“The love of wisdom.”  However, this very general definition has been understood in various ways.  For Socrates and, to an extent, Plato, philosophy is either a preparation for a proper and detached death, a capacity for knowing the limits of human knowledge, or a dialectical capacity for knowing the Exemplar “Forms” that are the models of all beings.  According to the Aristotelian tradition, philosophy is wisdom as the science of things in their first principles or causes that can be achieved by the natural light of reason.  According to important Stoic authors, philosophy is above all the knowledge which enables one to live in accord with right reason.  For Neo-Platonists, philosophy is sometimes presented as a study that enables one to dialectically return to the First Principle through rational and moral purification.  Various modern thinkers have explicitly or implicitly restricted philosophy to some particular branch (e.g., logic, the theory of knowledge, or epistemology) or have even held that philosophy serves the goal of helping in the progressive mastery of nature, whether physical or human.