Skip to main content

We have now but to prove a third attribute: I mean the faculty of feeling which the philosophers of all centuries have found in this same substance. ...The Cartesians have made, in vain, to rob matter of this faculty. But in order to avoid insurmountable difficulties, they have flung themselves into a labyrinth from which they have thought to escape by this absurd system "that animals are pure machines."An opinion so absurd has never gained admittance among philosophers... Experience gives us no less proof of the faculty of feeling in animals than of feeling in men.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. VI Concerning the Sensitive Faculty of Matter
1 month 3 weeks ago

We shall divert through our own Country a branch of commerce which the European States have thought worthy of the most important struggles and sacrifices, and in the event of peace... we shall form to the American union a barrier against the dangerous extension of the British Province of Canada and add to the Empire of liberty an extensive and fertile Country thereby converting dangerous Enemies into valuable friends.

0
0

I have written a good number of drafts and small reflections. They are not waiting for the last touch but for the sunlight to wake them up.

0
0
Source
source
B 29
3 months 2 weeks ago

All the measures now proposed are only a compromise with the errors of the present systems; but as these errors now almost universally exist, and must be overcome solely by the force of reason; and as reason, to effect the most beneficial purposes, makes her advance by slow degrees, and progressively substantiates one truth of high import after another, it will be evident, to minds of comprehensive and accurate thought, that by these and similar compromises alone can success be rationally expected in practice. For such compromises bring truth and error before the public; and whenever they are fairly exhibited together, truth must ultimately prevail.

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

The seat of faith, however, is not consciousness but spontaneous religious experience, which brings the individual's faith into immediate relation with God. Here we must ask: Have I any religious experience and immediate relation to God, and hence that certainty which will keep me, as an individual, from dissolving in the crowd?

0
0
Source
source
p 85
3 months 3 weeks ago

Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom not one of them knew, not one of them wanted to know, and not one of them cared about; Anna Pávlovna observed these greetings with mournful and solemn interest and silent approval. The aunt spoke to each of them in the same words, about their health and her own, and the health of Her Majesty, "who, thank God, was better today." And each visitor, though politeness prevented his showing impatience, left the old woman with a sense of relief at having performed a vexatious duty and did not return to her the whole evening.

0
0
Source
source
Bk. I, Ch. II
3 months 5 days ago

The biology of suffering in intelligent agents is a deep underlying source of existential risk - and one that can potentially be overcome.

0
0
Source
source
"Unsorted Postings", pre-2014
2 months 1 week ago

I can say without affectation that I belong to the Russian convict world no less ... than I do to Russian literature. I got my education there, and it will last forever.

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

Everyone must destroy their life. According to the way they do it, they're either triumphants or failures.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man.

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

Each new ontological theory, propounded in lieu of previous ones shown to be untenable, has been followed by a new criticism leading to a new scepticism. All possible conceptions have been one by one tried and found wanting; and so the entire field of speculation has been gradually exhausted without positive result: the only result reached being the negative one above stated, that the reality existing behind all appearances is, and must ever be, unknown.

0
0
Source
source
Pt. I, The Unknowable; Ch. IV, The Relativity of All Knowledge
2 months 2 weeks ago

The panting breathless haste and vehemence of a man struggling in the thick of battle for life and salvation; this is the mood he is in!

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

This world is empty to him alone who does not understand how to direct his libido towards objects, and to render them alive and beautiful for himself, for Beauty does not indeed lie in things, but in the feeling that we give to them.

0
0
5 months 3 days ago

Nature is none other than God in things... Animals and plants are living effects of Nature; Whence all of God is in all things... Think thus, of the sun in the crocus, in the narcissus, in the heliotrope, in the rooster, in the lion.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Elements of Pantheism (2004) by Paul A. Harrison
6 months 2 weeks ago

Thus intrigues and conspiracies do not arise, and thievery and robbery do not occur; therefore doors need never be locked.

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

M. Comte's philosophy, in practice, might be compendiously described as Catholicism minus Christianity.

0
0
Source
source
On the Physical Basis of Life
6 months 5 days ago

In this life it is necessary that we be on our guard. To begin with we must be constantly aware of the fact that life here below is best described as being a type of continual warfare. This is a fact that Job, that undefeated soldier of vast experience, tells us so plainly. Yet in this matter the great majority of mankind is often deceived, for the world, like some deceitful magician, captivates their minds with seductive blandishments, and as a result most individuals behave as if there had been a cessation of hostilities.

0
0
Source
source
p.61
2 months 2 weeks ago

Of the radical and iconoclastic ideals preached in the early years of the revolution, all were discarded except those which helped the state to exert absolute control over the individual. Hence the idea of collective education and reduction of parental authority to the minimum continued to hold sway, but an end was put to "progressive" educational methods designed to promote initiative and independence. Strict discipline became once more the rule, and in this respect Soviet schools differed from Tsarist ones only in the immensely increased emphasis on indoctrination. In due course, puritanical sexual ethics were restored to favour.

0
0
Source
source
(pg. 53)
3 months 3 weeks ago

Man in the electronic age has no possible environment except the globe and no possible occupation except information-gathering.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

And I will tell you something else: there is no birth of all mortal things, nor any end in wretched death, but only a mixing and dissolution of mixtures; 'birth' is so called on the part of mankind.

0
0
Source
source
fr. 8
5 months 1 day ago

Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.

0
0
Source
source
Book Four, Chapter III.
4 months 3 weeks ago

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe
4 months 1 week ago

The greater part of Eastern teachers of the Church, from Clement of Alexandria to Maximus the Confessor, were supporters of Apokatastasis, of universal salvation and resurrection. And this is characteristic of (contemporary) Russian religious thought. Orthodox thought has never been suppressed by the idea of Divine justice and it never forgot the idea of Divine love. Chiefly - it did not define man from the point of view of Divine justice but from the idea of transfiguration and Deification of man and cosmos.

0
0
Source
source
"The Truth of Orthodoxy" as translated in Vestnik of the Russian West European Patriarchal Exarchate
5 months 3 weeks ago

Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth.

0
0
Source
source
"Natural History of Massachusetts". The Dial (July 1842) p. 39
4 months 3 weeks ago

I think of so many people who are no more, and I pity them. Yet they are not so much to be pitied, for they have solved every problem, beginning with the problem of death.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

No one gets angry at a mathematician or a physicist whom he or she doesn't understand at all, or at someone who speaks a foreign language, but rather at someone who tampers with your own language, with this 'relation,' precisely, which is yours.

0
0
Source
source
Derrida Jacques, Elisabeth Weber (1995), Points...: Interviews, 1974-1994. p. 115
1 week 1 day ago

Alright....here's the piece I referred to earlier...Universality is unquestionable! I'm not even going to waste time entertaining arguments against....

 

https://open.substack.com/pub/axiomaticpanic/p/universality-is-unquesti…

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

That all men are equal is a proposition which at ordinary times no sane individual has ever given his assent.

0
0
Source
source
"The Idea of Equality"
5 months 3 weeks ago

It is said that "being" is the most universal and the emptiest concept. As such it resists every attempt at definition. Nor does this most universal and thus indefinable concept need any definition. Everybody uses it constantly and also already understands what is meant by it.

0
0
Source
source
Introduction: The Exposition of the Question of the Meaning of Being (Stambaugh translation)
4 months 3 weeks ago

Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

0
0
Source
source
P. 97
5 months 3 weeks ago

To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.

0
0
Source
source
Reader's Digest, 1934
3 months 3 weeks ago

Poverty is the lack of many things, but avarice is the lack of all things.

0
0
Source
source
Maxim 236
6 months 4 days ago

A little folly is desirable in him that will not be guilty of stupidity.

0
0
Source
source
Book III, Ch. 9. Of Vanity
5 months 3 weeks ago

"What is meant by saying that my choice of which way to walk home after the lecture is ambiguous and matter of chance?...It means that both Divinity Avenue and Oxford Street are called but only one, and that one either one, shall be chosen.

0
0
Source
source
The Dilemma of Determinism (1884) p.155
6 months 1 week ago

The verdict of the world is conclusive.

0
0
Source
source
III, 24
5 months 2 weeks ago

Men in their prayers beg the gods for health, not knowing that this is a thing they have in their own power. Through their incontinence undermining it, they themselves become, because of their passions, the betrayers of their own health.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

Be a craftsman in speech that thou mayest be strong, for the strength of one is the tongue, and speech is mightier than all fighting.

0
0
Source
source
Translated by J. H. Breasted, The Dawn of Conscience (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933) p. 131
1 month 3 weeks ago

The distinction of Fact and Theory is only relative. Brute animals have a practical knowledge of relations of space and force; but they have no knowledge of Geometry or Mechanicks.

0
0
2 months 5 days ago

The trial that begins Awards to him who wins The fairest prize to-day. And lo, the hour is here And summons you. Appear! Ye may no more delay. Come hear the herald's call Ye princes one and all. Many tribes of men Submissive to you then! How keen in war your swords! But now 'tis wisdom's turn; Now let your rivals learn How keen can be your words.

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

Karl Marx was born at Trier on 5 May 1818, the child of Jewish parents with a long rabbinical tradition on both sides. His grandfathers were rabbis; his father, a well-to-do lawyer, changed his first name from Herschel to Heinrich and adopted Protestantism, which in Prussia was a necessary condition of professional and cultural emancipation.

0
0
Source
source
(pg. 96)
2 months 2 weeks ago

Who is there that can recognize real intellect, and do reverence to it; and discriminate it well from sham intellect, which is so much more abundant, and deserves the reverse of reverence? He that himself has it!-One really human Intellect, invested with command, and charged to reform Downing Street for us, would continually attract real intellect to those regions, and with a divine magnetism search it out from the modest corners where it lies hid. And every new accession of intellect to Downing Street would bring to it benefit only, and would increase such divine attraction in it, the parent of all benefit there and elsewhere!

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

I realize the malady of the oppressed and disinherited masses only too well, but I refuse to prescribe the usual ridiculous palliatives which allow the patient neither to die nor to recover. One cannot be too extreme in dealing with social ills; besides, the extreme thing is generally the true thing. My lack of faith in the majority is dictated by my faith in the potentialities of the individual. Only when the latter becomes free to choose his associates for a common purpose, can we hope for order and harmony out of this world of chaos and inequality.

0
0
1 month 3 weeks ago

When common words are appropriated as technical terms, this must be done so that they are not ambiguous in their application.

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

A girl, if she has any pride, is so ashamed of having anything she wishes to say out of the hearing of her own family, she thinks it must be something so very wrong, that it is ten to one, if she have the opportunity of saying it, that she will not. And yet she is spending her life, perhaps, in dreaming of accidental means of unrestrained communion.

0
0
4 months 5 days ago

The techniques of the practitioner are usually called 'synthetic'. He designs by organizing known principles and devices into larger systems.

0
0
Source
source
Simon (1945, p. 353); As cited in: Philosophy of Technology and Engineering Sciences (2009) p. 425.
5 months ago

Jews are angry and brutish people, vile and vulgar men, slaves worthy of the yoke [Talmudism] which you bear... Go, take back your books and remove yourselves from me. [ The Talmud ] taught the Jews to steal the goods of Christians, to regard them as savage beasts, to push them over the precipice... to kill them with impunity and to utter every morning the most horrible imprecations against them.

0
0
Source
source
See The Jews: A History, Second Edition, by John Efron, Steven Weitzman and Matthias Lehmann
4 months 3 weeks ago

There is, properly speaking, no Misfortune in the world. Happiness and Misfortune stand in continual balance. Every Misfortune is, as it were, the obstruction of a stream, which, after overcoming this obstruction, but bursts through with the greater force.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

If a given science accidentally reached its goal, this would by no means stop the workers in the field, who would be driven past their goal by the sheer momentum of the illusion of unlimited progress.

0
0
Source
source
p. 55

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia