Reading Heidegger’s What Is Philosophy? set me going. Heidegger answers the question not by definition but by retrieval: he takes philosophia back into its Greek setting, as though the older word might disclose what philosophy is. The lecture is the occasion rather than the target. It offers a clean specimen of a manoeuvre that runs far wider. A word’s origin can show where a practice has been, but it can’t settle what the practice is. At least this is what I was thinking as he was making his case.

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