the spirit of adventure

"Why is philosophy no longer loved today? (...)

Once the stongest men were willing to die for her: Socrates chose to be her martyr (...); Plato risked himself twice to win a kingdom for her; Marcus Aurelius loved her more passionately than his throne (...)

Those were great days for philosophy (...). Men honored her then; nothing was held nobler than the love of truth. (...)

Philosophy is not loved today because she has lost the spirit of adventure. (...) And as philosophy has been written the last two hundred years, it may well deserve this dishonor and oblivion. What has philosophy been since Bacon and Spinoza died? For the most part it has been epistemology, the scholastic theology of knowledge, the technical and esoteric, the mystic and incomprehensible dispute about the existence of the external world (...).

Something of the blame for all this belongs to that simple, almost naive remark of Descartes - Je pense, donc je suis. (...) It was a highly dangerous thing to make being depend so much upon thought (...).

Occasionally an epistemolog is found who is capable of smiling, like Bradley or William James; occasionaly one is found who understands that his '0logy is only a game, and therefore, plays it with a wordly twinkle in his eye, like David Hume. But never was there, for the rest, so deadly solemn a tribe; from John Locke to Rudolf Eucken (...)".

(Will Durant, The Pleasures of Philosophy, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952, pp. 1-3)