Skip to main content
3 months 2 weeks ago

And so the arbitrary union of three incommensurate, mutually disconnected concepts became the basis of a bewildering theory... [by which] one of the lowest renderings of art, art for mere pleasure - against which all of the master teachers warned - was idealized as the ultimate in art.

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

You see, if you say something positive like the whole of life - all living things - is descended from a single common ancestor which lived about 4,000 million years ago and that we are all cousins, well that is an exceedingly important and true thing to say and that is what I want to say. Somebody who is religious sees that as threatening and so I am represented as attacking religion, and I am forced into responding to their reaction. But you do not have to see my main purpose as attacking religion. Certainly I see the scientific view of the world as incompatible with religion, but that is not what is interesting about it. It is also incompatible with magic, but that also is not worth stressing. What is interesting about the scientific world view is that it is true, inspiring, remarkable and that it unites a whole lot of phenomena under a single heading. And that is what is so exciting for me.

0
0
Source
source
Kam Patel (28 April 1995) . "Going the whole hog". Times Higher Education.
5 months 4 weeks ago

The natural philosophy of Democritus and some others, who did not suppose a mind or reason in the frame of things, but attributed the form thereof able to maintain itself to infinite essays or proofs of nature, which they term fortune, seemeth to me... in particularities of physical causes more real and better inquired than that of Aristotle and Plato; whereof both intermingled final causes, the one as a part of theology, and the other as a part of logic, which were the favourite studies respectively of both those persons. Not because those final causes are not true, and worthy to be inquired, being kept within their own province; but because their excursions into the limits of physical causes hath bred a vastness and solitude in that tract.

0
0
Source
source
Book VII, 7
1 month 2 weeks ago

"Those who have forgotten where the road leads." "They are at odds with what is all around them"-the all-directing logos. And "they find alien what they meet with every day."

0
0
Source
source
(Hays translation) IV, 46
4 months 6 days ago

God's love for us is not the reason for which we should love him. God's love for us is the reason for us to love ourselves.

0
0
Source
source
p. 270
2 months 6 days ago

That the individual is of himself a world's history, and possesses his property in the rest of the world's history, goes beyond what is Christian. To the Christian the world's history is the higher thing, because it is the history of Christ or 'man'; to the egoist only his history has value, because he wants to develop only himself not the mankind-idea, not God's plan, not the purposes of Providence, not liberty, and the like. He does not look upon himself as a tool of the idea or a vessel of God, he recognizes no calling, he does not fancy that he exists for the further development of mankind and that he must contribute his mite to it, but he lives himself out, careless of how well or ill humanity may fare thereby.

0
0
Source
source
Cambridge 1995, p. 323
5 months 3 weeks ago

Persons of genius, it is true, are, and are always likely to be, a small minority; but in order to have them, it is necessary to preserve the soil in which they grow. Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. III: Of Individuality, As One of the Elements of Well-Being
4 months 2 weeks ago

What, then, is the animal? First of all, a system of plant-souls. The unity of those plant-souls, which unity nature itself produces, is the soul of the animal. Its world is therefore partly that of the plants - its nourishment, for instance, it receives partly through synthesis from vegetable, and through analysis from animal nature - and partly that of the animals, whereof we shall speak directly. Each product of nature is an organically in-itself completed totality in space, like the plant. Hence, the unknown x which we are looking for must also be such a whole or totality, and in so far it must also have a principle of organization, a sphere and central point of this organization ; in short, the same which we have called the soul of the plant, which thus remains common to both. ... The animal is a system of plant-souls, and the plant is a separated, isolated part of an animal. Both reciprocally affect each other.

0
0
Source
source
P. 502, 503, 504
5 months 3 weeks ago

The second is the partiality for unity proper to the philosophical mind, whence this wide-spread canon has flown forth: principles are not to be multiplied beyond supreme necessity, to which we give in our adhesion, not because we have insight into causal unity in the world either by reason or experience, but as seeking it by an impulse of the intellect which seems to itself to have by thus much advanced in the explication of phenomena, by as much as it is granted to it to descend from the same principle to a greater number of consequences,

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

It would be worthy of the age to print together the collected Scriptures or Sacred Writings of the several nations, the Chinese, the Hindus, the Persians, the Hebrews, and others, as the Scripture of mankind. The New Testament is still, perhaps, too much on the lips and in the hearts of men to be called a Scripture in this sense. Such a juxtaposition and comparison might help to liberalize the faith of men. This is a work which Time will surely edit, reserved to crown the labors of the printing-press. This would be the Bible, or Book of Books, which let the missionaries carry to the uttermost parts of the earth.

0
0
6 months 5 days ago

Thus the sum of things is ever being renewed, and mortal creatures live dependent one upon another. Some species increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and, like runners, pass on the torch of life.

0
0
Source
source
Book II, line 75 (tr. Rouse)
5 months 2 weeks ago

Yet a man may love a paradox, without losing either his wit or his honesty.

0
0
Source
source
"Walter Savage Landor", from The Dial, xii, 1841
3 months 2 weeks ago

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter III, Christianity Misunderstood by Believers
5 months 1 week ago

Teach him what has been said in the past; then he will set a good example to the children of the magistrates, and judgement and all exactitude shall enter into him. Speak to him, for there is none born wise.

0
0
Source
source
Introduction.
4 months 2 weeks ago

Facing a landscape annihilated by the light, to remain serene supposes a temper I do not have. The sun is my purveyor of black thoughts; and summer the season when I have always reconsidered my relations with this world and with myself, to the greatest prejudice of both.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

The soul is subject to dollars.

0
0
Source
source
par. 6
4 months 3 weeks ago

The foremost, or indeed the sole condition which is required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community, is to love equality, or to get men to believe you love it. Thus the science of despotism, which was once so complex, is simplified, and reduced as it were to a single principle.

0
0
Source
source
Book Four, Chapter IV.
2 months 1 day ago

There is a word very commonly used these days: "anti-communism." It's a very stupid word, badly put together. It makes it appear as though communism were something original, something basic, something fundamental. Therefore, it is taken as the point of departure, and anti-communism is defined in relation to communism. Here is why I say that this word was poorly selected, that it was put together by people who do not understand etymology: the primary, the eternal concept is humanity. And communism is anti-humanity. Whoever says "anti-communism" is saying, in effect, anti-anti-humanity. A poor construction. So we should say: that which is against communism is for humanity. Not to accept, to reject this inhuman Communist ideology is simply to be a human being. It isn't being a member of a party.

0
0
Source
source
Speech in Washington D.C. (30 June 1975), published in Solzhenitsyn: The Voice of Freedom (1975), p. 30
5 months 3 weeks ago

Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely. And as it is especially the vice of energetic men, the causal efficacy of love of power is out of all proportion to its frequency. It is, indeed, by far the strongest motive in the lives of important men. Love of power is greatly increased by the experience of power, and this applies to petty power as well as to that of potentates.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will believe themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so.

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

0
0
Source
source
8:32
1 month 4 weeks ago

Suppose we try to locate the cause of disorder, we shall find it lies in the want of mutual love.

0
0
Source
source
Book 4; Universal Love I
4 months 4 days ago

Revolutionary feminism embraces men who are able to change, who are capable of responding mutually in a subject-to-subject encounter where desire and fulfillment are in no way linked to coercive subjugation. This feminist vision of the sexual imaginary is the space few men seem able to enter.

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

If the potential of every number is in the monad, then the monad would be intelligible number in the strict sense, since it is not yet manifesting anything actual, but everything conceptually together in it.

0
0
Source
source
On the Monad
5 months 3 weeks ago

Whatever you do, crush the infamous thing, and love those who love you.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Jean le Rond d'Alembert (28 November 1762);
4 months 3 days ago

What so impressed me on that first reading was the self-containedness of Tolkien's world. I suppose there are a few novelists who have created worlds that are uniquely their own -- Faulkner, for example, or Dickens. But since their world is fairly close to the actual world, it cannot really be called a unique creation. The only parallel that occurs to me is the Wagner Ring cycle, that one can only enter as if taking a holiday on a strange planet.

0
0
Source
source
pp. 8-9
4 months 1 week ago

No human acquisition is stable. Even what appears to us most completely won and consolidated can disappear in a few generations. This thing we call "civilization" - all these physical and moral comforts, all these conveniences, all these shelters, all these virtues and disciplines which have become habit now, on which we count, and which in effect constitute a repertory or system of securities which man made for himself like a raft in the initial shipwreck which living always is - all these securities are insecure securities which in the twinkling of an eye, at the least carelessness, escape from man's hands and vanish like phantoms.

0
0
Source
source
p. 25
2 months 3 weeks ago

I may not be as unambiguously hostile to capitalism as many people are, but what I don't like about it is the commodification of personal experiences, it turns everyone into actors.

0
0
Source
source
Quoted in Will Self, "John Gray: Forget everything you know," The Independent
5 months 2 weeks ago

To-day unbind the captive, So only are ye unbound; Lift up a people from the dust, Trump of their rescue, sound!

0
0
Source
source
Boston Hymn, st. 17
5 months 3 weeks ago

There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.

0
0
2 months 1 day ago

But what we've got going wrong is we've got a kind of bifurcation in cultural development:You take your classified telephone directory, and open up "Churches", and have a ruler in your hand. And you will find that the longest space is occupied by authoritarian, Bible-banging churches. And these people are barbarians, who take the written word of the Bible literally. Because they need terribly, they have a personal need, for something to depend on. ... The government realizes that there is a very large number of people like that; and therefore, to keep their votes, they have to pander to those kind of people. And these are the boys who never grew up; they always need Papa. ... The trouble is that the boys who need Papa, are violent. They have the guns. And they are the types of people who like to be soldiers, policemen-tough guys. And therefore they have a great deal of power.

0
0
Source
source
Interviewed on Les Hixon's show "In The Spirit" on WBAI New York
1 month 3 weeks ago

Crocodiles sweetly shut their lidded eyes, and yawned,for the blond meat had been quite good, and in slow rainsnew flesh would sprout once more and then be munched anew.

0
0
Source
source
Book XI, line 652
2 months 6 days ago

The difficulty in our education up till now lies, for the most part, in the fact that knowledge did not refine itself into will, to application of itself, to pure practice. The realists felt the need and supplied it, though in a most miserable way, by cultivating idea-less and fettered "practical men." Most college students are living examples of this sad turn of events. Trained in the most excellent manner, they go on training; drilled they continue drilling.

0
0
Source
source
p. 25
5 months 2 weeks ago

The public execution, then, has a juridico-political function. It is a ceremonial by which a momentarily injured sovereignty is reconstituted. It restores that sovereignty by manifesting it at its most spectacular. The public execution, however hasty and everyday, belongs to a whole series of great rituals in which power is eclipsed and restored (coronation, entry of the king into a conquered city, the submission of rebellious subjects); over and above the crime that has placed the sovereign in contempt, it deploys before all eyes an invincible force. Its aim is not so much to re-establish a balance as to bring into play, as its extreme point, the dissymmetry between the subject who has dared to violate the law and the all-powerful sovereign who displays his strength.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter One, The Spectacle of the Scaffold
2 months 1 week ago

Here and everywhere is the struggle for existence, life inextricably enmeshed with war. All life living at the expense of life, every organism eating other organisms forever.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 4 : On Old Age
4 months 2 weeks ago

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

0
0
Source
source
p. 32 (1981 edition) Originally presented at an Eranos conference.
2 months 1 week ago

...shall we say that the difference between a vegetarian and a cannibal is just a matter of taste?

0
0
Source
source
"The Idolatry of Politics", New Republic, 1986-June-16, page 31.
5 months 2 weeks ago

It's only by thinking even more crazily than philosophers do that you can solve their problems.

0
0
Source
source
p. 75e
5 months 3 weeks ago

The typical Westerner wishes to be the cause of as many changes as possible in his environment; the typical Chinaman wishes to enjoy as much and as delicately as possible.

0
0
Source
source
The Problem of China (1922), Ch. XII: The Chinese Character
2 months 6 days ago

Now, on the contrary, when every one is to cultivate himself into man, condemning a man to machine-like labor amounts to the same thing as slavery. If a factory-worker must tire himself to death twelve hours and more, he is cut off from becoming man. Every labor is to have the intent that the man be satisfied. His labor is nothing taken by itself, has no object in itself, is nothing complete in itself; he labors only into another's hands, and is used (exploited) by this other.

0
0
Source
source
Cambridge 1995, p. 108
5 months 2 weeks ago

A good symbol is the best argument and is a missionary to persuade thousands.

0
0
Source
source
Poetry and Imagination
4 months 2 weeks ago

The subject must distinguish itself through opposition from the rational being, which it has assumed outside of itself. The subject has posited itself as one, which contains in itself the last ground of something that is in it, (for this is the condition of Egohood, or of Rationality generally;) but it has also posited a being outside of itself, as the last ground of this something in it. It is to have the power of distinguishing itself from this other being; and this is, under our presupposition, possible only, if the subject can distinguish in that given something how far the ground of this something lies in itself and how far it lies outside of itself.

0
0
Source
source
P. 63
2 months 5 days ago

It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little.

0
0
Source
source
Lecture XIX : On the Conduct of the Understanding, Part II
5 months 1 week ago

By Thy perfect Intelligence, O MazdaThou didst first create us having bodies and spiritual consciences,And by Thy Thought gave our selves the power of thought, word, and deed.Thus leaving us free to choose our faith at our own will.

0
0
Source
source
Ahunuvaiti Gatha; Yasna 31, 11.

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia