" He continues: "When scientific thought attains
an independent existence as a desire for knowledge for the sake of
knowledge, it takes the name of philosophy; when subsequently knowledge
as a whole divides into its various branches, philosophy is the general
knowledge of the world that embraces all other knowledge. As soon as
scientific thought stoops again to becoming a means to ethics or
religious contemplation, philosophy is transformed into an art of life
or into a formulation of religious beliefs. And when afterwards the
scientific life regains its liberty, philosophy acquires once again its
character as an independent knowledge of the world, and in so far as it
abandons the attempt to solve this problem, it is changed into a theory
of knowledge itself." Here you have a brief recapitulation of the
history of philosophy from Thales to Kant, including the medieval
scholasticism upon which it endeavoured to establish religious beliefs.
But has philosophy no other office to perform, and may not its office be
to reflect upon the tragic sense of life itself, such as we have been
studying it, to formulate this conflict between reason and faith,
between science and religion, and deliberately to perpetuate this
conflict?
Later on Windelband says: "By philosophy in the systematic, not in the
historical, sense, I understand the critical knowledge of values of
universal validity (_allgemeingiltigen Werten_).
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