Julian Baggini Quotes

To me, what philosophy does best is reflect on knowledge that's generated in other areas.

First, philosophy concerns itself with all kinds of issues that don't get much airtime in day-to-day life. What's the nature of reality? Can we ever truly know anything, and if so, how? What does it mean to be a moral agent? And while we're at it, is there any such thing as agency anyway?

I bought some books in order to learn the first principles of philosophy.

It is right that we be concerned with the scientific probity of metaphysics.

I discovered philosophy in my youth when I read 'wildly,' and thus I was exposed to the world of ideas.

Philosophy changes day by day.

Let us come to the philosophers, whose authority is of greater weight, and their judgment more to be relied on, because they are believed to have paid attention, not to matters of fiction, but to the investigation of the truth.

You can't do without philosophy, since everything has its hidden meaning which we must know.

I think that reality exists and that it's knowable.

It has generally been assumed that of two opposing systems of philosophy, e.g., realism and idealism, one only can be true and one must be false; and so philosophers have been hopelessly divided on the question, which is the true one.

My purpose is to explain, not the meaning of words, but the nature of things.

If somebody is going to try to paste a person's view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas. Don't give me Ayn Rand.

I secretly think reality exists so we can speculate about it.

It is a great advantage for a system of philosophy to be substantially true.

Philosophy is an odd thing. When we use the word in everyday speech, you know, you sometimes hear it hilariously.

Well, I don't know if I can comment on Kant or Hegel because I'm no real philosopher in the sense of knowing what these people have said in any detail so let me not comment on that too much.

Modern secular thought has its own dualism: It treats only the physical world as knowable and testable, while locking everything else - mind, spirit, morality, meaning - into the realm of private, subjective feelings. The so-called fact/value split.

Whoever says he is starting from a given in nature may be right, and so is he who says he is starting from nothing!

Truth as such is not a particularly important concept in naturalistic philosophy.

Metaphysics is a science.

It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.

About no subject is there less philosophizing than about philosophy.

Philosophy: Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

Initially, I studied philosophy, because it claimed to give you answers to the meaning of existence, but it didn't: It was basically a semantics game.

I've never understood the division between so-called realists and so-called idealists.