The Place of Philosophy in Human Culture

Extract

I Think there is scarcely any academic subject regarding which there exists so much general misapprehension as philosophy. If I were to introduce myself to the readers of almost any newspaper as a professor of chemistry, or of classics, or of music, most of them would have a fairly good general idea of the nature of my subject. But if I were to introduce myself as a professor of philosophy, I suspect that many of them would vaguely associate my subject with theosophy, or palmistry, or occultism. Very few would have any notion of what philosophy really is. Even in a university, even among the learned themselves, it would be true to say, I think, that