True Philosophy Is Comparative Philosophy

PHILOSOPHY, IN THE GREEK SENSE, MEANT love of wisdom. The term sophia designated a balance between knowledge and action, sound knowledge being the condition of just or proper action. Philosophy, in the broad and universal sense, is still an attitude, a mode of action: a certain balance between the investigation of objective nature and the acquisition of true values. Philosophy, thus conceived, undoubtedly secularizes and individualizes religion, which is collective faith and action. Philosophical rationalisms and personalisms germinate in religious soil, be it to abolish or to justify a faith. When one discovers that a religion languishes or dies, one remembers that it has not always existed and that it does not exist in isolation. Once held to be something absolute, it is now recognized as something relative. One should note here that there are religions which compete with one another and others which come together and fuse. The diversity of modes of coexistence can be a source of interest-satisfaction or alarm.