philosopher Hear it!

philosopher Definition

phi·loso·pher (fi läs′ə fər)

noun

  1. a person who studies or is an expert in philosophy
  2. a person who lives by or expounds a system of philosophy
    1. a person who meets difficulties with calmness and composure
    2. a person given to philosophizing

Etymology: ME philosophre < OFr philosophe < L philosophus < Gr philosophos < philos, loving + sophos, wise

philosopher Synonyms

philosopher

n.

logician, wise man, sage, savant, sophist, Solon; see also scholar 2.

Major philosophers include: Confucius, Thales, Parmenides, Epicurus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Democritus, Marcus Aurelius, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Boethius, Baruch Spinoza, Francis Bacon, Voltaire, René Descartes, Edmund Burke, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, George Berkeley, Friedrich Schiller, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Arthur Schopenhauer, G.W.F. Hegel, Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, William James, Martin Heidegger, Karl Marx, Ernst Cassirer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Buber, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein.

philosopher Usage Examples

Converse of object

  • bear: For example, I was not born a philosopher, but made myself one by studying the writings of the philosophers.

Adjective modifier

  • Greek: Atlantis was first written about by the Greek philosopher Plato over 2000 years ago.
  • Stoic: Look at verses 18-21: A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to dispute with him.
  • Hellenistic: First, he was alone among the Islamic Hellenistic philosophers to argue for the temporal creation of the world.
  • pre-socratic: Certainly, the pre-Socratic philosophers conceived Being as ( being ) made of matter.
  • eminent: FOR LIFE, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY INTRODUCTION 1 Karl Popper was without question one of the most eminent philosophers of the 20th Century.
  • German: The man thus gloomy about history was the German philosopher Hegel.

Modifies a noun

  • Aristotle: The Greek philosopher Aristotle says this is " the mean between being too angry and never angry at all " .
  • king: Philosopher kings, the quarrel between poetry & philosophy, the cave metaphor are all famous bits from this.

Noun used with modifier

  • existentialist: Jean Paul Sartre, the famous French existentialist philosopher, went as far as saying that we are ' condemned to be free ' .
  • postmodernist: The book fails to engage directly with the major postmodernist philosophers.
  • idealist: The old Marx, it has been claimed, was the scientific and economistic Marx, whereas the early one was the idealist philosopher.
  • rationalist: To my surprise, the latter category is dominated by Enlightenment rationalist philosophers.
  • enlightenment: Reason was of primary importance to the Enlightenment philosophers, a company to which Wollstonecraft belongs.
  • atheist: One atheist philosopher has made a tentative step toward belief.

Possessives

  • stone: The philosopher's stone: in the early 50s Britain came under the celestial influence of American Music.

Preposition: of

  • enlightenment: A ' science ' in the manner set down by the scientists and philosophers of the Enlightenment.
  • science: With Karl Popper, who died in 1994, Thomas Kuhn was the most influential philosopher of science in the twentieth century.
  • mathematics: This is the kind of thing philosophers of mathematics should be thinking about!
  • century: He was one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century.
philosopher Quotes

For every philosopher, in every age, the first question must be:Just what is philosophy?

—Sparshott, Francis

But al be that he was a philosophre, Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre.

—Chaucer, Geoffrey

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

—Einstein, Albert

This sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher. Philosophy indeed has no other origin.

—Socrates

No philosopher now looks for anything but the gradual evolutionoftheneworder fromtheold†Historyshows us no example of the sudden substitutions of Utopian and revolutionary romance.

—Webb, SidneyJames

Nihil tam absurde dici potest quo non dicatur ab aliquo philosophorum. There is nothing so absurd that it has not been said by some philosopher.

—Cicero full name MarcusTullius Cicero

Ovid, the soft philosopher of love.

—Dryden,John

Physician art thou?öone, all eyes, Philosopher!öa fingering slave, One that would peep and botanize Upon his mother's grave?

—Wordsworth,William

The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom and education

—Smith, Adam

And being a novelist, I consider myself superior to the saint, the scientist, the philosopher, and the poet, who are all great masters of different bits of man alive, but never get the whole hog.

—Lawrence, D(avid) H(erbert)

Der Philosoph behandelt eine Frage wie eine Krankheit. The philosopher's treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness.

—Wittgenstein, LudwigJosef Johann

   It is the man of science, eager to have his every opinion regenerated, his every idea rationalized, by drinking at the fountain of fact, and devoting all the energies of his life to the cult of truth, not as he understands it, but as he does not yet understand it, that ought properly to be called a philosopher.

—Pierce, C(harles) S(aunders)

It was a saying of an ancient philosopher, which I find some of our writers have ascribed to Queen Elizabeth, who perhapsmight havetakenoccasionto repeat it, that a good face is a letter of recommendation.

—Addison,Joseph

You are a philosopher, Dr Johnson. I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but, I don't know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in.

—Edwards, Oliver

Browse dictionary entries near philosopher

  1. ‹ philosophe
  2. ‹ philos
  3. ‹ philoprogenitive
  4. ‹ Philomela
  5. ‹ philomel
  6. ‹ philology
  7. ‹ philologist
  8. ‹ philol
  9. ‹ philogyny
  10. ‹ philodendron
  1. philosophic ›
  2. philosophical ›
  3. philosophize ›
  4. philosophy ›
  5. -philous ›
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