Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To think or express oneself in a philosophical manner.
  • intransitive verb To consider or discuss (a matter) from a philosophical standpoint.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To think or reason about the subjects of philosophy; meditate upon or discuss the fundamental principles of being, knowledge, or conduct; reason after the manner of philosophers; form or attempt to form a philosophical system or theory. Also spelled philosophise.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To reason like a philosopher; to search into the reason and nature of things; to investigate phenomena, and assign rational causes for their existence.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To philosophically ponder or reason out.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb reason philosophically

Etymologies

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Examples

  • "Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophize, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide, while the many natures who at present pursue either one exclusively are forcibly prevented from doing so, cities will have no rest from evils, ... nor, I think, will the human race."

    All the President's Lies 2008

  • Essays significantly entitled “That to philosophize is to learn to die,” he reports that being bothered by attacks of dread of dying, he at first tried to follow

    DEATH AND IMMORTALITY JACQUES CHORON 1968

  • Plato said that philosophy is a meditation on and a preparation for death; Seneca said that he or she who learns how to die unlearns slavery; and Montaigne said that to philosophize is to learn how to die.

    The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com Judith Acosta 2011

  • Montaigne argued that to philosophize is to learn how to die.

    MoJo Blogs and Articles | Mother Jones 2010

  • Cicero observed that "to philosophize is to learn how to die," and Michel de Montaigne had it that "He who should teach men to die would at the same time teach them to live."

    unknown title 2009

  • In the Western tradition beginning with Plato to 'philosophize' is to learn how to die.

    NAACHGAANA 2008

  • I wish you to write a book on the power of words, and the processes by which human feelings form affinities with them -- in short, I wish you to "philosophize" Horne Tooke's system, and to solve the great questions -- whether there be reason to hold that an action bearing the semblance of predesigning consciousness may yet be simply organic, and whether a series of such actions are possible -- and close on the heels of this question would follow the old, "Is logic the essence of thinking?"

    Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1803

  • Every once in a while I philosophize — yet what kind of philosopher am I anyway?

    November « 2009 « poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground 2009

  • Every once in a while I philosophize — yet what kind of philosopher am I anyway?

    vaclav havel | writer and ‘revolution’ « poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground 2009

  • Too far away, and they mean nothing; too close to you, and you are too grieved to philosophize.

    Haroon Moghul: Finding Meaning In The Death Of A Teacher Haroon Moghul 2011

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