Philosophy as practice does not mean its restriction to utility or applicability, that is, to what serves morality or produces serenity of soul.

The great philosophers and the great works are standards for the selection of what is essential. Everything that we do in studying the history of philosophy ultimately serves their better understanding.

If philosophy is practice, a demand to know the manner in which its history is to be studied is entailed: a theoretical attitude toward it becomes real only in the living appropriation of its contents from the texts.

Philosophy can only be approached with the most concrete comprehension.

Philosophy is tested and characterised by the way in which it appropriates its history.

Only then, approaching my fortieth birthday, I made philosophy my life's work.