Philosophy has never been of interest to the masses, nor do people ever understand what it really is. As Cicero said: “Philosophy is content to have but few judges, and flies from the mob deliberately; by the mob itself philosophy is both envied and distrusted. So that if someone wanted to cry down philosophy as a whole, they could do it with the support of the people.” Plato believed that one must not study dialectics till one reaches a mature age of 30 and has learnt all requisite subsidiary sciences, or else the study of dialectics would lead to nihilism. Despite this philosophy, it has, to a great extent, lost the limited influence and respect it once had. The reason for this is that philosophy, as Hegel points out, has the same content as religion, but while religion seeks to understand its subject matter through representations and images, philosophy has a rational form; it seeks to study this content through pure thought. Philosophy seeks to understand everything by tracing it b...
For Those Who Love Philosophy