Philosophy

"You must be a slave to philosophy, that true freedom may fall to your lot.

The very name of philosophy is hateful enough, even if it is handled with moderation;

but neither let us think that to lack gold and silver is a proof of frugality.

Philosophy has lain neglected until this very day and has had no light shed on it by Latin letters;

and since the system and discipline of all the arts that bear upon the right conduct of life are comprehended in the pursuit of wisdom which we call philosophy, I thought it my task to set this forth in the literature of our own tongue — not because philosophy could not be grasped through Greek writings and Greek teachers, but because it has always been my judgement that our countrymen have either …

Wherefore, if by our industry we have brought some credit to oratory, with far greater zeal we shall open up the springs of philosophy, from which those gifts also flowed.

even if philosophy were useless, if establishing its uselessness is useful, then it is useful.

Before the coming of the Lord, then, philosophy was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness;

The Miscellanies will contain the truth mingled with the doctrines of philosophy, or rather veiled and hidden within them, as the edible kernel within the shell of the nut;

and come back to philosophy not as to a schoolmaster, but as the sore-eyed come back to the little sponge and the egg, as another to a plaster, as to a fomentation.

So now the court is your stepmother, and philosophy your mother.

You are tainted, then, so that to win the reputation of a philosopher is no longer easy for you;

Do not, then, you too seek to taste the words from philosophy, as the eyes the honey;

do you mean anything else than that the philosopher differs from the rest by truth, and by examining each thing with reference to truth and not according to opinion?

but to philosophy belongs no proper work nor business nor equipment?

I maintain also that if you compare me with those who profess to turn men to a life of temperance and justice, you will find that my teaching is more true and more profitable than theirs.

that while those who are thought to be adept in court procedure are tolerated only for the day when they are engaged in the trial, the devotees of philosophy are honored and held in high esteem in every society and at all times;

Now you have heard the whole truth about my power, my philosophy, my profession, or whatever you care to call it.

What are you doing, my admirable friend, in driving our dear poverty, the nurse of philosophy, away from this retreat?

I left Athens for the report of your philosophy, passing over the schools there.

How noble a thing philosophy is — in other respects, and in this too, that she does not even allow her foster-children to be cured at great expense;

for the value of their service is not measurable in money, and no honor paid them could be an equivalent, but no doubt all that can be expected is that to them, as to the gods and to our parents, we should make such return as is in our Power.

but we must provide the best things for the soul, freeing it through philosophy, as from a prison, from its fellowship with the passions of the body, while at the same time making the body too superior to the passions—serving the belly with what is necessary, not with what is most pleasant.

or else we must cling to it only so far—as Plato says—as we win from it a service for philosophy, speaking somewhat like Paul, who exhorts that we should take no forethought for the body unto the occasion of lusts.

As a philosopher, Cicero’s most important function was to make his countrymen familiar with the main schools of Greek thought.

and the future statesman received an elaborate education in rhetoric, law, and philosophy, studying and practising under some of the most noted teachers of the time.

from which things we have won philosophy, than which no good more to be desired, none more excellent, has ever been given, or ever shall be, to the race of mortals by the grant and gift of the gods .

Philosophy, as the elders say, is a long-lasting counsel, wooing the eternal love of wisdom;

Be convinced too that all philosophical learning confers precious benefits upon those who take advantage of it, but especially is this true of the knowledge that deals with practical affairs and political discussions.

My own judgement is not different from Solon’s and I recommend to you to study philosophy, bearing in mind the advantages you have possessed from the beginning.

Now of the powers residing in human beings we shall find that intelligence leads all the rest and that philosophy alone is capable of educating this rightly and training it.

For myself, I should have preferred above great riches that philosophy had as much power as these men claim;

However, if it is my duty not only to rebuke others, but also to set forth my own views, I think all intelligent people will agree with me that while many of those who have pursued philosophy have remained in private life, others, on the other hand, who have never taken lessons from any one of the sophists have become able orators and statesmen.

Formal training makes such men more skilfull and more resourceful in discovering the possibilities of a subject;

and then for the soul they introduced philosophy’s training, a pursuit which has the power, not only to establish laws, but also to investigate the nature of the universe.

on the contrary, many contemporaries and predecessors have remarked it, of whom Pythagoras of Samos is one On a visit to Egypt he became a student of the religion of the people, and was first to bring to the Greeks all philosophy, and more conspicuously than others he seriously interested himself in sacrifices and in ceremonial purity, since he believed that even if he should gain thereby no great …

For it has not escaped the notice of either me or anyone else that you, Nicocles, are the first and the only one of those who possess royal power, wealth, and luxury who has undertaken to pursue the study of philosophy, nor that you will cause many kings, emulating your culture, to desire these studies and to abandon the pursuits in which they now take too great pleasure.

For we exhort young men to the study of philosophy by praising others in order that they, emulating those who are eulogized, may desire to adopt the same pursuits, but I appeal to you and yours, using as examples not aliens, but members of your own family, and I counsel you to devote your attention to this, that you may not be surpassed in either word or deed by any of the Hellenes

for if you persevere in the study of philosophy and make as great progress as heretofore, you will soon become the man it is fitting you should be.

Therefore, those who dare to speak with disrespect of educators and teachers of philosophy deserve our opprobrium no less than those who profane the sanctuaries of the gods.

There are people who frown upon eloquence and censure men who study philosophy, asserting that those who engage in such occupations do so, not for the sake of virtue, but for their own advantage.

As regards systems of philosophy, they say that while you do not indeed reject eristic, but hold that it is valuable in private discussions, you regard it nevertheless as unsuitable for either those who are leaders of the people or for monarchs;

Which now is called philosophy, and who

Who first and chief found out that plan of life

Were the happinesses not many and of various kinds, the happy man in truth would be one man among men, namely the one who had acquired all the parts of philosophy and understood all the arts and whose portion of the whole of wisdom was ample.

and it is on that account that the sage divided philosophy into two divisions, theoretical and practical, and neither of them dispenses with the other in the acquisition of happiness.

Ever since I saw his longing for the true sciences and his being stamped with the stamp of wisdom, I have kept furnishing him, one thing after another, with what he sought of them, as time allowed and as the occasion required, until he came to me with the very purpose of the sage which he supports by his striving and the goal of the philosopher which he seeks by his exertion:

Then is it not, said Socrates, a sufficient indication, when you see a man troubled because he is going to die, that he was not a lover of wisdom but a lover of the body?

But the worst of all is that if we do get a bit of leisure and turn to philosophy, the body is constantly breaking in upon our studies and disturbing us with noise and confusion, so that it prevents our beholding the truth, and in fact we perceive that, if we are ever to know anything absolutely, we must be free from the body and must behold the actual realities with the eye of the soul alone.

Would not that man do this most perfectly who approaches each thing, so far as possible, with the reason alone, not introducing sight into his reasoning nor dragging in any of the other senses along with his thinking, but who employs pure, absolute reason in his attempt to search out the pure, absolute essence of things, and who removes himself, so far as possible, from eyes and ears, and, in a wo …

And what will so many and so great souls of mountain-folk and barbarians do, who lack the nourishments of wisdom, and yet are strong in untaught prudence, and — without academies and Attic porticoes, and indeed the prison of Socrates — nonetheless live while fasting from philosophy?

that sometimes they clothe common conclusions in their own argumentations, contrary in places to our rule, and sometimes they fortify their own conclusions with common argumentations, agreeable in places to their rule — so that truth is almost shut out of philosophy by its own sorceries against her.

If, then, anything in this fashion darkens the bright and pure air of truth with the fumes of philosophy, these things must be cleared away by Christians, who both strike at the original argumentations — that is, the philosophical ones — and oppose to them the heavenly definitions — that is, the Lord's — so that both the things by which the heathen are captured through philosophy may be destroyed, …

Did Anacharsis change otherwise, when he preferred philosophy to the kingdom of Scythia?

But even if eloquence rest — whether withdrawn by speechlessness or held back by modesty (for philosophy is content even with a tongueless life) — the very dress speaks.

Hence those fables and endless genealogies and unfruitful questions and discourses creeping like a cancer, from which the apostle, restraining us, expressly attests that philosophy must be guarded against, writing to the Colossians: