An Intelligent Person's Guide to Philosophy Quotes

“In this book I try to show what philosophy has to offer in this new condition. Its task, as I envisage it, is thoughtfully to restore what has been thoughtlessly damaged. This damaged thing is not religion, morality or culture, but the ordinary human world: the world in its innocence, the world in spite of science. Russell is surely right in his assumption that philosophy begins from questions; he is right too that it seeks for answers in a realm of abstraction, where ordinary interests recede, and contemplation comes in place of them. But its task does not end in this endless seeking. There is a way back to the human world, through the very abstract thinking which corrodes it.”
― Roger Scruton, Philosophy: Principles and Problems

“Philosophy arises, therefore, in two contrasted ways: first, in attempting to complete the ‘Why?’ of explanation; secondly in attempting to justify the other kinds of ‘Why?’ — the ‘Why?’ which looks for a reason, and the ‘Why?’ which looks for a meaning. Most of the traditional branches of the subject stem from these two attempts, the first of which is hopeless, the second of which is our best source of hope.”
― Roger Scruton, An Intelligent Person's Guide to Philosophy