Here
are various
quotes by philosophers (mainly) that I liked, was entertained by, or
otherwise
found notable in some of my reading. One of these days, I'll try to
impose some
order on them. In the mean time, here they are in no particular order.
-Mario
Bunge "Philosophy of Science and Technology" Contemporary
Philosophy 8: Philosophy of Latin America, ed. Floistad, p. 266.
"If you are able to rise to this challenge, if you are able to honestly examine the moral arguments in favor of slavery and genocide (along with the much stronger arguments against them), then you are likely to be either a psychopath or a philosopher. Philosophers are one of the only groups that have been found spontaneously to look for reasons on both sides of a question; they excel at examining ideas 'dispassionately'"
- Haidt and Bjorklund "Social Intuitionists Answer Six Questions About Moral Psychology" inSinnott-Armstrong, ed. Moral Psychology Volume 2, p. 196
"No thinker
has the right
to take his own life of reason by shirking the responsibility of trying
to
explain whatever mysteries permeate the world in which he lives and
dies. To
say, for example, that the structural ascent from a lower to a higher manifestation of energy is
a
"mysterious" saltus
in Nature
is to block the road to inquiry. After all, as Charles Peirce observed,
it is
precisely the "mysterious" itself which calls for an explanatory
theory. To
declare that the facts themselves, the "leaps" of energy in this case,
are
"mysterious" is to make them inexplicable by definition, thus defeating
the
very purpose of whatever hypothesis is proposed. It is, in fact, to
miss the
whole point of the function of hypothesis in the field of inquiry,
which is to
make as intelligible as possible what otherwise would remain a great
mystery."
-Patrick
Romanell, Making of the Mexican Mind, p. 116.
"Philosophy, when it is really philosophy and not sophistry or
ideology, does not ponder philosophy. It does not ponder philosophical
texts, excepts as a pedgogical propaedeutic to provide itself with
interpretive categories. Philosophy ponders the nonphilosophical; the
reality."
Enrique Dussel, Philosophy of Liberation,
¤ 1.1.3.1
"I
hate you all. You leave me writhing to give a decent account of what
you have done for me, and no matter what I say, I am still going to
feel like an ungrateful little weasel."
Sarah Ruden, in the acknowledgements to
her translation of AristophanesÕ Lysistrata,
p. ix.
"In reality,
the subject
of all our researches is one; we divide it only so that we may, by
separating
the difficulties, resolve them more easily. And so it not infrequently
happens
that these established divisions are a hiderance, and that questions
arise
which need to be treated by combining the points of view of several
sciences"
- Comte,
in Introduction of Positive Philosophy p. 25-6.
In Mexico, we
are called
upon to protect 'national identity' as an element that is always on the
verge
of wandering away or getting lost.
- Carlos
Monsiv‡is, "Cultural Relations between the United States and
Mexico" in Common
Border, Uncommon Paths,
115.
Conjectures
on the
cultural consequences of Mexico's economic integration with the United
States-fears of loss of identity and destruction of individuality, for
example-are somewhat belated and alarmist. The process will take a
while and
even when it intensifies, its essential features can already be clearly
seen:
The continent, and Mexico, will continue to be Americanized and,
depending on
how close or how far a Latin American country is from high-level
technology,
the way it view the world will be modified (who can, in all
seriousness, define
what being a Mexican or a Peruvian means?), without having its
fundamental
values affected. These values include the Spanish language, whose
vitality and
powers of assimilation do not need government supports that are alien
to the
educative process itself.
- Carlos
Monsivais, "Cultural
Relations between the United States and Mexico" in Common
Border,
Uncommon
Paths,
119.
"Who knows
what I want to
do? Who knows what anyone wants to do? How can you be sure about
something like
that? Isn't it all a question of brain chemistry, signals going back
and forth,
electrical energy in the cortex? How do you know whether something is
really
what you want to do or just some kind of nerve impulse in the brain?
Some minor
little activity takes place somewhere in this unimportant place in one
of the
brain hemispheres and suddenly I want to go to Montana or I don't want
to go to
Montana. how do I know I really want to go and it isn't just some
neurons
firing or something? Maybe it's just an accidental flash in the medulla
and
suddenly there I am in Montana and I find out I really didn't want to
go there
in the first place. I can't control what happens in my brain, so how
can I be
sure what I want to do ten seconds from now, much less Montana next
summer?
It's all this activity in the brain and you don't know what's you as a
person
and what's some neuron that just happens to fire or just happens to
misfire?
Isn't that why Tommy Roy killed those people?"
-
Heinrich in Don Dellilo's White Noise, pp.45-6.
"But it is
the reverse in
philosophy: since it is believed that there is no issue that cannot be
defended
from either side, few look for the truth and many more prowl about for
a
reputation for profundity by arrogantly challenging whichever arguments
are the
best."
Descartes
Meditation on First Philosophy
"Moreover, it
may be part
of mature commitments, even of the most intimate sort, that a measure
of
perspective beyond the personal be maintained."
Peter
Railton, "Alienation, Consequentialism, Morality"
". . . for
while it is
desireable to secure what is good in the case of an individual, to do
so in the
case of a people or a state is something finer and more sublime."
Aristotle,
Ethics, Book 1, 1094b
"It is a mark
of the
trained mind never to expect more precision in the treatment of any
subject
than the nature of that subject permits."
Aristotle,
Ethics, Book 1, 1094b
"Conscious of
their own
ignorance, most people are impressed by anyone who pontificates and
says
something that is over their heads."
Aristotle,
Ethics, Book1, 1095a
"Possibility
is the
destruction of contentment."
G.E.M.
Anscombe, "You Can have Sex without Children"
"Philosophy
being nothing
else but the study of wisdom and truth, it may with reason be expected
that
those who have spent most time and pains in it should enjoy a greater
clam and
serenity of mind, a greater clearness and evidence of knowledge, and be
less
disturbed with doubts and difficulties than other men."
George
Berkeley, Introduction to "Principles of Human Knowledge"
"For moral
philosophy is
nothing else but the science of what is good, and evil, in the
conversation,
and society of mankind. Good, and evil, are names that signify our
appetites,
and aversions . . ."
Thomas
Hobbes, "Leviathan"
"To this war
of every
man, against every man, this also is consequent: that nothing can be
unjust.
The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no
place.
Where there is no common power, there is no law: where no law, no
injustice."
Thomas
Hobbes, "Leviathan"
"and the life
of man,
solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
Thomas
Hobbes, "Leviathan"
"So that in
the nature of
man, we find three principal causes of quarrel. First, competition;
secondly,
diffidence; thirdly, glory."
Thomas
Hobbes, "Leviathan"
"For such is
the nature
of men, that howsoever they may acknoweldge many others to be more
witty, or
more eloquent, or more learned yet they will hardly believe there be
many so
wise as themselves; for they see their own wit at hand, and other men's
at a
distance."
Thomas
Hobbes, "Leviathan"
"So that in
the first
place, I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and
restless
desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death."
Thomas
Hobbes, "Leviathan"
"The passions
that most
of all cause the difference of wit, are principally, the more or less
desire of
power, of riches, of knowledge, and of honour. All of which may be
reduced to
the first, that is, desire of power."
Thomas
Hobbes, "Leviathan"
"He must
surely be either
very weak, or very little acquainted with the sciences, who shall
reject a
truth that is capable of demonstration, for no other reason but because
it is
newly known and contrary to the prejudices of mankind."
George
Berkeley, Principle of Human Knowledge
"It is
impossible to
refute a system which has never yet been explained. In such a manner of
fighting in the dark, a man loses his blows in the air and often places
them
where the enemy is not present."
David
Hume, Treatise of Human Nature
"Be a
philosopher; but,
amidst all your philosophy, be still a man."
David
Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding ¤1
"If from our
own concepts
we are unable to assert and determine anything certain, we must not
throw the
blame upon the object as concealing itself from us."
Kant,
Critique of Pure Reason,
A482/B510
"To profess
to solve all
problems and to answer all questions would be impudent boasting, and
would
argue such extravagant self-conceit as at once to forfeit all
confidence."
Kant,
Critique of Pure Reason,
A476/B504
"Human reason
is by
nature architectonic. That is to say, it regards all our knowledge as
belonging
to a possible system."
Kant,
Critique of Pure Reason, B502
"The point of
philosophy
is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and
end with
something so paradoxical that no one will believe it."
Betrand
Russell, The Monist
(1918)
"Possible
worlds are what
they are, and not some other thing."
David
Lewis, "Possible Worlds."
"What matters
in survival
is survival."
David
Lewis, "Survival and Identity"
"Religious
faith is best
understood as trust in the ultimate meaningfulness of life-that is, the
ultimate meaningfulness of the world an of one's own life, one's own
being, as
part of and related to, as embedded in, the world. Religious beliefs,
by
contrast, are best understood as religious faith mediated by-
understood and
expressed in the medium of-words, whether concretely, in stories, or
abstractly, in concepts and ideas."
Michael
Perry, Love and Power
"We "moderns"
(or
"postmoderns") would never embrace an outdated, superseded conception
of
"science" (of scientific inquiry, of the methodology of science, and so
on),
but we often embrace an outdated and outlandish conception of
"religion" (and
of "theology").
Michael
Perry, Love and Power
For that
matter I don't
know anything that gives me greater pleasure, or profit either, than
talking or
listening to philosophy. But when it comes to ordinary conversation,
such as
the stuff you talk about financiers and the money market, well, I find
it
pretty tiresome personally, and I feel sorry that my friends should
think
they're being very busy when they're really doing absolutely nothing.
Of
course, I know your idea of me; you think I'm just a poor unfortunate,
and I shouldn't
wonder if you're right. But then, I don't think that you're
unfortunate- I know
you are.
Apollodorus
in Plato's Symposium
(173c-d)
"It is comfortable
to
be
a
philosopher, for no one makes demands of philosophers . . . . Today's
philosophers manifest all the vices of the age, above all its haste,
and they
rush into writing. They are not ashamed to teach, even when they are
very
young."
-
Nietzsche, "Philosophy in Hard Times," #53 (1873).
"No genuinely
radical
living for the truth is possible in a university."
Nietzsche
. . . letter to Overbeck (date ?)
"Twentieth-century
moral
philosophers
have sometimes appealed to their and our intuitions; but
one of
the things that we ought to have learned from the history of moral
philosophy
is that the introduction of the word 'intuition' by a moral philosopher
is
always a signal that something has gone badly wrong with an argument."
-
MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 69
"Philosophy
leaps ahead
on tiny toeholds; hope and intuition lend wings to its feet.
Calculating reason
lumbers heavily behind, looking for better footholds. For reason too
wants to
reach that alluring goal which its diving comrade has long since
reached."
-
Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greek, ¤ 3
"Perhaps . .
. the inwardness
of human life is an ontological absurdity- something which takes itself
enormously seriously but actually has no important role to play."
H.
Frankfurt, "Identification and Wholeheartedness"
"For what
purpose,
then, any
consciousness at all when it is in the
main superfluous?"
F.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, ¤
354
"In the end,
when the
work is finished, it becomes evident how the constraint of a single
taste
governed and formed everything large and small. Whether this taste was
good or
bad is less important than one might suppose, if only it was a single
taste!"
F.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, ¤
290
"We were
friends and have
become estranged. but this was right, and we do not want to conceal and
obscure
it from ourselves as if we had reason to feel ashamed. We are two ships
each of
which has its goal and course; our paths may cross and we may celebrate
a feast
together, as we did-and then the good ships rested so quietly in one
harbor and
one sunshine that it may have looked as if they had reached their goal
and as
if they had one goal. But then the almighty force of our tasks drove us
apart
again into different seas and sunny zones, and perhaps we shall never
see each
other again; perhaps we shall meet again but fail to recognize each
other: our exposure
to different seas and suns has changed us. That we have to become
estranged is
the law above us;
by the same
token we should also become more venerable for each other-and the
memory of our
former friendship more sacred. There is probably a tremendous but
invisible
stellar orbit in which our very different ways and goals may be included as small parts of this path;
let us
rise up to
this thought. but our life is too short and our power of vision too
small for
us to be more than friends in the sense of this sublime possibility.
-Let us
then believe in
our star
friendship even if we should be compelled to be earth enemies."
F.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, ¤
279.
"the maxim
'know
theself!' addressed to human beings by a god, is almost malicious.'
F.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, ¤
335
"The general
drift of
Vitoria's argument is that the quality of the thing being eaten
reflects the
quality of the eater. Thus it is 'better' to eat a cow than cabbage for
precisely the same reason that, as we have seen, it is better to
command a
woman than a donkey."
Anthony
Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man,
p. 88.
"Men do not
consider what
we say but what we do- we may philosophize interminably, but if when
the
occasion arises we do not demonstrate with our actions the truth of
what we
have been saying, our words will have done more harm than good."
St.
John Chrysostom
Other apart
sat on a hill
retired
In thought
more elevate,
and reason'd high
Of
providence,
foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fix'd fate,
free will,
foreknowledge absolute;
And found no
end, in
wand'ring mazes lost.
Milton
Paradise Lost, Book I
Demetrius:
'No one seems
to me more miserable than the man who has not been touched by adversity'
Seneca's
gloss: 'indeed
he has not been allowed to test himself; if everything has gone as he
could
wish or even better than he wished, the gods have had a low opinion of
him; he
has not been thought to deserve an occasional victory over ill-fortune
. . .
God hardens, examines and trains those he loves . . . Why does God
visit bad
health and loss of those dear to them and other troubles on the best of
mankind? Because in the army the most dangerous tasks are assigned to
the
bravest soldiers . . . No one who goes out on a dangerous mission says
'the
commander has treated me badly' but 'he has judged me well'. In the
same way
those who are ordered to suffer what would cause the fearful and
cowardly to
weep should say 'God has found us worthy men on whom to try what human
nature
can bear'" (On Providence IV).
"The story
goes that Zeno
was flogging a slave for stealing. 'I was fated to steal', said the
slave. 'And
to be flogged', was Zeno's reply.
Diogenes
Laertius 7.23
"For the
Cynic life is a
short road to virtue, as Apollodorus says in his Ethics. And the wise man will even
taste
human flesh in
special circumstnaces. He alone is free, and the base men are slaves;
for
freedom is the authority to act on one's own, while slavery is the
privation of
[the ability] to act on one's own."
Diogenes
Laertius, 7.121
"For as long
as a purely
naturalistic understanding of human life remains controversial . . . no conception of agency and
responsibility can claim
to be neutral among conceptions of the good. This may seem to imply
that, in
order to preserve its neutrality, liberalism should refrain from
endorsing any
conception of individual agency or responsibiliy. However, even if such
abstinence were a conceptual possibility, as it almost certainly is
not, it
would have the peculiar effect of reducing liberalism to silence on the
very
subject that was supposed to be its specialty, namely, the nature and
moral
importance of the individual human agent."
Sam
Scheffler, "Responsibility, Reactive Attitudes, and Liberalism in
Philosophy
and Politics," p. 318.
"The rest of
it seemed
very plausible, quite in keeping with the general tone of the work and
(as is
natural) a bit boring. Reading it over again, we discovered beneath its
rigorous prose a fundamental vagueness."
Jorge
Luis Borges "Tlšn, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius"
"I myself
believe that
the great prophet Darwin has done us as ill a turn as Cortˇs
did
his crew
members. Darwin has burned our ships for us, and I have a strong urge
to
strangle him."
Angel
Floro Costa, quoted in Zea's The Latin-American Mind, p. 252.
"Students
were asked at
the beginning of the semester, and also at the end, whether they would
return
to its owner an envelope they found that contained $100. The students
also were
asked whether they would inform a store about a billing mistake if they
had
been sent ten computers but had been billed only for nine. At the beginning of the semester, the
economics
students and the
astronomy students said they'd perform the honest action about equally
often.
The economics and the astronomy students differed in how they changed during the semester. The
willingness
to act
dishonestly increased among students in the economics classes more than
it did
among those in the astronomy class. This is evidence that studying
economics
inhibits cooperation. Of course, it is a further question whether
economics has
this effect by encouraging people to believe that psychological egoism
is true.
We think that this is a plausible guess, since this motivational theory
plays a
more prominent role in economics than in any other discipline."
Sober
and Wilson in Unto Others
(1998, p.274), reporting on a study by Frank, Gilovich, and Regan in
(1993).
"As is
frequently
the case in discussions that are conducted with a great show of
emotion, the
down-to-earth interests of certain groups, whose excitement is entirely
concerned with factual matters and who therefore try to distort the
facts,
become quickly and inextricably involved with the untrammeled
inspirations of
intellectuals who, on the contrary, are not in the least interested in
facts
but treat them merely as a springboard for "ideas."
Arendt,
in postscript to Eichmann in Jerusalem (285).
"What is evil? You have looked on it often, so whatever happens, remind
yourself that you have seen it all before."
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.1
"One thing alone troubles me: the thought that I might do what my true
self does not will or that I might do what it wills in the wrong way or
at the wrong time"
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.20
"Do
not feel for misanthropes what they feel for mankind."
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.65
"It is no longer possible to live your entire life, not even your adult
life, as a philosopher. How far short of philosophy you fall is plain
to others, as it is to yourself. Your life is flawed, your reputation
tainted, and it is no longer possible to win the glory of being a
philosopher. Even your calling in life militates against it. Having
seen these truths wiht your own eyes, stop worrying about what others
may think and be content to live the rest of your life, as long or
short as it may be, according to the requirements of your nature. know
those requirements well and let nothing pry you from them."
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8.1
"Treat with utmost respect your power of forming opinions, for this
power alone guards you against making assumptions that are contrary to
nature and judgments that overthrow the rule of reason."
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 3.9
"Never act
without purpose
and resolve, or without the means to finish the job."
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.2