Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

by Edward Craig

Think of philosophy as the sound of humanity trying to recover from this crisis.

There is nothing to stop us lifting a sentence from an old text and seeing what it can do for us now. If we want to lift the thought, not just the sentence, we may have to put some work into deciding what the sentence meant. If we aren't prepared to do that we shouldn't expect too much of it, and we certainly shouldn't disparage its author if we don't get too much from it.