December 2009
31 posts
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“It is commonly supposed that the truth of a proposition consists in some...”
– G.E. Moore: ‘Truth and Falsity’, in J.M. Baldwin (ed.): Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology
“Know that philosophy is the perfecting of the human soul through cognition of...”
– Mullā Ṣadrā: Four Journeys
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“We pass our time and our lives in contemplating what we have already ...”
– Paul Virilio: Negative Horizon (translated by M. Degener)
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“We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the...”
– Ludwig Wittgenstein: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
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“A self does not amount to much, but no self is an island […] [E]ven before he is...”
– Jean-François Lyotard: The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi)
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The Philosophy of Christmas: An Interview with... →
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“But the essence of literature is precisely to evade any essential...”
– Maurice Blanchot, quoted in The Blanchot Reader (ed. M. Holland)
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“Art that is simply a thing is an oxymoron. Yet the development of this oxymoron...”
– Theodor W. Adorno: Aesthetic Theory (translated by by Robert Hullot-Kentor)
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“Without the world, God is not God.”
– Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion
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“What constitutes the alienation of labour?
Firstly, the fact that labour is...”
– Karl Marx: Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts
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“Many people think that each kind of animal has its own language – including...”
– Robert Arp and Tracie Mahaffey: ‘“And They Have A Plan”: Cylons As Persons‘ in: Jason T. Eberl (Ed.): Battlestar Galactica and philosophy: knowledge here begins out there
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“If we don’t allow free thought in mathematics, why on earth should we allow it...”
– Auguste Comte: Système de politique positive
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“Judging, making up our minds what to think, is something for which we are, in...”
– John McDowell: ‘Having the World in View: Lecture One’
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“Life in itself is neither good nor evil. It is the place of good and evil,...”
– Michel de Montaigne: Essays
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“For it is one thing to know, and another to love; one thing to understand, and...”
– Francesco Petrarca: De sui ipsius et multorum aliorum ignorantia
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“There are scholars for whom the history of philosophy (ancient as well as...”
– Immanuel Kant: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will be Able to Come Forward as Science
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Maurice Merleau-Ponty: By definition, it seems that there cannot be any consciousness of ambiguity without ambiguity of consciousness […] From the moment you assume that consciousness of ambiguity is perfectly clear […] and ambiguity is perfectly ambiguous, there is no more consciousness of ambiguity. You see ambiguity as an omnipotent thought might see it. In your eyes it’s no longer ambiguity […].
Umberto Campagnolo: Is there a notion of ambiguity which isn’t ambiguous?
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: I said that if one could conceive ambiguity with total clarity, it would no longer be ambiguous. Consequently, you’re right.
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“Almost all our discoveries are due to our violence, to the exacerbation of our...”
– Émile Michel Cioran: ‘Thinking Against Oneself’
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“The notion that truths external to the human mind may be known by intuition or...”
– John Stuart Mill: Autobiography
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“Oh! I see my life clearly now […] a passionate, frantic search. […] I didn’t...”
– Simone de Beauvoir: The Coming of Age (translated by Patrick O’Brian)
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“Structuralism’s basic ontological assumptions are as follows:
(1) There...”
– Carlos Ulises Moulines: ‘Structuralism: The Basic Ideas’
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Philippe Nemo: In the face of the Other you say there is an ‘elevation’, a ‘height’. The Other is higher than I am. What do you mean by that?
Emmanuel Levinas: The first word of the face is the ‘Thou shalt not Kill.’ It is an order. There is a commandment in the appearance of the face, as if a master spoke to me. However, at the same time, the face of the Other is destitute; it is the poor for whom I can do all and to whom I owe all. And me, whoever I may be, but as a ‘first person’, I am he who finds the resources to respond to the call.
Philippe Nemo: One is tempted to say to you: yes, in certain cases. But in other cases, to the contrary, the encounter with the Other occurs in the mode of violence, hate and disdain.
Emmanuel Levinas: To be sure. But I think that whatever the motivation which explains this inversion, the analysis of the face such as I have just made, with the mastery of the Other and his poverty, with my submission and my wealth, is primary. It is the presupposed in all human relationships. If it were not that, we would not even say, before an open door, ‘after you, sir!’ It is an original ‘After you, sir!’ that I have tried to describe.
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“And what we expect with certainty is essential to our whole life.”
– Ludwig Wittgenstein: Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (translated by G.E.M. Anscombe)
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“[W]e can […] come to know the human soul’s mode of existence, on the basis...”
– Thomas Aquinas: Quaestiones disputatae de anima
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“The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An...”
– Aristotle: Metaphysics (translated by W. D. Ross)
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“Apparently [the value-based aestheticist] lacks qualifications: he does not have...”
– Henryk Elzenberg, unsourced as it seems nearly impossible to find English translations of texts by Elzenberg, be it online or in printed form.
It is a shame that there is not even a stub page on the English Wikipedia about him while the Polish Wikipedia page is rather extensive.
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“If there is some point to everything we do, something we want for its own sake...”
– Aristotle: Nicomachaean Ethics
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