CriticaLink | Plato: Phaedrus | Terms

philosophy

With its focus on love, knowledge, and truth, Plato's Phaedrus offers a good occasion to recall that the word philosophy means "love of wisdom": philo (love) + sophia (wisdom)--the same root gives us the word sophist. Now a separate academic discipline, philosophy in the Greek world encompassed virtually all forms of conscious inquiry. Greek philosophers sought to understand phenomena ranging from geometrical forms to the origin of life. We retain a sense of this all-encompassing meaning of "philosophy" in the advanced academic degree of PhD--Doctor of Philosophy.

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