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Will Durant

“Philosophy means and includes five fields of study and discourse: logic, aesthetics, ethics, politics, and metaphysics.

Logic is the study of ideal method in thought and research: observation and introspection, deduction and induction, hypothesis and experiment, analysis and synthesis - such are the forms of human activity which logic tries to underhand the guide; it is a dull study for most of us, and yet the great events in the history of understand are the improvements men have made in their methods of thinking and research.

Aesthetics is the study of ideal form, or beauty; it is the philosophy of art.

Ethics is the study of ideal conduct; the highest knowledge, said Socrates, is the knowledge of good and evil, the knowledge of good and evil, the knowledge of the wisdom of life.

Politics is the study of ideal social organization (it is not, as one might suppose, the art and science of capturing and keeping office); monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, socialism, anarchism, feminisim - these are the dramatis personae of political philosophy.

And lastly, metaphysics (which gets into so much trouble because it is not, like the other forms of philosophy, an attempt to coordinate the real in the light of the ideal) is the study of the "ultimate reality" of all things: of the real and final nature of "matter" (ontology), of "mind" (philosophical psychology), and of the interrelation of "mind" and "matter" in the processes of perception and knowledge (epistemology).”

Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers
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The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers by Will Durant
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