Abstract

In Walden, Henry David Thoreau famously laments that "there are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live." From Thoreau's point of view, what professors of philosophy do has something parasitic or derivative about it. They subsist on the praiseworthy achievements of others who have gone before them: real philosophers, presumably, who understood that "to be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically."1... Read More.