What Is Philosophy

In What is Philosophy? the distinguished philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand analyses the datum of knowledge itself in its different forms, from the most casual perception of some object in our naïve experience to "a priori knowledge," taken as consisting of absolutely certain insights into "necessary essences." Plato's central teaching about that kind of human knowledge which transcends the world of time and of becoming is here purified, clarified and deepened. Precise lines are meticulously drawn which distinguish empirical knowledge, such as is found in the physical sciences, from a priori knowledge, as it can be attained in mathematics, logic and philosophy. Most importantly, von Hildebrand draws lines which distinguish fruitful a priori knowledge ("synthetic a priori") from mere tautologies. Von Hildebrand's method is thus sharply opposed to the analytic school of philosophy. The book illuminates in a unique way the epistemological thought of earlier philosophers including Plato, Augustine, Descartes and Kant. Fundamentally it expresses the driving principle of "back to the things themselves" which attracted so many outstanding thinkers at the start of the twentieth century and constituted the basis of Phenomenology. In this classic work, von Hildebrand affords the reader the chance to understand phenomenology and to appreciate Husserl's revolutionary early insights, as well as to criticize his later idealism. An extensive introductory essay by Josef Seifert puts the work into a historical and systematic perspective and relates it to present-day Anglo-Saxon thought.