Definition of "philosophy" []

• Love and pursuit of wisdom by intellectual means and moral self-discipline. (noun)
• Investigation of the nature, causes, or principles of reality, knowledge, or values, based on logical reasoning rather than empirical methods. (noun)
• A system of thought based on or involving such inquiry: the philosophy of Hume. (noun)
• The critical analysis of fundamental assumptions or beliefs. (noun)
• The disciplines presented in university curriculums of science and the liberal arts, except medicine, law, and theology. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The story does not introduce any of the special vocabulary of philosophy (not even the word ˜philosophy™ itself makes an appearance)."
• "In a word, the philosophy which Neoplatonism represents, whose final interest is the religious, and whose highest object is the super-rational, must be a _philosophy of revelation_."
• "_religion_, in the general acceptation of the term (philosophy of religion); and, thirdly, _philosophy_ itself, as the purest and most perfect form of the scientific knowledge of truth."