as generalisation ]

Full Idea

Philosophy studies everything: it tries to provide a theory of the whole of things.

Gist of Idea

Philosophy aims to provide a theory of everything

Source

Roger Scruton (Modern Philosophy:introduction and survey [1994], 1.2)

Book Ref

Scruton,Roger: 'Modern Philosophy: introduction and survey' [Sinclair-Stevenson 1994], p.7

A Reaction

Good, but you can't avoid value-judgements about which things are important; philosophers place more value on moral theories than on theories about glacier movement. There is a tension in philosophy between human and eternal concerns.

The 7 ideas with the same theme [philosophy aims at broad generalisations]:

11242 Wisdom is knowledge of principles and causes [Aristotle]
19588 The highest aim of philosophy is to combine all philosophies into a unity [Novalis]
19598 Philosophy relies on our whole system of learning, and can thus never be complete [Novalis]
17992 The main aim of philosophy is to describe the whole Universe. [Moore,GE]
21829 Philosophy aims to understand how things (broadly understood) hang together (broadly understood) [Sellars]
3879 Philosophy aims to provide a theory of everything [Scruton]
14255 We understand things through their dependency relations [Fine,K]