1. "The postulate is that the only things which shall be debatable among philosophers shall be things definable in terms drawn from experience. . . .
(2) The predominantly naturalistic and positivistic period coincides roughly with the nineteenth century. The wars of independence were accompanied by revolt from scholasticism. In the early part of the century, liberal eclectics like Cousin and P. Janet were popular in South America, but French eighteenth century materialism exerted an increasing influence. Later, the thought of Auguste Comte and of Herbert Spencer came to be dominant especially in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. Even an idealistically inclined social and educational philosopher like Eugenio Maria de Hostos (1839-1903), although rejecting naturalistic ethics, maintains a positivistic attitude toward metaphysics.
Abravanel, Don Isaac: Exegete and philosopher (1437-1508), was born in Lisbon, Portugal, emigrated to Toledo, Spain, and after the expulsion settled in Italy. He wrote a number of philosophical works, among them a commentary on parts of the Guide. He follows in most of his views Maimonides but was also influenced by Crescas. -- M.W.
Absolute ::: A term which unfortunately is much abused and often misused even in theosophical writings. It is aconvenient word in Occidental philosophy by which is described the utterly unconditioned; but it is apractice which violates both the etymology of the word and even the usage of some keen and carefulthinkers as, for instance, Sir William Hamilton in his Discussions (3rd edition, p.13n), who apparentlyuses the word absolute in the exactly correct sense in which theosophists should use it as meaning"finished," "perfected," "completed." As Hamilton observes: "The Absolute is diametrically opposed to,is contradictory of, the Infinite." This last statement is correct, and in careful theosophical writings theword Absolute should be used in Hamilton's sense, as meaning that which is freed, unloosed, perfected,completed.Absolute is from the Latin absolutum, meaning "freed," "unloosed," and is, therefore, an exact Englishparallel of the Sanskrit philosophical term moksha or mukti, and more mystically of the Sanskrit term socommonly found in Buddhist writings especially, nirvana -- an extremely profound and mysticalthought.Hence, to speak of parabrahman as being the Absolute may be a convenient usage for Occidentals whounderstand neither the significance of the term parabrahman nor the etymology, origin, and proper usageof the English word Absolute -- "proper" outside of a common and familiar employment.In strict accuracy, therefore, the student should use the word Absolute only when he means what theHindu philosopher means when he speaks of moksha or mukti or of a mukta -- i.e., one who has obtainedmukti or freedom, one who has arrived at the acme or summit of all evolution possible in any onehierarchy, although as compared with hierarchies still more sublime, such jivanmukta is but a merebeginner. The Silent Watcher in theosophical philosophy is an outstanding example of one who can besaid to be absolute in the fully accurate meaning of the word. It is obvious that the Silent Watcher is notparabrahman. (See also Moksha, Relativity)
Absolute: (Lat. absolvere to release or set free) Of this term Stephanus Chauvin in the Lexicon Philosophicum, 1713, p2 observes: "Because one thing is said to be free from another in many ways, so also the word absolute is taken by the philosophers in many senses." In Medieval Scholasticism this term was variously used, for example: freed or abstracted from material conditions, hence from contingency; hence applicable to all being; without limitations or restrictions; simply; totally; independent; unconditionally; uncaused; free from mental reservation.
academist ::: n. --> An Academic philosopher.
An academician.
acatalepsy ::: n. --> Incomprehensibility of things; the doctrine held by the ancient Skeptic philosophers, that human knowledge never amounts to certainty, but only to probability.
According to the belief of most Advaita-Vedantists, Sankaracharya, the great Indian philosopher and sage, is held to be an avatara of Siva.
Adorno (1903-1969): was a philosopher, sociologist and composer. Within social psychology, is largely remembered for defining the authoritarian personality (characterised by intolerance of ambiguity, prejudiced attitudes and conformity to authority, with an emphasis on the influence of childhood experiences and internalisation) and the subsequent development of the F-scale (a measurement of the authoritarian personality).
Agent, Universal. See PHILOSOPHER’s STONE
Akshara (Sanskrit) Akṣara [from a not + kṣara flowing from the verbal root kṣar to flow, melt away] Imperishable; name of Brahman, also on occasion of Siva and Vishnu, signifying their enduring, imperishable nature for the term of the mahamanvantara. Krishna tells Arjuna that there are two Purushas in the world — kshara and akshara — the perishable and the imperishable; that all beings are kshara in the sense used by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus: panta rhei (all things flow); and that which dies not is akshara (BG 15:16-17). But the highest Purusha is still another, the paramatman (supreme atman).
Alchemy [from Arab al-kimiya from al the + kimiya philosopher’s stone from Greek chyma fluid] The art of divine magic under a chemical symbolism. The ancient alchemists, more conscious of the unity of nature, perhaps did not need to distinguish between a natural and spiritual alchemy or to regard one as symbolic of the other. Alchemy was introduced into Europe by the Arabs, from whom it may be traced to Egypt and India. Modern Europe knows it best from medieval alchemists, who studied its physical aspects, though some could interpret the symbolism and work out the analogies between the physical elements and processes and their spiritual counterparts.
Alchemy seeks the primal unity beyond diversity: a homogeneous substance from which the many elements were derived; a pure gold which could be obtained from baser metals by purging them of the dross with which the pure element was alloyed; an elixir of life which would cure all diseases. The transmutation of metals was their magnum opus; the agent to be employed was the philosopher’s stone. Though these processes are possible physically, the spiritual processes to which they correspond are incomparably more important. The base metals are the passions and delusions of the lower mind; and the pure gold is the wisdom of the manas in alliance with buddhi.
Alexandrian School Alexandria flourished from the 4th century BC to the 7th AD, being a remarkable center of learning due to the blending of Greek and Oriental influences, its favorable situation and commercial resources, and the enlightened energy of some of the Macedonian Dynasty of the Ptolemies ruling over Egypt. The Alexandrian school was formed of the Neoplatonist philosophers whose appearance marks the later outburst of Alexandrian culture; and with them may perhaps be classed those Gnostic schools which originated there. This philosophy is a characteristic presentation of parts of the archaic wisdom-religion, being derived from contact with India and with knowledge still then accessible in Egypt.
Al Kindi, Al Farabi, and Ibn Sina (Avicenna) were the first great philosophers who made large use of Aristotelian books. Their writings are of truly encyclopedic character and comprise the whole edifice of knowledge in their time. Their Aristotelianism is, however, mainly Neo-Platonism with addition of certain peripatetic notions. Avicenna is more of an Aristotelian than his predecessors. Al Farabi, e.g., held that cognition is ultimately due to an illumination, whereas Avicenna adopted a more Aristotelian theory. While these thinkers had an original philosophy, Averroes (Ibn Roshd) endeavored to clarify the meaning of the Aristotelian texts by extensive and minute commentaries. Translations from these writings first made known to medieval philosophy the non-logical works of the "Philosopher", although there existed, at the same time, some translations made directly from Greek texts.
Almost all Jewish philosophers with the exception of Gabirol, ha-Levi, and Gersonides produce proofs for the existence of God. These proofs are based primarily on principles of physics. In the case of the Western philosophers, they are Aristotelian, while in the case of the Eastern, they are a combination of Aristotelian and those of the Mutazilites. The Eastern philosophers, such as Saadia and others and also Bahya of the Western prove the existence of God indirectly, namely that the world was created and consequently there is a creator. The leading Western thinkers, such as Ibn Daud (q.v.) and Maimonides employ the Aristotelian argument from motion, even to positing hypothetically the eternity of the world. Ha-LevI considers the conception of the existence of God an intuition with which man is endowed by God Himself. Crescas, who criticized Aristotle's conception of space and the infinite, in his proof for the existence of God, proves it by positing the need of a being necessarily existent, for it is absurd to posit a world of possibles.
Al-Mukamis, David Ibn Merwan: Early Jewish philosopher (died c. 937). His philosophic work, Book of Twenty Tractates shows influence of the teachings of the Kalam (q.v.) reasoning follows along lines similar to that of Saadia. -- M.W.
Also a materialistic philosopher whose doctrines are said to be imbodied in the Barhaspatya-sutras; a “denier of all but matter, who if he could come back to life, would put shame to all the ‘Free thinkers’ and ‘Agnostics’ of the day. He lived before the Ramayanic period, but his teachings and school have survived to this day, and he has even now followers, who are mostly to be found in Bengal” (ibid.).
A major medieval rabbi, physician, scientist, and philosopher, known by the acronym RaMBaM (Rabbi Moses ben Maimon). Born in Spain, Maimonides fled from persecution to Morocco and finally settled in Egypt. His Major works include a legal commentary on the Mishnah, a law code called Mishnah Torah, and the preeminent work of medieval Jewish rational philosophy, The Guide of the Perplexed.
Among his most important works the following must be mentioned: Paz en la Guerra, 1897; De la Ensenanza Superior en Espana, 1899; En Torno al Casticismo, 1902; Amor y Pedagogia, 1902; Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho, 1905; Mi Religion y Otros Ensayos, 1910; Soliloquios y Conversaciones, 1912; Contra Esto y Aquello, 1912; Ensayos, 7 vols., 1916-1920; Del Sentimiento Tragico de la Vida en los Hombres y en los Pueblos, 1914; Niebla, 1914; La Agonia del Cristianismo, 1930; etc. Unamuno conceives of everv individual man as an end in himself and not a means. Civilization has an individual responsibility towards each man. Man lives in society, but society as such is an abstraction. The concrete fact is the individual man "of flesh and blood". This doctrine of man constitutes the first principle of his entire philosophy. He develops it throughout his writings by way of a soliloquy in which he attacks the concepts of "man", "Society", "Humanity", etc. as mere abstractions of the philosophers, and argues for the "Concrete", "experiential" facts of the individual living man. On his doctrine of man as an individual fact ontologically valid, Unamuno roots the second principle of his philosophy, namely, his theory of Immortality. Faith in immortality grows out, not from the realm of reason, but from the realm of facts which lie beyond the boundaries of reason. In fact, reason as such, that is, as a logical function is absolutely disowned bv Unamuno, as useless and unjustified. The third principle of his philosophy is his theory of the Logos which has to do with man's intuition of the world and his immediate response in language and action. -- J.A.F.
MEANING AND GOAL OF
EXISTENCE The meaning of existence (a problem unsolvable to theologians, philosophers, and scientists) is the consciousness development of the primordial atoms, to awaken to consciousness primordial atoms which are unconscious in primordial matter, and thereupon to teach them in ever higher kingdoms to acquire consciousness of, understanding of life in all its relationships.
The goal of existence is the omniscience and omnipotence of all in the whole cosmos.
The process implies development: in respect of knowledge from ignorance to omniscience, in respect of will from impotence to omnipotence, in respect of freedom from bondage to that power which the application of the laws afford, in respect of life from isolation to unity with all life. K 1.30.1ff
Ananda: (Skr.) Joy, happiness, bliss, beatitude, associated in the thinking of many Indian philosophers with moksa (q.v.); a concomitant of perfection and divine consciousness (cf. sat-citananda). -- K.F.L.
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (500?-428 BC) A Greek scientific philosopher who lived in Athens and associated with the distinguished men of the Periclean era. Like Parmenides he denied the existence of birth or death, seeing the two processes as a mingling and unmingling. The ultimate elements of this process are the infinite number of indivisible, imperishable particles (atoms or homoeomere), acted on and ordered by spirit or pure cosmic reason (nous, equivalent to the Hindu mahat). He openly taught the Pythagorean astronomical ideas concerning the movement and nature of the planets, moon, sun, stars, etc., and attempted to explain all phenomena by natural causes. He “firmly believed that the spiritual prototypes of all things, as well as their elements, were to be found in the boundless ether, where they were generated, whence they evolved, and whither they returned from earth” (IU 1:158).
Anaximenes of Miletus (611-547 BC) Ionian Greek philosopher, pupil of Anaximander, who held air to be the fundamental principle from which fire arose through rarefaction and water and solids arose through condensation. He also held that the universe was alive, and that the individual soul was a small portion of the most rarefied “air” or ultimate world-substance, trapped within the individual being (cf Guthrie, Greek Philosophers 80). He taught that mankind had evolved from the animals, though not in the Darwinian sense. (BCW 6:204) (BCW 11:270; IU 1:238, SD 1:77, 590)
“An Occultist or a philosopher will not speak of the goodness or cruelty of Providence; but, identifying it with Karma-Nemesis, he will teach that nevertheless it guards the good and watches over them in this, as in future lives; and that it punishes the evil-doer — aye, even to his seventh rebirth. So long, in short, as the effect of his having thrown into perturbation even the smallest atom in the Infinite World of harmony, has not been finally readjusted. For the only decree of Karma — an eternal and immutable decree — is absolute Harmony in the world of matter as it is in the world of Spirit. It is not, therefore, Karma that rewards or punishes, but it is we, who reward or punish ourselves according to whether we work with, through and along with nature, abiding by the laws on which that Harmony depends, or — break them.
antiochian ::: a. --> Pertaining to Antiochus, a contemporary with Cicero, and the founder of a sect of philosophers.
Of or pertaining to the city of Antioch, in Syria.
Anti-Semitism ::: First coined in 1897 by German philosopher Wilhelm Marr to denote hatred of Jews; the term literally means opposed to Semites (which would include Arabic and other semitic peoples as well), but was invented specifically in reference to Jews and is most often applied specifically to opposition to Jews.
antonomasia ::: n. --> The use of some epithet or the name of some office, dignity, or the like, instead of the proper name of the person; as when his majesty is used for a king, or when, instead of Aristotle, we say, the philosopher; or, conversely, the use of a proper name instead of an appellative, as when a wise man is called a Solomon, or an eminent orator a Cicero.
Apeiron: Greek for infinite, indeterminate. The Greek philosopher Anaximander (6th century B.C.) used the term for the primal indeterminate matter out of which all things come to be.
AQAL ::: Pronounced “ah-qwul.” Short for “all-quadrants, all-levels,” which itself is short for “allquadrants, all-levels, all-lines, all-states, and all-types.” Developed by philosopher and author, Ken Wilber, AQAL appears to be the most comprehensive approach to reality to date. It is a supertheory or metatheory that attempts to explain how the most time-tested methodologies, and the experiences those methodologies bring forth, fit together in a coherent fashion. AQAL theory’s pragmatic correlate is a series of social practices called Integral Methodological Pluralism (IMP). The personal application of AQAL is called Integral Life Practice (ILP). “AQAL” is often used interchangeably with Integral Theory, the Integral approach, the Integral map, the Integral model, and Integral Operating System (IOS).
Arabic Philosophy: The contact of the Arabs with Greek civilization and philosophy took place partly in Syria, where Christian Arabic philosophy developed, partly in other countries, Asia Minor, Persia, Egypt and Spain. The effect of this contact was not a simple reception of Greek philosophy, but the gradual growth of an original mode of thought, determined chiefly by the religious and philosophical tendencies alive in the Arab world. Eastern influences had produced a mystical trend, not unlike Neo-Platonism; the already existing "metaphysics of light", noticeable in the religious conception of the Qoran, also helped to assimilate Plotinlan ideas. On the other hand, Aristotelian philosophy became important, although more, at least in the beginning, as logic and methodology. The interest in science and medicine contributed to the spread of Aristotelian philosophy. The history of philosophy in the Arab world is determined by the increasing opposition of Orthodoxy against a more liberal theology and philosophy. Arab thought became influential in the Western world partly through European scholars who went to Spain and elsewhere for study, mostly however through the Latin translations which became more and more numerous at the end of the 12th and during the 13th centuries. Among the Christian Arabs Costa ben Luca (864-923) has to be mentioned whose De Differentia spiritus et animae was translated by Johannes Hispanus (12th century). The first period of Islamic philosophy is occupied mainly with translation of Greek texts, some of which were translated later into Latin. The Liber de causis (mentioned first by Alanus ab Insulis) is such a translation of an Arab text; it was believed to be by Aristotle, but is in truth, as Aquinas recognized, a version of the Stoicheiosis theologike by Proclus. The so-called Theologia Aristotelis is an excerpt of Plotinus Enn. IV-VI, written 840 by a Syrian. The fundamental trends of Arab philosophy are indeed Neo-Platonic, and the Aristotelian texts were mostly interpreted in this spirit. Furthermore, there is also a tendency to reconcile the Greek philosophers with theological notions, at least so long as the orthodox theologians could find no reason for opposition. In spite of this, some of the philosophers did not escape persecution. The Peripatetic element is more pronounced in the writings of later times when the technique of paraphrasis and commentary on Aristotelian texts had developed. Beside the philosophy dependent more or less on Greek, and partially even Christian influences, there is a mystical theology and philosophy whose sources are the Qoran, Indian and, most of all, Persian systems. The knowledge of the "Hermetic" writings too was of some importance.
Arcanum: An old term almost identical with occultism, its recent equivalent. Arcana were originally used to cover the sacred objects, such as the Playthings of Dionysus in the Eleusinian rites, and a cognate is ark, as in the Ark of the Covenant. Arcesilaus: (315-241 B.C.) Greek philosopher from Pitane in Aeolis. He succeeded Crates in the chair of the Platonic Academy and became the founder of the second or so-called middle academy. In opposition to both Stoicism and Epicureanism, he advocated a scepticism that was not so extreme as that of Pyrrho although he despaired of man's attaining truth. Suspended judgment was to him the best approach. -- L.E.D.
Arcanum (singular) sometimes meant in medieval and modern Europe, an elixir, philosopher’s stone, or magical agent, whether physical or spiritual.
archeus ::: n. --> The vital principle or force which (according to the Paracelsians) presides over the growth and continuation of living beings; the anima mundi or plastic power of the old philosophers.
archimedean ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Archimedes, a celebrated Greek philosopher; constructed on the principle of Archimedes&
Archytas of Tarentum (flourished 400-365 BC) Greek Pythagorean philosopher, general, statesman, scientist, and mathematician, contemporary of Plato. He was the first to distinguish harmonic progression from arithmetical and geometric progression, is credited with inventing the pulley, and contributed to the study of acoustics, music, and mathematics.
Aristobulus: A philosopher of the second century B.C. who combined Greek philosophy with Jewish theology. -- M.F.
aristotelian ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Aristotle, the famous Greek philosopher (384-322 b. c.). ::: n. --> A follower of Aristotle; a Peripatetic. See Peripatetic.
Aristotle: A Greek philosopher who lived from 384 BC to 322 BC. Aristotle wrote on numerous subjects including poetry, physics, music, politics and biology. He was the student of Plato. Alongside Plato and Socrates, Aristotle is considered an important figure to the founding of Western knowledge.
Aristotle, medieval: Contrary to the esteem in which the Fathers held Platonic and especially Neo-Platonic philosophy, Aristotle plays hardly any role in early Patristic and Scholastic writings. Augustine seems not to have known much about him and admired him more as logician whereas he held Plato to be the much greater philosopher. The Middle Ages knew, until the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century, only the logical texts, mostly in the translations made by Boethius of the texts and of the introduction by Porphyrius (Isagoge). During the latter third of the 12th, mostly however at the beginning of the 13th century appeared translations partly from Arabian texts and commentaries, partly from the Greek originals. Finally, Aquinas had William of Moerbeke translate the whole work of Aristotle, who soon came to be known as the Philosopher. Scholastic Aristotelianism is, however, not a simple revival of the Peripatetic views; Thomas is said to have "Christianized" the Philosopher as Augustine had done with Plato. Aristotle was differently interpreted by Aquinas and by the Latin Averroists (q.v. Averroism), especially in regard to the "unity of intellect" and the eternity of the created world. -- R.A.
Ars Combinatoria: (Leibniz) An art or technique of deriving or inventing complex concepts by a combination of a relatively few simple ones taken as primitive. This technique was proposed as a valuable subject for study by Leibniz in De Arte Combinatoria (1666) but was never greatly developed by him. Leibniz's program for logic consisted of two main projects: (1) the development of a universal characteristic (characteristica universalis), and (2) the development of a universal mathematics (mathesis universalis (q.v.). The universal characteristic was to be a universal language for scientists and philosophers. With a relatively few basic symbols for the ultimately simple ideas, and a suitable technique for constructing compound ideas out of the simple ones, Leibniz thought that a language could be constructed which would be much more efficient for reasoning and for communication than the vague, complicated, and more or less parochial languages then available. This language would be completely universal in the sense that all scientific and philosophical concepts could be expressed in it, and also in that it would enable scholars m all countries to communicate over the barriers of their vernacular tongues. Leibniz's proposals in this matter, and what work he did on it, are the grand predecessors of a vast amount of research which has been done in the last hundred years on the techniques of language construction, and specifically on the invention of formal rules and procedures for introducing new terms into a language on the basis of terms already present, the general project of constructing a unified language for science and philosophy. L. Couturat, La Logique de Leibniz, Paris, 1901; C. I. Lewis, A Survey of Symbolic Logic, Berkeley, 1918. -- F.L.W.
Aryadeva. (T. 'Phags pa lha; C. Tipo; J. Daiba; K. Cheba 提婆). While traditional sources are often ambiguous, scholars have identified two Aryadevas. The first Aryadeva (c. 170-270 CE) was an important Indian philosopher, proponent of MADHYAMAKA philosophy, and a direct disciple of the Madhyamaka master NAGARJUNA. According to traditional accounts, he was born to a royal family in Sri Lanka. Renouncing the throne at the time of his maturity, he instead sought monastic ordination and met NAgArjuna at PAtALIPUTRA. After his teacher's death, Aryadeva became active at the monastic university of NALANDA, where he is said to have debated and defeated numerous brahmanic adherents, eventually converting them to Buddhism. He is the author of the influential work CATUḤsATAKA ("The Four Hundred"). He is also said to be the author of the *sATAsASTRA (C. BAI LUN), or "The Hundred Treatise," counted as one of the "three treatises" of the SAN LUN ZONG of Chinese Buddhism, together with the Zhong lun ("Middle Treatise," i.e., MuLAMADHYAMAKAKARIKA) and SHI'ERMEN LUN ("Twelve [Chapter] Treatise"), both attributed to NAgArjuna. The *satasAstra is not extant in Sanskrit or Tibetan, but is preserved only in Chinese. ¶ The second Aryadeva [alt. AryadevapAda; d.u.] trained in yogic practices under the tantric master NAgArjuna at NAlandA. In the Tibetan tradition, this Aryadeva is remembered for his great tantric accomplishments, and is counted among the eighty-four MAHASIDDHAs under the name Karnari or Kanheri. His important tantric works include the CaryAmelapakapradīpa ("Lamp that Integrates the Practices") and Cittavisuddhiprakarana [alt. CittAvaranavisuddhiprakarana] ("Explanation of Mental Purity").
As a school of Greek and Latin philosophers, Plotinism lasted until the fifth century. Porphyry, Apuleius, Jamblichus, Julian the Apostate, Themistius, Simplicius, Macrobius and Proclus are the most important representatives. Through St. Augustine, Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, John Scotus Eriugena, and the Greek Fathers, Plotinian thought has been partly incorporated into Christian intellectualism. Nearly all prominent Arabian philosophers before Averroes are influenced by Plotinus, this is particularly true of Avicenna and Algazel. In the Jewish tradition Avicebron's Fons Vitae is built on the frame of the emanation theory. Master Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa continue the movement. It is spiritually related to some modern anti-intellectualistic and mystical currents of thought. Plotin, Enneades, (Greek text and French transl.) by E. Brehier, (Bude), 6 vol., Paris, 1930-40. Mackenna, S., The Enneads of Plotinus, London, 1917-1919. Heinemann, F., Plotin, Leipzig, 1921. Brehier, E., La philosophie de Plotin, Paris, 1928. Inge, W. R., The Philosophy of Plotinus, 2 vol., 2rd ed., London and N. Y., 1929.
Atheism: (Gr. a, no; theos, god) Two uses of the term: The belief that there is no God. Some philosophers have been called "atheistic" because they have not held to a belief in a personal God. Atheism in this sense means "not theistic." The former meaning of the term is a literal rendering. The latter meaning is a less rigorous use of the term although widely current in the history of thought. -- V.F.
Athenagoras Second century Christian apologist and philosopher, said to have been influenced by Ammonius Saccus and to have been “thoroughly instructed in the Platonic philosophy, and comprehended its essential unity with the oriental systems” (Wilder, New Platonism and Alchemy, p. 3-4) (BCW 14:305-8).
Atmaswarupa: The Sanskrit term used by Hindu mystic philosophers for the universe. (Literally: manifestation of the Spirit.)
Atomists Certain ancient Greek philosophers, especially of the school of Leucippus and Deomcritus, who taught that all things arose from atoms (atomoi) and a vacuum (kenon). By atoms Democritus meant “indivisible particles of substance containing in themselves the potentialities of all possible future development, self-moved, self-driven . . . spiritual indivisible entities, the ultimates of being, self-conscious, spiritual monads.
Atom ::: This word comes to us from the ancient Greek philosophers Democritus, Leucippus, and Epicurus, andthe hundreds of great men who followed their lead in this respect and who were therefore also atomists -such, for instance, as the two Latin poets Ennius and Lucretius. This school taught that atoms were thefoundation-bricks of the universe, for atom in the original etymological sense of the word meanssomething that cannot be cut or divided, and therefore as being equivalent to particles of whattheosophists call homogeneous substance. But modern scientists do not use the word atom in that senseany longer. Some time ago the orthodox scientific doctrine concerning the atom was basically thatenunciated by Dalton, to the general effect that physical atoms were hard little particles of matter,ultimate particles of matter, and therefore indivisible and indestructible.But modern science [1933] has a totally new view of the physical atom, for it knows now that the atom isnot such, but is composite, builded of particles still more minute, called electrons or charges of negativeelectricity, and of other particles called protons or charges of positive electricity, which protons aresupposed to form the nucleus or core of the atomic structure. A frequent picture of atomic structure isthat of an atomic solar system, the protons being the atomic sun and the electrons being its planets, thelatter in extremely rapid revolution around the central sun. This conception is purely theosophical in idea,and adumbrates what occultism teaches, though occultism goes much farther than does modern science.One of the fundamental postulates of the teachings of theosophy is that the ultimates of nature are atomson the material side and monads on the energy side. These two are respectively material and spiritualprimates or ultimates, the spiritual ones or monads being indivisibles, and the atoms being divisibles -things that can be divided into composite parts.It becomes obvious from what precedes that the philosophical idea which formed the core of the teachingof the ancient initiated atomists was that their atoms or "indivisibles" are pretty close to whattheosophical occultism calls monads; and this is what Democritus and Leucippus and others of theirschool had in mind.These monads, as is obvious, are therefore divine-spiritual life-atoms, and are actually beings living andevolving on their own planes. Rays from them are the highest parts of the constitution of beings in thematerial realms.
At the same time, Berkeley, trusting the external reference of individual experience, argues from it the existence of a universal mind (God) of which the content is the so-called objective world. Finite spirits are created by God, and their several experiences represent his communication to them, so far as they are able to receive it, of his divine experience. Reality, then, is composed of spirits and ideas. The physical aspects of the world are reducible to mental phenomena. Matter is non-existent. G. Berkeley, Treatise on the Principles of Human Knowledge, 1710; Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Phdonous, 1713; De Motu (critique of Newtonian mechanics), 1720; Al-ciphron, or the Minute Philosopher, 1733; Siris, 1744. -- B.A.S.F.
Aufklärung: In general, this German word and its English equivalent Enlightenment denote the self-emancipation of man from mere authority, prejudice, convention and tradition, with an insistence on freer thinking about problems uncritically referred to these other agencies. According to Kant's famous definition "Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority, which is the incapacity of using one's understanding without the direction of another. This state of minority is caused when its source lies not in the lack of understanding, but in the lack of determination and courage to use it without the assistance of another" (Was ist Aufklärung? 1784). In its historical perspective, the Aufklärung refers to the cultural atmosphere and contrlbutions of the 18th century, especially in Germany, France and England [which affected also American thought with B. Franklin, T. Paine and the leaders of the Revolution]. It crystallized tendencies emphasized by the Renaissance, and quickened by modern scepticism and empiricism, and by the great scientific discoveries of the 17th century. This movement, which was represented by men of varying tendencies, gave an impetus to general learning, a more popular philosophy, empirical science, scriptural criticism, social and political thought. More especially, the word Aufklärung is applied to the German contributions to 18th century culture. In philosophy, its principal representatives are G. E. Lessing (1729-81) who believed in free speech and in a methodical criticism of religion, without being a free-thinker; H. S. Reimarus (1694-1768) who expounded a naturalistic philosophy and denied the supernatural origin of Christianity; Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) who endeavoured to mitigate prejudices and developed a popular common-sense philosophy; Chr. Wolff (1679-1754), J. A. Eberhard (1739-1809) who followed the Leibnizian rationalism and criticized unsuccessfully Kant and Fichte; and J. G. Herder (1744-1803) who was best as an interpreter of others, but whose intuitional suggestions have borne fruit in the organic correlation of the sciences, and in questions of language in relation to human nature and to national character. The works of Kant and Goethe mark the culmination of the German Enlightenment. Cf. J. G. Hibben, Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 1910. --T.G. Augustinianism: The thought of St. Augustine of Hippo, and of his followers. Born in 354 at Tagaste in N. Africa, A. studied rhetoric in Carthage, taught that subject there and in Rome and Milan. Attracted successively to Manicheanism, Scepticism, and Neo-Platontsm, A. eventually found intellectual and moral peace with his conversion to Christianity in his thirty-fourth year. Returning to Africa, he established numerous monasteries, became a priest in 391, Bishop of Hippo in 395. Augustine wrote much: On Free Choice, Confessions, Literal Commentary on Genesis, On the Trinity, and City of God, are his most noted works. He died in 430. St. Augustine's characteristic method, an inward empiricism which has little in common with later variants, starts from things without, proceeds within to the self, and moves upwards to God. These three poles of the Augustinian dialectic are polarized by his doctrine of moderate illuminism. An ontological illumination is required to explain the metaphysical structure of things. The truth of judgment demands a noetic illumination. A moral illumination is necessary in the order of willing; and so, too, an lllumination of art in the aesthetic order. Other illuminations which transcend the natural order do not come within the scope of philosophy; they provide the wisdoms of theology and mysticism. Every being is illuminated ontologically by number, form, unity and its derivatives, and order. A thing is what it is, in so far as it is more or less flooded by the light of these ontological constituents. Sensation is necessary in order to know material substances. There is certainly an action of the external object on the body and a corresponding passion of the body, but, as the soul is superior to the body and can suffer nothing from its inferior, sensation must be an action, not a passion, of the soul. Sensation takes place only when the observing soul, dynamically on guard throughout the body, is vitally attentive to the changes suffered by the body. However, an adequate basis for the knowledge of intellectual truth is not found in sensation alone. In order to know, for example, that a body is multiple, the idea of unity must be present already, otherwise its multiplicity could not be recognized. If numbers are not drawn in by the bodily senses which perceive only the contingent and passing, is the mind the source of the unchanging and necessary truth of numbers? The mind of man is also contingent and mutable, and cannot give what it does not possess. As ideas are not innate, nor remembered from a previous existence of the soul, they can be accounted for only by an immutable source higher than the soul. In so far as man is endowed with an intellect, he is a being naturally illuminated by God, Who may be compared to an intelligible sun. The human intellect does not create the laws of thought; it finds them and submits to them. The immediate intuition of these normative rules does not carry any content, thus any trace of ontologism is avoided. Things have forms because they have numbers, and they have being in so far as they possess form. The sufficient explanation of all formable, and hence changeable, things is an immutable and eternal form which is unrestricted in time and space. The forms or ideas of all things actually existing in the world are in the things themselves (as rationes seminales) and in the Divine Mind (as rationes aeternae). Nothing could exist without unity, for to be is no other than to be one. There is a unity proper to each level of being, a unity of the material individual and species, of the soul, and of that union of souls in the love of the same good, which union constitutes the city. Order, also, is ontologically imbibed by all beings. To tend to being is to tend to order; order secures being, disorder leads to non-being. Order is the distribution which allots things equal and unequal each to its own place and integrates an ensemble of parts in accordance with an end. Hence, peace is defined as the tranquillity of order. Just as things have their being from their forms, the order of parts, and their numerical relations, so too their beauty is not something superadded, but the shining out of all their intelligible co-ingredients. S. Aurelii Augustini, Opera Omnia, Migne, PL 32-47; (a critical edition of some works will be found in the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vienna). Gilson, E., Introd. a l'etude de s. Augustin, (Paris, 1931) contains very good bibliography up to 1927, pp. 309-331. Pope, H., St. Augustine of Hippo, (London, 1937). Chapman, E., St. Augustine's Philos. of Beauty, (N. Y., 1939). Figgis, J. N., The Political Aspects of St. Augustine's "City of God", (London, 1921). --E.C. Authenticity: In a general sense, genuineness, truth according to its title. It involves sometimes a direct and personal characteristic (Whitehead speaks of "authentic feelings"). This word also refers to problems of fundamental criticism involving title, tradition, authorship and evidence. These problems are vital in theology, and basic in scholarship with regard to the interpretation of texts and doctrines. --T.G. Authoritarianism: That theory of knowledge which maintains that the truth of any proposition is determined by the fact of its having been asserted by a certain esteemed individual or group of individuals. Cf. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent; C. S. Peirce, "Fixation of Belief," in Chance, Love and Logic, ed. M. R. Cohen. --A.C.B. Autistic thinking: Absorption in fanciful or wishful thinking without proper control by objective or factual material; day dreaming; undisciplined imagination. --A.C.B. Automaton Theory: Theory that a living organism may be considered a mere machine. See Automatism. Automatism: (Gr. automatos, self-moving) (a) In metaphysics: Theory that animal and human organisms are automata, that is to say, are machines governed by the laws of physics and mechanics. Automatism, as propounded by Descartes, considered the lower animals to be pure automata (Letter to Henry More, 1649) and man a machine controlled by a rational soul (Treatise on Man). Pure automatism for man as well as animals is advocated by La Mettrie (Man, a Machine, 1748). During the Nineteenth century, automatism, combined with epiphenomenalism, was advanced by Hodgson, Huxley and Clifford. (Cf. W. James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, ch. V.) Behaviorism, of the extreme sort, is the most recent version of automatism (See Behaviorism). (b) In psychology: Psychological automatism is the performance of apparently purposeful actions, like automatic writing without the superintendence of the conscious mind. L. C. Rosenfield, From Beast Machine to Man Machine, N. Y., 1941. --L.W. Automatism, Conscious: The automatism of Hodgson, Huxley, and Clifford which considers man a machine to which mind or consciousness is superadded; the mind of man is, however, causally ineffectual. See Automatism; Epiphenomenalism. --L.W. Autonomy: (Gr. autonomia, independence) Freedom consisting in self-determination and independence of all external constraint. See Freedom. Kant defines autonomy of the will as subjection of the will to its own law, the categorical imperative, in contrast to heteronomy, its subjection to a law or end outside the rational will. (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, § 2.) --L.W. Autonomy of ethics: A doctrine, usually propounded by intuitionists, that ethics is not a part of, and cannot be derived from, either metaphysics or any of the natural or social sciences. See Intuitionism, Metaphysical ethics, Naturalistic ethics. --W.K.F. Autonomy of the will: (in Kant's ethics) The freedom of the rational will to legislate to itself, which constitutes the basis for the autonomy of the moral law. --P.A.S. Autonymy: In the terminology introduced by Carnap, a word (phrase, symbol, expression) is autonymous if it is used as a name for itself --for the geometric shape, sound, etc. which it exemplifies, or for the word as a historical and grammatical unit. Autonymy is thus the same as the Scholastic suppositio matertalis (q. v.), although the viewpoint is different. --A.C. Autotelic: (from Gr. autos, self, and telos, end) Said of any absorbing activity engaged in for its own sake (cf. German Selbstzweck), such as higher mathematics, chess, etc. In aesthetics, applied to creative art and play which lack any conscious reference to the accomplishment of something useful. In the view of some, it may constitute something beneficent in itself of which the person following his art impulse (q.v.) or playing is unaware, thus approaching a heterotelic (q.v.) conception. --K.F.L. Avenarius, Richard: (1843-1896) German philosopher who expressed his thought in an elaborate and novel terminology in the hope of constructing a symbolic language for philosophy, like that of mathematics --the consequence of his Spinoza studies. As the most influential apostle of pure experience, the posltivistic motive reaches in him an extreme position. Insisting on the biologic and economic function of thought, he thought the true method of science is to cure speculative excesses by a return to pure experience devoid of all assumptions. Philosophy is the scientific effort to exclude from knowledge all ideas not included in the given. Its task is to expel all extraneous elements in the given. His uncritical use of the category of the given and the nominalistic view that logical relations are created rather than discovered by thought, leads him to banish not only animism but also all of the categories, substance, causality, etc., as inventions of the mind. Explaining the evolution and devolution of the problematization and deproblematization of numerous ideas, and aiming to give the natural history of problems, Avenarius sought to show physiologically, psychologically and historically under what conditions they emerge, are challenged and are solved. He hypothesized a System C, a bodily and central nervous system upon which consciousness depends. R-values are the stimuli received from the world of objects. E-values are the statements of experience. The brain changes that continually oscillate about an ideal point of balance are termed Vitalerhaltungsmaximum. The E-values are differentiated into elements, to which the sense-perceptions or the content of experience belong, and characters, to which belongs everything which psychology describes as feelings and attitudes. Avenarius describes in symbolic form a series of states from balance to balance, termed vital series, all describing a series of changes in System C. Inequalities in the vital balance give rise to vital differences. According to his theory there are two vital series. It assumes a series of brain changes because parallel series of conscious states can be observed. The independent vital series are physical, and the dependent vital series are psychological. The two together are practically covariants. In the case of a process as a dependent vital series three stages can be noted: first, the appearance of the problem, expressed as strain, restlessness, desire, fear, doubt, pain, repentance, delusion; the second, the continued effort and struggle to solve the problem; and finally, the appearance of the solution, characterized by abating anxiety, a feeling of triumph and enjoyment. Corresponding to these three stages of the dependent series are three stages of the independent series: the appearance of the vital difference and a departure from balance in the System C, the continuance with an approximate vital difference, and lastly, the reduction of the vital difference to zero, the return to stability. By making room for dependent and independent experiences, he showed that physics regards experience as independent of the experiencing indlvidual, and psychology views experience as dependent upon the individual. He greatly influenced Mach and James (q.v.). See Avenarius, Empirio-criticism, Experience, pure. Main works: Kritik der reinen Erfahrung; Der menschliche Weltbegriff. --H.H. Averroes: (Mohammed ibn Roshd) Known to the Scholastics as The Commentator, and mentioned as the author of il gran commento by Dante (Inf. IV. 68) he was born 1126 at Cordova (Spain), studied theology, law, medicine, mathematics, and philosophy, became after having been judge in Sevilla and Cordova, physician to the khalifah Jaqub Jusuf, and charged with writing a commentary on the works of Aristotle. Al-mansur, Jusuf's successor, deprived him of his place because of accusations of unorthodoxy. He died 1198 in Morocco. Averroes is not so much an original philosopher as the author of a minute commentary on the whole works of Aristotle. His procedure was imitated later by Aquinas. In his interpretation of Aristotelian metaphysics Averroes teaches the coeternity of a universe created ex nihilo. This doctrine formed together with the notion of a numerical unity of the active intellect became one of the controversial points in the discussions between the followers of Albert-Thomas and the Latin Averroists. Averroes assumed that man possesses only a disposition for receiving the intellect coming from without; he identifies this disposition with the possible intellect which thus is not truly intellectual by nature. The notion of one intellect common to all men does away with the doctrine of personal immortality. Another doctrine which probably was emphasized more by the Latin Averroists (and by the adversaries among Averroes' contemporaries) is the famous statement about "two-fold truth", viz. that a proposition may be theologically true and philosophically false and vice versa. Averroes taught that religion expresses the (higher) philosophical truth by means of religious imagery; the "two-truth notion" came apparently into the Latin text through a misinterpretation on the part of the translators. The works of Averroes were one of the main sources of medieval Aristotelianlsm, before and even after the original texts had been translated. The interpretation the Latin Averroists found in their texts of the "Commentator" spread in spite of opposition and condemnation. See Averroism, Latin. Averroes, Opera, Venetiis, 1553. M. Horten, Die Metaphysik des Averroes, 1912. P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin, 2d ed., Louvain, 1911. --R.A. Averroism, Latin: The commentaries on Aristotle written by Averroes (Ibn Roshd) in the 12th century became known to the Western scholars in translations by Michael Scottus, Hermannus Alemannus, and others at the beginning of the 13th century. Many works of Aristotle were also known first by such translations from Arabian texts, though there existed translations from the Greek originals at the same time (Grabmann). The Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle was held to be the true one by many; but already Albert the Great pointed out several notions which he felt to be incompatible with the principles of Christian philosophy, although he relied for the rest on the "Commentator" and apparently hardly used any other text. Aquinas, basing his studies mostly on a translation from the Greek texts, procured for him by William of Moerbecke, criticized the Averroistic interpretation in many points. But the teachings of the Commentator became the foundation for a whole school of philosophers, represented first by the Faculty of Arts at Paris. The most prominent of these scholars was Siger of Brabant. The philosophy of these men was condemned on March 7th, 1277 by Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, after a first condemnation of Aristotelianism in 1210 had gradually come to be neglected. The 219 theses condemned in 1277, however, contain also some of Aquinas which later were generally recognized an orthodox. The Averroistic propositions which aroused the criticism of the ecclesiastic authorities and which had been opposed with great energy by Albert and Thomas refer mostly to the following points: The co-eternity of the created word; the numerical identity of the intellect in all men, the so-called two-fold-truth theory stating that a proposition may be philosophically true although theologically false. Regarding the first point Thomas argued that there is no philosophical proof, either for the co-eternity or against it; creation is an article of faith. The unity of intellect was rejected as incompatible with the true notion of person and with personal immortality. It is doubtful whether Averroes himself held the two-truths theory; it was, however, taught by the Latin Averroists who, notwithstanding the opposition of the Church and the Thomistic philosophers, gained a great influence and soon dominated many universities, especially in Italy. Thomas and his followers were convinced that they interpreted Aristotle correctly and that the Averroists were wrong; one has, however, to admit that certain passages in Aristotle allow for the Averroistic interpretation, especially in regard to the theory of intellect. Lit.: P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin au XIIIe Siecle, 2d. ed. Louvain, 1911; M. Grabmann, Forschungen über die lateinischen Aristotelesübersetzungen des XIII. Jahrhunderts, Münster 1916 (Beitr. z. Gesch. Phil. d. MA. Vol. 17, H. 5-6). --R.A. Avesta: See Zendavesta. Avicehron: (or Avencebrol, Salomon ibn Gabirol) The first Jewish philosopher in Spain, born in Malaga 1020, died about 1070, poet, philosopher, and moralist. His main work, Fons vitae, became influential and was much quoted by the Scholastics. It has been preserved only in the Latin translation by Gundissalinus. His doctrine of a spiritual substance individualizing also the pure spirits or separate forms was opposed by Aquinas already in his first treatise De ente, but found favor with the medieval Augustinians also later in the 13th century. He also teaches the necessity of a mediator between God and the created world; such a mediator he finds in the Divine Will proceeding from God and creating, conserving, and moving the world. His cosmogony shows a definitely Neo-Platonic shade and assumes a series of emanations. Cl. Baeumker, Avencebrolis Fons vitae. Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Philos. d. MA. 1892-1895, Vol. I. Joh. Wittman, Die Stellung des hl. Thomas von Aquino zu Avencebrol, ibid. 1900. Vol. III. --R.A. Avicenna: (Abu Ali al Hosain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina) Born 980 in the country of Bocchara, began to write in young years, left more than 100 works, taught in Ispahan, was physician to several Persian princes, and died at Hamadan in 1037. His fame as physician survived his influence as philosopher in the Occident. His medical works were printed still in the 17th century. His philosophy is contained in 18 vols. of a comprehensive encyclopedia, following the tradition of Al Kindi and Al Farabi. Logic, Physics, Mathematics and Metaphysics form the parts of this work. His philosophy is Aristotelian with noticeable Neo-Platonic influences. His doctrine of the universal existing ante res in God, in rebus as the universal nature of the particulars, and post res in the human mind by way of abstraction became a fundamental thesis of medieval Aristotelianism. He sharply distinguished between the logical and the ontological universal, denying to the latter the true nature of form in the composite. The principle of individuation is matter, eternally existent. Latin translations attributed to Avicenna the notion that existence is an accident to essence (see e.g. Guilelmus Parisiensis, De Universo). The process adopted by Avicenna was one of paraphrasis of the Aristotelian texts with many original thoughts interspersed. His works were translated into Latin by Dominicus Gundissalinus (Gondisalvi) with the assistance of Avendeath ibn Daud. This translation started, when it became more generally known, the "revival of Aristotle" at the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century. Albert the Great and Aquinas professed, notwithstanding their critical attitude, a great admiration for Avicenna whom the Arabs used to call the "third Aristotle". But in the Orient, Avicenna's influence declined soon, overcome by the opposition of the orthodox theologians. Avicenna, Opera, Venetiis, 1495; l508; 1546. M. Horten, Das Buch der Genesung der Seele, eine philosophische Enzyklopaedie Avicenna's; XIII. Teil: Die Metaphysik. Halle a. S. 1907-1909. R. de Vaux, Notes et textes sur l'Avicennisme Latin, Bibl. Thomiste XX, Paris, 1934. --R.A. Avidya: (Skr.) Nescience; ignorance; the state of mind unaware of true reality; an equivalent of maya (q.v.); also a condition of pure awareness prior to the universal process of evolution through gradual differentiation into the elements and factors of knowledge. --K.F.L. Avyakta: (Skr.) "Unmanifest", descriptive of or standing for brahman (q.v.) in one of its or "his" aspects, symbolizing the superabundance of the creative principle, or designating the condition of the universe not yet become phenomenal (aja, unborn). --K.F.L. Awareness: Consciousness considered in its aspect of act; an act of attentive awareness such as the sensing of a color patch or the feeling of pain is distinguished from the content attended to, the sensed color patch, the felt pain. The psychologlcal theory of intentional act was advanced by F. Brentano (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte) and received its epistemological development by Meinong, Husserl, Moore, Laird and Broad. See Intentionalism. --L.W. Axiological: (Ger. axiologisch) In Husserl: Of or pertaining to value or theory of value (the latter term understood as including disvalue and value-indifference). --D.C. Axiological ethics: Any ethics which makes the theory of obligation entirely dependent on the theory of value, by making the determination of the rightness of an action wholly dependent on a consideration of the value or goodness of something, e.g. the action itself, its motive, or its consequences, actual or probable. Opposed to deontological ethics. See also teleological ethics. --W.K.F. Axiologic Realism: In metaphysics, theory that value as well as logic, qualities as well as relations, have their being and exist external to the mind and independently of it. Applicable to the philosophy of many though not all realists in the history of philosophy, from Plato to G. E. Moore, A. N. Whitehead, and N, Hartmann. --J.K.F. Axiology: (Gr. axios, of like value, worthy, and logos, account, reason, theory). Modern term for theory of value (the desired, preferred, good), investigation of its nature, criteria, and metaphysical status. Had its rise in Plato's theory of Forms or Ideas (Idea of the Good); was developed in Aristotle's Organon, Ethics, Poetics, and Metaphysics (Book Lambda). Stoics and Epicureans investigated the summum bonum. Christian philosophy (St. Thomas) built on Aristotle's identification of highest value with final cause in God as "a living being, eternal, most good." In modern thought, apart from scholasticism and the system of Spinoza (Ethica, 1677), in which values are metaphysically grounded, the various values were investigated in separate sciences, until Kant's Critiques, in which the relations of knowledge to moral, aesthetic, and religious values were examined. In Hegel's idealism, morality, art, religion, and philosophy were made the capstone of his dialectic. R. H. Lotze "sought in that which should be the ground of that which is" (Metaphysik, 1879). Nineteenth century evolutionary theory, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and economics subjected value experience to empirical analysis, and stress was again laid on the diversity and relativity of value phenomena rather than on their unity and metaphysical nature. F. Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-1885) and Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887) aroused new interest in the nature of value. F. Brentano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (1889), identified value with love. In the twentieth century the term axiology was apparently first applied by Paul Lapie (Logique de la volonte, 1902) and E. von Hartmann (Grundriss der Axiologie, 1908). Stimulated by Ehrenfels (System der Werttheorie, 1897), Meinong (Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie, 1894-1899), and Simmel (Philosophie des Geldes, 1900). W. M. Urban wrote the first systematic treatment of axiology in English (Valuation, 1909), phenomenological in method under J. M. Baldwin's influence. Meanwhile H. Münsterberg wrote a neo-Fichtean system of values (The Eternal Values, 1909). Among important recent contributions are: B. Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value (1912), a free reinterpretation of Hegelianism; W. R. Sorley, Moral Values and the Idea of God (1918, 1921), defending a metaphysical theism; S. Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (1920), realistic and naturalistic; N. Hartmann, Ethik (1926), detailed analysis of types and laws of value; R. B. Perry's magnum opus, General Theory of Value (1926), "its meaning and basic principles construed in terms of interest"; and J. Laird, The Idea of Value (1929), noteworthy for historical exposition. A naturalistic theory has been developed by J. Dewey (Theory of Valuation, 1939), for which "not only is science itself a value . . . but it is the supreme means of the valid determination of all valuations." A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936) expounds the view of logical positivism that value is "nonsense." J. Hessen, Wertphilosophie (1937), provides an account of recent German axiology from a neo-scholastic standpoint. The problems of axiology fall into four main groups, namely, those concerning (1) the nature of value, (2) the types of value, (3) the criterion of value, and (4) the metaphysical status of value. (1) The nature of value experience. Is valuation fulfillment of desire (voluntarism: Spinoza, Ehrenfels), pleasure (hedonism: Epicurus, Bentham, Meinong), interest (Perry), preference (Martineau), pure rational will (formalism: Stoics, Kant, Royce), apprehension of tertiary qualities (Santayana), synoptic experience of the unity of personality (personalism: T. H. Green, Bowne), any experience that contributes to enhanced life (evolutionism: Nietzsche), or "the relation of things as means to the end or consequence actually reached" (pragmatism, instrumentalism: Dewey). (2) The types of value. Most axiologists distinguish between intrinsic (consummatory) values (ends), prized for their own sake, and instrumental (contributory) values (means), which are causes (whether as economic goods or as natural events) of intrinsic values. Most intrinsic values are also instrumental to further value experience; some instrumental values are neutral or even disvaluable intrinsically. Commonly recognized as intrinsic values are the (morally) good, the true, the beautiful, and the holy. Values of play, of work, of association, and of bodily well-being are also acknowledged. Some (with Montague) question whether the true is properly to be regarded as a value, since some truth is disvaluable, some neutral; but love of truth, regardless of consequences, seems to establish the value of truth. There is disagreement about whether the holy (religious value) is a unique type (Schleiermacher, Otto), or an attitude toward other values (Kant, Höffding), or a combination of the two (Hocking). There is also disagreement about whether the variety of values is irreducible (pluralism) or whether all values are rationally related in a hierarchy or system (Plato, Hegel, Sorley), in which values interpenetrate or coalesce into a total experience. (3) The criterion of value. The standard for testing values is influenced by both psychological and logical theory. Hedonists find the standard in the quantity of pleasure derived by the individual (Aristippus) or society (Bentham). Intuitionists appeal to an ultimate insight into preference (Martineau, Brentano). Some idealists recognize an objective system of rational norms or ideals as criterion (Plato, Windelband), while others lay more stress on rational wholeness and coherence (Hegel, Bosanquet, Paton) or inclusiveness (T. H. Green). Naturalists find biological survival or adjustment (Dewey) to be the standard. Despite differences, there is much in common in the results of the application of these criteria. (4) The metaphysical status of value. What is the relation of values to the facts investigated by natural science (Koehler), of Sein to Sollen (Lotze, Rickert), of human experience of value to reality independent of man (Hegel, Pringle-Pattlson, Spaulding)? There are three main answers: subjectivism (value is entirely dependent on and relative to human experience of it: so most hedonists, naturalists, positivists); logical objectivism (values are logical essences or subsistences, independent of their being known, yet with no existential status or action in reality); metaphysical objectivism (values --or norms or ideals --are integral, objective, and active constituents of the metaphysically real: so theists, absolutists, and certain realists and naturalists like S. Alexander and Wieman). --E.S.B. Axiom: See Mathematics. Axiomatic method: That method of constructing a deductive system consisting of deducing by specified rules all statements of the system save a given few from those given few, which are regarded as axioms or postulates of the system. See Mathematics. --C.A.B. Ayam atma brahma: (Skr.) "This self is brahman", famous quotation from Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 2.5.19, one of many alluding to the central theme of the Upanishads, i.e., the identity of the human and divine or cosmic. --K.F.L.
Avalokitesvara (Sanskrit) Avalokiteśvara [from ava down, away from + the verbal root lok to look at, contemplate + īśvara lord] The lord who is perceived; the divinity or lord seen or contemplated in its inferior or “downward-seen” aspect. The essential meaning in theosophy is the Logos, whether considered in its kosmic aspect or in its function in an entity dwelling in such kosmos. “Simultaneously with the evolution of the Universal Mind, the concealed Wisdom of Adi-Buddha — the One Supreme and eternal — manifests itself as Avalokiteshwara (or manifested Iswara), which is the Osiris of the Egyptians, the Ahura-Mazda of the Zoroastrians, the Heavenly Man of the Hermetic philosopher, the Logos of the Platonists, and the Atman of the Vedantins” (SD 1:110).
averroist ::: n. --> One of a sect of peripatetic philosophers, who appeared in Italy before the restoration of learning; so denominated from Averroes, or Averrhoes, a celebrated Arabian philosopher. He held the doctrine of monopsychism.
A. V. Vasihev, Space, Time, Motion, translated by H. M. Lucas and C. P. Sanger, with an introduction by Bertrand Russell, London. 1924, and New York, 1924. Religion, Philosophy of: The methodic or systematic investigation of the elements of religious consciousness, the theories it has evolved and their development and historic relationships in the cultural complex. It takes account of religious practices only as illustrations of the vitality of beliefs and the inseparableness of the psychological from thought reality in faith. It is distinct from theology in that it recognizes the priority of reason over faith and the acceptance of creed, subjecting the latter to a logical analysis. As such, the history of the Philosophy of Religion is coextensive with the free enquiry into religious reality, particularly the conceptions of God, soul, immortality, sin, salvaition, the sacred (Rudolf Otto), etc., and may be said to have its roots in any society above the pre-logical, mythological, or custom-controlled level, first observed in Egypt, China, India, and Greece. Its scientific treatment is a subsidiary philosophic discipline dates from about Kant's Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der reinen Vernunft and Hegel's Philosophie der Religion, while in the history of thought based on Indian and Greek speculation, sporadic sallies were made by all great philosophers, especially those professing an idealism, and by most theologians.
Baeck, Leo ::: (1873-1956) Rabbi, philosopher, and community leader in Berlin. In 1933, he became president of the Reich Representation of German Jews, an organization responsible to the Nazi regime concerning Jewish matters. Despite opportunities to emigrate, Baeck refused to leave Germany. In 1943, he was deported to the ghetto of Terezin (Theresienstadt), where he became a member of the Council of Elders and spiritual leader of the Jews imprisoned there. After the liberation of the ghetto he emigrated to England.
Bahya, ben Joseph Ibn Padudah: (c. 1050) Philosopher and ethicist. The title of his work, The Duties of the Heart (Heb. Hobot ha-Leba-bot), indicates its purpose, i.e., to teach ethical conduct. First part demonstrates pure conception of God, unity and attributes. His basic principle of ethics is thankfulness to God, for His creating the wonderful world; the goal of religious ethical conduct is love of God. A second work ascribed to him is the Torot ha-Nefesh, i.e., Doctrines of the Soul, which deals primarily with the soul, but also with other subjects and evinces a strong neo-Platonic strain. See Jewish Philosophy -- M.W.
Barqu: In demonography, a demon, guardian of the great secret of the Philosopher’s Stone (q.v.).
Basic Sentences, Protocol Sentences: Sentences formulating the result of observations or perceptions or other experiences, furnishing the basis for empirical verification or confirmation (see Verification). Some philosophers take sentences concerning observable properties of physical things as basic sentences, others take sentences concerning sense-data or perceptions. The sentences of the latter kind are regarded by some philosophers as completely verifiable, while others believe that all factual sentences can be confirmed only to some degree. See Scientific Empiricism. -- R.C.
Bethel Stone (Hebrew) Bēith-ēl The pillar of Jacob, which he set up as a memorial or massebah at Bethel and anointed with oil (Genesis 28:18, 22); a phallic stone similar to the Hindu linga. Blavatsky writes: “How could anyone worthy of the name of a philosopher, and knowing the real secret meaning of their ‘pillar of Jacob,’ their Bethel, oil-anointed phalli, and their ‘Brazen Serpent,’ worship such a gross symbol, and minister unto it, seeing in it their ‘Covenant’ — the Lord Himself!” (SD 2:473; BCW 12:101) See also BETYLOS
(b) In particular: a group of French political philosophers of the early nineteenth century. -- V.J.B.
Blavatsky suggests that there was a succession of Kapilas; but that the Kapila who slew King Sagara’s 60,000 progeny was the founder of the Sankhya philosophy as stated in the Puranas. Further, the Sankhya philosophy may have been brought down and taught by the first, and written out by the last, Kapila, the great sage and philosopher of the kali yuga (cf SD 2:571-2).
Blondel, Maurice: (1861-1939) A philosopher in the French "spiritualistic" tradition of Maine de Biran and Boutroux, who in his essays L'action (1893), and Le Proces de l'Intelligence (1922), defended an activistic psychology and metaphysics. "The Philosophy of Action" is a voluntaristic and idealistic philosophy which, as regards the relation of thought to action, seeks to compromise between the extremes of intellectualism and pragmatism. In his more recent book La Pensee (1934), Blondel retains his earlier activistic philosophy combined with a stronger theological emphasis. -- L.W.
(b) Metaphysical: Subvariety of idealism which maintains that the individual self of the solipsistic philosopher is the whole of reality and that the external world and other persons are representations of that self having no independent existence. -- L.W.
Boehme, Jacob: (1575-1624) Of Gorlitz, was the son of poor parents, received little formal schooling, studied the Bible and the works of Pastor Valentine Weigel assiduously. He became noted as a mystic, theosophist, and in his own day was called the German Philosopher. He wrote in German but his early followers translated his works into Latin, hence it is difficult to distinguish his personal thought from that of his school. He thought that all reality, even God, contains a duality of good and evil, the universe and man's soul are nothing without God. He has had much influence on later German and Russian mysticism. Chief works: Aurora, Vierzig Fragen von der Seele, Mysterium Magnum, Von der Gnadenwahl. Deussen, J. Boehme, uber sein Leben u. seine Philos. (Kiel, 1897). -- V.J.B.
Boehme, Jacob or Bohme, Jakob (1575-1624). Great German mystic philosopher, one of those individuals who, showing unusual spiritual insight due to excellent past karma, are especially watched over by the Great Lodge in preparation for future work. A shepherd as a boy, he became a shoemaker after learning to read and write.
Bolzano, Bernard: (1781-1848) Austrian philosopher and mathematician. Professor of the philosophy of religion at Prague, 1805-1820, he was compelled to resign in the latter year because of his rationalistic tendencies in theology and afterwards held no academic position. His Wissenschaftslehre of 1837, while it is to be classed as a work on traditional logic, contains significant anticipations of many ideas which have since become important in symbolic logic and mathematics. In his posthumously published Paradoxien des Unendlitchen (1851) he appears as a forerunner in some respects of Cantor's theory of transfinite numbers. -- A.C.
Boodin, John Elof: American philosopher born in Sweden in 1869 who emigrated in 1886 to the United States. Studied at the Universities of Colorado, Minnesota, Brown and especially Harvard under Royce with whom he kept a life-long friendship though he was opposed to his idealism. His works (Time and Reality, 1904 -- Truth and Reality, 1912 -- A Realistic Universe, 1916 -- Cosmic Evolution, 1925 -- Three Interpretations of the Universe, 1934 -- God, 1935 -- The Social Mind, 1940) form practically a complete system. His philosophy takes the form of a cosmic idealism, though he was interested for a time in certain aspects of pragmatism. It grew gradually from his early studies when he developed a new concept of a real and non-serial time. The structure of the cosmos is that of a hierarchy of fields, as exemplified in physics, in organisms, in consciousness and in society. The interpenetration of the mental fields makes possible human knowledge and social intercourse. Reality as such possesses five attributes: being (the dynamic stuff of all complexes, the active energy), time (the ground of change and transformation), space (which accounts for extension), consciousness (active awareness which lights up reality in spots; it becomes the self when conative tendencies cooperate as one active group), and form (the ground of organization and structure which conditions selective direction). God is the spirit of the whole. -- T.G.J Boole, George: (1815-1864) English mathematician. Professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork, 1849-1864. While he made contributions to other branches of mathematics, he is now remembered primarily as the founder of the Nineteenth Century algebra of logic and through it of modern symbolic logic. His Mathematical Analysis of Logic appeared in 1847 and the fuller Laws of Thought in 1854. -- A.C.
philosopher ::: n. --> One who philosophizes; one versed in, or devoted to, philosophy.
One who reduces the principles of philosophy to practice in the conduct of life; one who lives according to the rules of practical wisdom; one who meets or regards all vicissitudes with calmness.
An alchemist.
philosophersstone ::: Philosopher's Stone A term used in Alchemy, also known as the 'Powder of Projection', a mysterious 'law/theory' having the power to transmute base metals into gold. In Theosophy it symbolises the transmutation of the base animal nature of man into the divine.
brahmana &
Brentano, Franz: (1838-1917) Who had originally been a Roman Catholic priest may be described as an unorthodox neo-scholastic. According to him the only three forms of psychic activity, representation, judgment and "phenomena of love and hate", are just three modes of "intentionality", i.e., of referring to an object intended. Judgments may be self-evident and thereby characterized as true and in an analogous way love and hate may be characterized as "right". It is on these characterizations that a dogmatic theory of truth and value may be based. In any mental experience the content is merely a "physical phenomenon" (real or imaginary) intended to be referred to, what is psychic is merely the "act" of representing, judging (viz. affirming or denying) and valuing (i.e. loving or hating). Since such "acts" are evidently immaterial, the soul by which they are performed may be proved to be a purely spiritual and imperishable substance and from these and other considerations the existence, spirituality, as also the infinite wisdom, goodness and justice of God may also be demonstrated. It is most of all by his classification of psychic phenomena, his psychology of "acts" and "intentions" and by his doctrine concerning self-evident truths and values that Brentano, who considered himself an Aristotelian, exercised a profound influence on subsequent German philosophers: not only on those who accepted his entire system (such as A. Marty and C. Stumpf) but also those who were somewhat more independent and original and whom he influenced either directly (as A. Meinong and E. Husserl) or indirectly (as M. Scheler and Nik. Hartmann). Main works: Psychologie des Aristoteles, 1867; Vom Dasein Gottes, 1868; Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, 1874; Vom Ursprung sittliches Erkenntnis, 1884; Ueber die Zukunft der Philosophie, 1893; Die vier Phasen der Philos., 1895. -- H.Go. Broad, C.D.: (1887) As a realistic critical thinker Broad takes over from the sciences the methods that are fruitful there, classifies the various propositions used in all the sciences, and defines basic scientific concepts. In going beyond science, he seeks to reach a total view of the world by bringing in the facts and principles of aesthetic, religious, ethical and political experience. In trying to work out a much more general method which attacks the problem of the connection between mathematical concepts and sense-data better than the method of analysis in situ, he gives a simple exposition of the method of extensive abstraction, which applies the mutual relations of objects, first recognized in pure mathematics, to physics. Moreover, a great deal can be learned from Broad on the relation of the principle of relativity to measurement.
Bruno, Giordano: (1548-1600) A Dominican monk, eventually burned at the stake because of his opinions, he was converted from Christianity to a naturalistic and mystical pantheism by the Renaissance and particularly by the new Copernican astronomy. For him God and the universe were two names for one and the same Reality considered now as the creative essence of all things, now as the manifold of realized possibilities in which that essence manifests itself. As God, natura naturans, the Real is the whole, the one transcendent and ineffable. As the Real is the infinity of worlds and objects and events into which the whole divides itself and in which the one displays the infinite potentialities latent within it. The world-process is an ever-lasting going forth from itself and return into itself of the divine nature. The culmination of the outgoing creative activity is reached in the human mind, whose rational, philosophic search for the one in the many, simplicity in variety, and the changeless and eternal in the changing and temporal, marks also the reverse movement of the divine nature re-entering itself and regaining its primordial unity, homogeneity, and changelessness. The human soul, being as it were a kind of boomerang partaking of the ingrowing as well as the outgrowing process, may hope at death, not to be dissolved with the body, which is borne wholly upon the outgoing stream, but to return to God whence it came and to be reabsorbed in him. Cf. Rand, Modern Classical Philosophers, selection from Bruno's On Cause, The Principle and the One. G. Bruno: De l'infinito, universo e mundo, 1584; Spaccio della bestia trionfante, 1584; La cena delta ceneri, 1584; Deglieroici furori, 1585; De Monade, 1591. Cf. R. Honigswald, Giordano Bruno; G. Gentile, Bruno nella storia della cultura, 1907. -- B.A.G.F. Brunschvicg, Leon: (1869-) Professor of Philosophy at the Ecole Normale in Paris. Dismissed by the Nazis (1941). His philosophy is an idealistic synthesis of Spinoza, Kant and Schelling with special stress on the creative role of thought in cultural history as well as in sciences. Main works: Les etapes de la philosophie mathematique, 1913; L'experience humaine et la causalite physique, 1921; De la connaissance de soi, 1931. Buddhism: The multifarious forms, philosophic, religious, ethical and sociological, which the teachings of Gautama Buddha (q.v.) have produced. They centre around the main doctrine of the catvari arya-satyani(q.v.), the four noble truths, the last of which enables one in eight stages to reach nirvana (q.v.): Right views, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. In the absence of contemporary records of Buddha and Buddhistic teachings, much value was formerly attached to the palm leaf manuscripts in Pali, a Sanskrit dialect; but recently a good deal of weight has been given also the Buddhist tradition in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese. Buddhism split into Mahayanism and Hinayanism (q.v.), each of which, but particularly the former, blossomed into a variety of teachings and practices. The main philosophic schools are the Madhyamaka or Sunyavada, Yogacara, Sautrantika, and Vaibhasika (q.v.). The basic assumptions in philosophy are a causal nexus in nature and man, of which the law of karma (q.v.) is but a specific application; the impermanence of things, and the illusory notion of substance and soul. Man is viewed realistically as a conglomeration of bodily forms (rupa), sensations (vedana), ideas (sanjna), latent karma (sanskaras), and consciousness (vijnana). The basic assumptions in ethics are the universality of suffering and the belief in a remedy. There is no god; each one may become a Buddha, an enlightened one. Also in art and esthetics Buddhism has contributed much throughout the Far East. -- K.F.L.
Buber, Martin ::: (1878-1965) Jewish philosopher and Zionist.
Buddhacarita. (T. Sangs rgyas kyi spyod pa; C. Fosuoxing zan; J. Butsushogyosan; K. Pulsohaeng ch'an 佛所行讚). In Sanskrit, "Acts [viz., Life] of the Buddha"; the title of two verse compositions written in the first and second centuries CE that were intended to serve as a complete biography of the historical Buddha. The first was by the monk Sangharaksa (c. first century CE), whose work survives today only in its Chinese translation. The second version, which became hugely popular across Asia, was composed by the well-known Indian philosopher-poet AsVAGHOsA (c. second century), who was supposedly an opponent of Buddhism until he converted after losing a debate with the VAIBHAsIKA teacher PARsVA. Because of the early date of Asvaghosa's epic poem, it is of great importance for both the history of Indian Buddhism, as well as the study of classical Indian linguistics and thought. Asvaghosa's version of the Buddha's life begins with a description of his parents-King sUDDHODANA and Queen MAYA-and ends with the events that immediately follow his death, or PARINIRVAnA. His text is written in the style of high court poetry, or kAvya. In keeping with this style, the Buddhacarita is characterized by lengthy digressions and elaborate descriptions. For example, one entire canto is devoted to a detailed description of the sight of the women sleeping in the palace that precedes GAUTAMA's renunciation (pravrajya; see PRAVRAJITA). Canto XII provides an invaluable outline of the ancient Indian SAMkhya philosophical system. The Buddhacarita has served an important role within the Buddhist tradition itself, as the canonical works do not offer a systematic, chronological account of the Buddha's life from his birth through his death. Only the first half of the Buddhacarita is extant in its original Sanskrit; the remainder survives in Tibetan and Chinese translations.
Buddhamitra. (C. Fotuomiduoluo; J. Butsudamitsutara; K. Pult'amiltara 佛陀蜜多羅). In Sanskrit, literally "Friend of the Buddha"; one of the Indian patriarchs listed in Chinese lineage records. He is variously listed in Chinese sources as the ninth (e.g., in the LIDAI FABAO JI and BAOLIN ZHUAN), the eighth (e.g., FU FAZANG YINYUAN ZHUAN), or the fifteenth (e.g., LIUZU TAN JING) patriarch of the Indian tradition. He is said to have been born into the vaisya caste of agriculturalists, in the kingdom of Daigya. His master was the patriarch BUDDHANANDI. According to tradition, when Buddhamitra was fifty years old, Buddhanandi was passing by the house in which Buddhamitra lived; seeing a white light floating above the house, Buddhanandi immediately recognized that his successor was waiting inside. Buddhamitra is also said to be one of the teachers of the Indian Buddhist philosopher VASUBANDHU and is considered the author of a work known as the PaNcadvAradhyAnasutramahArthadharma.
By the year 200 of the Hejira a definite sect of mystics had arisen, and following the instructions of a prominent member, Abu Said, his disciples forsook the world and entered the mystic life with a view of pursuing contemplation and meditation. These disciples wore a garment of wool, and from this received their name. Sufiism spread rapidly in Persia, and all Moslem philosophers were attracted to this sect, as great latitude in the beliefs of its followers was at first permitted, until in the reign of Moktadir, a Persian Sufi named Hallaj was tortured and put to death for teaching publicly that every man is God. After this the Sufis veiled their teachings, and especially in their poetry used amorous language and sang of the delights of the wine cup. In spite of the amorous trend of poetry followed by the Sufis, to the observing eye there appears a beauty and a spirituality of thought which has found many devotees. Ideas of pantheism abound, for God is held to be immanent in all things, expresses itself through all things, and is the transcendent essence of every human soul. For a person to know God is to see that God is immanent in himself.
Called in different ages by a host of names, they are best known in Europe by the terms given by the medieval Fire-philosophers: salamanders (beings of the element fire); sylphs (denizens of the element air); undines (the water elementals); and gnomes (beings of the element earth). These are all general terms for elementals, whether of spiritual or material worlds, though most commonly used for the more material elementals.
Cambridge School: A term loosely applied to English philosophers who have been influenced by the teachings of Professor G. E. Moore (mainly in unpublished lectures delivered at the Cambridge University, 1911-1939). In earlier years Moore stressed the need to accept the judgments of "common sense" on such matters as the existence of other persons, of an "external world", etc. The business of the analytical philosopher was not to criticise such judgments but to display the structure of the facts to which they referred. (Cf. "A defense of common-sense in philosophy," Contemporary British Philosophy, 2 (1925) -- Moore's only discussion of the method.) Such analysis would be directional, terminating in basic or atomic facts, all of whose constituents might be known by acquaintance. The examples discussed were taken largely from the field of epistemology, turning often about the problem of the relation of material objects to sense-data, and of indirect to direct knowledge. In this earlier period problems were often suggested by Russell's discussion of descriptions and logical constructions. The inconclusiveness of such specific discussions and an increasingly critical awareness of the functions of language in philosophical analysis has in later years tended to favor more flexible interpretations of the nature of analysis. (Cf. M. Black, "Relations Between Logical Positivism and the Cambridge School of Analysis", Journal of Unified Science (Erkenntnis), 8, 24-35 for a bibliography and list of philosophers who have been most influenced by emphasis on directional analysis.) -- M.B.
Campanella was a political philosopher. In his City of the Sun he conceived a Utopia built on Platonic lines. He was also an ardent champion of the temporal power of the Papacy and of its political as well as its religious sovereignty through the world. -- B.A.G.F.
Carlyle, Thomas: (1795-1881) Vigorous Scotch historian and essayist, apostle of work. He was a deep student of the German idealists and did much to bring them before English readers. His forceful style showed marked German characteristics. He was not in any sense a systematic philosopher but his keen mind gave wide influence to the ideas he advanced in ethics, politics and economics. His whimsical Sartor Resartus or philosophy of clothes and his searching Heroes and Hero-worship, remain his most popular works along with his French Revolution and Past and Present. He was among the Victorians who displayed some measure of distrust for democracy. -- L.E.D.
carmot ::: n. --> The matter of which the philosopher&
cartesian ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the French philosopher Rene Descartes, or his philosophy. ::: n. --> An adherent of Descartes.
Cartesian coordinates "mathematics, graphics" (After Renee Descartes, French philosopher and mathematician) A pair of numbers, (x, y), defining the position of a point in a two-dimensional space by its perpendicular projection onto two axes which are at right angles to each other. x and y are also known as the {abscissa} and {ordinate}. The idea can be generalised to any number of independent axes. Compare {polar coordinates}. (1997-07-08)
Cartesian coordinates ::: (mathematics, graphics) (After Renee Descartes, French philosopher and mathematician) A pair of numbers, (x, y), defining the position of a point in a two-dimensional space by its perpendicular projection onto two axes which are at right angles to each other. x and y are also known as the abscissa and ordinate.The idea can be generalised to any number of independent axes.Compare polar coordinates. (1997-07-08)
Cartesianism: The philosophy of the French thinker, Rene Descartes (Cartesius) 1596-1650. After completing his formal education at the Jesuit College at La Fleche, he spent the years 1612-1621 in travel and military service. The reminder of his life was devoted to study and writing. He died in Sweden, where he had gone in 1649 to tutor Queen Christina. His principal works are: Discours de la methode, (preface to his Geometric, Meteores, Dieptrique) Meditationes de prima philosophia, Principia philosophiae, Passions de l'ame, Regulae ad directionem ingenii, Le monde. Descartes is justly regarded as one of the founders of modern epistemology. Dissatisfied with the lack of agreement among philosophers, he decided that philosophy needed a new method, that of mathematics. He began by resolving to doubt everything which could not pass the test of his criterion of truth, viz. the clearness and distinctness of ideas. Anything which could pass this test was to be readmitted as self-evident. From self-evident truths, he deduced other truths which logically follow from them. Three kinds of ideas were distinguished: innate, by which he seems to mean little more than the mental power to think things or thoughts; adventitious, which come to him from without; factitious, produced within his own mind. He found most difficulty with the second type of ideas. The first reality discovered through his method is the thinking self. Though he might doubt nearly all else, Descartes could not reasonably doubt that he, who was thinking, existed as a res cogitans. This is the intuition enunciated in the famous aphorism: I think, therefore I am, Cogito ergo sum. This is not offered by Descartes as a compressed syllogism, but as an immediate intuition of his own thinking mind. Another reality, whose existence was obvious to Descartes, was God, the Supreme Being. Though he offered several proofs of the Divine Existence, he was convinced that he knew this also by an innate idea, and so, clearly and distinctly. But he did not find any clear ideas of an extra-mental, bodily world. He suspected its existence, but logical demonstration was needed to establish this truth. His adventitious ideas carry the vague suggestion that they are caused by bodies in an external world. By arguing that God would be a deceiver, in allowing him to think that bodies exist if they do not, he eventually convinced himself of the reality of bodies, his own and others. There are, then, three kinds of substance according to Descartes: Created spirits, i.e. the finite soul-substance of each man: these are immaterial agencies capable of performing spiritual operations, loosely united with bodies, but not extended since thought is their very essence. Uncreated Spirit, i.e. God, confined neither to space nor time, All-Good and All-Powerful, though his Existence can be known clearly, his Nature cannot be known adequately by men on earth, He is the God of Christianity, Creator, Providence and Final Cause of the universe. Bodies, i.e. created, physical substances existing independently of human thought and having as their chief attribute, extension. Cartesian physics regards bodies as the result of the introduction of "vortices", i.e. whorls of motion, into extension. Divisibility, figurability and mobility, are the notes of extension, which appears to be little more thin what Descartes' Scholastic teachers called geometrical space. God is the First Cause of all motion in the physical universe, which is conceived as a mechanical system operated by its Maker. Even the bodies of animals are automata. Sensation is the critical problem in Cartesian psychology; it is viewed by Descartes as a function of the soul, but he was never able to find a satisfactory explanation of the apparent fact that the soul is moved by the body when sensation occurs. The theory of animal spirits provided Descartes with a sort of bridge between mind and matter, since these spirits are supposed to be very subtle matter, halfway, as it were, between thought and extension in their nature. However, this theory of sensation is the weakest link in the Cartesian explanation of cognition. Intellectual error is accounted for by Descartes in his theory of assent, which makes judgment an act of free will. Where the will over-reaches the intellect, judgment may be false. That the will is absolutely free in man, capable even of choosing what is presented by the intellect as the less desirable of two alternatives, is probably a vestige of Scotism retained from his college course in Scholasticism. Common-sense and moderation are the keynotes of Descartes' famous rules for the regulation of his own conduct during his nine years of methodic doubt, and this ethical attitude continued throughout his life. He believed that man is responsible ultimately to God for the courses of action that he may choose. He admitted that conflicts may occur between human passions and human reason. A virtuous life is made possible by the knowledge of what is right and the consequent control of the lower tendencies of human nature. Six primary passions are described by Descartes wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy and sorrow. These are passive states of consciousness, partly caused by the body, acting through the animal spirits, and partly caused by the soul. Under rational control, they enable the soul to will what is good for the body. Descartes' terminology suggests that there are psychological faculties, but he insists that these powers are not really distinct from the soul itself, which is man's sole psychic agency. Descartes was a practical Catholic all his life and he tried to develop proofs of the existence of God, an explanation of the Eucharist, of the nature of religious faith, and of the operation of Divine Providence, using his philosophy as the basis for a new theology. This attempted theology has not found favor with Catholic theologians in general.
Cartesian System The system of Descartes, the great French philosopher (1596-1650), representing the first great attempt in Europe to develop philosophy on strict mathematical and scientific lines, as opposed to what seemed to him the futile subtilties of the Schoolmen.
Carvaka (Charvak) ::: [a materialistic philosopher; his school].
Charles Babbage ::: (person) The british inventor known to some as the Father of Computing for his contributions to the basic design of the computer through his Analytical Engine. His previous Difference Engine was a special purpose device intended for the production of mathematical tables.Babbage was born on December 26, 1791 in Teignmouth, Devonshire UK. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1814 and graduated from Peterhouse. In 1817 he Analytical Engine. In 1834 he founded the Statistical Society of London. He died in 1871 in London.Babbage also invented the cowcatcher, the dynamometer, standard railroad gauge, uniform postal rates, occulting lights for lighthouses, Greenwich time signals, and the heliograph opthalmoscope. He also had an interest in cyphers and lock-picking.[Adapted from the text by J. A. N. Lee, Copyright September 1994].Babbage, as (necessarily) the first person to work with machines that can attack problems at arbitrary levels of abstraction, fell into a trap familiar to toolsmiths since, as described here by the English ethicist, Lord Moulton:One of the sad memories of my life is a visit to the celebrated mathematician and inventor, Mr Babbage. He was far advanced in age, but his mind was still as more work to complete the Calculating Machine than to design and construct the other in its entirety, so I turned my attention to the Analytical Machine.'After a few minutes' talk, we went into the next work-room, where he showed and explained to me the working of the elements of the Analytical Machine. I asked the Analytical Machine from the stage in which I left it.' I took leave of the old man with a heavy heart.When he died a few years later, not only had he constructed no machine, but the verdict of a jury of kind and sympathetic scientific men who were deputed to was that everything was too incomplete of be capable of being put to any useful purpose.[Lord Moulton, The invention of algorithms, its genesis, and growth, in G. C. Knott, ed., Napier tercentenary memorial volume (London, 1915), p. 1-24; quoted in Charles Babbage Passage from the Life of a Philosopher, Martin Campbell-Kelly, ed. (Rutgers U. Press and IEEE Press, 1994), p. 34].Compare: uninteresting, Ninety-Ninety Rule. (1996-02-22)
Charles Babbage "person" The British inventor known to some as the "Father of Computing" for his contributions to the basic design of the computer through his {Analytical Engine}. His previous {Difference Engine} was a special purpose device intended for the production of mathematical tables. Babbage was born on December 26, 1791 in Teignmouth, Devonshire UK. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1814 and graduated from Peterhouse. In 1817 he received an MA from Cambridge and in 1823 started work on the Difference Engine through funding from the British Government. In 1827 he published a table of {logarithms} from 1 to 108000. In 1828 he was appointed to the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge (though he never presented a lecture). In 1831 he founded the British Association for the Advancement of Science and in 1832 he published "Economy of Manufactures and Machinery". In 1833 he began work on the Analytical Engine. In 1834 he founded the Statistical Society of London. He died in 1871 in London. Babbage also invented the cowcatcher, the dynamometer, standard railroad gauge, uniform postal rates, occulting lights for lighthouses, Greenwich time signals, and the heliograph opthalmoscope. He also had an interest in cyphers and lock-picking. [Adapted from the text by J. A. N. Lee, Copyright September 1994]. Babbage, as (necessarily) the first person to work with machines that can attack problems at arbitrary levels of {abstraction}, fell into a trap familiar to {toolsmiths} since, as described here by the English ethicist, Lord Moulton: "One of the sad memories of my life is a visit to the celebrated mathematician and inventor, Mr Babbage. He was far advanced in age, but his mind was still as vigorous as ever. He took me through his work-rooms. In the first room I saw parts of the original Calculating Machine, which had been shown in an incomplete state many years before and had even been put to some use. I asked him about its present form. 'I have not finished it because in working at it I came on the idea of my {Analytical Machine}, which would do all that it was capable of doing and much more. Indeed, the idea was so much simpler that it would have taken more work to complete the Calculating Machine than to design and construct the other in its entirety, so I turned my attention to the Analytical Machine.'" "After a few minutes' talk, we went into the next work-room, where he showed and explained to me the working of the elements of the Analytical Machine. I asked if I could see it. 'I have never completed it,' he said, 'because I hit upon an idea of doing the same thing by a different and far more effective method, and this rendered it useless to proceed on the old lines.' Then we went into the third room. There lay scattered bits of mechanism, but I saw no trace of any working machine. Very cautiously I approached the subject, and received the dreaded answer, 'It is not constructed yet, but I am working on it, and it will take less time to construct it altogether than it would have token to complete the Analytical Machine from the stage in which I left it.' I took leave of the old man with a heavy heart." "When he died a few years later, not only had he constructed no machine, but the verdict of a jury of kind and sympathetic scientific men who were deputed to pronounce upon what he had left behind him, either in papers or in mechanism, was that everything was too incomplete of be capable of being put to any useful purpose." [Lord Moulton, "The invention of algorithms, its genesis, and growth", in G. C. Knott, ed., "Napier tercentenary memorial volume" (London, 1915), p. 1-24; quoted in Charles Babbage "Passage from the Life of a Philosopher", Martin Campbell-Kelly, ed. (Rutgers U. Press and IEEE Press, 1994), p. 34]. Compare: {uninteresting}, {Ninety-Ninety Rule}. (1996-02-22)
Chuang Tzu (Chinese) Chinese philosopher (late 4th century b.c.) who, with Lao Tzu and Kuan Tzu, is regarded as one of the patriarchs of Taoism. He wrote a work under his name which treats of the tao and its relation to the universe and man, and gives directions for the conduct of human life.
Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106-43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, and philosopher, who helped popularize Greek philosophy in Roman thought and create a philosophical language in Latin. Famous for the style of his speeches, letters, and essays, he is credited as the creator of classical Latin prose. A firm republican, he was executed for opposing the imperial factions after Caesar’s murder.
citrination ::: n. --> The process by which anything becomes of the color of a lemon; esp., in alchemy, the state of perfection in the philosopher&
Cleanthes (3rd century BC) Greek Stoic philosopher and poet, native of Asia Minor, who studied under Zeno at Athens for 19 years and succeeded him as head of the Stoic school in 260 BC; a beautiful hymn to Zeus is the only one of his writings that remains today.
confucian ::: a. --> Of, or relating to, Confucius, the great Chinese philosopher and teacher. ::: n. --> A Confucianist.
Construction, Psychological: (In contrast to Logical) A framework devised by the common-sense, scientific or philosophical imagination for the integration of diverse empirical data. In contrast to an hypothesis, a construction is not an inference from experience but is an arbitrary scheme which, though presumably not a true picture of the actual state of affairs, satisfies the human imagination and promotes further investigation. Perceptual objects, space and time, physical atoms, electrons, etc. as well as philosophical world-views, have by certain philosophers been called logical constructs. (Cf. B. Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World, Ch. IV.) -- L.W.
Conze, Edward. [Eberhard (Edward) Julius Dietrich Conze] (1904-1979). An influential Anglo-German Buddhist scholar and practitioner, Edward Conze was born in London, the son of the then German vice consul, but was raised in Germany. He attended the universities of Cologne, Bonn, and Hamburg, where he studied both Western and Indian philosophy and Buddhist languages, including Sanskrit, PAli, and Tibetan. Conze was raised as a Protestant, but he also explored Communism and had a strong interest in Theosophy. Because of his deep opposition to the Nazi ideology, he became persona non grata in Germany and in 1933 moved to England. Although initially active with English socialists, he eventually became disillusioned with politics and began to study the works of DAISETZ TEITARO SUZUKI, whom he came to consider his informal spiritual mentor. Conze taught at various universities in the UK between 1933 and 1960, expanding the range of his visiting professorships to the USA and Canada in the 1960s. However, the Communist affiliations of his youth and his outspoken condemnation of the Vietnam War put him at odds with American authorities, prompting him to return to England. Conze was especially enamored of the perfection of wisdom (PRAJNAPARAMITA) texts and the related MADHYAMAKA strand of Buddhist philosophy and became one of foremost scholarly exponents of this literature of his day. He saw Buddhism and especially Madhyamaka philosophy as presenting an "intelligible, plausible, and valid system" that rivaled anything produced in the West and was therefore worthy of the close attention of Western philosophers. He translated several of the major texts of the prajNApAramitA, including The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousands Lines and Its Verse Summary (1973), and The Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom with the Divisions of the AbhisamayAlaMkAra (1975), as well as the VAJRACCHEDIKAPRAJNAPARAMITASuTRA ("Diamond Sutra") and the PRAJNAPARAMITAHṚDAYASuTRA ("Heart Sutra"). His compilation of terminology derived from this translation work, Materials for a Dictionary of the PrajNApAramitA Literature (1967), did much to help establish many of the standard English equivalencies of Sanskrit Buddhist terms. Conze also wrote more general surveys of Buddhist philosophy and history, including Buddhism: Its Essence and Development (1951) and Buddhist Thought in India (1962).
Corresponding in origin to the Indian apsaras, the pairikas correspond to the elementals of the air, rather than water, called sylphs by the medieval Fire-philosophers. The rain-bestowing god Tishtrya corresponds to the sixth principle in man, buddhi, which fructifies the fifth and fourth principles. Thus it is only when the lower passions, the pairikas, have been mastered, that the light of Tishtrya — the buddhic splendor — may shine in the temple (Theos).
Cosmological argument: Attempted to prove that God's existence follows from the fact that things exist. It aims to prove that there is a God by showing that causes presuppose causes, no matter how far back we go. The series of causes of causes can only come to an end in a cause which does not depend upon something else for its existence. Being the most basic proof of God's existence as it starts with the existence of anything, it is the favorite of most philosophers and theologians. -- H.H.
Cosmology: A branch of philosophy which treats of the origin and structure of the universe. It is to be contrasted with ontology or metaphysics, the study of the most general features of reality, natural and supernatural, and with the philosophy of nature, which investigates the basic laws, processes and divisions of the objects in nature. It is perhaps impossible to draw or maintain a sharp distinction between these different subjects, and treatises which profess to deal with one of them usually contain considerable material on the others. Encyclopedia, section 35), are the contingency, necessity, eternity, limitations and formal laws of the world, the freedom of man and the origin of evil. Most philosophers would add to the foregoing the question of the nature and interrelationship of space and time, and would perhaps exclude the question of the nature of freedom and the origin of evil as outside the province of cosmology. The method of investigation has usually been to accept the principles of science or the results of metaphysics and develop the consequences. The test of a cosmology most often used is perhaps that of exhibiting the degree of accordance it has with respect to both empirical fact and metaphysical truth. The value of a cosmology seems to consist primarily in its capacity to provide an ultimate frame for occurrences in nature, and to offer a demonstration of where the limits of the spatio-temporal world are, and how they might be transcended.
Cournot, Antoine Augustin: (1801-1877) French mathematician, economist, and philosopher, is best known for his interest in probability. His philosophical writings, long neglected, reflect disagreement both with the positivism of his own day and with the earlier French rationalism. His place between the two is manifest in his doctrine that order and contingency, continuity and discontinuity, are equally real. This metaphysical position led him to conclude that man, though he cannot attain certain truth of nature, can by increasing the probable truth of his statements approach this truth. Cournot's mathematical investigations into probability and his mathematical treatment of economics thus harmonize with his metaphysics and epistemology. Main works: Exposition de la theorie des chances et des probabdites, 1843; Essai sur les fondements de la connaissance, 2 vols. 1851; Consid. sur les marches des idees, 1872; Materialisme, Vitalisme, Rationalism, 1875; Traite de l'Enchainement des idees fondamentales dans les sciences et dans l'histoire, 1881.
Crescas, Don Hasdai: (1340-1410) Jewish philosopher and theologian. He was the first European thinker to criticize Aristotelian cosmology and establish the probability of the existence of an infinite magnitude and of infinite space, thus paving the way for the modern conception of the universe. He also took exception to the entire trend of the philosophy of Maimonides, namely its extreme rationalism, and endeavored to inject the emotional element into religious contemplation, and make love an attribute of God and the source of His creative activity. He also expressed original views on the problems of freedom and creation. He undoubtedly exerted influence on Spinoza who quotes him by name in the formulation of some of his theories. See Jewish Philosophy. Cf. H. A. Wolfson, Crescas' Critique of Aristotle, 1929. -- M.W.
Crow’s head: In medieval alchemical terminology, the blackness of the mixture intended to produce the Philosopher’s Stone (q.v.).
(c) The result of this elaborate critique of Platonism is sometimes called the Aristotelian-Thomistic synthesis. It is better, however, to call it simply a Thornistic synthesis, not only because St. Thomas criticized Aristotle on several occasions, but also because the real and historical meaning of Aristotle as a philosopher in the fourth century B.C. is still very much in dispute. In any case it ought to be pretty much beyond dispute that St. Thomas was quite aware that Aristotle was not the author of all the doctrines which he attributed to him.
Datum: That which is given or presented. In logic: facts from which inferences may be drawn. In epistemology: an actual presented to the mind; the given of knowledge. In psychology: that which is given in sensation; the content of sensation. --J.K.F. Daud, Abraham Ibn: (of Toledo, 1110-1180) Jewish historian and philosopher with distinctly Aristotelian bent. His Emunah Ramah ( Al-Akida Al-Rafia), i.e., Exalted Faith, deals with the principles of both philosophy and religion and with ethics. He also enunciated six dogmas of Judaism to which every Jew must subscribe. -- M.W.
Rambam is an acronym for &
deconstruction: The approach whereby any text is unfolded and meticulously investigated for its meaning, to the point where the base of the text is exposed as unstable. The term was coined by French philosopher Jacques Derrida. See post-structuralism and aporia.
deipnosophist ::: n. --> One of an ancient sect of philosophers, who cultivated learned conversation at meals.
Demon of Socrates: The guiding spirit who forewarned the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates of dangers.
Deus Emnim et Circulus Est (Latin) “For God is indeed a circle”; a Hermetic axiom ascribed to Pherecydes, a Greek philosopher of the 6th century b.c., said to be the teacher of Pythagoras. The circle is a symbol of the Boundless and also of repetitive cycles; and circular motions and attitudes were prescribed in rituals by Pythagoras, Numa, and many others as being symbolic of divine and celestial concerns.
Deva(s)(Sanskrit) ::: A word meaning celestial being, of which there are various classes. This has been a greatpuzzle for most of our Occidental Orientalists. They cannot understand the distinctions that thewonderful old philosophers of the Orient make as regards the various classes of the devas. They say, insubstance: "What funny contradictions there are in these teachings, which in many respects are profoundand seem wonderful. Some of these devas or divine beings are said to be less than man; some of thesewritings even say that a good man is nobler than any god. And yet other parts of these teachings declarethat there are gods higher even than the devas, and yet are called devas. What does this mean?"The devas or celestial beings, one class of them, are the unself-conscious sparks of divinity, cyclingdown into matter in order to bring out from within themselves and to unfold or evolve self-consciousness,the svabhava of divinity within. They then begin their reascent always on the luminous arc, which neverends, in a sense; and they are gods, self-conscious gods, henceforth taking a definite and divine part inthe "great work," as the mystics have said, of being builders, evolvers, leaders of hierarchies. In otherwords, they are monads which have become their own innermost selves, which have passed thering-pass-not separating the spiritual from the divine.
Dewey, John: (1859-) Leading American philosopher. The spirit of democracy and an abiding faith in the efficacy of human intelligence run through the many pages he has presented in the diverse fields of metaphysics, epistemology, logic, psychology, aesthetics, religion, ethics, politics and education, in all of which he has spoken with authority. Progressive education owes its impetus to his guidance and its tenets largely to his formulation. He is the chief exponent of that branch of pragmatism known as instrumentalism. Among his main works are Psychology, 1886; Outline of Ethics, 1891; Studies in Logical Theory, 1903; Ethics (Dewey and Tufts), 1908; How We Think, 1910; Influence of Darwin on German Philosophy, 1910; Democracy and Education, 1916; Essays in Experimental Logic, 1916; Reconstruction in Philosophy, 1920; Human Nature and Conduct, 1922; Experience and Nature, 1925; The Quest for Certainty, 1929; Art as Experience, 1933; Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, 1939. Cf. J. Ratner, The Philosophy of John Dewey, 1940, M. H. Thomas, A Bibliography of John Dewey, 1882-1939, The Philosophy of John Dewey, ed. P. A. Schilpp (Evanston, 1940). Dharma: (Skr.) Right, virtue, duty, usage, law, social as well as cosmic. -- K.F.L.
Dge 'dun chos 'phel. (Gendun Chopel) (1903-1951). A distinguished essayist, poet, painter, translator, historian, and philosopher; one of the most important Tibetan intellectuals of the first half of the twentieth century. He was born in the Reb kong region of A mdo, the son of a respected SNGAGS PA. At the age of five, he was recognized as the incarnation (SPRUL SKU) of an abbot of the famous RNYING MA monastery, RDO RJE BRAG. Following his father's untimely death, he entered a local DGE LUGS monastery, eventually moving to BLA BRANG BKRA' SHIS 'KHYIL. He gained particular notoriety as a debater but apparently criticized the monastery's textbooks (yig cha). In 1927, he traveled to LHA SA, where he entered Sgo mang College of 'BRAS SPUNGS monastery. In 1934, the Indian scholar and nationalist Rahul Sankrityayan (1893-1963) arrived in Lha sa in search of Sanskrit manuscripts, especially those dealing with Buddhist logic. He enlisted Dge 'dun chos 'phel as his guide, just as he was completing the final examinations at the end of the long curriculum of the DGE BSHES. After visiting many of the monasteries of southern Tibet, Sankrityayan invited Dge 'dun chos 'phel to return with him to India. Over the next decade, he would travel extensively, and often alone, across India and Sri Lanka, learning Sanskrit, Pāli, several Indian vernaculars, and English. He assisted the Russian Tibetologist, GEORGE ROERICH, in the translation of the important fifteenth-century history of Tibetan Buddhism by 'Gos lo tsā ba, DEB THER SNGON PO ("The Blue Annals"). He visited and made studies of many of the important Buddhist archaeological sites in India, writing a guide (lam yig) that is still used by Tibetan pilgrims. He studied Sanskrit erotica and frequented Calcutta brothels, producing his famous sex manual, the 'Dod pa'i bstan bcos ("Treatise on Passion"). During his time abroad, he also spent more than a year in Sri Lanka. In January 1946, after twelve years abroad, Dge 'dun chos 'phel returned to Lha sa. He taught poetry and also gave teachings on MADHYAMAKA philosophy, which would be published posthumously as the controversial Klu sgrub dgongs rgyan ("Adornment for NĀGĀRJUNA's Thought"). Within a few months of his arrival in Lha sa, Dge 'dun chos 'phel was arrested by the government of the regent of the young fourteenth Dalai Lama on the fabricated charge of counterfeiting foreign currency. Sentenced to three years, he served at least two, working on his unfinished history of early Tibet, Deb ther dkar po ("The White Annals"), and composing poetry. He emerged from prison a broken man and died in October 1951 at the age of forty-eight.
Dharmapāla. (T. Chos skyong; C. Hufa; J. Goho; K. Hobop 護法) (530-561). One of the ten great YOGĀCĀRA philosophers of Indian Buddhism. He was born in southern India in the middle of the sixth century CE, to the family of a high government minister. At around the age of twenty, on the evening that he was to be married, he ran away to a mountain monastery to become a monk. After mastering the teachings of both mainstream and MAHĀYĀNA Buddhism, Dharmapāla traveled extensively, becoming renowned for his debating skills. Later, he studied under the YOGĀCĀRA specialist and logician DIGNĀGA (d.u.) at NĀLANDĀ, where he became chief instructor despite his youth. His teaching focused especially on Yogācāra doctrine, and he produced many excellent disciples. XUANZANG (600/602-664), one of the most important figures in the history of Chinese Buddhist scholasticism, traveled to India in the seventh century, where he studied Dharmapāla's doctrines at Nālandā under one of his principal disciples, sĪLABHADRA (529-645), and brought Dharmapāla's scholastic lineage back to China. Xuanzang edited and translated some of the materials he had collected in India into the CHENG WEISHI LUN (*VijNaptimātratāsiddhisāstra; "Demonstration of Consciousness-Only"), a synopsis of ten separate commentaries on VASUBANDHU's TRIMsIKĀ ("Thirty Verses") but heavily focused on the insights of Dharmapāla, which Xuanzang considered orthodox. Unlike STHIRAMATI, who understood the bifurcation of consciousness into subject and object to be wholly imaginary, Dharmapāla proposed instead that consciousness always appears in both subjective and objective aspects, viz., a "seeing part" (darsanabhāga) and a seen part (nimittabhāga). His interpretations regarding the nature of consciousness became predominant in the Chinese FAXIANG (alt. Weishi) school of Yogācāra, which was developed by Xuanzang and his two main disciples, WoNCH'ŬK and KUIJI. Dharmapāla retired to AsaMbodhi monastery at the age of twenty-nine and passed away at the age of thirty-one.
Difficult as it is to distinguish as among the manes, larvae, and lemures, the manes were considered by Roman philosophers and poets equivalent to the human soul or monad; whereas the larvae and lemures were distinctly the shells or shades existent in the astral light and being the cast-off portions of the human monad when it ascends into, or reaches, devachan.
Dilthey, Wilhelm: (1833-1911) A devoted student of biography, he constructed a new methodology and a new interpretation of the study of society and culture. He formulated the doctrine of Verstehungs-psychologie, which is basic to the study of social ends and values. He was the founder of Lebensphilosophie. Being the first humanistic philosopher historian of his age, he led in the comprehensive research in the history of intellectual development. Main works: Einlettung in die Geisteswessenschaften, 1883; Der Erlebnis und die Dtchtung, 1905; Das Wesen der Philosophie, 1907, Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in der Geisteswissenschaften, 1910, Die Typen der Weltanschauung, 1911; Gesammelte Schriften, 9 vols., 1922-35. --H.H. Dimension: (scientific) 1. Any linear series or order of elements. 2. Any quantity of a given kind, capable of increase or decrease over a certain range, a variable. 3. In the physical system: mass, length and time. -- A.C.B.
Dimension or dimensional is a word which when strictly used refers to measuring in one or another direction. Now the intuition which has led many modern scientists and philosophers to speak of more than three dimensions of space is a true one, but a more correct way of phrasing these suppositions dimensions would be to speak of the philosophical qualities or attributes of space. Thus, time in the Relativity Theory of Einstein may logically enough be considered a dimension, because it is a quality or mode of measuring space from event to event, so that by such mensuration the mind can picture to itself not only the continuous present, but likewise the past and future. Furthermore, any entity possessing the commonly accepted three dimensions could not exist or be, unless the time element entered into the equation; in other words, unless a being or thing exists in time it obviously cannot exist at all, and thus it is that time logically and correctly can be called a dimension of space. As long as matter or physical space exists, however, there will be for such physical space three dimensions and no more, to which it is likewise philosophically accurate enough to add the fourth dimension modernly called time; but theosophy is not satisfied with restricting itself to these four ways of measuring the attributes or qualities of space, but adds others, one of the most important being consciousness, which is such an attribute of abstract space as time is, or as our length, breadth, and thickness.
Dining Philosophers Problem "parallel" (DPP) A problem introduced by {Dijkstra} concerning resource allocation between processes. The DPP is a model and universal method for testing and comparing theories on resource allocation. Dijkstra hoped to use it to help create a layered {operating system}, by creating a machine which could be consider to be an entirely {deterministic} {automaton}. The problem consists of a finite set of processes which share a finite set of resources, each of which can be used by only one process at a time, thus leading to potential {deadlock}. The DPP visualises this as a number of philosophers sitting round a dining table with a fork between each adjacent pair. Each philosopher may arbitrarily decide to use either the fork to his left or the one to his right but each fork may only be used by one philosopher at a time. Several potential solutions have been considered. Semaphores - a simple, but unfair solution where each resources is a {binary semaphore} and additional semaphores are used to avoid deadlock and/or {starvation}. Critical Regions - each processor is protected from interference while it exclusively uses a resource. Monitors - the process waits until all required resources are available then grabs all of them for use. The best solution allows the maximum parallelism for any number of processes (philosophers), by using an array to track the process' current state (i.e. hungry, eating, thinking). This solution maintains an array of semaphores, so hungry philosophers trying to acquire resources can block if the needed forks are busy. (1998-08-09)
Dining Philosophers Problem ::: (parallel) (DPP) A problem introduced by Dijkstra concerning resource allocation between processes. The DPP is a model and universal method for to help create a layered operating system, by creating a machine which could be consider to be an entirely deterministic automaton.The problem consists of a finite set of processes which share a finite set of resources, each of which can be used by only one process at a time, thus leading to potential deadlock.The DPP visualises this as a number of philosophers sitting round a dining table with a fork between each adjacent pair. Each philosopher may arbitrarily decide to use either the fork to his left or the one to his right but each fork may only be used by one philosopher at a time.Several potential solutions have been considered.Semaphores - a simple, but unfair solution where each resources is a binary semaphore and additional semaphores are used to avoid deadlock and/or starvation.Critical Regions - each processor is protected from interference while it exclusively uses a resource.Monitors - the process waits until all required resources are available then grabs all of them for use.The best solution allows the maximum parallelism for any number of processes (philosophers), by using an array to track the process' current state (i.e. hungry philosophers trying to acquire resources can block if the needed forks are busy. (1998-08-09)
diogenes ::: n. --> A Greek Cynic philosopher (412?-323 B. C.) who lived much in Athens and was distinguished for contempt of the common aims and conditions of life, and for sharp, caustic sayings.
divers ::: a. --> Different in kind or species; diverse.
Several; sundry; various; more than one, but not a great number; as, divers philosophers. Also used substantively or pronominally.
Divine providence is admitted by all Jewish philosophers, but its extent is a matter of dispute. The conservative thinkers, though admitting the stability of the natural order and even seeing in that order a medium of God's providence, allow greater latitude to the interference of God in the regulation of human events, or even in disturbing the natural order on occasion. In other words, they admit a frequency of miracles. The more liberal, though they do not deny the occurrence of miracles, attempt to limit it, and often rationalize the numerous miraculous events related in the Bible and bring them within the sphere of the rational order. Typical and representative is Maimonides' view of Providence. He limits its extent in the sublunar world to the human genus only on account of its possession of mind. As a result he posits a graded Providence, namely, that the one who is more intellectually perfect receives more attention or special Providence. This theory is also espoused, with certain modifications, by Ibn Daud and Gersonides. Divine providence does by no means impair human freedom, for it is rarely direct, but is exerted through a number of mediate causes, and human choice is one of the causes.
Divisibility: The property in virtue of which a whole (whether physical, psychical or mathematical) may be divided into parts which do not thereby necessarily sever their relation with the whole. Divisibility usually implies not merely analysis or distinction of parts, but actual or potential resolution into parts. From the beginning philosophers have raised the question whether substances are infinitely or finitely divisible. Ancient materialism conceived of the physical atom as an indivisible substance. Descartes, however, and after him Leibniz, maintained the infinite divisibility of substance. The issue became the basis of Kant's cosmological antinomy (Crit. of pure Reason), from which he concluded that the issue was insoluble in metaphysical terms. In recent decades the question has had to take account of (1) researches in the physical atom, before which the older conception of physical substance has steadily retreated; and (2) the attempt to formulate a satisfactory definition of infinity (q.v.). -- O.F.K.
Dogmatism: (Gr. dogma, opinion) A term used by many and various philosophers to characterize their opponents' view more or less derogatorily since the word cannot rid itself of certain linguistic and other associations. The Skeptics among Greek philosophers, doubting all, called dogmatism every assertion of a positive nature. More discriminately, dogmatism may be applied to presumptuous statements or such that lack a sufficiently rational ground, while in the popular mind the word still has the affiliation with the rigor of church dogma which, having a certain finality about it, appeals to faith rather than reason. Since Kant, dogmatism has a specific connotation in that it refers to metaphysical statements made without previous analysis of their justification on the basis of the nature and aptitudes of reason, exactly what Kant thought to remedy through his criticism. By this animadversion are scored especially all 17th and 18th century metaphysical systems as well as later ones which cling to a priori principles not rationally founded. Now also applied to principles of a generalized character maintained without regard to empirical conditions. -- K.F.L.
dominion over philosophers and those who wish
DPP {Dining Philosophers Problem}
Dravya: (Skr.) Substance, as a substratum of qualities (see guna), accidents, or modes. Various classes are established by Indian philosophers. -- K.F.L.
Driesch, Hans Adolf Eduard: (1867-1940) An experimental biologist turned philosopher, he as a rationalist became the most prominent defender of a renovated vitalism. He excludes the physical-chemical level of reality from his vitalism. He asserts that every organism has its own entelechy. For what he terms phylogenetic development, a more inclusive vitalism of the whole evolutionary process, he postulates a super-personal phylogenetic entelechy. He offers an a priori justification of his vitalistic theory, and treats incisively the logic of the psychological. Main works: Philosophy of the Organism; Ordnungslehre, 1912; Wirklichkeitslehre, 1917; Alltagsrätsel des Seelenlebens, 1938; "Kausalität und Vitalismus" in Jahrbuch der Schopenhauer Gesellschaft, XVI, 1939.
(d) The methodological problem bulks large in epistemology and the solutions of it follow in general the lines of cleavage determined by the previous problem. Rationalists of necessity have emphasized deductive and demonstrative procedures in the acquisition and elaboration of knowledge while empiricists have relied largely on induction and hypothesis but few philosophers have espoused the one method to the complete exclusion of the other. A few attempts have been made to elaborate distinctively philosophical methods reducible neither to the inductive procedure of the natural sciences nor the demonstrative method of mathematics -- such are the Transcendental Method of Kant and the Dialectical Method of Hegel though the validity and irreducibility of both of these methods are highly questionable. Pragmatism, operationalism, and phenomenology may perhaps in certain of their aspects be construed is recent attempts to evaluate new epistemological methods.
Dühring, Eugen Karl: (1813-1901) Dühring, a German economist and philosopher, started on a legal career which lasted until 1859. He became docent at the University of Berlin and taught there until he lost his license in 1874. He was editor of Der moderne Volkergeist and of Personalist und Emancipator. Philosophically he belonged to the positivistic school. Dühring advocated not the elimination of capitalism, but of its abuses through the medium of a strong labor movement. His literary work is strongly tinged with anti-semitism, and he is probably better known for the attack which Marx and Engels made upon him than for his own work.
eclectic ::: a. --> Selecting; choosing (what is true or excellent in doctrines, opinions, etc.) from various sources or systems; as, an eclectic philosopher.
Consisting, or made up, of what is chosen or selected; as, an eclectic method; an eclectic magazine. ::: n.
Eclectic [from Greek eklektikos selective, picking out] Applied to systems of philosophy or religion which cull the best from a variety of systems, with the view of thus arriving at essentials. It was applied to the School of Ammonius Saccas and other Alexandrian philosophers, implying that they picked out what was best in all faiths in order to make a new system, doing so because they knew that all the major systems of human religion and philosophy fundamentally derive from a common wisdom-religion of remote antiquity, and therefore that each such system contains at least some elements of truth. Hence they were teaching the wisdom-religion through synthesizing, and by illustrating it from various faiths. The word is also applied to other matters, e.g. schools of painting.
eleatic ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a certain school of Greek philosophers who taught that the only certain science is that which owes nothing to the senses, and all to the reason. ::: n. --> A philosopher of the Eleatic school.
Elemental(s) Used by medieval European mystics, such as the Fire-philosophers, Rosicrucians, and Qabbalists, to signify those classes of ethereal beings evolved in and born of the four elements or kingdoms of nature. Ordinarily they are spoken of as existing in four classes corresponding to the four popular elements air, fire, water, and earth; but theosophy describes these kingdoms of nature as seven or even ten in number: four of the material or quasi-material range, and three (or six) of highly ethereal and even quasi-spiritual substance. They are often described as nature spirits or sprites.
Elijah, Aaron ben: Karaite exegete and philosopher (1300-1369). The Ez Hayyim, i.e. Tree of Size, his philosophical work, deals with all problems of philosophy and displays the influence of both Maimonides and of the teachings of the Mutazilites. -- M.W.
Engels, Friedrich: Engel was born on 28 November 1820 and died on 5 August 1895. The German was a social scientist and philosopher who wrote The Communist Manifesto in 1848 alongside Marx. See Marxism and Marx.
Enlightenment: When Kant, carried by the cultural enthusiasm of his time, explained "enlightenment" as man's coming of age from the state of infancy which rendered him incapable of using his reason without the aid of others, he gave only the subjective meaning of the term. Objectively, enlightenment is a cultural period distinguished by the fervent efforts of leading personalities to make reason the absolute ruler of human life, and to shed the light of knowledge upon the mind and conscience of any individual. Such attempts are not confined to a particular time, or nation, as history teaches; but the term is generally applied to the European enlightenment stretching from the early 17th to the beginning of the 19th century, especially fostered by English, Dutch, French, and German philosophers. It took its start in England from the empiricism of F. Bacon, Th. Hobbes, J. Locke, it found a religious version in the naturalism of Edw. H. Cherbury, J. Toland, M. Tindal, H. Bolingbroke, and the host of "freethinkers", while the Earl of Shaftesbury imparted to it a moral on the "light of reason". Not so constructive but radical in their sarcastic criticism of the past were the French enlighteners, showing that their philosophy got its momentum from the moral corruption at the royal court and abuse of kinglv power in France. Descartes' doctrine of the "clear and perspicuous ideas," Spinoza's critical attitude towards religion, and Leibniz-Wolff's "reasonable thinking" prepared the philosophy of P. Bayle, Ch. Montesquieu, F. M. Voltaire, and J. J. Rousseau. The French positive contribution to the subject was the "Encyclopedie ou Dictionaire raisonne des sciences, arts et metiers", 1751-72, in 28 volumes, edited by Diderot, D'Alembert, Helvetius, Holbach, J. L. Lagrane, etc. What, in England and France, remained on the stage of mere ideas and utopic dreams became reality in the new commonwealth of the U.S.A. The "fathers of the constitution" were enlightened, outstanding among them B. Franklin, Th. Jefferson, J. Adams, A. Hamilton, and Th. Paine their foremost literary propagandist.
Enneads [from Greek ennead group of nine] A work of Plotinus (205? - 270) — one of the last and most famous of the Neoplatonic philosophers, and pupil of Ammonius Saccas — published by his disciple Porphyry. Each of its six books contained nine chapters.
epictetain ::: a. --> Pertaining to Epictetus, the Roman Stoic philosopher, whose conception of life was to be passionless under whatever circumstances.
Epictetus: (c. 60-110 A.D.) A Stoic philosopher and freed slave, who established his School in Nicopolis, Epirus; his Discourses were published by Arrian, his learned disciple, they contain sharp observations of human behavior and pithy sayings on ethical matters. -- R.B.W.
Epictetus Greek Stoic philosopher, a freed slave who taught philosophy in Rome until 90 AD, when Domitian expelled all philosophers. He left no writings, and his philosophy is known through the Discourses and Enchiridion of his pupil Flavius Arrian. Like other Stoics, he held that each person has at the root of his or her being a spark of the Logos, so that all people are brothers and relationships with others must be respected. Inner harmony could be attained by correct perceptions and attitudes, differentiating between what is “ours” and thus under our control, and what is “not ours” and therefore beyond our control. He encouraged making new habits of thought and action through constant practice and self-discipline and by acting deliberately.
Epicurean Philosophy School founded by Epicurus (b. 341 BC), an atomist philosopher popularly associated with later travesties of his teachings. His actual teachings and way of living prove that his chief aim and good was happiness rather than pleasure; for he taught and practiced abstemiousness of living. In this he reacted to the travestied forms of Platonism which existed in his time, moving away from a barren idealism towards a concrete practicality, trying to substitute realities for empty abstractions, both in philosophy and ethics. For this reason he lays the chief stress on ethics, to the comparative neglect of logic and philosophy.
Epicurean School: Founded by Epicurus in Athens in the year 306 B.C. Epicureanism gave expression to the desire for a refined type of happiness which is the reward of the cultured man who can take pleasure in the joys of the mind over which he can have greater control than over those of a material or sensuous nature. The friendship of gifted and noble men, the peace and contentment that comes from fair conduct, good morals and aesthetic enjoyments are the ideals of the Epicurean who refuses to be perturbed by any metaphysical or religious doctrines which impose duties and thus hinder the freedom of pure enjoyment. Epicurus adopted the atomism of Democritus (q.v.) but modified its determinism by permitting chance to cause a swerve (clinamen) in the fall of the atoms. See C. W. Bailey, Epicurus. However, physics was not to be the main concern of the philosopher. See Apathia, Ataraxia, Hedonism. -- M.F.
Eschatology: (Gr. ta eschata, death) That part of systematic or dogmatic theology dealing with the last things, namely, death, judgment, heaven and hell, and also with the end of the world. Also applied by philosophers to the complexus of theories relating to the ultimate end of mankind and the final stages of the physical cosmos. -- J.J.R.
Eschatology: That part of systematic or dogmatic theology dealing with the last things, namely, death, judgment, heaven and hell, and also with the end of the world. Also applied by philosophers to the complexus of theories relating to the ultimate end of mankind and the final stages of the physical cosmos.
esoteric ::: a. --> Designed for, and understood by, the specially initiated alone; not communicated, or not intelligible, to the general body of followers; private; interior; acroamatic; -- said of the private and more recondite instructions and doctrines of philosophers. Opposed to exoteric.
Essence: (Lat. essentia, fr. essens, participle of esse, to be) The being or power of a thing; necessary internal relation or function. The Greek philosophers identified essence and substance in the term, ousia. In classic Latin essence was the idea or law of a thing. But in scholastic philosophy the distinction between essence and substance became important. Essence began to be identified, as in its root meaning, with being, or power. For Locke, the being whereby a thing is what it is. For Kant, the primary internal principle of all that belongs to the being of a thing. For Peirce, the intelligible element of the possibility of being. (a) In logic: definition or the elements of a thing; the genus and differentia. See Definition. (b) In epistemology: that intelligible character which defines what an indefinite predicate asserts. The universal possibility of a thing. Opposite of existence. Syn. with being, possibility. See Santayana's use of the term in Realm of Essence, as a hybrid of intuited datum and scholastic essence (q.v.). See Eternal object. -- J.K.F.
Ethical rule: See Rule. Ethics: (Gr. ta ethika, from ethos) Ethics (also referred to as moral philosophy) is that study or discipline which concerns itself with judgments of approval and disapproval, judgments as to the rightness or wrongness, goodness or badness, virtue or vice, desirability or wisdom of actions, dispositions, ends, objects, or states of affairs. There are two main directions which this study may take. It may concern itself with a psychological or sociological analysis and explanation of our ethical judgments, showing what our approvals and disapprovals consist in and why we approve or disapprove what we do. Or it may concern itself with establishing or recommending certain courses of action, ends, or ways of life as to be taken or pursued, either as right or as good or as virtuous or as wise, as over against others which are wrong, bad, vicious, or foolish. Here the interest is more in action than in approval, and more in the guidance of action than in its explanation, the purpose being to find or set up some ideal or standard of conduct or character, some good or end or summum bonum, some ethical criterion or first principle. In many philosophers these two approaches are combined. The first is dominant or nearly so in the ethics of Hume, Schopenhauer, the evolutionists, Westermarck, and of M. Schlick and other recent positivists, while the latter is dominant in the ethics of most other moralists.
Euhemerism: The view that explains religious myths as traditional and partially distorted accounts of historical events and personages; from Euhemerus, Cyrenaic philosopher (c. 300 B.C.), who advanced the theory that the gods of mythology were deified heroes. -- G.R.M.
everlasting to everlasting), and perhaps they are the spiritual intelligences of which the philosophers speak.” He goes
experimental ::: a. --> Pertaining to experiment; founded on, or derived from, experiment or trial; as, experimental science; given to, or skilled in, experiment; as, an experimental philosopher.
Known by, or derived from, experience; as, experimental religion.
Ezra, Abraham Ibn: Jewish exegete and philosopher (1093-1167). Born in Spain he wandered in many lands, sojourned for a time in Italy and Provence. His philosophy is expressed largely in his commentaries but also in several short treatises, such as the Yesod Mora, i.e. Foundation of the Knowledge of God, and the Shaar ha-Shamayyim, i.e., The Gate to Heaven. Main problems he deals with are that of the right conception of the universe and its becoming and that of knowledge. He was influenced by teachings of neo-Platonism and Gabirol. -- M.W.
Fa chia: The Legalists School, the Philosophers of Law, also called hsing ming chia, who "had absolute faithfulness in reward and punishment as support for the system of correct conduct," and made no distinction between kindred and strangers and no discrimination between the honorable and the humble, but treated them as equals before the law. They emphasized the power natural to the position of a ruler (shih, especially Kuan Tzu, sixth century B.C. and Shen Tao, 350-275 B.C.?) statecraft (shu, especially Shen Pu-hai, 400-337 B.C.?), and law (fa, especially Shang Chun, 390-338 B.C.?), with Han Fei Tzu (280-233 B.C.) synthesizing all the three tendencies. -- W.T.C.
F. C. S. Schiller, the Oxford pragmatist or humanist, is, if anything, more hostile to rationalism, intellectualism, absolute metaphysics and even systematic and rigorous thinking than James himself. In his Humanism (1903) and his most important book Studies in Humanism (1907), he attempts to resolve or deflate metaphysical issues and controversies by practical distinctions of terms and appeal to personal, human factors, supposedly forgotten by other philosophers. Schiller wrote about many of the topics which James treated: absolute metaphysics, religion, truth, freedom, psychic research, etc., and the outcome is similar. His spirited defense of Protagoras, "the humanist", against Socrates and his tireless bantering critique of all phases of formal logic are elements of novelty. So also is his extreme activism. He goes so far as to say that "In validating our claims to 'truth' . . . we really transform them [realities] by our cognitive efforts, thereby proving our desires and ideas to be real forces in the shaping of the world". (Studies tn Humanism, 1906, p. 425.) Schiller's apparent view that desires and ideas can transform both truth and reality, even without manipulation or experiment, could also be found in James, but is absent in Dewey and later pragmatists.
Ficino, Marsilio: Of Florence (1433-99). Was the main representative of Platonism in Renaissance Italy. His doctrine combines NeoPlatonic metaphysics and Augustinian theologv with many new, original ideas. His major work, the Theologia Ptatonica (1482) presents a hierarchical system of the universe (God, Angelic Mind, Soul, Quality, Body) and a great number of arguments for the immortality of the soul. Man is considered as the center of the universe, and human life is interpreted as an internal ascent of the soul towards God. Through the Florentine Academy Ficino's Platonism exercised a large influence upon his contemporaries. His theory of "Platonic love" had vast repercussions in Italian, French and English literature throughout the sixteenth century. His excellent Latin translations of Plato (1484), Plotinus (1492), and other Greek philosophers provided the occidental world with new materials of the greatest importance and were widely used up to the beginning of the nineteenth century. -- P.O.K.
Fictionism: An extreme form of pragmatism or instrumentalism according to which the basic concepts and principles of natural science, mathematics, philosophy, ethics, religion and jurisprudence are pure fictions which, though lacking objective truth, are useful instruments of action. The theory is advanced under the influence of Kant, by the German philosopher H. Vaihinger in his Philosophie des Als Ob, 1911. Philosophv of the "As If." English translation by C. K. Ogden.) See Fiction, Construction. -- L. W.
Fire-philosophers Philosophers of medieval Europe who regarded fire as the supreme principle. Their ideas were largely those of Oriental occult or semi-occult bodies; hence they may be described as either the Persian Magi, or the European followers of Robert Fludd (1574-1637), a student of Paracelsus who taught the analogy of macrocosm and microcosm and the four elements.
Fire Philosophers: A designation applied to the medieval alchemists and Hermetists and also to the Rosicrucians.
“First it [the light of the Logos] is the life, or the Mahachaitanyam of the cosmos; that is one aspect of it; secondly, it is force, and in this aspect it is the Fohat of the Buddhist philosophy; lastly, it is wisdom, in the sense that it is the Chichakti [Chichchakti] of the Hindu philosophers. All these three aspects are . . . combined in our conception of the Gayatri” (N on BG 90).
Fiske, John: (1842-1901) Harvard librarian and philosopher. He is best known as an historian of the colonial period. He was a voluminous writer in many fields. His Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy is his best known work as a pioneer in America of the evolutionary theories. He claimed an original contribution to these speculations in his studies of the period of infancy. His works on God and on immortality were widely read in his day although he later expressed doubts about them. Nevertheless his constant emphasis on the theistic as opposed to the positivistic implications of evolution served to influence the current theories of creative and emergent evolution. See Evolutionism. -- L.E.D.
Flames Largely interchangeable with fire, both being borrowed from the Fire-philosophers in an attempt to render the ancient teachings. Often the same distinction is made as in ordinary usage: that flame is a portion of fire, or that fire is a more abstract and general term and flame a more concrete and particular. Thus, the intellectual and guiding cosmic spirits, as well as the astrally and physically creative builders, are spoken of as being a hierarchy of flames. The Lords of the Flame are the agnishvatta-pitris, or the intelligent architects cosmically; as the givers of mind to humanity they are alluded to as those whose fire is too pure for the production of physical mortal mankind. The Asiatic Qabbalists or Shemitic initiates meant by Holy Flame what is called the anima mundi or world-soul, and this is why adepts were called sons of the holy flame. Flame is also a projection of fire, as when a flame of the divine fire descends into matter, or flames of fire descend upon one inspired by the Holy Spirit or encircle the head of an initiate.
Florentine Academy: It was a loose and informal circle of scholars and educated persons which gathered in Florence around the Platonic philosopher Marsilio Ficino. Its activities consisted in regular lectures on Platonic philosophy as well as in informal discussions and parties. "Platonic" love or friendship was considered as the spiritual link between the members of the group which was organized and named after the model of Plato's Academy. The main documents describing it are Ficino's correspondence and a number of dialogues like Ficino's commentary on Plato's Symposion, Landino's Disputationes Camaldulenses , and Benedetto Colucci's Declamationes. Outstanding members or associates of the Academy were Cosimo, Piero, and Lorenzo de'Medici, Angelo Poliziano, and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. The Academy which was first founded in 1462, dissolved after the revolution in Florence (1494) and after Ficino's death (1499), but the tradition of Platonic philosophy was continued in other private circles as well as at the universities of Florence and Pisa throughout the sixteenth century. -- P.O.K.
Fons Vitae (Latin) Fount of life; Latin title of the chief work of Ibn Gebirol (Avicebron), the Arab Jewish philosopher of the 11th century, believed by many to be a profound Kabbalist. The Hebrew title is Meqor Hayyim (Fountain of Lives).
Four Elements: The four primary kinds of body recognized by the Greek philosophers, viz. fire, air, water, and earth. -- G.R.M.
Fourth dimension: A higher order of space, additional to the three known dimensions of height, width and length; a direction which is neither up-or-down nor right-or-left nor back-or-forth, but at right angles to all three. Many philosophers consider time (duration, the past-or-present direction) a fourth dimension—but the “fourth dimension” just described is conceived of as a fourth spatial dimension. In occult terminology, the fourth dimension has to do with internal qualities which, when seen in the astral light, become visible. It has been defined as “the sum of the other three dimensions,” and also as “man’s expanding sense of time.”
Fries, Jakob Friedrich: (1773-1843) Eminent German philosopher. The contribution of Fries lies in the continuation of Kant's work as offered in New or Anthropological Criticism of Reason and by his system of philosophy as exact science.
Future: That part of time which includes all the events which will happen. According to many occultists and esoteric philosophers, the future co-exists with the present and the past, time is indivisible, unchangeable, and past, present and future are merely concepts of the human mind which moves along a “time track” through the reality which is time; foreknowledge, prophecy, etc., can be explained as glimpses ahead along the time track.
Galen, Claudius: Famous physician; died about the year 200 A.D.; an Eclectic philosopher who combined the Peripatetic and Stoic teachings.
Gazali: Born 1059 in Tus, in the country of Chorasan, taught at Bagdad, lived for a time in Syria, died in his home town 1111. He started as a sceptic in philosophy and became a mystic and orthodox afterwards. Philosophy is meaningful only as introduction to theology. His attitude resembles Neo-Platonic mysticism and is anti-Aristotelian. He wrote a detailed report on the doctrines of Farabi and Avicenna only to subject them to a scathing criticism in Destructio philosophorum where he points out the self-contradictions of philosophers. His main works are theological. In his writings on logic he wants to ensure to theology a reliable method of procedure. His metaphysics also is mainly based on theology: creation of the world out of nothing, resurrection, and so forth. Cf. H. Bauer, Die Dogmatik Al-Ghazalis, 1912. -- R.A.
George Boole ::: (person) 1815-11-02 - 1864-12-08. An English mathematician best known for his contribution to symbolic logic (Boolean Algebra) but also active in other equations. He lived, taught, and is buried in Cork City, Ireland. The Boole library at University College Cork is named after him.For centuries philosophers have studied logic, which is orderly and precise reasoning. George Boole argued in 1847 that logic should be allied with mathematics rather than with philosophy.Demonstrating logical principles with mathematical symbols instead of words, he founded symbolic logic, a field of mathematical/philosophical study. In the new of binary computer circuits and telephone switching equipment. These devices make use of Boole's two-valued (presence or absence of a property) system.Born in Lincoln, Lincolnshire, UK, George Boole was the son of a tradesman and was largely self-taught. He began teaching at the age of 16 to help support his symbolic logic. Two years later he was appointed professor of mathematics at Queen's College in Ireland, even though he had never studied at a university.He died in Ballintemple, Ireland, on 1864-12-08. . (1998-11-19)
George Boole "person" 1815-11-02 - 2008-05-11 22:58 best known for his contribution to symbolic logic ({Boolean Algebra}) but also active in other fields such as probability theory, {algebra}, analysis, and differential equations. He lived, taught, and is buried in Cork City, Ireland. The Boole library at University College Cork is named after him. For centuries philosophers have studied logic, which is orderly and precise reasoning. George Boole argued in 1847 that logic should be allied with mathematics rather than with philosophy. Demonstrating logical principles with mathematical symbols instead of words, he founded {symbolic logic}, a field of mathematical/philosophical study. In the new discipline he developed, known as {Boolean algebra}, all objects are divided into separate classes, each with a given property; each class may be described in terms of the presence or absence of the same property. An electrical circuit, for example, is either on or off. Boolean algebra has been applied in the design of {binary} computer circuits and telephone switching equipment. These devices make use of Boole's two-valued (presence or absence of a property) system. Born in Lincoln, Lincolnshire, UK, George Boole was the son of a tradesman and was largely self-taught. He began teaching at the age of 16 to help support his family. In his spare time he read mathematical journals and soon began to write articles for them. By the age of 29, Boole had received a gold medal for his work from the British Royal Society. His 'Mathematical Analysis of Logic', a pamphlet published in 1847, contained his first statement of the principles of symbolic logic. Two years later he was appointed professor of mathematics at Queen's College in Ireland, even though he had never studied at a university. He died in Ballintemple, Ireland, on 1864-12-08. {Compton's Encyclopedia Online (http://comptons2.aol.com/encyclopedia/ARTICLES/00619_A.html)}. (1998-11-19)
Gerson, Levi ben: (Gersonides) Bible commentator, astronomer, and philosopher (1288-1340). He invented an instrument for astronomical observation which is described in his Sefer ha-Ttkunah (Hebr.) Book on Astronomy. His philosophy embodied in the Milhamot Elohim i.e., The Wars of God, is distinguished by its thoroughgoing Aristotehanism and by its general free spirit. His theory of the soul teaches that the passive or material intellect is only a potentiality for developing pure thought which is accomplished through the influence of the Universal Active Intellect, and that it is that part of the soul which contains the sum total of the exalted thoughts which remains immortal, thus making intellectuality a condition of immortality. He also teaches that God knows things from their general aspect but does not know the particulars in their infinite ramifications. -- See Jewish Philosophy. -- M.W.
gnostic ::: a. --> Knowing; wise; shrewd.
Of or pertaining to Gnosticism or its adherents; as, the Gnostic heresy. ::: n. --> One of the so-called philosophers in the first ages of Christianity, who claimed a true philosophical interpretation of the
Go bo rab 'byams pa Bsod nams seng ge. [alt. Go rams pa Bsod nams seng ge] (1429-1489). A renowned philosopher and logician of the SA SKYA sect of Tibetan Buddhism, he studied at NA LAN DRA (founded in 1435 by RONG STON SMRA BA'I SENG GE) then NGOR (founded in 1429 by Ngor chen KUN DGA' BZANG PO), where he later became the sixth abbot. His complete works in five volumes, included in the set of works of the great masters of the Sa skya sect, present the authoritative interpretation of statements by the five Sa skya hierarchs (SA SKYA GONG MA RNAM LNGA) on important topics in ABHIDHARMA and epistemology (PRAMĀnA). Particularly highly regarded are his works on MADHYAMAKA and the thought of DHARMAKĪRTI, as well as his explanation of Sa skya Pandita's SDOM GSUM RAB DBYE, a core text of the Sa skya curriculum explaining the three sRĀVAKA, BODHISATTVA, and tantric moral codes, written as a corrective to the work of his contemporary SHĀKYA MCHOG LDAN.
God: In metaphysical thinking a name for the highest, ultimate being, assumed by theology on the basis of authority, revelation, or the evidence of faith as absolutely necessary, but demonstrated as such by a number of philosophical systems, notably idealistic, monistic and dualistic ones. Proofs of the existence of God fall apart into those that are based on facts of experience (desire or need for perfection, dependence, love, salvation, etc.), facts of religious history (consensus gentium, etc.)), postulates of morality (belief in ultimate justice, instinct for an absolute good, conscience, the categorical imperative, sense of duty, need of an objective foundation of morality, etc.)), postulates of reason (cosmological, physico-theological, teleological, and ontological arguments), and the inconceivableness of the opposite. As to the nature of God, the great variety of opinions are best characterized by their several conceptions of the attributes of God which are either of a non-personal (pantheistic, etc.) or personal (theistic, etc.) kind, representing concepts known from experience raised to a superlative degree ("omniscient", "eternal", etc.). The reality, God, may be conceived as absolute or as relative to human values, as being an all-inclusive one, a duality, or a plurality. Concepts of God calling for unquestioning faith, belief in miracles, and worship or representing biographical and descriptive sketches of God and his creation, are rather theological than metaphysical, philosophers, on the whole, utilizing the idea of God or its linguistic equivalents in other languages, despite popular and church implications, in order not to lose the feeling-contact with the rather abstract world-ground. See Religion, Philosophy of. -- K.F.L.
Gorgias: (c. 480 - c. 375 B.C.) Celebrated orator, rhetorician and philosopher from Leontini in Sicily. He was numbered among the leading Sophists. He spent the major part of his long life in Greece, particularly in Athens. The Platonic dialogue bearing his name indicates in some measure the high esteem in which he was held. -- L.E.D.
great philosopher.” [Rf. Jung, Fallen Angels in
Green Lion, Hunting of the: A medieval alchemical treatise on the search for the Philosopher’s Stone (q.v.). The Green Lion is natural, unpurified, undeified Man—green because he is unripe, his occult powers are dormant, but having the strength and fierceness of a lion.
Guide for the Perplexed ::: Maimonides masterpiece of Jewish philosophy and theology, written from the perspective of an Aristotelian philosopher. (Heb. Moreh N'vuchim). See also Maimonides.
gymnosophist ::: n. --> One of a sect of philosophers, said to have been found in India by Alexander the Great, who went almost naked, denied themselves the use of flesh, renounced bodily pleasures, and employed themselves in the contemplation of nature.
Gymnosophists [from Greek gymnosophistai naked wise men] Name given by the Greeks to the ascetics met by Alexander in India, as mentioned by Plutarch and others. They are said in some cases to have practiced extreme asceticism, including virtual nudity in all weathers; these “learned yogis and ascetic type philosophers who returned to the jungle and forest, there to reach through great austerities superhuman knowledge and experience,” are said to have possessed occult powers due to their mode of life and to the traditional knowledge which they had (TG 130, IU 1:90, 113).
Hachamim (Hebrew) Hakhāmīm Hakkim (Aramaic) Hakkīm. Wise men; philosophers, statesmen, magicians — also at times the historical Magians.
Ha-Levi, Judah: (b. ca. 1080, d. ca. 1140) Poet and philosopher. His Kuzari (Arabic Kitab Al-Khazari), written in dialogue form, has a double purpose. First, as its subtitle, A Book of Proofs and Arguments in Defense of the Humiliated Religion, indicates, it aims to prove the dignity and worth of Judaism. Secondly, he endeavors to show the insufficiency of philosophy and the superiority of the truths of revealed religion to those arrived at by logic. The admission of both Christianity and Islam that Judaism is their source proves the first. The exaltation of intuition as a means of certainty in matters of religion, and the claim that the prophet is the highest type of man rather than the philosopher purposes to substantiate the second. He endows the Jewish people with a special religio-ethical sense which is their share only and constitutes a quasi-biological quality. He assigns also a special importance to Palestine as a contributory factor in the spiritual development of his people, for only there can this religio-ethical sense come to full expression. -- M.W.
Han Fei Tzu: (d. 233 B.C.) Was a pupil of Hsun Tzu. The greatest Chinese philosopher of law (fa chia), he advocated government by law and statecraft. Delegated by his native state, he appealed to the king of Chin (Shih Huang-ti) not to invade his country. At first he was cordially entertained but later was ordered to commit suicide by the premier of Chin, his former schoolmate, Li Ssu, who became jealous of him. (Han-fei Tzu, Eng. tr. by W. K. Liao: Han Fei Tzu, Complete Works.) -- W.T.C.
Hedonism [from Greek hedone, pleasure] In ethics, the doctrine that the gratification of natural inclinations is the chief good, and that the moral law is thereby fulfilled. The value of this doctrine depends entirely on what we are to understand by pleasure or inclination. In the best sense, which was that of Epicurus and his followers, these words may be considered as one way of trying to express the summum bonum, the goal of human endeavor; and this school pointedly taught that neither happiness nor peace are ever attainable by the subjection of human thought, mind, and conscience to the instincts or inclinations of the body. Some aspects of modern utilitarianism may be considered as a form of hedonism. But the doctrine as stated is easily degraded, and in its worst form becomes the pursuit of sensual gratification. In fact, hedonism as a word, and as understood now and by many even in ancient times, is the exact opposite of what these early philosophers believed and taught. See also EPICUREAN PHILOSOPHY
Heliocentric The heliocentric system was universally known in antiquity as a part of the teaching of the Mysteries, and certain eminent sages of those archaic times even taught it more or less openly, among them Confucius in China, Greek philosophers, Egyptian priests, and Hindu astronomical and other writers. Pythagoras veiled the heliocentric theory under the teaching that the planets (and the sun) revolved around a mysterious central fire, invisible to us, but whose light was reflected to the earth by the sun.
Helvetius, Claude Adrien: (1715-1771) A French philosopher, he developed on the basis of Condillac's sensationalism his superficial materialistic philosophy. His theories of the original mental equality of individuals, of the egoism or self-interest as the sole motive of human action, and of the omnipotence of education, stress the basic determining influence of circumstances.
Hence in its widest sense Scholasticism embraces all the intellectual activities, artistic, philosophical and theological, carried on in the medieval schools. Any attempt to define its narrower meaning in the field of philosophy raises serious difficulties, for in this case, though the term's comprehension is lessened, it still has to cover many centuries of many-faced thought. However, it is still possible to list several characteristics sufficient to differentiate Scholastic from non-Scholastic philosophy. While ancient philosophy was the philosophy of a people and modern thought that of individuals, Scholasticism was the philosophy of a Christian society which transcended the characteristics of individuals, nations and peoples. It was the corporate product of social thought, and as such its reasoning respected authority in the forms of tradition and revealed religion. Tradition consisted primarily in the systems of Plato and Aristotle as sifted, adapted and absorbed through many centuries. It was natural that religion, which played a paramount role in the culture of the middle ages, should bring influence to bear on the medieval, rational view of life. Revelation was held to be at once a norm and an aid to reason. Since the philosophers of the period were primarily scientific theologians, their rational interests were dominated by religious preoccupations. Hence, while in general they preserved the formal distinctions between reason and faith, and maintained the relatively autonomous character of philosophy, the choice of problems and the resources of science were controlled by theology. The most constant characteristic of Scholasticism was its method. This was formed naturally by a series of historical circumstances, The need of a medium of communication, of a consistent body of technical language tooled to convey the recently revealed meanings of religion, God, man and the material universe led the early Christian thinkers to adopt the means most viable, most widely extant, and nearest at hand, viz. Greek scientific terminology. This, at first purely utilitarian, employment of Greek thought soon developed under Justin, Clement of Alexandria, Origin, and St. Augustine into the "Egyptian-spoils" theory; Greek thought and secular learning were held to be propaedeutic to Christianity on the principle: "Whatever things were rightly said among all men are the property of us Christians." (Justin, Second Apology, ch. XIII). Thus was established the first characteristic of the Scholastic method: philosophy is directly and immediately subordinate to theology. Because of this subordinate position of philosophy and because of the sacred, exclusive and total nature of revealed wisdom, the interest of early Christian thinkers was focused much more on the form of Greek thought than on its content and, it might be added, much less of this content was absorbed by early Christian thought than is generally supposed. As practical consequences of this specialized interest there followed two important factors in the formation of Scholastic philosophy: Greek logic en bloc was taken over by Christians; from the beginning of the Christian era to the end of the XII century, no provision was made in Catholic centers of learning for the formal teaching of philosophy. There was a faculty to teach logic as part of the trivium and a faculty of theology. For these two reasons, what philosophy there was during this long period of twelve centuries, was dominated first, as has been seen, by theology and, second, by logic. In this latter point is found rooted the second characteristic of the Scholastic method: its preoccupation with logic, deduction, system, and its literary form of syllogistic argumentation. The third characteristic of the Scholastic method follows directly from the previous elements already indicated. It adds, however, a property of its own gained from the fact that philosophy during the medieval period became an important instrument of pedogogy. It existed in and for the schools. This new element coupled with the domination of logic, the tradition-mindedness and social-consciousness of the medieval Christians, produced opposition of authorities for or against a given problem and, finally, disputation, where a given doctrine is syllogistically defended against the adversaries' objections. This third element of the Scholastic method is its most original characteristic and accounts more than any other single factor for the forms of the works left us from this period. These are to be found as commentaries on single or collected texts; summae, where the method is dialectical or disputational in character. The main sources of Greek thought are relatively few in number: all that was known of Plato was the Timaeus in the translation and commentary of Chalcidius. Augustine, the pseudo-Areopagite, and the Liber de Causis were the principal fonts of Neoplatonic literature. Parts of Aristotle's logical works (Categoriae and de Interpre.) and the Isagoge of Porphyry were known through the translations of Boethius. Not until 1128 did the Scholastics come to know the rest of Aristotle's logical works. The golden age of Scholasticism was heralded in the late XIIth century by the translations of the rest of his works (Physics, Ethics, Metaphysics, De Anima, etc.) from the Arabic by Gerard of Cremona, John of Spain, Gundisalvi, Michael Scot, and Hermann the German, from the Greek by Robert Grosseteste, William of Moerbeke, and Henry of Brabant. At the same time the Judae-Arabian speculation of Alkindi, Alfarabi, Avencebrol, Avicenna, Averroes, and Maimonides together with the Neoplatonic works of Proclus were made available in translation. At this same period the Scholastic attention to logic was turned to metaphysics, even psychological and ethical problems and the long-discussed question of the universals were approached from this new angle. Philosophy at last achieved a certain degree of autonomy and slowly forced the recently founded universities to accord it a separate faculty.
Heraclitus Herakleitos (535-475 BC) Greek philosopher from Ephesus, known as “the obscure” because of difficult writing style. He held that knowledge is based on sense perceptions, and wisdom consists in recognizing the intelligence that guides the universe. Everything is in constant flux, everything being resolvable into the primordial element fire after cycling through all the elements. Nature is constantly dividing and uniting itself, so that all things are at once identical and not identical. ( )
Hesiodic Cosmogony The cosmogony and theogony of Hesiod, the Greek poet-philosopher of the 8th century BC, are historical but need interpretation to understand the symbology involved and to filter out the accumulation of minor myths which have been mingled with it. His two great works are Works and Days and Theogony. Among the features he mentions are: that gods and mortals have one common origin; that there have been four races preceding ours — called golden, silver, bronze, and iron, the fourth being that of the heroes who fell at Thebes and Troy; that seven is a sacred number in days and in constellations; that the beginning of all things was Chaos (Hesiod having the singular restraint to say nothing about what preceded Chaos); that “night” came before “day.” The giants he mentions parallel the asuras and suras and are reminiscences of Atlanteans. His three cyclopes are said to have been representative figures for the last three subraces of Lemuria, and also for three polar continents (SD 2:769, 776). His Prometheus typifies the Greek moral ideal in representing this rebel demigod as the benefactor of mankind, in contrast with the Christian Satan.
He was the first to recognize a fundamental critical difference between the philosopher and the scientist. He found those genuine ideals in the pre-Socratic period of Greek culture which he regarded as essential standards for the deepening of individuality and real culture in the deepest sense, towards which the special and natural sciences, and professional or academic philosophers failed to contribute. Nietzsche wanted the philosopher to be prophetic, originally forward-looking in the clarification of the problem of existence. Based on a comprehensive critique of the history of Western civilization, that the highest values in religion, morals and philosophy have begun to lose their power, his philosophy gradually assumed the will to power, self-aggrandizement, as the all-embracing principle in inorganic and organic nature, in the development of the mind, in the individual and in society. More interested in developing a philosophy of life than a system of academic philosophy, his view is that only that life is worth living which develops the strength and integrity to withstand the unavoidable sufferings and misfortunes of existence without flying into an imaginary world.
Hillel of Verona: (1220-1295) Physician and philosopher. His principal philosophic work, the Tagmule ha-Nefesh (Heb.) The Reward of the Soul, is devoted to two problems, that of the soul and that of reward and punishment. In his theory of the soul he follows partly Averroes (q.v.) and assumes with him that the universal Active Intellect acts upon the soul of the individual and helps to realize its powers. He rejects, though, the former's view of immortality which consists of a union of the human intellect with the universal Active Intellect. -- M.W.
Historically, philosophers have, in the main, taken the latter approach in both parts of ethics, and we may confine our remaining space to it. On this approach a theory of value is a theorv as to what is to be pursued or sought, and a theory of obligation, a theory as to what is to be done. Now, of these two parts of ethic, philosophers have generally been concerned primarily with the latter, busying themselves with the former only secondarily, usually because it seemed to them that one must know what ends are good before one can know what acts are tn be performed. They all offer both a theory of value and a theory of obligition, but it was not until the 19th and 20th centuries that value-theory became a separate discipline studied for its own sake -- a development in which important roles were played by Kant, Lotze, Ritschl, certain European economists, Brentano, Meinong, von Ehrenfels, W. M. Urban, R. B. Perry, and others.
Höffding, Harald: (1843-1931) Danish philosopher at the University of Copenhagen and brilliant author of texts in psychology, history of philosophy and the philosophy of religion. He held that the world of reality as a whole is unknowable although we may believe that conscious experience and its unity afford the best keys to unlock the metaphysical riddle. His svstem of thought is classified on the positive side as a cautious idealistic monism (his own term is "critical monism").
Homoeomerian (Homoiomerian) System [from Greek homoios similar + meros part] The theory of the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras that the spiritual originants or seeds of all classes of beings and things existed in the primordial cosmic chaos, and that each such originant or seed was of like substance with all others, and therefore in a more extended sense likewise with the species to which these gave rise through emanational evolution. These seeds, particles, monads, or spiritual atoms were called homoiomere (of similar part — often verging in meaning into identity). It was the action of nous (cosmic intelligence) on chaos — or in Hindu terms, of mahat on svabhavat — which at the opening of a period of cosmic evolution separated and discriminated these quasi-identical atoms, starting them on their respective evolutions in the families of hierarchies to which they belong, the various individuals thereof manifesting as beings and things of various kinds, such as atoms of grain or gold, etc., each according to its original nature or svabhava.
Huperouranioi (Greek) Hyperuranii (Latin) Above the heavens, or in highest heaven; the name given by Plato, Proclus, and other Greek philosophers to the highest orders of celestial beings, those above the enkosmioi (intercosmic gods).
Hutcheson, Francis: (1694-1746) A prominent Scottish philosopher. Born in Drumalig, Ulster, educated at Glasgow, died in Dublin. The influence of his doctrine of "moral sense," stressing inborn conscience, or "moral feeling," was very wide, he was also the original author of the phrase "the greatest happiness for the greatest number," utilized by J. Bentham (q.v.) for the development of utilitarianism (q.v.) His principal work is Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue. -- R.B.W.
hylicist ::: n. --> A philosopher who treats chiefly of matter; one who adopts or teaches hylism.
HYLOZOICS (Gr. hyle, &
Idol: (Gr. eidolon, and Lat. idolum, image or likeness) Democritus (5th c. B.C.) tried to explain sense perception by means of the emission of little particles (eidola) from the sense object. This theory and the term, idolum, are known throughout the later middle ages, but in a pejorative sense, as indicating a sort of "second-hand" knowledge. G. Bruno is usually credited with the earliest Latin use of the term to name that which leads philosophers into error, but this is an unmerited honor. The most famous usage occurs in F. Bacon's Novum Oiganum, I, 39-68, where the four chief causes of human error in philosophy and science are called the Idols of the Tribe (weakness of understanding in the whole human race), of the Cave (individual prejudices and mental defects), of the Forum (faults of language in the communication of ideas), and of the Theatre (faults arising from received systems of philosophy). A very similar teaching, without the term, idol, had been developed by Grosseteste and Roger Bacon in the 13th century. -- V.J.R.
Illusion Positive unreality, or that which is wholly and completely deceptive without basis in reality; as such some philosophers consider it to be rooted in the human mind itself, subjective or interior rather than external or objective. As thus understood, illusion falls far short of the significance of the Sanskrit maya, for which it is used as a translation. For the sense of maya is that of appearance rising out of reality, not something opposed to reality. It is evident that, if the universe can be said to exist at all, we must allow that illusion in the sense of maya has existence, a relative or temporary reality, for it obviously originates from and shadows forth the reality within and behind it. It is not that reality itself, but its multiform appearances. To say that the world in which we live, and all the people and beings and things in it, are an illusion, does not mean that all this is an empty dream; it means that what is so real to us, as long as we are conscious on this plane, will be seen as a maya or deceptive appearance from our viewpoint when we become conscious on a higher and more inclusive plane. See also MAYA
in 1964. Hegel the philosopher saw in Mephisto¬
inconscient ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Inconscient and the Ignorance may be mere empty abstractions and can be dismissed as irrelevant jargon if one has not come in collision with them or plunged into their dark and bottomless reality. But to me they are realities, concrete powers whose resistance is present everywhere and at all times in its tremendous and boundless mass.” *Letters on Savitri
". . . in its actual cosmic manifestation the Supreme, being the Infinite and not bound by any limitation, can manifest in Itself, in its consciousness of innumerable possibilities, something that seems to be the opposite of itself, something in which there can be Darkness, Inconscience, Inertia, Insensibility, Disharmony and Disintegration. It is this that we see at the basis of the material world and speak of nowadays as the Inconscient — the Inconscient Ocean of the Rigveda in which the One was hidden and arose in the form of this universe — or, as it is sometimes called, the non-being, Asat.” Letters on Yoga
"The Inconscient itself is only an involved state of consciousness which like the Tao or Shunya, though in a different way, contains all things suppressed within it so that under a pressure from above or within all can evolve out of it — ‘an inert Soul with a somnambulist Force".” Letters on Yoga
"The Inconscient is the last resort of the Ignorance.” Letters on Yoga
"The body, we have said, is a creation of the Inconscient and itself inconscient or at least subconscient in parts of itself and much of its hidden action; but what we call the Inconscient is an appearance, a dwelling place, an instrument of a secret Consciousness or a Superconscient which has created the miracle we call the universe.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga :::
"The Inconscient is a sleep or a prison, the conscient a round of strivings without ultimate issue or the wanderings of a dream: we must wake into the superconscious where all darkness of night and half-lights cease in the self-luminous bliss of the Eternal.” The Life Divine
"Men have not learnt yet to recognise the Inconscient on which the whole material world they see is built, or the Ignorance of which their whole nature including their knowledge is built; they think that these words are only abstract metaphysical jargon flung about by the philosophers in their clouds or laboured out in long and wearisome books like The Life Divine. Letters on Savitri :::
"Is it really a fact that even the ordinary reader would not be able to see any difference between the Inconscient and Ignorance unless the difference is expressly explained to him? This is not a matter of philosophical terminology but of common sense and the understood meaning of English words. One would say ‘even the inconscient stone" but one would not say, as one might of a child, ‘the ignorant stone". One must first be conscious before one can be ignorant. What is true is that the ordinary reader might not be familiar with the philosophical content of the word Inconscient and might not be familiar with the Vedantic idea of the Ignorance as the power behind the manifested world. But I don"t see how I can acquaint him with these things in a single line, even with the most. illuminating image or symbol. He might wonder, if he were Johnsonianly minded, how an Inconscient could be teased or how it could wake Ignorance. I am afraid, in the absence of a miracle of inspired poetical exegesis flashing through my mind, he will have to be left wondering.” Letters on Savitri
**inconscient, Inconscient"s.**
Indian Philosophy: General name designating a plethora of more or less systematic thinking born and cultivated in the geographic region of India among the Hindus who represent an amalgamation of adventitious and indigenous peoples, but confined at first exclusively to the caste-conscious Indo-germanic conquerors of the lands of the Indus and Ganges. Its beginnings are lost in the dim past, while a distinct emergence in tangible form is demonstrable from about 1000 B.C. Hindu idiosyncrasies are responsible for our inability to date with any degree of accuracy many of the systems, schools, and philosophers, or in some cases even to refer to the latter by name. Inasmuch as memory, not writing, has been universally favored in India, an aphoristic form (cf. sutra), subtended by copious commentaries, give Indian Philosophy its distinctive appearance. The medium is Sanskrit and the dialects derived from it. There are translations in all major Asiatic and European languages. The West became familiar with it when philologists discovered during last century the importance of Sanskrit. As a type of thinking employing unfamiliar conceptions and a terminology fluctuating in meaning (cf., e.g., rasa), it is distinct from Western speculations. Several peaks have been reached in the past, yet Indian Philosophy does not cease to act fructifyingly upon the present mind in India as elsewhere. Various factions advance conflicting claims as to the value of Indian speculation, because interpretations have not as yet become standardized. Textual criticism is now making strides, but with varying successes. Among larger histories of Indian Philosophy may be mentioned those of Deussen, Das Gupta, Bel-valkar and Ranade, and Radhakrishnan.
Ineffable Name With the Jews, applied to the word Jehovah; with the Qabbalists, associated with the Tetragrammaton (JHVH, YHVH, or IHVH). The Ineffable Name is the secret of secrets, IHVH (or Jehovah) being used as a screen. The power of the Ineffable Name is the power or force of the natural harmony in nature, which the ancient Greek mystical philosophers called music or the cosmic harmony. The name used by the Western Qabbalists is not to be pronounced, rather than ineffable, for the “ ‘Ineffable Name’ of the true Occultist, is no name at all, least of all is it that of Jehovah. The latter implies, even in its Kabbalistical, esoteric meaning, an androgynous nature, YHVH, or one of a male and female nature. It is simply Adam and Eve, or man and woman blended in one, and as now written and pronounced, is itself a substitute. But the Rabbins do not care to remember the Zoharic admission that YHVH means ‘not as I Am written, Am I read” (Zohar, fol. III., 230a). One has to know how to divide the Tetragrammaton ad infinitum before one arrives at the sound of the truly unpronounceable name of the Jewish mystery-god” (TG 155-6).
Infinite [from Latin in not + finitus ended] That which is endless or not finite; ancient peoples expressed the frontierless, beginningless, and endless hierarchical immensities, whether of space, time, spirit, or matter in many ways, as in the ’eyn soph (without bounds or frontiers) of the Qabbalah, the Hindu parabrahman (beyond Brahman), the Void, the Sunyata of Buddhism, the Ginnungagap (gaping void) of the Scandinavians, the Deep of the Bible, or the waters of space, etc. Many philosophers of antiquity considered it futile to speculate upon that which is ex hypothesi beyond the understanding of the human mind, confessedly finite in function and range. For whatever the human mind can shape or figurate to itself as a concept must be de facto finite in itself, however great or grand. Infinite was never used as a synonym for deity or any divine being, for however immense in its incomprehensible vastness in both time and space, it could be nevertheless only finite, for the human mind itself had given birth to the human thought, and the human mind is finite.
influences philosophers and ecclesiastics. His cor¬
In Germany, the movement was initiated by G. W. Leibniz whose writings reveal another motive for the cult of pure reason, i.e. the deep disappointment with the Reformation and the bloody religious wars among Christians who were accused of having forfeited the confidence of man in revealed religion. Hence the outstanding part played by the philosophers of ''natural law", Grotius, S. Pufendorf, and Chr. Thomasius, their theme being advanced by the contributions to a "natural religion" and tolerance by Chr. Wolff, G. E. Lessing, G. Herder, and the Prussian king Frederik II. Fr. v. Schiller's lyric and dramas served as a powerful commendation of ideal freedom, liberty, justice, and humanity. A group of educators (philanthropists) designed new methods and curricula for the advancement of public education, many of them, eg. Pestalozzi, Basedow, Cooper, A. H. Francke, and Fr. A. Wolf, the father of classic humanism, having achieved international recognition. Although in general agreement with th philosophical axioms of foreign enlighteners, the German philosophy decidedly opposed the English sensism (Hume) and French scepticism, and reached its height in Kant's Critiques. The radical rationalism, however, combined with its animosity against religion, brought about strong philosophical, theological, and literal opposition (Hamann, Jacobi, Lavater) which eventually led to its defeat. The ideals of the enlightenment period, the impassioned zeal for the materialization of the ideal man in an ideal society show clearly that it was basically related to the Renaissance and its continuation. See Aufklärung. Cf. J. G. Hibben, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 1910. -- S.v.F.
In Greek philosophers The exercise of nous, or reason, the activity of intellectual apprehension and intuitive thought. See Nous; Aristotelianism. -- G.RM.
In regard to Jehovah: “Jehovah was a substitute for purposes of an exoteric national faith, and had no importance or reality in the eyes of the erudite priests and philosophers — the Sadducees, the most refined as the most learned of all the Israelite sects, who stand as a living proof with their contemptuous rejection of every belief, save the Law” (SD 2:472-3).
In respect to the field of ethics in general, Soviet philosophers have lately been developing the doctrine known as socialist or proletarian humanism. As distinguished from "bourgeois humanism", this term signifies that system of social institutions and personal values designed to insure that there be no underprivileged gioup or class de facto excluded from full participation in the good life conceived in terms of the educational and cultural development of the individual and the full enjoyment of the things of this world. Such objectives, it is held, are only possible of attainment in a classless society where there is economic security for all. The view taken is that the freedoms and liberties proclaimed by "bourgeois humanism" represented a great historical advance, but one that was, in general, limited in application to the emancipation of the bourgeoisie (q.v.) from the restrictions of feudalism while retaining and making use, to greater or lesser extent, of slavery, serfdom and a system of private capitalism invoking the precarious economic existence and cultural darkness of large proletarian masses. While it is held that there is an absolute light binding upon all, vaguely expressed in such formulations as, each for all and all for each, it is asserted that in class society, the position and class interest of one class may motivate it to oppose a genuine application of this right, whereas the class interest of another class may coincide with such an application. It is held that the proletariat is in this latter position, for its class interest as well as its moral obligation is considered to be in abolishing itself as a proletariat, which is taken to mean, abolishing classes generally.
In the distant past the sacred and secret language possessed by all schools of occult philosophers was spoken all over the civilized portions of the globe. This language included not merely the speech but the various forms of the written alphabets employed to imbody it. The devanagari (god-city script), of which modern Hindu devanagari is the lineal descendant, was then the favorite alphabetic form, in which the sacred language was imbodied when used by initiates. It then was used almost exclusively by the central seat of occult learning of the time. (cf 5 Years of Theosophy 423).
In the Hindu zodiac the sixth sign is also named the Virgin, Kanya and is presided over by Karttikeya, the god of war. Subba Row says that Kanya represents Sakti or Mahamaya, and its number six indicates that there are six primary forces in nature, which in their unity represent the astral light, this unity thus making a seventh (Theosophist Nov 1881, p. 43). To this Blavatsky added: “Even the very name of Kanya (Virgin) shows how all the ancient esoteric systems agreed in all their fundamental doctrines. The Kabalists and the Hermetic philosophers call the Astral Light the ‘heavenly or celestial Virgin.’ The Astral Light in its unity is the 7th. Hence the seven principles diffused in every unity or the 6 and one — two triangles and a crown.”
INTUITION Refers to at least causal consciousness (47:1-3). Ignorance has idiotized this originally esoteric term so as to denote emotional impulses with a faint content of the lowest mental consciousness (47:7).
It is intuition that opens up the world of ideas for us. It is a special organ of knowledge that gives us correct ideas, correct knowledge of reality. Only a few men have worked their way up through the different &
In very recent years, a new stress has been laid upon the dogmatic side of Christianity as expressed in liturgy. This has been coupled with a revived interest in Thomism, found both in older philosophers such as A. E. Taylor and in younger men like A. G. Hebert (cf. his Grace and Nature, etc.). -- W.N.P.
investigation ::: n. --> The act of investigating; the process of inquiring into or following up; research; study; inquiry, esp. patient or thorough inquiry or examination; as, the investigations of the philosopher and the mathematician; the investigations of the judge, the moralist.
Ionian or Ionic School A school of Greek philosophers of the 5th and 6th centuries BC in Ionia, considered to have been founded by Thales of Miletus (640-550 BC) and including Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, Diogenes of Apollonia, Archelaus, and Hippo. They were astronomers, geometers, and geographers who sought to explain the universe in terms of matter, movement, and force. Thales and Hippo make the cosmic element water the primordial originating element; Anaximenes and Diogenes of Apollonia make it the cosmic element air; Heraclitus, the cosmic element fire. Anaxagoras postulates a supreme hierarchical mind (nous) as imparting evolutionary form and order to chaos, the undeveloped substance of nature.
The Philosopher&
“It is a kind of cosmogony which contains all the fundamental tenets of Esoteric Cosmogenesis. Thus he says that in the beginning there was naught but limitless and boundless Space. All that lives and is, was born in it, from the ‘Principle which exists by Itself, developing Itself from Itself,’ i.e., Swabhavat. As its name is unknown and its essence is unfathomable, philosophers have called it Tao (Anima Mundi), the uncreate, unborn and eternal energy of nature, manifesting periodically. Nature as well as man when it reaches purity will reach rest, and then all become one with Tao, which is the source of all bliss and felicity. As in the Hindu and Buddhistic philosophies, such purity and bliss and immortality can only be reached through the exercise of virtue and the perfect quietude of our worldly spirit; the human mind has to control and finally subdue and even crush the turbulent action of man’s physical nature; and the sooner he reaches the required degree of moral purification, the happier he will feel” (TG 320).
It was alleged by ancient Hindu philosophers that the sun when located in this division of the zodiac is called Vishnu and relates to the 12th skandha of Bhagavata (12 Signs of the Zodiac). In other respects, Scorpio is intimately and even causatively connected with the human organs of reproduction and their functioning, because it is a spiritually and otherwise productive and generative sign — functions which are primordially spiritual and which therefore have their reflection in all the lower hierarchical ranges emanating from the original spiritual productive power. Although Vishnu in other senses is looked upon as the sustainer or continuer, this is achieved by a constant efflux of productive or generative energy from the original cosmic power.
Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich: (1743-1819) German philosopher of "feeling" who opposed the Kantian tradition. He held that the system of absolute subjective idealism, to which he reduced Kant, could not grasp ultimate reality. He was equally opposed to a dogmatic rationalism such as the Spinozistic. He based his view upon feeling, belief or faith by which he purported to find truth as immediately revealed in consciousness. Main works: Ueber die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an Moses Mendelsohn, 1785; David Hume über den Glauben, 1787; Sendschreiben an Fichte, 1799. -- L.E.D.
Jaimini (Sanskrit) Jaimini Celebrated sage and philosopher of antiquity, pupil of Vyasa, to whom the Sama-Veda was transmitted by his teacher (Bh-P 1.4.21). The founder of the Purva-Mimansa or Karma-Mimansa system — one of the six Darsanas or schools of Hindu philosophy.
J. L. Coolidge, A History of Geometrical Methods, New York, 1940. Mathesis universalis: Universal mathematics. One major part of Leibniz's program for logic was the development of a universal mathematics or universal calculus for manipulating, i.e. performing deductions in, the universal language (characteristica universalis). This universal language, he thought, could be constructed on the basis of a relatively few simple terms and, when constructed, would be of immense value to scientists and philosophers in reasoning as well as in communication. Leibniz's studies on the subject of a universal mathematics are the starting point in modern philosophy of the development of symbolic, mathematical logic. -- F.L.W.
Jnana (Sanskrit) Jñāna [from the verbal root jñā to know, have knowledge, understand] Intelligence, understanding, knowledge; the old philosophers said that parabrahman is not jnata (known), not jnana (knowledge), and not jneya (that which may be known), nevertheless parabrahman is the one source of which these three modes of understanding are manifestations.
Jnana: (Skr.) Cognition, knowledge, wisdom, philosophic understanding, insight, believed by some Indian philosophers to effect moksa (q.v.). -- K.F.L.
JNānasrīmitra. (T. Ye shes dpal bshes gnyen) Late Indian YOGĀCĀRA philosopher and logician of the school of DHARMAKĪRTI at VIKRAMAsĪLA monastery, born between 975 and 1000. Within the Yogācāra, he held the so-called "aspectarian" (SĀKĀRA) position regarding the nature of cognition, taking a position opposed to that of RATNĀKARAsĀNTI. He is credited as the author of twelve treatises, including an important work on APOHA, the Apohaprakarana. In his works on logic, he upholds the interpretation of DHARMAKĪRTI by PRAJNĀKARAGUPTA against the interpretation by DHARMOTTARA.
John Dewey prefers to call his philosophy experimentalism, or even instrumentalism, but the public continues to regard him as the leading exponent of pragmatism. Dewey's pragmatism (like that of Peirce and James), is (1) a theory of meaning, and of truth or "warranted assertibihty", and (2) a body of fairly flexible philosophical doctrines. The connection between (1) and (2) requires analysis. Joseph Ratner (editor of volumes of Dewey's philosophy), claims that if Dewey's analysis of experimentalism is accepted almost everything that is fundamental in his philosophy follows (Intelligence in the Modern World, John Dewey's Philosophy, ed. Joseph Ratner, N. Y., 1939), but on the other hand it might also be claimed that Dewey's method, whatever name is given to it, can be practiced by philosophers who have important doctrinal differences.
Joseph, Albo: (1380-1444) Jewish philosopher. His Ikkarim, i.e., Dogmas is devoted primarily to the problem of dogmatics. He differs with Maimonides who fixed the Articles of Creed at thirteen, and posits only three fundamental dogmas. Belief in the existence of God; Divine origin of the Torah; Reward and punishment. The others are of secondary importance. See Jewish Philosophy. -- M. W.
Ju: Confucianists. Scholars who were versed in the six arts, namely, the rules of propriety, music, archery, charioteering, writing, and mathematics. Priest-teachers in the Chou period (1122-249 B.C.) who clung to the dying culture of Shang (1765-1122 B.C.), observed Shang rules of conduct, became specialists on social decorum and religious rites. --W.T.C. Ju chia: The Confucian School, which "delighted in the study of the six Classics and paid attention to matters concerning benevolence and righteousness. They regarded Yao and Shun (mythological emperors) as founders whose example is to be followed, King Wen (1184-1135 B.C.?) and King Wu (1121-1116 B.C.?) as illustrious examples, and honored Confucius (551-479 B.C.) as the exalted teacher to give authority to their teaching." "As to the forms of proper conduct which they set up for prince and minister, for father and son, or the distinctions they make between husband and wife and between old and young, in these not even the opposition of all other philosophers can make any change."
Justin Martyr: (c. 100-160) A prominent Christian Apologist, who taught that Divine truth appears in two forms, first, in man's power of reasoning, and second, in special revelation expressed by philosophers, prophets, and especially Christ. Cf. Justin's Apologia. -- R.B.W.
Kaf, Kaph, Ghaf (Persian) Kāf, Kaph, Ghāf, Kaofa (Avestan) Kaofā, Kafor (Pahlavi) Mountain; in Persian tradition the sacred mythological mountain, comparable in many respects to the Hindu Mount Meru; regarded as the abode of the gods and the place whither heroes travel in order to reach the sacred land beyond these mountains. Hushenk, the hero, rode there on his twelve-legged horse, while Tahmurath went on his winged steed. It is the abode of Simorgh or Angha, the legendary bird of knowledge. In the “Aghre-Sorkh” (Red Intellect) of 12th century mystic philosopher Sohrevardi, Ghaf is referred to as the abode of intellect, surrounding the world with eleven peaks that only initiates can pass through. He says that the Night-Lightener Jewel (Gohar-e-Shab Afrooz) can be found in Mount Ghaf. This jewel receives its brilliance from the tree of Touba which is on Mount Ghaf.
Kalanos: (Grecized from Skr. kalyana) A Hindu philosopher who lived at the court of Alexander the Great while in India and finally mounted his own funeral pile. -- K.F.L.
kantian ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher; conformed or relating to any or all of the philosophical doctrines of Immanuel Kant. ::: n. --> A follower of Kant; a Kantist.
Kanya (Sanskrit) Kanyā Virgin; the sixth zodiacal sign, Virgo, which may represent mahamaya or sakti. The saktis or six primary forces in nature (parasakti, jnanasakti, ichchhasakti, kriyasakti, kundalinisakti, and mantrikasakti) together are represented by the astral light, called the heavenly or celestial Virgin by Kabalists and Hermetic philosophers.
Khadomas (Tibetan) mkha’ ’gro ma (kha-do-ma) [from mkha’ sky + ’gro going + ma female] Equivalent of Sanskrit dakini; in popular Tibetan folklore, deities having feminine characteristics, and hence often styled mothers, although regarded as demons. Blavatsky states that they are elementals, “occult and evil Forces of Nature,” and that Lilith is the Jewish equivalent: “Allegorical legends call the chief of these Liliths, Sangye Khado (Buddha Dakini, in Sanskrit); all are credited with the art of ‘walking in the air,’ and the greatest kindness to mortals; but no mind — only animal instinct” (TG 177; SD 2:285). Thus the khado or khadoma are equivalent to one of the classes of nature spirits recognized by the medieval Fire-philosophers.
Kierkegaard, Soren (1813-1855) ::: Christian philosopher; author of Fear and Trembling (1843); a meditation on the Binding of Isaac; Denmark.
K = The Knowledge of Reality
P = The Philosopher&
KNOWLEDGE, HYLOZOIC THEORY OF As regards the theory of knowledge, everything is above all what it appears to be: physical material reality, but beside that always something totally different and immensely more. K 1.4.3, 4.1.1
In the main, there are three totally different kinds of so-called theory of knowledge; that of Western ignorance of life, Indian illusionist philosophy (advaita), and hylozoics, respectively.
The Western theory is either the usual agnostic or skeptical physicalism that denies the existence of anything that cannot be ascertained by everybody, and regards consciousness as a quality of organic matter; or philosophic subjectivism that attributes man's different kinds of consciousness to a fictitious immaterial or
spiritual world of consciousness.
The advaita philosophy makes the cardinal mistake of judging reality in one world from the apprehension of reality in another world, and therefore arrives at nothing but absurdities. The apprehension of reality in world 45, for example, is logically impossible to both 47- selves and 43-selves. The philosophers must learn to let &
Kook, Abraham Isaac (1865-1935) ::: Philosopher; first chief rabbi for Ashkenazim in British Mandatory Palestine.
Korn's philosophy represents an attack against naive and dogmatic positivism, but admits and even assimilates an element of Positivism which Korn calls Native Argentinian Positivism. Alejandro Korn may be called The Philosopher of Freedom. In fact, freedom is the keynote of his thought. He speaks of Human liberty as the indissoluble union of economic and ethical liberties. The free soul's knowledge of the world of science operates mainly on the basis of intuition. In fact, intuition is the basis of all knowledge. "Necessity of the objective world order", "Freedom of the spirit in the subjective realm", "Identity", 'Purpose", "Unity of Consciousness", and other similar concepts, are "expressions of immediate evidence and not conclusions of logical dialectics". The experience of freedom, according to Korn, leads to the problem of evaluation, which he defines as "the human response to a fact", whether the fact be an object or an event. Valuation is an experience which grows out of the struggle for liberty. Values, therefore, are relative to the fields of experience in which valuation takes place. The denial of an absolute value or values, does not signify the exclusion of personal faith. On the contrary, personal, faith is the common ground and point of departure of knowledge and action. See Latin-American Philosophy. -- J.A.F.
Kyoto school. An influential school of modern and contemporary Japanese philosophy that is closely associated with philosophers from Kyoto University; it combines East Asian and especially MAHĀYĀNA Buddhist thought, such as ZEN and JoDO SHINSHu, with modern Western and especially German philosophy and Christian thought. NISHIDA KITARo (1870-1945), Tanabe Hajime (1885-1962), and NISHITANI KEIJI (1900-1991) are usually considered to be the school's three leading figures. The name "Kyoto school" was coined in 1932 by Tosaka Jun (1900-1945), a student of Nishida and Tanabe, who used it pejoratively to denounce Nishida and Tanabe's "Japanese bourgeois philosophy." Starting in the late 1970s, Western scholars began to research the philosophical insights of the Kyoto school, and especially the cross-cultural influences with Western philosophy. During the 1990s, the political dimensions of the school have also begun to receive scholarly attention. ¶ Although the school's philosophical perspectives have developed through mutual criticism between its leading figures, the foundational philosophical stance of the Kyoto school is considered to be based on a shared notion of "absolute nothingness." "Absolute nothingness" was coined by Nishida Kitaro and derives from a putatively Zen and PURE LAND emphasis on the doctrine of emptiness (suNYATĀ), which Kyoto school philosophers advocated was indicative of a distinctive Eastern approach to philosophical inquiry. This Eastern emphasis on nothingness stood in contrast to the fundamental focus in Western philosophy on the ontological notion of "being." Nishida Kitaro posits absolute nothingness topologically as the "site" or "locale" (basho) of nonduality, which overcomes the polarities of subject and object, or noetic and noematic. Another major concept in Nishida's philosophy is "self-awareness" (jikaku), a state of mind that transcends the subject-object bifurcation, which was initially adopted from William James' (1842-1910) notion of "pure experience" (J. junsui keiken); this intuition reveals a limitless, absolute reality that has been described in the West as God or in the East as emptiness. Tanabe Hajime subsequently criticized Nishida's "site of absolute nothingness" for two reasons: first, it was a suprarational religious intuition that transgresses against philosophical reasoning; and second, despite its claims to the contrary, it ultimately fell into a metaphysics of being. Despite his criticism of what he considered to be Nishida's pseudoreligious speculations, however, Tanabe's Shin Buddhist inclinations later led him to focus not on Nishida's Zen Buddhist-oriented "intuition," but instead on the religious aspect of "faith" as the operative force behind other-power (TARIKI). Inspired by both Nishida and such Western thinkers as Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1327), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) (with whom he studied), Nishitani Keiji developed the existential and phenomenological aspects of Nishida's philosophy of absolute nothingness. Concerned with how to reach the place of absolute nothingness, given the dilemma of, on the one hand, the incessant reification and objectification by a subjective ego and, on the other hand, the nullification of reality, he argued for the necessity of overcoming "nihilism." The Kyoto school thinkers also played a central role in the development of a Japanese political ideology around the time of the Pacific War, which elevated the Japanese race mentally and spiritually above other races and justified Japanese colonial expansion. Their writings helped lay the foundation for what came to be called Nihonjinron, a nationalist discourse that advocated the uniqueness and superiority of the Japanese race; at the same time, however, Nishida also resisted tendencies toward fascism and totalitarianism in Japanese politics. Since the 1990s, Kyoto school writings have come under critical scrutiny in light of their ties to Japanese exceptionalism and pre-war Japanese nationalism. These political dimensions of Kyoto school thought are now considered as important for scholarly examination as are its contributions to cross-cultural, comparative philosophy.
Lachelier, J.: (1831-1918) A French philosopher who, though he wrote little, exerted a considerable direct personal influence on his students at the Ecole Normale Superieure; he was the teacher of both E. Boutroux and H. Bergson. His philosophical position was a Kantian idealism modified by the French "spiritualism" of Maine de Biran and Ravaisson.
Land of the Eternal Sun From immemorial time mystics and occult philosophers have consistently taught of the existence of a land where the sunshine is perpetual, the abode of the gods whose particular function it is to oversee the destinies, not only of mankind, but of other hierarchical groups occupying the earth. Any attempt to fix a geographical locality as this land of the eternal sun has never been successful, for it is no geographical locality, but a region mystically said to be at the top of Mount Meru or the north pole of the earth.
Lapis philosophorum: Latin for Philosopher’s Stone (q.v.).
Lapis Philosophorum. See PHILOSOPHER’s STONE
laputan ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Laputa, an imaginary flying island described in Gulliver&
Leibniz, Gottfried Withelm: (1646-1716) Born in Leipzig, where his father was a professor in the university, he was educated at Leipzig, Jena, and Altdorf University, where he obtained his doctorate. Jurist, mathematician, diplomat, historian, theologian of no mean proportions, he was Germany's greatest 17th century philosopher and one of the most universal minds of all times. In Paris, then the centre of intellectual civilization (Moliere was still alive, Racine at the height of his glory), where he had been sent on an official mission of state, he met Arnauld, a disciple of Descartes who acquainted him with his master's ideas, and Huygens who taught him as to the higher forms of mathematics and their application to physical phenomena. He visited London, where he met Newton, Boyle, and others. At the Hague he came face to face with the other great philosopher of the time, Spinoza. One of Leibniz's cherished ideas was the creation of a society of scholars for the investigation of all branches of scientific truth to combine them into one great system of truth. His philosophy, the work "of odd moments", bears, in content and form, the impress of its haphazard origin and its author's cosmopolitan mode of large number of letters, essays, memoranda, etc., published in various scientific journals. Universality and individuality characterize him both as a man and philosopher.
Lenin, V. I.: (Ulianov, Vladimir Ilyich) Lenin is generally regarded as the chief exponent of dialectical materialism (q.v.) after Marx and Engels. He was born April 22, 1870, in Simbirsk, Russia, and received the professional training of a lawyer. A Marxist from his student days onward, he lived many years outside of Russia as a political refugee, and read widely in the social sciences and philosophy. In the latter field his "Philosophical Note Books" (as yet untranslated into English) containing detailed critical comments on the works of many leading philosophers, ancient and modern, and in particular on Hegel, indicate his close study of texts. In 1909, Lenin published his best known philosophic work "Materialism and Empirio-Cnticism" which was directed against "a number of writers, would-be Marxists" including Bazarov, Bogdanov, Lunacharsky, Berman, Helfond, Yushkevich, Suvorov and Valentinov, and especially against a symposium of this group published under the title, "Studies in the Philosophy of Marxism" which in general adopted the "positivistic" position of Mach and Avenanus.
liar paradox "philosophy" A sentence which asserts its own falsity, e.g. "This sentence is false" or "I am lying". These paradoxical assertions are meaningless in the sense that there is nothing in the world which could serve to either support or refute them. Philosophers, of course, have a great deal more to say on the subject. ["The Liar: an Essay on Truth and Circularity", Jon Barwise and John Etchemendy, Oxford University Press (1987). ISBN 0-19-505944-1 (PBK), Library of Congress BC199.P2B37]. (1995-02-22)
liar paradox ::: (philosophy) A sentence which asserts its own falsity, e.g. This sentence is false or I am lying. These paradoxical assertions are meaningless support or refute them. Philosophers, of course, have a great deal more to say on the subject.[The Liar: an Essay on Truth and Circularity, Jon Barwise and John Etchemendy, Oxford University Press (1987). ISBN 0-19-505944-1 (PBK), Library of Congress BC199.P2B37]. (1995-02-22)
Li hsueh: The Rational Philosophy or the Reason School of the Sung dynasty (960-1279) which insisted on Reason or Law (li) as the basis of reality, including such philosophers as Chou Lien-hsi (1017-1073), Shao K'ang-chieh (1011-1077), Chang Heng-ch'u (1020-1077), Ch'eng I-ch'uan (1033-1107), Ch'eng Ming-tao (1032-1086), Chu Hsi (1130-1200), and Lu Hsiang-shan (1139-1193). It is also called Hsing-li Hsueh (Philosophy of the Nature and Reason) and Sung Hsueh (Philosophy of the Sung Dynasty). Often the term includes the idealistic philosophy of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), including Wang Yang-ming (1473-1529), sometimes called Hsin Hsueh (Philosophy of Mind). Often it also includes the philosophy of the Ch'ing dynasty (1644-1911), called Tao Hsueh, including such philosophers as Yen Hsi-chai (1635-1704) and Tai Tung-yuan (1723-1777). For a summary of the Rational Philosophy, see Chinese philosophy. For its philosophy of Reason (li), vital force (ch'i), the Great Ultimate (T'ai Chi), the passive and active principles (yin yang), the nature of man and things (hsing), the investigation of things to the utmost (ch'iung li), the extension of knowledge (chih chih), and its ethics of true manhood or love (jen), seriousness (ching) and sincerity (ch'eng), see articles on these topics. -- W.T.C.
li. (J. ri; K. i 理). In Chinese, "principle"; the fundamental "principle," general "pattern," or innate "quality" that governs reality. (The antiquated English rendering of li as "noumenon" is weighted down with Kantian connotations that are inappropriate in an East Asian philosophical context and is best avoided.) In ancient China, the term li was originally used as a noun to indicate the natural patterns that occurred on a piece of jade, although it could also be used as a verb referring to the carving that transforms a piece of raw jade into a refined cultural object. The term soon came to refer to the inner or outer patterns inherent in any kind of physical object. For example, in the section on "Jielao" ("Explaining Lao[zi]") from the Hanfeizi, compiled during the late second century BCE, li refers to either an object's overt quality or its hidden disposition to manifest certain qualities at a given time. XUANXUE (Dark Learning) scholars from the Wei-Jin period were among the first intellectuals to use the term in a philosophically meaningful way. In particular, Wang Bi (226-249) employed li as a synonym for his ontological concept of WU (nonbeing) to refer to a metaphysical principle that underlies all phenomena. Such usages of the term influenced early Buddhist thinkers in China. DAOSHENG (355-434), e.g., regarded li as an immutable, ultimate principle, often using it as a synonym for the buddha-nature (FOXING) or the true self (zhenwo). During the Tang dynasty, Huayan Buddhism (HUAYAN ZONG) employed the term in a philosophically sophisticated manner, although with varying meanings. For DUSHUN, the putative founder of the Huayan school, li represents not a substance or thing but, instead, a proposition that expresses the true identity of the phenomenal world. For example, li could refer to the principle that all phenomena (SHI) are empty (suNYATĀ), a proposition that is only understandable through practice. His successors in the Huayan school, such as FAZANG and CHENGGUAN, imbued the term with additional ontological connotations. Fazang identified li with the mind as suchness (TATHATĀ; BHuTATATHATĀ) described in the DASHENG QIXIN LUN ("Awakening of Faith According to the Mahāyāna"), which he considered to be synonymous with the TATHĀGATAGARBHA. Developing on Fazang's thought, Chengguan viewed li as the essential quality that pervades all four realms of reality (DHARMADHĀTU; SI FAJIE). During the Song dynasty, Neo-Confucian philosophers reinterpreted the term to fit a Confucian philosophical context. They interpreted li as an inherent principle within things that makes them what they are; when applied to human beings, li thus refers to the four inner moral essences of humaneness, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom. Some aspects of these Neo-Confucian interpretations of the term li appear in the writings of such Song-dynasty Chan masters as DAHUI ZONGGAO.
Lipps, Theodor: (1851-1914) Eminent German philosopher and psychologist. The study of optical illusions led him to his theory of empathy. Starts with the presupposition that every aesthetic object represents a living being, and calls the psychic state which we experience when we project ourselves into the life of such an object, an empathy (Einfühlung) or "fellow-feeling". He applied this principle consistently to all the arts. The empathic act is not simply kinaesthetic inference but has exclusively objective reference. Being a peculiar source of knowledge about other egos, it is a blend of inference and intuition. Main works: Psychol. Studien, 1885; Grundzüge d. Logik, 1893; Die ethische Grundfragen, 1899; Aesthetik, 2 vols., 1903-06; Philos. u. Wirklichkeit, 1908; Psychol. Untersuch., 2 vols., 1907-12. -- H.H.
Madhva: An Indian dualistic philosopher of the 13th century A.D., a Vedantist and Vishnuite who held that world and soul, as well as the highest reality are entities different in their essence, and non-commutable. -- K.F.L.
magi ::: n. pl. --> A caste of priests, philosophers, and magicians, among the ancient Persians; hence, any holy men or sages of the East.
Magi: The “Wise Ones,” philosophers, astrologers and priests of ancient Persia, expounders of Zoroastrian wisdom. Their name is the root of the words magic, magician, etc.
Magnum Opus (Latin) The great work; in medieval and modern times an alchemical term for the making of the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life; an achievement which, as with alchemy generally, may be regarded as being accomplished either in the laboratory of human nature among the elements of man’s constitution, or in a brick and mortar laboratory with chemicals.
Maimon, Moses ben: (better known as Maimonides) (Abu Imram Musa Ibn Maimun Ibn Abdallah) (1135-1204) Talmud commentator and leading Jewish philosopher during the Middle Ages. Born in Cordova, left Spain and migrated to Palestine in 1165 and ultimately 1160, settled in Fez, N. Africa, whence he settled in Fostat, Egypt. His Guide for the Perplexed (More Nebukim in Heb.; Dalalat al-hairin, in Arab.) contains the summa of Jewish philosophic thought up to his time. It is written in the spirit of Aristotelianism and is divided into three parts. The first is devoted to the problems of Biblical anthropomorphisms, Divine attributes, and exposition and criticism of the teachings of the Kalam; the second to the proof of the existence of God, matter and form, creatio de novo, and an exposition of prophecy; the third to God and the world including problems of providence, evil, prescience and freedom of the will, teleology, and rationality of the precepts of the Torah. Maimonides exerted great influence not only on the course of subsequent Jewish speculation but also on the leaders of the thirteenth century scholastic philosophy, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. -- M.W.
Maine de Biran, F. P. Gonthier: (1766-1824) French philosopher and psychologist, who revolted against the dominant sensationalistic and materialistic psychology of Condlllac and Cabanis and developed, under the influence of Kant and Fichte, an idealistic and voluntaristic psychology. The mind directly experiences the activity of its will and at the same time the resistance offered to it by the "non-moi." Upon this basis, Maine de Biran erected his metaphysics which interprets the conceptions of force, substance, cause, etc. in terms of the directly experienced activity of the will. This system of psychology and metaphysics, which came to be known as French spiritualism, exerted considerable influence on Cousin, Ravaisson and Renouvier. His writings include: De la Decomposition de la Pensee (1805); Les Rapports du Physique et du Moral de l'Homme (1834); Essai sur les Fondements de la Psychologie (1812); Oeuvres Philosophiques, ed. by V. Cousin (1841). -- L.W.
Many-valued logic: See propositional calculus, many-valued. Marburg School: Founded by Herman Cohen (1842-1918) and Paul Natorp (1854-1924) and supported by Ernst Cassirer (1874-), the noteworthy historian of philosophy, and Rudolf Stammler (1856-1938), the eminent legal philosopher, the school revived a specialized tendency of critical idealism. Stress is laid on the a priori, non-empirical, non-psychological and purely logical of every certain knowledge. Cohen and Natorp register an emphatic opposition to psychologism, and sought to construct a system upon pure thought on the basis of Kant and the Kantian reconstruction of Platonism. The logical and a priori in aesthetics, ethics, psychology and law is, being also independent of experience, the essential basis of these fields. Cf. Natorp, Kant u.d. Marburger Schule, 1915. -- H.H.
Marx, Karl: Karl Heinrich Marx was born on the 5 May 1818. He was a philosopher and revolutionary who is renowned for his communist ideology. He believed that capitalism would, after a revolution, be replaced by a classless communist society. Alongside Engels, Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto in 1848. Marx died on 14 March 1883. See Marxism.
mastery ::: n. --> The position or authority of a master; dominion; command; supremacy; superiority.
Superiority in war or competition; victory; triumph; preeminence.
Contest for superiority.
A masterly operation; a feat.
Specifically, the philosopher&
Materialism In the rigid philosophical sense, any theory which considers the facts of the universe to be sufficiently explained by the existence and nature of matter. A familiar form of this is what has been called the atomo-mechanical theory, which derives all phenomena from the movements of material atoms in space. The philosophical definition of materialism differs according to the meaning of the word matter; as for instance, when we limit matter by no physical attributes or implications alone, but see in it the sevenfold prakritis or pradhanas of Hindu philosophers and mystics, matter is then seen to be but a name for the veil or shadow of spirit — the other side of spirit as it were. This distinction makes materialism but a synonym for spiritualism — i.e., the profound philosophic theory that the universe is built throughout, from and of the substances and attributes of spirit, which become matter in its innumerable and manifold forms and phases on the lower cosmic planes. What physicists have been calling matter is a percept derived from the interaction of the physical senses with the physical plane of prakriti or nature.
Matter: That the defining characteristic of which is extension, occupancy of space, mass, weight, motion, movability, inertia, resistance, impenetrability, attraction and repulsion, or their combinations; these characteristics or powers themselves; the extra-mental cause of sense experience; what composes the "sensible world"; the manipulate; the permanent (or relatively so); the public (accessible to more than one knower, non-pn'vate); the physical or non-mental; the physical, bodily, or non-spiritual; the relatively worthless or base; the inanimate; the worldly or natural (non-supernatural); the wholly or relatively indeterminate; potentiality for receiving form or what has that potentiality; that which in union with form constitutes an individual; differentiating content as against form; the particular as against the universal; the manifold of sensation; the given element in experience as against that supplied by mind; that of which something consists; that from which a thing develops or is made; the first existent or primordial stuff; what is under consideration. Philosophers conceive matter as appearance or privation of reality, as one or the only reality; as the principle of imperfection and limitation, as potentially or sometimes good; as substance, process, or content; as points, atoms, substrata, or other media endowed with powers mentioned above. -- M.T.K.
Mendelsohn, Moses: (1729-1786) A German Jewish popular philosopher, holding an admired position in German literature. He was the first to advocate the social emancipation of the Jews, to plead in Germany for the separation of the Church and the State and for freedom of belief and conscience. He is philosrohically best known for his adduced proofs of the immortality of the soul and of the existence of a personal God. Schriften z. Philos., Aesthetik u. Apologetik (ed. Brasch, 1880). -- H.H.
“Men have not learnt yet to recognise the Inconscient on which the whole material world they see is built, or the Ignorance of which their whole nature including their knowledge is built; they think that these words are only abstract metaphysical jargon flung about by the philosophers in their clouds or laboured out in long and wearisome books like The Life Divine.
Mo chia: The School of Mo Tzu (Moh Tzu, Mo Ti, between 500 and 396 B.C.) and his followers. This utilitarian and scientific minded philosopher, whose doctrines are embodied in Mo Tzu, advocated: "benefit" (li), or the promotion of general welfare and removal of evil, through the increase of population and of benevolence and righteousness toward this practical objective, the elimination of war, and the suppression of wasteful musical events and elaborate funerals; "universal love" (chien ai), or treating others, their families, and their countries as one's own, to the end that the greatest amount of benefit will be realized; agreement with the superiors (shang t'ung); a method of reasoning which involves a foundation, a survey, and application (san piao); the belief in Heaven and the spirits both as a religious sanction of governmental measures and as an effective way of promotion of peace and welfare. For the development of his teachings by his followers, see Mo che. -- W.T.C.
Morals, Morality ::: What is the basis of morals? This is the most important question that can be asked of any system ofthought. Is morality based on the dicta of man? Is morality based on the conviction in most men's heartsthat for human safety it is necessary to have certain abstract rules which it is merely convenient tofollow? Are we mere opportunists? Or is morality, ethics, based on truth, which it is not merelyexpedient for man to follow, but necessary? Surely upon the latter! Morals is right conduct based uponright views, right thinking.In the third fundamental postulate of The Secret Doctrine [1:17] we find the very elements, the veryfundamentals, of a system of morality greater than which, profounder than which, more persuasive thanwhich, perhaps, it would be impossible to imagine anything.On what, then, is morality based? And by morality is not meant merely the opinion which somepseudo-philosophers have, that morality is more or less that which is "good for the community," based onthe mere meaning of the Latin word mores, "good customs," as opposed to bad. No! Morality is thatinstinctive hunger of the human heart to do righteousness, to do good to every man because it is good andsatisfying and ennobling to do so.When man realizes that he is one with all that is, inwards and outwards, high and low; that he is one withall, not merely as members of a community are one, not merely as individuals of an army are one, butlike the molecules of our own flesh, like the atoms of the molecule, like the electrons of the atom,composing one unity -- not a mere union but a spiritual unity -- then he sees truth. (See also Ethics)
MORALS The terms morals (from Latin) and ethics (from Greek) through ignorance&
More, Paul Elmer: An American literary critic and philosopher (1864-1937), who after teaching at Bryn Mawr and other colleges, edited The Nation for several years before retiring to lecture at Princeton University and write The Greek Tradition, a series of books in which he argues for orthodox Christianity on the basis of the Platonic dualism of mind-body, matter-spirit, God-man. In The Sceptical Approach to Religion he gave his final position, as ethical theism grounded on man's sense of the good and consciousness of purpose, and validated by the Incarnation of God in Christ. -- W.N.P.
Most of the basic problems and theories of cosmology seem to have been discussed by the pre-Socratic philosophers. Their views are modified and expanded in the Timaeus of Plato, and rehearsed and systematized in Aristotle's Physics. Despite multiple divergencies, all these Greek philosophers seem to be largely agreed that the universe is limited in space, has neither a beginning nor end in time, is dominated by a set of unalterable laws, and has a definite and recurring rhythm. The cosmology of the Middle Ages diverges from the Greek primarily through the introduction of the concepts of divine creation and annihilation, miracle and providence. In consonance with the tendencies of the new science, the cosmologies of Descartes, Leibniz and Newton bring the medieval views into closer harmony with those of the Greeks. The problems of cosmology were held to be intrinsically insoluble by Kant. After Kant there was a tendency to merge the issues of cosmology with those of metaphysics. The post-Kantians attempted to deal with both in terms of more basic principles and a more flexible dialectic, their opponents rejected both as without significance or value. The most radical modern cosmology is that of Peirce with its three cosmic principles of chance, law and continuity; the most recent is that of Whitehead, which finds its main inspiration in Plato's Timaeus.
Muni: (Skr.) A philosopher, sage, especially one who has taken upon himself observance of silence. -- K.F.L.
Münsterberg, Hugo: (1863-1916) German-born philosopher and psychologist, for many years professor of psychology at Harvard University. One of the advance guard of present axiological development, he is affiliated with the ideological criticism stemming from Fichte. Agrees that pure reason is endowed with a priori principles which enable it to achieve objective super-individual affirmations which transcend and which can neither be confirmed nor denied by psychological investigation. Main works: Der Ursprung d. Sittlichkeit, 1889; Beiträge z. Experim. Psychol., 1889-92; Psychol. u. Lehre, 1906; Philos. der Werte, 1908 (Eng. tr. The External Values); Grundzüge d. Psychotechnik, 1914. -- H.H.
Mysteria Specialia [from mysteria mystery + specialia particular, specific] Particular mystery; used by European Medieval alchemico-mystical philosophers, such as Paracelsus. Mysterium is used by Paracelsus to denote the germinal state of a being, which is afterwards produced in the differentiated state; thus the seed is the mysterium of the future plant. Specialia implies that each organism pre-exists in its own special mysterium. Thus is indicated an intermediate state of differentiation, between the condition of undifferentiated chaos and that of separate and developed organisms.
...Nanael, influences philosophers [205]
Natura Non Facit Saltum (Latin) Nature makes no leap, nature does not go by jumps; used by biological evolutionists, especially Darwin, to denote the uniformity and unbroken continuity of natural processes of physical transformation. In this respect Darwin seems to have been a philosopher and idealist, since here he was trying to find factual evidence for an idea which he felt to be true, rather than making inferences from facts as observed. His difficulty in finding that evidence is well known. Since there is continuous development throughout nature, we infer that the hypothesis of separate organisms is an incomplete picture of reality. It will never be easy to explain how things are linked with one another, so long as we begin with the false assumption that they are radically separate.
Nature Philosophers: Name given to pre-Socratic "physiologers" and to Renaissance philosophers who revived the study of physical processes. Early in the 16th century, as a result of the discovery of new lands, the revival of maritime trade, and the Reformation, there appeared in Europe a renewed interest in nature. Rationalism grown around the authorities of the Bible and Aristotle was challenged and the right to investigate phenomena was claimed. Interest in nature was directed at first toward the starry heaven and resulted in important discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler. The scientific spirit of observation and research had not yet matured, however, and the philosophers of that time blended their interest in facts with much loose speculation. Among the nature philosophers of that period three deserve to be mentioned specifically, Telesio, Bruno and Carnpanella, all natives of Southern Italy. Despite his assertions that thought should be guided by the observation of the external world, Bernardino Telesio (1508-1588) confined his works to reflections on the nature of things. Particularly significant are two of his doctrines, first, that the universe must be described in terms of matter and force, the latter classified as heat and cold, and second, that mind is akin to matter. Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), a Dominican monk and a victim of the Inquisition, was greatly influenced by the Copernican conception of the universe regarded by him as a harmonious unity of which the earth was but a small and not too important part. The concept of unity was not a condition of human search for truth but a real principle underlying all things and expressing the harmonious order of Divine wisdom. Deity, in his view, was the soul of nature, operating both in the human minds and in the motion of bodies. Consequently, both living beings and material objects must be regarded as animated. Tomaso Campanella (1568-1639), another Dominican monk, was also persecuted for his teachings and spent 27 years in prison. He contended that observations of nature were not dependent on the authority of reason and can be refuted only by other observations. His interests lay largely along the lines previously suggested by Telesio, and much of his thought was devoted to problems of mind, consciousness and knowledge. He believed that all nature was permeated by latent awareness, and may therefore be regarded as an animist or perhaps pantheist. Today, he is best known for his City of the Sun, an account of an imaginary ideal state in which existed neither property nor nobility and in which all affair were administered scientifically. -- R.B.W.
neoplatonism ::: Neoplatonism/Neo-Platonism The modern term for a school of religious and mystical philosophy which took shape in the 3rd century AD, founded by Plotinus (205270 AD), a major Greek philosopher, and based on the teachings of Plato and earlier Platonists.
Neoplatonism, Neoplatonists This famous school of Platonic theosophy originated in the 2nd century at Alexandria, with Ammonius Saccas (170-243), and was developed by his pupils, of whom Plotinus (204-270) was the outstanding philosopher and under whom Neoplatonism reached its culmination. Other famous representatives were Porphyry (the pupil of Plotinus, 233-305); Iamblichus (d. 330); Hypatia (d. 415); Synesius (378-430); Proclus (412-485); and concluding with Olympiodorus (6th century). Among other pupils of Ammonius Saccas were Longinus and Origen.
Neo-Pythagoreanism: A school of thought initiated in Alexandria, according to Cicero, by Nigidius Figulus, a Roman philosopher who died in 45 B.C. It was compounded of traditional Pythagorean teachings, various Platonic, Aristotelian and Stoic doctrines, including some mystical and theosophical elements. -- J.J.R.
nevertheless had his daimon, an attendant spirit, whose voice warned the marketplace philosopher
Nicolai, Friedrich: (1733-1811) Was one of the followers of Leibniz-Wolffian school which developed an eclectic reconciliation of rationalism and empiricism in a popular form that served to lay a foundation for the Kantian critical philosophy. -- L.E.D Nicomachus: Of Gerasa in Arabia, a Neo-Py-thagorean (q.v.) philosopher of the second century. -- M.F.
Nietzsche (1844-1900): Nineteenth-century philosopher.
Nihilism, ethical: The denial of the validity of all distinctions of moral value. As this position involves in effect the denial of possibility of all ethical philosophy, it has seldom been taken by philosophers. In the history of thought, however, a less pure ethical nihilism sometimes appears as an intermediate stage in a philosophy which wishes to deny the validity of all previous systems of value as a preliminary to substituting a new one in their places. -- F.L.W.
nominalist ::: n. --> One of a sect of philosophers in the Middle Ages, who adopted the opinion of Roscelin, that general conceptions, or universals, exist in name only.
occam "language" (Note lower case) A language based on {Anthony Hoare}'s {CSP} and {David May}'s {EPL}. Named after the English philosopher, William of Occam (1300-1349) who propounded {Occam's Razor}. The occam language was designed by David May of {INMOS} to easily describe {concurrent} processes which communicate via one-way channels. It was developed to run on the {INMOS} {transputer} but {compilers} are available for {VAX}, {Sun} and {Intel} {MDS}, inter alia. The basic entity in occam is the process of which there are four fundamental types, {assignment}, input, output, and wait. More complex processes are constructed from these using SEQ to specify sequential execution, PAR to specify parallel execution and ALT where each process is associated with an input from a channel. The process whose channel inputs first is executed. The fourth constructor is IF with a list of conditions and associated processes. The process executed is the one with the first true condition in textual order. There is no {operator precedence}. The original occam is now known as "occam 1". It was extended to {occam 2}. {Simulator for VAX (ftp://watserv1.waterloo.edu/)}. Tahoe mailing list: "occam@sutcase.case.syr.edu". [David May et al, 1982. "Concurrent algorithms"]. ["Occam", D. May, SIGPLAN Notices 18(4):69-79, 1983]. (1994-11-18)
occam ::: (language) (Note lower case) A language based on Anthony Hoare's CSP and EPL. Named after the English philosopher, William of Occam (1300-1349) who It was developed to run on the INMOS transputer but compilers are available for VAX, Sun and Intel MDS, inter alia.The basic entity in occam is the process of which there are four fundamental types, assignment, input, output, and wait. More complex processes are process executed is the one with the first true condition in textual order. There is no operator precedence.The original occam is now known as occam 1. It was extended to produce occam 2. .Tahoe mailing list: .[David May et al, 1982. Concurrent algorithms].[Occam, D. May, SIGPLAN Notices 18(4):69-79, 1983]. (1994-11-18)
Occam's Razor ::: (philosophy) The English philosopher, William of Occam (1300-1349) propounded Occam's Razor:Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.(Latin for Entities should not be multiplied more than necessary). That is, the fewer assumptions an explanation of a phenomenon depends on, the better it is.For example, some claim that God caused himself to exist and also caused the universe to exist - he was the first cause - whereas Occam's Razor suggests better to assume that it was the universe that caused itself rather than God because this explanation involves fewer entities.The negation of Occam's Razor would suggest that an arbitrarily complex explanation is just as good as the simplest one. (E.g. God and his cat created a robot called Sparky who built the universe from parts bought from a shop in another dimension).See also KISS Principle. (1995-11-09)
Occam's Razor "philosophy" The English philosopher, William of Occam (1300-1349) propounded Occam's Razor: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. (Latin for "Entities should not be multiplied more than necessary"). That is, the fewer assumptions an explanation of a phenomenon depends on, the better it is. For example, some claim that God caused himself to exist and also caused the universe to exist - he was the "first cause" - whereas Occam's Razor suggests that if one accepts the possibility of something causing itself then it is better to assume that it was the universe that caused itself rather than God because this explanation involves fewer entities. The negation of Occam's Razor would suggest that an arbitrarily complex explanation is just as good as the simplest one. (E.g. God and his cat created a robot called Sparky who built the universe from parts bought from a shop in another dimension). See also {KISS Principle}. (1995-11-09)
occasionalism ::: n. --> The system of occasional causes; -- a name given to certain theories of the Cartesian school of philosophers, as to the intervention of the First Cause, by which they account for the apparent reciprocal action of the soul and the body.
Occultism ::: This word meant originally only the science of things hid; even in the Middle Ages of Europe thosephilosophers who were the forerunners of the modern scientists, those who then studied physical nature,called their science occultism, and their studies occult, meaning the things that were hid or not known tothe common run of mankind. Such a medieval philosopher was Albertus Magnus, a German; and so alsowas Roger Bacon, an Englishman -- both of the thirteenth century of the Christian era.Occultism as theosophists use the term, and as it should be used, means the study of the hid things ofBeing, the science of life or universal nature. In one sense this word can be used to mean the study ofunusual "phenomena," which meaning it usually has today among people who do not think of the vastlylarger field of causes which occultism, properly speaking, investigates. Doubtless mere physicalphenomena have their place in study, but they are on the frontier, on the outskirts -- the superficialities -of occultism. The study of true occultism means penetrating deep into the causal mysteries of Being.Occultism is a generalizing term for the entire body of the occult sciences -- the sciences of the secrets ofuniversal nature; as H. P. Blavatsky phrases it, "physical and psychic, mental and spiritual; calledHermetic and Esoteric Sciences." Occultism may be considered also to be a word virtuallyinterchangeable with the phrase esoteric philosophy, with, however, somewhat more emphasis laid on theoccult or secret or hid portions of the esoteric philosophy. Genuine occultism embraces not merely thephysical, physiological, psychological, and spiritual portions of man's being, but has an equal and indeeda perhaps wider range in the studies dealing with the structure and operations as well as the origin anddestiny of the kosmos.
Of the many theological doctrines included in this philosophy, there are to be noted those of the Torah and prophecy. The Torah is considered by all philosophers divinely revealed. The Sinaitic revelation was accomplished by means of a specially created voice which uttered the commandments. The Torah is therefore immutable and is eternal. Its purpose is to train men for a good life. According to Maimonides, the Torah aims at both the improvement of the soul and of the body. The first is accomplished the second by numerous laws which regulate the by inculcating right conceptions about God, and life of the individual and society.
Olympus (Greek) The abode of the great gods in Grecian mythology in Homer and Hesiod. Such heavenly abodes are usually associated with mountains, such as the Hindu Meru, the Greek Atlas, and the Hebrew Sinai; in this case the name was given to the summit of the range dividing Macedonia from Thessaly, but there were other mountains called Olympus. Later philosophers, perhaps more mystically minded, placed Olympus in the zenith, as the abode of the divinities. There were many Olympuses, the references in story occasionally being to the higher globes of the earth-chain, and in a cosmic sense the higher planes of the solar system. At one time in Greek legend both the gods and their abode had a character of voluptuousness, comparable with the Hebrew Eden (which means “delight”), the heaven of Indra, or the abode of the Arabian houris; but this was when degeneracy had set in and the people had forgotten the significance of the deities, and lost the key enabling them to interpret the myths and allegories forming their respective mythologic religions.
On the continent of Europe philosophers as far removed from Dewey as Hans Vaihinger are sometimes called pragmatists (Ueberweg). The similarities are of doubtful importance. -- V.J.M.
On the question as to what acts are right or to be done ethical theories fall into two groups (1) Axiological theories seek to determine what is right entirely by reference to the goodness or value of something, thus miking the theory of obligation dependent on the theorv of value. For a philosopher like Martineau it is the comparative goodness of its motive that determines which act is right. For a teleologist it is the comparative amount of good which it brings or probably will bring into being that determines which act is right -- the egoistic teleologist holding that the right act is the act which is most conducive to the good of the agent (some Sophists, Epicurus, Hobbes), and the universalistic teleologist holding that the right act is the act which is most conducive to the good of the world as a whole (see Utilitarianism). (2) On deontological theories see Deontological ethics and Intuitionism.
Our atmosphere teems with invisible lives, of which germs are merely the physically imbodied or integrated samples, minute and very weak in power. Our atmosphere contains likewise hosts of invisible beings of tremendous energy. Medieval philosophers combined these denizens of the atmosphere under the curious name of sylphs. As compared with the populations of the other elements of mystical philosophers, the sylphs are perhaps the most dangerous, psychologically and otherwise, at least so far as mankind is concerned. Further, theosophy teaches that both the atmosphere and the solid earth are interpenetrated by other spatial realms, invisible and intangible to us, but as objective to their own denizens as our world is to us.
Palingenesy: Greek for re-birth. The transmigration of the life-energy or soul, retaining its identity, in recurrent cycles or phases. The term was employed by the occult philosophers of the seventeenth century to denote the “resurrection of plants,” and the method of achieving their astral appearance after destruction. (L. Spence, An Encyclopaedia of Occultism.)
Panaetius: (180-110 B.C.) A prominent Stoic philosopher whose thought was influenced by the Skeptics; in his attempt to adapt Stoicism to practical needs of life, he abandoned some of the more speculative notions current among his predecessors. Influenced Cicero and Augustine. -- R.B.W.
Pandita (Sanskrit) Paṇḍita Often anglicized to pandit or pundit; a scholar, learned man, teacher, or philosopher.
Paranirvana: Sanskrit for beyond Nirvana. The ultimate Nirvana (q.v.) of the Vedantic philosophers. In occult philosophy, absolute non-being, yet equivalent to absolute sat (q.v.).
Pascal, Blaise: (1623-1662) French philosopher mathematician and scientist. He conducted scientific researches including experiments on atmospheric pressure and invented an ingenious calculating machine. He turned from preoccupation with the scientific to the study of man and his spiritual problems and found faith as a sounder guide than reason. At this stage of his thought, theology becomes central. These thoughts are developed in his Provincial Letters and in his posthumously published masterpieces of style, the Pensees. -- L.E.D.
Persian Philosophy: Persia was a vast empire before the time of Alexander the Great, embracing not only most of the orientnl tribes of Western Asia but also the Greeks of Asia Minor, the Jews and the Egyptians. If we concentrate on the central section of Persia, three philosophic periods may be distinguished Zoroastrianism (including Mithraism and Magianism), Manichaeanism, and medieval Persian thought. Zarathustra (Or. Zoroaster) lived before 600 B.C. and wrote the Avesta, apparently in the Zend language. It is primarily religious, but the teaching that there are two ultimate principles of reality, Ormazd, the God of Light and Goodness, and Ahriman, God of Evil and Darkness, is of philosophic importance. They are eternally fighting Mitra is the intermediary between Ormazd and man. In the third century A. D., Mani of Ecbatana (in Media) combined this dualism of eternal principles with some of the doctrines of Christianity. His seven books are now known only through second-hand reports of Mohammedan (Abu Faradj Ibn Ishaq, 10th c., and Sharastani, 12th c.) and Christian (St. Ephrem, 4th c., and Bar-Khoni, 7th c.) writers. St Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.) has left several works criticizing Manichaeism, which he knew at first-hand. From the ninth century onward, many of the great Arabic philosophers are of Persian origin. Mention might be made of the epicureanism of the Rubaiyat of the Persian poet, Omar Kayyam, and the remarkable metaphysical system of Avicenna, i.e. Ibn Sina (11th c.), who was born in Persia. -- V.J.B.
Philo of Alexandria: (30 B.C.- 50 A.D.) Jewish theologian and Neo-Platonic philosopher. He held that Greek thought borrowed largely from Mosaic teachings and therefore justified his use of Greek philosophy for the purpose of interpreting Scripture in a spiritual sense. For Philo, the renunciation of self and, through the divine Logos in all men, the achievement of immediate contact with the Supreme Being, is the highest blessedness for man. -- M.F Philosopheme: (Gr. philosophema) An apodictic syllogism (Aristotle). -- G.R.M.
philosophate ::: v. i. --> To play the philosopher; to moralize.
philosophe ::: n. --> A philosophaster; a philosopher.
Philosopher’a stone: An imaginary substance by means of which the ancient alchemists sought to transmit baser metals into gold. Probably an early concept of a catalytic agent. Used in occult terminology to indicate the power by which all life evolves and through which all minds and souls realize a mutual kinship; it signifies the highest aspirations and the purest ideologies of altruism, and is a symbol of transmutation of lower animal nature into the superior divine one; the knowbdge capable of solving all problems in life.
Philosopher’s egg: In alchemical terminology, the vessel or container in which the final stage of the process of the transmutation of metals was performed.
Philosophers have in the past been concerned with two questions covered by our definition, though attempts to organize the subject as an autonomous department of philosophy are of recent date. Enquiries into the origin of language (e.g. in Plato's Kratylos) once a favorite subject for speculation, are now out of fashion, both with philosophers and linguists. Enquiries as to the nature of language (as in Descartes, Leibniz, and many others) are, however, still central to all philosophical interest in language. Such questions as "What are the most general characters of symbolism?", "How is 'Language' to be defined?", "What is the essence of language?", "How is communication possible?", "What would be the nature of a perfect language?", are indicative of the varying modulations which this theme receives in the works of contemporaries. Current studies in the philosophy of language can be classified under five hends: Questions of method, relation to other disciplines, etc. Much discussion turns here upon the proposal to establish a science and art of symbolism, variously styled semiotic, semantics or logical syntax, The analysis of meaning. Problems arising here involve attention to those under the next heading. The formulation of general descriptive schemata. Topics of importance here include the identification and analysis of different ways in which language is used, and the definition of men crucial notions as "symbol'', "grammar", "form", "convention", "metaphor", etc. The study of fully formalized language systems or "calculi". An increasingly important and highly technical division which seeks to extend and adapt to all languages the methods first developed in "metamathematics" for the study of mathematical symbolism. Applications to problems in general philosophy. Notably the attempt made to show that necessary propositions are really verbal; or again, the study of the nature of the religious symbol. Advance here awaits more generally acceptable doctrine in the other divisions. References:
Philosopher’s Stone [from Latin Lapis philosophorum] The stone or material which can transmute base metals into gold. The universal agent or great solvent, the mystical culmination of whose work is the production of spiritual perfect man. The base metals, in this mystical interpretation, are the passions and lower elements in the human constitution, which by the philosopher’s stone are transmuted into the pure inner gold of his spiritual nature. Spiritual processes have their analogs in chemical processes, the latter being the sole object of most if not all of the later alchemists.
Philosopher's Stone ::: One of the primary aims of inner alchemy is a transformation of perspective on self. A major way this is done is to supplant the self of the Lunar Personality into the Self of the Solar Personality. On this site the stance is taken that the philosopher's stone is mainly a metaphor for this process.
Philosopher, The: Generally used name for Aristotle by medieval authors after the "reception of Aristotle" from the early 13th century onwards. In earlier writers the name may refer to any head of a school, e.g. to Abelard in the writings of his pupils. -- R.A.
Philosophes: French 18th century philosophers, e.g. Condorcet, Condillac, Rousseau, Voltaire (q.v.). Philosopher King: In Plato's theory of the ideal state rulership would be entrusted to philosopher kings. These rulers would reach the top by sheer talent and merit after a long period of training in the school of everyday work and leadership and by a prescribed pattern of formal discipline and study. The final test of leadership lay in the ability to see the truth of the Platonic vision of a reality governed by universal ideas and ideals. -- V.F.
philosophical ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to philosophy; versed in, or imbued with, the principles of philosophy; hence, characterizing a philosopher; rational; wise; temperate; calm; cool.
Philosophic speculations, heavily shrouded by "pre-logical" and symbolic language, started with the poetic, ritualistic Vedas (q.v.), luxuriating in polytheism and polyanthropoism, was then fostered by the Brahman caste in treatises called Aranyakas (q.v.) and Brahmanas (q.v.) and strongly promoted by members of the ruling caste who instituted philosophic congresses in which peripatetic teachers and women participated, and of which we know through the Upanishads (q.v.). Later, the main bulk of Indian Philosophy articulated itself organically into systems forming the nucleus for such famous schools as the Mimamsa and Vedanta, Sankhya and Yoga, Nyaya and Vaisesika, and those of Buddhism and Jainism (all of which see). Numerous other philosophic and quasi philosophic systems are found in the epic literature and elsewhere (cf., e.g., Shaktism, Shivaism, Trika, Vishnuism), or remain to be discovered. Much needs to be translated by competent philosophers.
philosophize ::: v. i. --> To reason like a philosopher; to search into the reason and nature of things; to investigate phenomena, and assign rational causes for their existence.
PHILOSOPHY Philosophy is limited to physical reality and therefore, physically, all philosophy remains physicalism and, superphysically, subjectivism: speculations without reality content. In order to speak about the superphysical one must have factual knowledge of the superphysical worlds. K 5.38.2
The philosophers have not yet managed to solve the basic problem of existence: trinity; the three equal, inseparable aspects of existence. Ever since the Greek sophists, the whole history of philosophy has been dominated by the subjectivist way of looking at things. K 5.43.21
Plato: (428-7 - 348-7 B.C.) Was one of the greatest of the Greek philosophers. He was born either in Athens or on the island of Aegina, and was originally known as Aristocles. Ariston, his father, traced his ancestry to the last kings of Athens. His mother, Perictione, was a descendant of the family of Solon. Plato was given the best elementary education possible and he spent eight years, from his own twentieth year to the death of Socrates, as a member of the Socratic circle. Various stories are told about his supposed masters in philosophy, and his travels in Greece, Italy, Sicily and Egypt, but all that we know for certain is that he somehow acquired a knowledge of Pythagoreanisrn, Heracleitanism, Eleaticism and othei Pre-Socratic philosophies. He founded his school of mathematics and philosophy in Athens in 387 B.C. It became known as the Academy. Here he taught with great success until his death at the age of eighty. His career as a teacher was interrupted on two occasions by trips to Sicily, where Plato tried without much success to educate and advise Dionysius the Younger. His works have been very well preserved; we have more than twenty-five authentic dialogues, certain letters, and some definitions which are probably spurious. For a list of works, bibliography and an outline of his thought, see Platonism. -- V.J.B.
Plato ::: Ancient Greek philosopher (4th century B.C.E.), student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle, whose identification of reality with the non-material world of ideas (“the ideal world”) played an enormous role in subsequent philosophy and religion (see neo-Platonism). Father of “Platonism” and the Platonic Academy as a philosophical institution in Athens.
Platonic School The philosophers of the Academy, who followed Plato and can be traced down to the days of Cicero, gradually undergoing change during that period and divisible into schools connected with the names of prominent philosophers. Distinguished from the Aristotelian or Peripatetic school, much as philosophy is distinguished from science or as idealism is distinguished from naturalism. The principal feature is the Platonic dualism: of noumenon and phenomenon, of the self-moving and that which is moved, of the Idea and its manifestation in an organic being, of the permanent and the impermanent, of soul and body, nous and psyche, etc. In epistemology this dualism appears as philosophia and sense experience — the wisdom which apprehends reality and that which forms concepts from the data of sense experience; in morals, as the contrast between the Good, which is altruistic because it apprehends the unity of all beings, and the ethic of self-seeking based on the illusion of separateness.
Platonism as a political philosophy finds its best known exposition in the theory of the ideal state in the Republic. There, Plato described a city in which social justice would be fully realized. Three classes of men are distinguished: the philosopher kings, apparently a very small group whose education has been alluded to above, who would be the rulers because by nature and by training they were the best men for the job. They must excel particularly in their rational abilities: their special virtue is philosophic wisdom; the soldiers, or guardians of the state, constitute the second class; their souls must be remarkable for the development of the spirited, warlike element, under the control of the virtue of courage; the lowest class is made up of the acquisitive group, the workers of every sort whose characteristic virtue is temperance. For the two upper classes, Plato suggested a form of community life which would entail the abolition of monogamous marriage, family life, and of private property. It is to be noted that this form of semi-communism was suggested for a minority of the citizens only (Repub. III and V) and it is held to be a practical impossibility in the Laws (V, 739-40), though Plato continued to think that some form of community life is theoretically best for man. In Book VIII of the Republic, we find the famous classification of five types of political organization, ranging from aristocracy which is the rule of the best men, timocracy, in which the rulers are motivated by a love of honor, oligarchy, in which the rulers seek wealth, democracy, the rule of the masses who are unfit for the task, to tyranny, which is the rule of one man who may have started as the champion of the people but who governs solely for the advancement of his own, selfish interests.
Pleasure and pain: In philosophy these terms appear mostly in ethical discussions, where they have each two meanings not always clearly distinguished. "Pleasure" is used sometimes to refer to a certain hedonic quality of experiences, viz. pleasantness, and sometimes as a name for experiences which have that quality (here "pleasures" are "pleasant experiences" and "pleasure" is the entire class of such experiences). Mutatis mutandis, the same is true of "pain". Philosophers have given various accounts of the nature of pleasure and pain. E.g., Aristotle says that pleasure is a perfection supervening on ccrtain activities, pain the opposite. Spinoza defines pleasure as the feeling with which one passes from a lesser state of perfection to a greater, pain is the feeling with which one makes the reverse transition. Again, philosophers have raised various questions about pleasure and pain. Can they be identified with good and evil? Are our actions always determined by our own pleasure and pain actual or prospective? Can pleasures and pains be distinguished quantitatively, qualitatively? See Bentham, Epicureanism. -- W.K.F.
plotinist ::: n. --> A disciple of Plotinus, a celebrated Platonic philosopher of the third century, who taught that the human soul emanates from the divine Being, to whom it reunited at death.
Posidonius of Rhodes: (c. 135-50 B.C.) An eclectic philosopher of the Stoic School, who incorporated into his thought many doctrines of Plato and Aristotle. -- R.B.W.
powder of projection ::: Powder of Projection See Philosopher's Stone above.
Practically all philosophers of religion (to name in addition to thoce above only Schleiermacher, Lotze, Pfleiderer, Hoffding, Siebeck, Galloway, Ladd, Wundt, Josiah Royce, W. E. Hocking, Barth, and Hauer) are carried by an ethical idealism, being interested in the good life as the right relation between God and man, conforming by and large to the ethical citegories of determinism, indeterminism, mechanism, rationalism, etc. Buddhists, though not believing in God, profess an ethics religiously motivated and supported philosophically.
Pragmatism is first and always a doctrine of meaning, and often a definition of truth as well, but as to the latter, not all pragmatists are in complete agreement. Neither Peirce nor Dewey, for example, would accept James' view that if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily for the individual, it is true. Pragmatism is also a method of interpreting ideas in terms of their consequences. James, however, apparently does not believe that this method entails his specific philosophical doctrines -- his pluralism, individualism, neutralism, indeterminism, meliorism, pragmatic theism, "crass" supernaturalism, etc. In fact, he states that pragmatism is independent of his new philosophy of "radical empiricism" and agrees with the anti-intellectualist bent of the Italian pragmatist, Papini, who sees the pragmatic method available to the atheist, the praying penitent, the investigating chemist, the metaphysician and the anti-metaphysician ("What Pragmatism Means".) On the other hand, insofar as pragmatism is practically identified with the scientific method (as is allegedly the case with Dewey) it appears that the pragmatic method might be expected to yield much the same conclusions for one philosopher as for another. In general, pragmatism as a method, does not seem to imply any final philosophical conclusions. It may imply a general direction of thought, such as empiricism. Although pragmatists (Peirce, James, Dewey) frequently attack older forms of empiricism, or crude empiricism, and necessarily reject truth as a simple or static correspondence of propositions with sense data, they nevertheless continue to describe themselves as empiricists, so that today pragmatism (especially in Dewey's case) is often regarded as synonymous with empiricism. See Empiricism.
preexistence ::: n. --> Existence in a former state, or previous to something else.
Existence of the soul before its union with the body; -- a doctrine held by certain philosophers.
Process Theory of Mind: The conception of mind in terms of process in contrast to substance. A mind, according to the process theory is a relatively permanent pattern preserved through a continuously changing process. Leibniz doctrine of the self-developing monad signalizes the transition from the substance to the process theory of mind and such philosophers as Bradley, Bosanquet, Bergson, James, Whitehead, Alexander and Dewey are recent exponents of the process theory. See C. W. Morris, Six Theories of Mind, Ch. II. -- L.W.
pseudo- ::: --> A combining form or prefix signifying false, counterfeit, pretended, spurious; as, pseudo-apostle, a false apostle; pseudo-clergy, false or spurious clergy; pseudo-episcopacy, pseudo-form, pseudo-martyr, pseudo-philosopher. Also used adjectively.
psilosopher ::: n. --> A superficial or narrow pretender to philosophy; a sham philosopher.
Psychic Powers ::: The lowest powers of the intermediate or soul-nature in the human being, and we are exercising andusing them all the time -- yes, and we cannot even control them properly! Men's emotional thoughts arevagrant, wandering, uncertain, lacking precision, without positive direction, and feebly governed. Theaverage man cannot even keep his emotions and thoughts in the grip of his self-conscious will. Hisweakest passions lead him astray. It is this part of his nature whence flow his "psychic powers." It isman's work to transmute them and to turn them to employment which is good and useful and holy.Indeed, the average man cannot control the ordinary psycho-astral-physical powers that he commonlyuses; and when, forsooth, people talk about cultivating occult powers, by which they mean merelypsychic powers, it simply shows that through ignorance they know not to what they refer. Their mindsare clouded as regards the actual facts. Those who talk so glibly of cultivating occult powers are just thepeople who cannot be trusted as real guides, for before they themselves can crawl in these mysteriousregions of life, they seem to desire to teach other people how to run and to leap. What most people reallymean, apparently, when they speak of cultivating occult powers is "I want to get power over otherpeople." Such individuals are totally unfit to wield occult powers of any kind, for the motive is in mostcases purely selfish, and their minds are beclouded and darkened with ignorance.The so-called psychic powers have the same relation to genuine spiritual powers that baby-talk has to thediscourse of a wise philosopher. Before occult powers of any kind can be cultivated safely, man mustlearn the first lesson of the mystic knowledge, which is to control himself; and all powers that later hegains must be laid on the altar of impersonal service -- on the altar of service to mankind.Psychic powers will come to men as a natural development of their inner faculties, as evolution performsits wonderful work in future ages. New senses, and new organs corresponding to these new senses, bothinterior and exterior, will come into active functioning in the distant future. But it is perilous both tosanity and to health to attempt to force the development of these prematurely, and unless the training anddiscipline be done under the watchful and compassionate eye of a genuine occult teacher who knowswhat he is about. The world even today contains hundreds of thousands of "sensitives" who are the firstfeeble forerunners of what future evolution will make common in the human race; but these sensitivesare usually in a very unfortunate and trying situation, for they themselves misunderstand what is in them,and they are misunderstood by their fellows. (See also Occultism)
Psychologism: (Ger. Psychologismus) The tendency of such philosophers as Hume, J. S. Mill and William James to approach philosophical problems, whether ethical, logical, aesthetic or metaphysical, from the stand-point of psychology. Psychologismus is used by Husserl and other German writers as a term of reproach which suggests the exaggeration of the psychological to the neglect of the logical and epistemological considerations. -- L.W.
punched card "storage, history" (Or "punch card") The signature medium of computing's Stone Age, now long obsolete outside of a few {legacy systems}. The punched card actually predates computers considerably, originating in 1801 as a control device for {Jacquard looms}. {Charles Babbage} used them as a data and program storage medium for his {Analytical Engine}: "To those who are acquainted with the principles of the Jacquard loom, and who are also familiar with analytical formulæ, a general idea of the means by which the Engine executes its operations may be obtained without much difficulty. In the Exhibition of 1862 there were many splendid examples of such looms. [...] These patterns are then sent to a peculiar artist, who, by means of a certain machine, punches holes in a set of pasteboard cards in such a manner that when those cards are placed in a Jacquard loom, it will then weave upon its produce the exact pattern designed by the artist. [...] The analogy of the Analytical Engine with this well-known process is nearly perfect. There are therefore two sets of cards, the first to direct the nature of the operations to be performed -- these are called operation cards: the other to direct the particular variables on which those cards are required to operate -- these latter are called variable cards. Now the symbol of each variable or constant, is placed at the top of a column capable of containing any required number of digits." -- from Chapter 8 of Charles Babbage's "Passages from the Life of a Philosopher", 1864. The version patented by {Herman Hollerith} and used with mechanical tabulating machines in the 1890 US Census was a piece of cardboard about 90 mm by 215 mm. There is a widespread myth that it was designed to fit in the currency trays used for that era's larger dollar bills, but recent investigations have falsified this. {IBM} (which originated as a tabulating-machine manufacturer) married the punched card to computers, encoding binary information as patterns of small rectangular holes; one character per column, 80 columns per card. Other coding schemes, sizes of card, and hole shapes were tried at various times. The 80-column width of most character terminals is a legacy of the IBM punched card; so is the size of the quick-reference cards distributed with many varieties of computers even today. See {chad}, {chad box}, {eighty-column mind}, {green card}, {dusty deck}, {lace card}, {card walloper}. [{Jargon File}] (1998-10-19)
punched card ::: (storage, history) (Or punch card) The signature medium of computing's Stone Age, now long obsolete outside of a few legacy systems. The punched card device for Jacquard looms. Charles Babbage used them as a data and program storage medium for his Analytical Engine:To those who are acquainted with the principles of the Jacquard loom, and who are also familiar with analytical formul�, a general idea of the means by which called variable cards. Now the symbol of each variable or constant, is placed at the top of a column capable of containing any required number of digits.-- from Chapter 8 of Charles Babbage's Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, 1864.The version patented by Herman Hollerith and used with mechanical tabulating machines in the 1890 US Census was a piece of cardboard about 90 mm by 215 mm. used for that era's larger dollar bills, but recent investigations have falsified this.IBM (which originated as a tabulating-machine manufacturer) married the punched card to computers, encoding binary information as patterns of small rectangular holes; one character per column, 80 columns per card. Other coding schemes, sizes of card, and hole shapes were tried at various times.The 80-column width of most character terminals is a legacy of the IBM punched card; so is the size of the quick-reference cards distributed with many varieties of computers even today.See chad, chad box, eighty-column mind, green card, dusty deck, lace card, card walloper.[Jargon File] (1998-10-19)
Purusartha: (Skr.) Object (artha) of man's (purusa) pursuits, enumerated as four: kama (desire), artha (wealth), dharma (duty), moksa (liberation). Also, a statement of aims with which Indian philosophers traditionally preface their works. -- K.F.L.
Pyrrhonism The philosophy of Pyrrho, the Greek Skeptic (c. 365-275 BC); also a general name for philosophic doubt. Pyrrho left no writings, but lives in those of his pupil Timon. His doctrine was that we can know nothing about reality by the use of our senses or mental faculties; against every statement its opposite may be maintained with equal justice; hence it is necessary to preserve a balanced judgment, the result of which is imperturbability, a tranquil acceptance of the events of life. The moral attitude thus engendered is somewhat like that of the Epicureans and Stoics, which has often been wrongly described as a self-centered indifference, bent upon the happiness of the individual, but this is only the negative aspect of the doctrine. His teachings approximate those of the Sankhya philosophy, and of some later philosophers — as in the doctrine of maya, that all is illusion save the divine. Whether Pyrrho himself stopped short at a suspense of judgment, or whether his teachings were imperfectly handed down by his followers, may be questioned. The ardent desire for knowledge may result in that illumination by which we becomes aware of the deceptive character of our faculties and the illusory nature of the images they create; but if our skepticism is merely the result of an intellectual disillusionment, unaccompanied by any inward vision, the result is usually selfish indifference bringing about a lapse into mere sensuality.
Pythagoras is famous for his use of numerical and geometrical keys, which he illustrated by reference to the geometrical figures, the musical scale, astronomy, etc. He is supposed to have “discovered” the Divine Section, the regular polyhedra, and the proposition relating to the square of the hypotenuse; what he did was to show that these were keys to the interpretation of mysteries. Porphyry reports that the numerals of Pythagoras were “hieroglyphical symbols” by means whereof he explained ideas concerning the nature of things: (Vita Pythag) or, Blavatsky adds, “the origin of the universe” (SD 1:361). His tetraktys is a gem of condensed esoteric symbolism. The influence of his school may be traced in subsequent Greek history, inspiring such characters as Epaminondas; “It was Pythagoras who was the first to teach the heliocentric system, and who was the greatest proficient in geometry of his century. It was he also who created the word ‘philosopher,’ composed of two words meaning a ‘lover of wisdom’ — philosophos. As the greatest mathematician, geometer and astronomer of historical antiquity, and also the highest of the metaphysicians and scholars, Pythagoras has won imperishable fame. He taught reincarnation as it is professed in India and much else of the Secret Wisdom” (TG 266).
Ralbag ::: (1288-1344) Acronym for “Rabbi Levi ben Gershon;” also known as Gersonides; Bible commentator; scientist and philosopher; France.
Ramban (&
Ravaisson-Mollien, Jean Gaspard Felix (1813-1900) French idealistic philosopher who studied under Schelling at Munich, became Professor of Philosophy at Rennes in 1838 and later inspector of Higher Education. Although he wrote little, he profoundly influenced French thought in the direction of the "dynamic spiritualism" of Maine de Biran. He explored the spiritual implications of individual personality especially in the domims of art and morals. See Morale et Metaphysique in Revue de Met. et de Mor. 1893. -- L.W.
redintegration ::: n. --> Restoration to a whole or sound state; renewal; renovation.
Restoration of a mixed body or matter to its former nature and state.
The law that objects which have been previously combined as part of a single mental state tend to recall or suggest one another; -- adopted by many philosophers to explain the phenomena of the association of ideas.
Reformation: The Protestant Reformation may be dated from 1517, the year Martin Luther (1483-1546), Augustinian monk and University professor in Wittenberg, publicly attacked the sale of indulgences by the itinerant Tetzel, Dominican ambassador of the Roman Church. The break came first in the personality of the monk who could not find in his own religious and moral endeavors to win divine favor the peace demanded by a sensitive conscience; and when it came he found to his surprise that he had already parted company with a whole tradition. The ideology which found a response in his inner experience was set forth by Augustine, a troubled soul who had surrendered himself completely to divine grace and mercy. The philosophers who legitimized man's endeavor to get on in the world, the church which demanded unquestioned loyalty to its codes and commands, he eschewed as thoroughly inconsonant with his own inner life. Man is wholly dependent upon the merits of Christ, the miracle of faith alone justifies before God. Man's conscience, his reason, and the Scriptures together became his only norm and authority. He could have added a fourth: patriotism, since Luther became the spokesman of a rising tide of German nationalism already suspect of the powers of distant Rome. The humanist Erasmus (see Renaissance) supported Luther by his silence, then broke with him upon the reformer's extreme utterances concerning man's predestination. This break with the humanists shows clearly the direction which the Protestant Reformation was taking: it was an enfranchised religion only to a degree. For while Erasmus pleaded for tolerance and enlightenment the new religious movement called for decision and faith binding men's consciences to a new loyalty. At first the Scriptures were taken as conscience permitted, then conscience became bound by the Scuptures. Luther lacked a systematic theology for the simple reason that he himself was full of inconsistencies. A reformer is often not a systematic thinker. Lutheran princes promoted the reconstruction of institutions and forms suggested by the reformer and his learned ally, Melanchthon, and by one stroke whole provinces became Protestant. The original reformers were reformed by new reformers. Two of such early reformers were Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) in Switzerland and John Calvin (1509-1564) who set up a rigid system and rule of God in Geneva. Calvinism crossed the channel under the leadership of John Knox in Scotland. The English (Anglican) Reformation rested on political rather than strictly religious considerations. The Reformation brought about a Counter-Reformation within the Roman Church in which abuses were set right and lines against the Protestants more tightly drawn (Council of Trent, 1545-1563). -- V.F.
Reid, Thomas: (1710-1796) Scotch philosopher. In his An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, he opposed the tradition of Berkeley and Hume and emphasized the common consciousness of mankind as basic. These ideas on the importance of self-evidence were further elaborated in "Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man" and "Essays on the Active Powers of Man." He was founder of the so-called Common Sense School, employing that term as here indicated and not in its present acceptation. -- L.E.D.
Romanticism: As a general philosophical movement, romanticism is best understood as the initial phase of German Idealism, serving as a transition from Kant to Hegel, and flourishing chiefly between 1775 and 1815. It is associated primarily with the Schlegel brothers, Novalis, Fried, Schelling, and Schleiermacher, with Schelhng as its culmination and most typical figure. The philosophical point of departure for romanticism is the Kantian philosophy, and romanticism shares with all German Idealism both the fundamental purpose of extending knowledge to the realm of noumena, and the fundamental doctrine that all reality is ultimately spiritual, derivative from a living spirit and so knowable by the human spirit. The essence of philosophical romanticism as expressed by Schelhng, that which differentiates it from other types of Idealism, resides in its conception of Spirit; upon this depend its metaphysical account of nature and man, and its epistemological doctrine of the proper method for investigating and understanding reality. Romanticism holds that Spirit, or the Absolute, is essentially creative; the ultimate ground of all things is primarily an urge to self-expression, and all that it has brought into being is but a means to its fuller self-realization. If the Absolute of Fichte is a moralist, and that of Hegel a logician, then that of the romanticists is primarily an artist. From this basic view there springs a metaphysic that interprets the universe in terms of the concepts of evolution, process, life, and consciousness. The world of nature is one manifestation of Spirit, man is another and a higher such manifestation, for in man Spirit seeks to become conscious of its own work. The metaphysical process is the process by which the Absolute seeks to realize itself, and all particular things are but phases within it. Hence, the epistemology of romanticism is exclusively emotional and intuitive, stressing the necessity for fullness of experience and depth of feeling if reality is to be understood. Reason, being artificial and analytical, is inadequate to the task of comprehending the Absolute; knowing is living, and the philosopher must approach nature through inspiration, longing, and sympathy.
rosicrucian ::: n. --> One who, in the 17th century and the early part of the 18th, claimed to belong to a secret society of philosophers deeply versed in the secrets of nature, -- the alleged society having existed, it was stated, several hundred years. ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the Rosicrucians, or their arts.
Rosicrucians [from Latin rosa rose + crux cross] Rosy cross or rose cross, referring to the cross of the rose, the general medieval idea of the rose being an emblem of divine love, and the cross of renunciation and self-conquest. A medieval European mystical and quasi-occult fraternity, probably dating from about the mid-15th century. It represented one of the many cyclic attempts to reintroduce and keep alive the ancient wisdom, and its history is typical of most such enterprises. The name was first given to the disciples of a learned adept, Christian Rosenkreuz, the alleged surname itself being a German translation of rose-cross, leaving open whether Rosenkreuz was actually a family name or a surname mystically adopted to designate a particular body of mystical thought; the name Christian may be another such mystical name-adoption. At any rate, Rosenkreuz returned form a journey in Asia and founded a mystical order in Europe. He and his disciples encountered the determined opposition of the Christian Church which then held sway over so much of Europe. He dressed up his teachings in a Christian garb, using such names as Jehovah as screens for the real meaning, and communicating to his disciples the keys for an interpretation of his doctrines. He founded no formal association and built no colleges, for the utmost secrecy was necessary to escape persecution and even death. It is for these reasons that the true history of the Rosicrucians is so difficult to trace. The original Rosicrucians were fire-philosophers, successors of the theurgists and the Magi.
Saadia Gaon ::: (882-942) Saadia ben Joseph; philosopher; halakhist, poet, and Bible commentator; head of the Sura academy in Babylon.
Sadducees [from Greek saddoukaioi from Hebrew tsadoq supposed to be the founder of the sect, meaning just, righteous] Among Europeans, a skeptic or doubter; originally the party of the Jewish priestly aristocracy which arose in the 2nd century BC under the later Hasmoneans. The Sadducees have come to be regarded as primarily a political party opposed to the Pharisees, called by some the party of the Scribes, but later Jewish tradition following Josephus more accurately regarded them as a philosophico-religious school. The Sadducees, a sect of erudite philosophers, opposed a great deal of the commonly accepted beliefs of the majority of the Jews, who were actually nearly all Pharisees — as for instance, the immortality of the personal soul, and the actual resurrection of the physical body; yet they strongly upheld what they considered the genuine meaning, and therefore the true authority, of the Jewish scriptures. They likewise opposed no small number of doctrinal or religious innovations, some of them true, and some of them less true in nature, which had been accepted by the body of the Pharisees — virtually by the Jewish people. And the reason for their reluctance to accept these innovations, whether of doctrine or interpretation of the Jewish scriptures, seems to be that they preferred a highly philosophical and even perhaps mystical interpretation, which they said the Jewish scriptures contained, rather than the more popular versions accepted by the Hebrew people as a whole. One may say that what the Gnostics were to the body of the Christians in the early centuries of the Christian era, the Sadducees were to the body of the Jews or Pharisees. The Sadducees likewise claimed to be the scientists and genuine philosophers of the Hebrews; although it is apparently quite true that as time went on their attitude of opposition, and even of reluctance, often became, at least among individual Sadducees, an attitude of cynicism and even possibly of cynical disbelief.
sage ::: n. --> A suffruticose labiate plant (Salvia officinalis) with grayish green foliage, much used in flavoring meats, etc. The name is often extended to the whole genus, of which many species are cultivated for ornament, as the scarlet sage, and Mexican red and blue sage.
The sagebrush.
A wise man; a man of gravity and wisdom; especially, a man venerable for years, and of sound judgment and prudence; a grave philosopher.
Saint-Simon, Claude Henry, Count De: (1760-1825) French philosopher who fought with the French army during the American Revolution. He supported the French Revolution. He advocated what he termed a new science of society to do away with inequalities in the distribution of property, power and happiness. Love for the poor and the lowly was basic for the reform he urged. He greatly influenced Comte and Positivism. -- L.E.D.
Salamander The name given by the medieval fire-philosophers to the nature spirits of fire, the fire elementals. The Greek salamandra meant a lizard-like animal believed to have power over and hence to extinguish fire — or to produce it. Marco Polo wrote that the salamander is not a beast but a substance found in the earth, corresponding from his description to asbestos.
Salt Used in alchemy for a fundamental principle of nature, a member of the triad mercury, sulphur, and salt, corresponding to spirit, soul, and body; or to fire (or air), water, and earth. Paracelsus regarded these as the mystical elements of all compound bodies. All forms of matter were reducible to one or other of them — everything was either a sulphur, a mercury, a salt, or a compound. The philosopher’s stone was said to be a compound of all three. Thus salt is the physical rudiment, as illustrated by the cubical crystals of common salt. Ancient thought regarded such elements as fundamental principles which manifest on various planes, nor did it make hard and fast distinctions between physical and nonphysical; but modern thought has given a fictitious reality to physical objects, and regards the ancient use of the terms as metaphorical. The veneration shown for salt was not a mere deification of its physical virtues, but a recognition of the salt-principle in nature, of which ordinary salt is merely a physical emblem. The well-known stimulant, flavoring, and preservative qualities of salt prove it to be a physical manifestation of an important principle; such phrases as bread and salt, and salt of the earth are therefore theosophy, as concerns not merely figures of speech but a use of salt in its more radical sense. For the same reason it played an important part, along with other substances, in sacrificial ceremonies. The word was also used to include other bodies besides sodium chloride or common salt, and is still used in chemistry in this generic sense. With some alchemists we find arsenic taking the place of salt in the fundamental triad, and this would be one of the salts of arsenic.
Samnyasin: (Skr.) A wise man, philosopher. -- K.F.L.
Sankara: One of the greatest of Indian philosophers, defender of Brahamism, who died about 820 AD., after having led a manysided, partly legendary, life as peripatetic teacher and author of numerous treatises, the most influential of which is his commentary on the Vedanta (s.v.) in which he established the doctrine of advaita (q.v.). -- K.F.L.
Scepticism, Fourteenth Century: At the beginning of the 14th century, Duns Scotus adopted a position which is not formally sceptical, though his critical attitude to earlier scholasticism may contain the germs of the scepticism of his century. Among Scotistic pre-sceptical tendencies may be mentioned the stress on self-knowledge rather than the knowledge of extra-mental reality, psychological voluntarism which eventuallj made the assent of judgment a matter of will rather than of intellect, and a theory of the reality of universal essences which led to a despair of the intellect's capacity to know such objects and thus spawned Ockhamism. Before 1317, Henry of Harclay noticed that, since the two terms of efficient causal connection are mutually distinct and absolute things, God, by his omnipotent will, can cause anything which naturally (naturaliter) is caused by a finite agent. He inferred from this that neither the present nor past existence of a finite external agent is necessarily involved in cognition (Pelstex p. 346). Later Petrus Aureoli and Ockham made the sime observation (Michalski, p. 94), and Ockham concluded that natural knowledge of substance and causal connection is possible only on the assumption that nature is pursuing a uniform, uninterrupted course at the moment of intuitive cognition. Without this assumption, observed sequences might well be the occasion of direct divine causal action rather than evidence of natural causation. It is possible that these sceptical views were suggested by reading the arguments of certain Moslem theologians (Al Gazali and the Mutakallimun), as well as by a consideration of miracles. The most influential sceptical author of the fourteenth century was Nicholas of Autrecourt (fl. 1340). Influenced perhaps by the Scotist conception of logical demonstration, Nicholas held that the law of noncontradiction is the ultimate and sole source of certainty. In logical inference, certainty is guaranteed because the consequent is identical with part or all of the antecedent. No logical connection can be established, therefore, between the existence or non-existence of one thing and the existence or non-existence of another and different thing. The inference from cause to effect or conversely is thus not a matter of certainty. The existence of substance, spiritual or physical, is neither known nor probable. We are unable to infer the existence of intellect or will from acts of intellection or volition, and sensible experience provides no evidence of external substances. The only certitudes properly so-called are those of immediate experience and those of principles known ex terminis together with conclusions immediately dependent on them. This thoroughgoing scepticism appears to have had considerable influence in its time, for we find many philosophers expressing, expounding, or criticizing it. John Buridan has a detailed criticism in his commentary on Aristotle's Physics (in 1 I, q. 4), Fitz-Ralph, Jacques d'Eltville, and Pierre d'Ailly maintain views similar to Nicholas', with some modifications, and there is at least one exposition of Nicholas' views in an anonymous commentary on the Sentences (British Museum, Ms. Harley 3243). These sceptical views were usually accompanied by a kind of probabilism. The condemnation of Nicholas in 1347 put a damper on the sceptical movement, and there is probably no continuity from these thinkers to the French sceptics of the 16th century. Despite this lack of direct influence, the sceptical arguments of 14th century thinkers bear marked resemblances to those employed by the French Occasionalists, Berkeley and Hume.
Scheler, Max (1874-1928) was originally a disciple of Rudolf Eucken, but joined early -- at the University of Munich -- the Husserl circle of phenomenologists, of which school he became one of the leading exponents. Moving from Kantianism and Eucken-personalism into phenomenology, he later espoused successively positions which may be called a synthesis between phenomenology and Catholic philosophy, sociological dynamism, and ideo-realistic humanism. He was the psychologist, ethicist, and religious and social philosopher of the phenomenological movement. In common with other phenomenologists, Scheler's doctrine begins with the assertion of an inherent correlation of the essences of objects with the essences of intentional experience. His unique contributions lie in the comprehensiveness of his vision, in his interpretation of the value-qualities of being; of emotional experience, especially love, as the key for the disclosure of being; of a hierarchy of concrete ("material" as against formal) values; of an analysis of "resentment" as a thorough grudge (rancour) perverted emotional attitude towards the values of life; of his definition of "person" as the concrete unity of acts; of his acknowledgment of total personality beyond individual persons; of his definition of "ethos" as a preferential system of values determinative for the validity of any specific thought-form; of his development of the sociology of knowledge as a distinct discipline within cultural sociology; and of his working out of a philosophical anthropology showing man's position in and towards the whole of being. His most important works include: Die transzendentale und die psychologische Methode (1900); Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik (1916); Vom Ewigen in Menschen (1921); Wesen und Formen der Sympathie (1923); Schriften zur Soziologie und Weltanschauungslehre (3 vols., 1923-1924); Die Wissensformen und dte Gesellschaft (1926); Die Stellung des Menschen in Kosmos (1928); Philosophische Weltanschauung (1929); Zur Ethik und Erkenntnislehre (1933).
Schopenhauer, Arthur: (1738-1860) Brilliant, manysided philosopher, at times caustic, who attained posthumously even popular acclaim. His principal work, The World as Will and Idea starts with the thesis that the world is my idea, a primary fact of consciousness implying the inseparableness of subject and object (refutation of materialism and subjectivism). The object underlies the principle of sufficient reason whose fourfold root Schopenhauer had investigated previously in his doctoral dissertation as that of becoming (causality), knowing, being, and acting (motivation). But the world is also obstinate, blind, impetuous will (the word taken in a larger than the dictionary meaning) which objectifies itself in progressive stages in the world of ideas beginning with the forces of nature (gravity, etc.) and terminating in the will to live and the products of its urges. As thing-in-itself, the will is one, though many in its phenomenal forms, space and time serving as principia individuationis. The closer to archetypal forms the ideas (Platonic influence) and the less revealing the will, the greater the possibility of pure contemplation in art in which Schopenhauer found greatest personal satisfaction. Propounding a determinism and a consequential pessimism (q.v.), Schopenhauer concurs with Kant in the intelligible character of freedom, makes compassion (Mitleid; see Pity) the foundation of ethics, and upholds the Buddhist ideal of desirelessness as a means for allaying the will. Having produced intelligence, the will has created the possibility of its own negation in a calm, ascetic, abstinent life.
Scotism: from the standpoints of number and influence, this was the next most important school of this period. Among the pupils of Duns Scotus, may be mentioned Anthony Andreas (+1320), Francis of Meyronnes (de Mayronis) (+1325) and John de Bassolis (+1347). Walter Burleigh (+1343) was a vigorous opponent of Nominalism; Thomas Bradwardine (+1349), a mathematician and philosopher whose determinism influenced John Wiclif (+1384), John Hus and the German reformers. In the XV cent., this school is represented by William of Vaurouillon (+1464), Nicholas of Orbelhs (+1455), John Anglicus, Thomas Bricot and the great Peter Tartaret (+1494).
Self-love: The term may be used to denote self-complacency or self-admiration (see Spinoza, Ethics, Book III, Prop. 55, note), but in ethical discussion it usually designates concern for one's own individual interest, advantage, or happiness. Taking the term in this latter sense philosophers have debated the question whether or not all of our actions, approvals, etc., are motivated entirely by self-love. Hobbes holds that they are. Spinoza, similarity, holds that the endeavor to conserve oneself is the basis of all of one's actions and virtues. Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Butler, and Hume, in opposition to Hobbes, argued that benevolence or sympathy and the moral sense or conscience are springs of action which are not reducible to self-love. Butler also pointed out that self-love itself presupposes the existence of certain primary desires, such as hunger, with whose satisfaction it is concerned, and which therefore cannot be subsumed under it. See Egoism. -- W.K.F.
Serpent One of the most fundamental and prolific symbols of the mystery-language. Its most basic meaning is of the eternal, alternating, cyclic motion during cosmic manifestation. For motion, which to the physicist and the philosopher alike seems an abstraction, is for the ancient wisdom a primordial principle or axiom, of the same order as space and time, existing per se. Never does motion cease utterly even during kosmic pralaya. And motion is essentially circular: where physics would derive circular motion from a composition of rectilinear motions, the opposite procedure would be that of the ancient wisdom. This circular motion, compounding itself into spirals, helixes, and vortices, is the builder of worlds, bringing together the scattered elements of chaos; motion per se is essential cosmic intelligence. This circular motion, returning upon itself like a serpent swallowing its tail, represents the cycles of time. This conscious energy in spirals whirls through all the planes of cosmos as fohat and his innumerable sons — the cosmic energies and forces, fundamentally intelligent, operating in every scale or grade of matter. The caduceus of Hermes, twin serpents wound about a staff, represents cosmically the mighty drama of evolution, in its twin aspects, the staff or tree standing for the structural aspect, the serpent for the fohatic forces that animate the structure.
Seyn, Sein (German) Being; the German philosopher Fichte distinguished between Sein and Dasein: and, according to him, in thought we know Sein (Being or the One) through Dasein (Existence) or the manifested. Fichte’s philosophical speculations on this point are echoes of tremendously old philosophical propositions in Hindu writings, where the Sein of Fichte is called the sat, and his Dasein the asat. It is equally permissible to invert these Sanskrit terms to propose an even more spiritual conception, making Sein equivalent to asat and Dasein the parallel of sat.
Social Contract: The original covenant by which, according to certain philosophers of modern times -- Hooker, Hohbes, Althusius, Spinoza, Locke, Pufendorf, etc. -- individuals have united and formed the state. This theory was combined with the older idea of the governmental contract by which the people conferred the power of government upon a single person or a group of persons. This theory goes back to ancient philosophy and was upheld by medieval thinkers, suth as Thomas Aquinas, Marsilius of Padova. Though most of the philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth century realized that no such original compact as the idea of the Social Contract called for, had actually occurred, the idea, nevertheless, served as a criterion to determine whether any act of the government was just or not, i.e., whether the consent of the governed might be assumed (especially Rousseau, Kant). The theory of the Social Contract had a remarkable influence upon the political philosophy of the American colonies. See Political Philosophy. -- W.E.
Sociology: The woid "sociologie" was coined by the French philosopher, Auguste Comte, (1798-1857).
Solipsism: The metaphysical doctrine that the individual self of the solipsistic philosopher is the whole of reality and that the external world and other persons are representations of that self and have no independent existence.
Soloveitchik, Joseph Dov ::: (1903-1992) Orthodox rabbinic leader and philosopher; United States.
Solvent The universal solvent is an alchemical expression equivalent to the Philosopher’s Stone and the Universal Agent of medieval alchemy. It means a unity into which diverse elements can be resolved or from which they emanate or proceed; and has different applications according to particular planes. Thus “whatsoever quits the Laya State becomes active life; it is drawn into the vortex of MOTION (the alchemical solvent of Life)” (SD 1:258). One culmination of the “Secret Work” is the union of the three elements (sulfur, mercury, salt), the occult solvent in the world-soul; while on the material plane the solvent is hydrogen (SD 2:113).
Some philosophers doubted or even denied the existence of the self. Thus, Hume pointed out (Treatise of Human Nature, I, pt. 4) that, apart from the bundle of successive perceptions, nothing justifying the concept of self can be discerned by introspection.
Soul: The divine, immortal part of man. The psyche of the Greek philosophers, the nephesh of the Hebrew Bible. According to occult philosophy, the vital principle (“breath of life”) which all living beings possess.
Space ::: Our universe, as popularly supposed, consists of space and matter and energy; but in theosophy we saythat space itself is both conscious and substantial. It is in fact the root of the other two, matter andenergy, which are fundamentally one thing, and this one fundamental thing is SPACE -- their essentialand also their instrumental cause as well as their substantial cause -- and this is the reality of being, theheart of things.Our teaching is that there are many universes, not merely one, our own home-universe; therefore arethere many spaces with a background of a perfectly incomprehensible greater SPACE inclosing all -- aspace which is still more ethereal, tenuous, spiritual, yes, divine, than the space-matter that we know orrather conceive of, which in its lowest aspect manifests the grossness of physical matter of commonhuman knowledge. Space, therefore, considered in the abstract, is BEING, filled full, so to say, withother entities and things, of which we see a small part -- globes innumerable, stars and planets, nebulaeand comets.But all these material bodies are but effectual products or results of the infinitudes of the invisible andinner causal realms -- by far the larger part of the spaces of Space. The space therefore of any oneuniverse is an entity -- a god. Fundamentally and essentially it is a spiritual entity, a divine entity indeed,of which we see naught but what we humans call the material and energic aspect -- behind which is thecausal life, the causal intelligence.The word is likewise frequently used in theosophical philosophy to signify the frontierless infinitudes ofthe Boundless; and because it is the very esse of life-consciousness-substance, it is incomparably morethan the mere "container" that it is so often supposed to be by Occidental philosophers. (See alsoUniverse; Milky Way)
Specificative: (in Schol.) Any concrete thing is taken specificatively or denominatively when the predicate which is attributed to it belongs to it by reason of the concrete subject itself: if we say: the philosopher sleeps, philosopher is taken specificatively, for he sleeps as man. -- H.G.
Spencer, Herbert: (1820-1903) was the great English philosopher who devoted a life time to the formulation and execution of a plan to follow the idea of development as a first principle through all the avenues of human thought. A precursor of Darwin with his famous notion of all organic evolution as a change "from homogeneity to heterogenity," from the simple to the complex, he nevertheless was greatly influenced by the Darwinian hypothesis and employed its arguments in his monumental works in biology, psychology, sociology and ethics. He aimed to interpret life, mind and society in terms of matter, motion and force. In politics, he evidenced from his earliest writings a strong bias for individualism. See Evolutionism, Charles Darwin. -- L.E.D.
Spirit-hyle [from Greek hyle matter, stuff] The Second Logos, Father-Mother, spirit-matter, Purusha-prakriti. Hyle was used by certain Greek philosophers to signify original cosmic spirit-stuff, and therefore is equivalent to the Sanskrit pradhana, or in a higher, more spiritual essence, mulaprakriti (root-substance). Thus hyle or spirit-hyle is the primordial quasi-conscious matter-substance of cosmic space, both before cosmic manifestation begins and through the entire period of the cosmic manvantara — the cosmic spiritual substantial background, or Mother of space. Again, spirit-hyle, in its prakritis aspect, is the spiritual sediment of surrounding universal chaos, the great deep of cosmic consciousness. Thus it is the primordial element-principle, out of which an objective universe is formed, and into which it again sinks when the cosmic manvantara ends, only to reissue forth at the end of the cosmic pralaya.
Spiritus rector: Latin for ruling spirit. In the terminology of medieval alchemists, the philosopher’s stone (q.v.) or the elixir of life (q.v.).
State of Nature: The state of man as it would he if there were no political organization or government. The concept was used by many philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a criterion of what man's naturnl condition might be and as to what extent that condition has been spoiled or corrupted by civilization. It was used as an argument for man's original rights to liberty and equality (Hooker, Locke, Rousseau), but occasionally also as an argument for the necessity of the state and its right to control all social relations (Hobbes). -- W.E.
Stern, William: (1871-1938) Psychologist and philosopher who has contributed extensively to individual psychology (see Individual Psychology), child psychology and applied psychology. He was an innovator in the field of intelligence testing, having suggested the use of intelligence quotient (I.Q.) obtained by dividing in individual's mental age by his chronological age and recognized that this quotient is relatively constant for a given individual. The Psychological Methods of Testing Intelligence. Stern's psychology with its emphasis on individual differences affords the foundation for his personalistic philosophy, the main contention of which is that the person is a psychophysical unity, characterized by purposiveness and individuality. See Die Psychologie und der Personalismus (1917); Person und Sache, 3 Vols. Die Philosophie der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellung, Vol. 6. -- L.W.
stoic ::: n. --> A disciple of the philosopher Zeno; one of a Greek sect which held that men should be free from passion, unmoved by joy or grief, and should submit without complaint to unavoidable necessity, by which all things are governed.
Hence, a person not easily excited; an apathetic person; one who is apparently or professedly indifferent to pleasure or pain.
Alt. of Stoical
Strauss, David Friedrich: (1808-1874) German philosopher who received wide popularity and condemnation for his Life of Jesus. He held that the unity of God and man is not realized in Christ but in mankind itself and in its history. This relation, he believed, was immanent and not transcendent. His numerous writings displayed many currents from Hegelianism and Darwinism to a pantheism that approaches atheism and then back to a naturalism that clings devoutly to an inward religious experience. Main works: Das Leben Jesu, 1835; Die Christliche Dogmatik, 1840; Der alte u. d. neue Glaube, 1872. -- L.E.D.
St. Thomas was a teacher and a writer for some twenty years (1254-1273). Among his works are: Scriptum in IV Libros Sententiarum (1254-1256), Summa Contra Gentiles (c. 1260), Summa Theologica (1265-1272); commentaries on Boethius. (De Trinitate, c. 1257-1258), on Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite (De Divinis Nominibus, c. 1261), on the anonymous and important Liber de Causis (1268), and especially on Aristotle's works (1261-1272), Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, On the Soul, Posterior Analytics, On Interpretation, On the Heavens, On Generation and Corruption; Quaestiones Disputatae, which includes questions on such large subjects as De Veritate (1256-1259); De Potentia (1259-1263); De Malo (1263-1268); De Spiritualibus Creaturis, De Anima (1269-1270); small treatises or Opuscula, among which especially noteworthy are the De Ente et Essentia (1256); De Aeternitate Mundi (1270), De Unitate Intellecus (1270), De Substantiis Separatis (1272). While it is extremely difficult to grasp in its entirety the personality behind this complex theological and philosophical activity, some points are quite clear and beyond dispute. During the first five years of his activity as a thinker and a teacher, St. Thomas seems to have formulated his most fundamental ideas in their definite form, to have clarified his historical conceptions of Greek and Arabian philosophers, and to have made more precise and even corrected his doctrinal positions, (cf., e.g., the change on the question of creation between In II Sent., d.l, q.l, a.3, and the later De Potentia, q. III, a.4). This is natural enough, though we cannot pretend to explain why he should have come to think as he did. The more he grew, and that very rapidly, towards maturity, the more his thought became inextricably involved in the defense of Aristotle (beginning with c. 1260), his texts and his ideas, against the Averroists, who were then beginning to become prominent in the faculty of arts at the University of Paris; against the traditional Augustinianism of a man like St. Bonaventure; as well as against that more subtle Augustinianism which could breathe some of the spirit of Augustine, speak the language of Aristotle, but expound, with increasing faithfulness and therefore more imminent disaster, Christian ideas through the Neoplatonic techniques of Avicenna. This last group includes such different thinkers as St. Albert the Great, Henry of Ghent, the many disciples of St. Bonaventure, including, some think, Duns Scotus himself, and Meister Eckhart of Hochheim.
Stuff, Neutral: A reality posited by certain philosophers which is neither mental nor physical, but which underlies both. See Neutral Monism. -- L W.
Subconscious Mind: (Lat. sub, under -- cum together + scire to know) A compartment of the mind alleged by certain psychologists and philosophers (see Psycho-analysis) to exist below the threshold of consciousness. The subconscious, though not directly accessible to introspection (see Introspection), is capable of being tapped by special techniques such as random association, dream-analysis, automatic writing, etc. The doctrine of the subconscious was foreshadowed in Leibniz's doctrine of petites perceptions (Monadology, Sections 21, 23) and received philosophical expression by A. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, and E. von Hartman, Philosophy of the Unconscious and has become an integral part of Freudian psychology. See Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, esp. pp. 425-35, 483-93. -- L.W.
Substance is the term used to signify thit which is sought when philosophers investigate the primary being of things. Thus Plato was primarily concerned with investigating the being of things from the standpoint of their intelligibility. Hence the Platonic dialectic was aimed at a knowledge of the essential nature (ousia) of things. But science is knowledge of universals. so the essence of things considered as intelligible is the universal common to many; i.e., the universal Form or Idea, and this was for Plato the substance of things, or what they are primarily.
Sudra(Sanskrit) ::: In ancient India a man of the servile or fourth or lowest caste, social and political, of the earlycivilizations of Hindustan in the Vedic and post-Vedic periods. The other three grades or classes arerespectively the Brahmana or priestphilosopher; the Kshatriya, the administrator -- king, noble -- andsoldier; and third, the Vaisya, the trader and agriculturist.
Sudra (Sanskrit) Śūdra A member of the lowest of the four castes or social divisions made in the Vedic period in India. In the Laws of Manu, the Sudra was regarded as a servant to the three other castes: the Brahmins or priest-philosophers, the Kshattriya or administrator-king and soldier, and the Vaisya or agriculturist or trader. The Sudra is said to have sprung from the feet of Purusha, while the Rig-Veda gives his origin as coming from the feet of Brahma. See also CHATUR-VARNA
Svabhava: Sanskrit for innate disposition, essence, inherent or innate nature. In the view of some Indian philosophers, the principle governing the universe through the spontaneity and individual character of the various substances. Other occultists regard it as the world-substance or its essence.
Svabhava: (Skr.) being-in-itself, essence, natural state, inherent or innate nature; the thing-in-itself aspect of anything, independent being; in the view of some Indian philosophers, the principle governing the universe through the spontaneity and individual character of the various substances. -- K.F.L.
Svabhavika (Sanskrit) Svābhāvika [from svabhāva self-becoming] The Svabhavika school, perhaps the oldest existing school of Buddhism, is one of the principal Buddhist philosophical system and is still prevalent in Nepal. Its teachings are highly mystical, and when properly understood may be said to have remained faithful in large degree to the esoteric teachings of Gautama Buddha. The Svabhavika philosophers teach the becoming or unfolding of the self by inner impulse or evolution of the inherent seeds of individuality lying latent in every monad or jiva.
The Academy continued as a school of philosophy until closed by Justinian in 529 A.D. The early scholars (Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemo, Crates) were not great philosophers, they adopted a Pythagorean interpretation of the Ideas and concentrated on practical, moral problems. Following the Older Academy (347-247 B.C.), the Middle and New Academies (Arcesilaus and Carneades were the principal teachers) became scepticil and eclectic. Aristotle (384-322 B.C. ) studied with Plato for twenty years and embodied many Platonic views in his own philosophy. Platonism was very highly regarded by the Christian Fathers (Ambrose, Augustine, John Damascene and Anselm of Canterbury, for instance) and it continued as the approved philosophy of the Christian Church until the 12th century. From the 3rd century on, Neo-Platonism (see Plotinism) developed the other-worldly mystical side of Plato's thought. The School of Chartres (Bernard, Thierry, Wm. of Conches, Gilbert of Poitiers) in the 12th century was a center of Christian Platonism, interested chiefly in the cosmological theory of the Timaeus. The Renaissance witnessed a revival of Platonism in the Florentine Academy (Marsilio Ficino and the two Pico della Mirandolas). In England, the Cambridge Platonists (H. More, Th. Gale, J. Norris) in the 17th century started an interest in Plato, which has not yet died out in the English Universities. Today, the ethical writings of A. E. Taylor, the theoiy of essences developed by G. Santayana, and the metaphysics of A. N. Whitehead, most nearly approach a contemporary Platonism. -- V.J.B.
The ancient conception of fire thus embraced far more than the ordinary view of fire as chemical combustion or one of its phenomena. Among all the older peoples fire was multitudinous in both characteristics and attributes, ranging from divine-spiritual intellectuality through all intermediate stages of its manifestations to the physical heat arising from the burning of material such as wood, or the natural heat of the body. It is for this reason that certain ancient philosophers, such as Heracleitos, spoke of fire as the primordial element of the universe, in close accord with the archaic outlook.
The astral light is virtually the same as the sidereal light of Paracelsus and other medieval mystic philosophers who followed him. The reason for calling this kosmic plane astral or sidereal is that all nature being a vast and intricately interwoven organism, the stars and planets emanate into each other their respective celestial energies and substances. Thus, because there is this constant interchange of starry fluids emanating from the different celestial bodies, the term astral light has a foundation of esoteric scientific fact. It is applied specifically to the second kosmic plane only because it is nearest to the physical and beings living on the physical plane at times become sensible of the existence of the second kosmic plane by means of flashes of starry light or sensations of luminosity. Hence the ancient initiates, knowing the source of this starry substance, properly called it the astral or sidereal light, or by some similar expression. The astral light, finally, is the very dregs of akasa, and is virtually the same as the hypothetical ether of science.
“The philosopher of the Yoga-charya School would say — as well he could — ‘Dharma is not a person but an unconditioned and underived entity, combining in itself the spiritual and material principles of the universe, whilst from Dharma proceeded, by emanation, Buddha [’reflected’ Bodhi rather] as the creative energy which produced, in conjunction with Dharma, the third factor in the trinity, viz., “Samgha,” which is the comprehensive sum total of all real life.’ Samgha, then, is not and cannot be that which it is now understood to be, namely, the actual ‘priesthood’; for the latter is not the sum total of all real life, but only of religious life. The real primitive significance of the word Samgha or ‘Sangha’ applies to the Arhats or Bhikshus, or the ‘initiates,’ alone, that is to say to the real exponents of Dharma — the divine law and wisdom, coming to them as a reflex light from the one ‘boundless light’ ” (TG 342).
The philosophers, dramatists, and historians who held the Dionysian mythos to be purely allegorical and symbolic take in the great names of antiquity, including Plato, Pythagoras, all the Neoplatonists, the greatest historians, and a few of the early Christian Fathers, notably Clement of Alexandria; Eusebius, Tertullian, Justin, and Augustine, also write of it.
“The doctrine of Emanation was at one time universal. It was taught by the Alexandrian as well as by the Indian philosophers, by the Egyptian, the Chaldean and Hellenic Hierophants, and also by the Hebrews (in their Kabbala, and even in Genesis). For it is only owing to deliberate mistranslation that the Hebrew word asdt has been translated ‘angels’ from the Septuagint, when it means Emanations, AEons, precisely as with the Gnostics. Indeed, in Deuteronomy (xxxiii., 2) the word asdt or ashdt is translated as ‘fiery law,’ while the correct rendering of the passage should be ‘from his right hand went [not a fiery law, but] a fire according to law’; viz., that the fire of one flame is imparted to, and caught up by another like as in a trail of inflammable substance. This is precisely emanation” (TG 113-4).
“The dog-headed ape was a glyph to symbolise the sun and moon, in turn, though the Cynocephalus is more a Hermetic than a religious symbol. For it is the hieroglyph of Mercury, the planet, as of the Mercury of the Alchemical philosophers, ‘as,’ say the Alchemists, ‘Mercury has to be ever near Isis, as her minister, as without Mercury neither Isis nor Osiris can accomplish anything in the great work.’ Cynocephalus, whenever represented with the Caduceus, the Crescent, or the Lotus, is a glyph of the ‘philosophical’ Mercury; but when seen with a reed, or a roll of parchment, he stands for Hermes, the secretary and adviser of Isis, as Hanuman filled the same office with Rama” (SD 1:388).
The Esoteric Dictionary is primarily an inventory of the terminology used by Henry T. Laurency, secondarily of the terminology used in theosophy and the works of Alice A. Bailey. The Dictionary is intended to be more than a mere vocabulary. It contains more than 500 entries, the majority of which besides definitions of the terms also cite excerpts from The Philosopher&
The general superiority of theology in this system over the admittedly distinct discipline of philosophy, makes it impossible for unaided reason to solve certain problems which Thomism claims are quite within the province of the latter, e.g., the omnipotence of God, the immortality of the soul. Indeed the Scotist position on this latter question has been thought by some critics to come quite close to the double standard of truth of Averroes, (q.v.) namely, that which is true in theology may be false in philosophy. The univocal assertion of being in God and creatures; the doctrine of universal prime matter (q.v.) in all created substances, even angels, though characteristically there are three kinds of prime matter); the plurality of forms in substances (e.g., two in man) giving successive generic and specific determinations of the substance; all indicate the opposition of Scotistic metaphysics to that of Thomism despite the large body of ideas the two systems have in common. The denial of real distinction between the soul and its faculties; the superiority of will over intellect, the attainment of perfect happiness through a will act of love; the denial of the absolute unchangeableness of the natural law in view of its dependence on the will of God, acts being good because God commanded them; indicate the further rejection of St. Thomas who holds the opposite on each of these questions. However the opposition is not merely for itself but that of a voluntarist against an intellectualist. This has caused many students to point out the affinity of Duns Scotus with Immanuel Kant. (q.v.) But unlike the great German philosopher who relies entirely upon the supremacy of moral consciousness, Duns Scotus makes a constant appeal to revelation and its order of truth as above all philosophy. In his own age, which followed immediately upon the great constructive synthesis of Saints Albert, Bonaventure, and Thomas, this lesser light was less a philosopher because he and his School were incapable of powerful synthesis and so gave themselves to analysis and controversy. The principal Scotists were Francis of Mayron (d. 1327) and Antonio Andrea (d. 1320); and later John of Basoles, John Dumbleton, Walter Burleigh, Alexander of Alexandria, Lychetus of Brescia and Nicholas de Orbellis. The complete works with a life of Duns Scotus were published in 1639 by Luke Wadding (Lyons) and reprinted by Vives in 1891. (Paris) -- C.A.H.
The influence of Kant has penetrated more deeply than that of any other modern philosopher. His doctrine of freedom became the foundation of idealistic metaphysics in Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, but not without sacrifice of the strict critical method. Schopenhauer based his voluntarism on Kant's distinction between phenomena and things-in-themselves. Lotze's teleological idealism was also greatly indebted to Kant. Certain psychological and pragmatic implications of Kant's thought were developed by J. F. Fries, Liebmann, Lange, Simmel and Vaihinger. More recently another group in Germany, reviving the critical method, sought a safe course between metaphysics and psychology; it includes Cohen, Natorp, Riehl, Windelband, Rickert, Husserl, Heidegger, and E. Cassirer. Until recent decades English and American idealists such as Caird, Green, Bradley, Howison, and Royce, saw Kant for the most part through Hegel's eyes. More recently the study of Kant's philosophy has come into its own in English-speaking countries through such commentaries as those of N. K. Smith and Paton. In France the influence of Kant was most apparent in Renouvier's "Phenomenism". -- O.F.K.
Theism: (Gr. theos, god) Is in general that type of religion or religious philosophy (see Religion, Philosophy of) which incorporates a conception of God as a unitary being; thus may be considered equivalent to monotheism. The speculation as to the relation of God to world gave rise to three great forms: God identified with world in pantheism (rare with emphasis on God); God, once having created the world, relatively disinterested in it, in deism (mainly an 18th cent, phenomenon); God working in and through the world, in theism proper. Accordingly, God either coincides with the world, is external to it (deus ex machina), or is immanent. The more personal, human-like God, the more theological the theism, the more appealing to a personal adjustment in prayer, worship, etc., which presuppose either that God, being like man, may be swayed in his decision, has no definite plan, or subsists in the very stuff man is made of (humanistic theism). Immanence of God entails agency in the world, presence, revelation, involvement in the historic process, it has been justified by Hindu and Semitic thinkers, Christian apologetics, ancient and modern metaphysical idealists, and by natural science philosophers. Transcendency of God removes him from human affairs, renders fellowship and communication in Church ways ineffectual, yet preserves God's majesty and absoluteness such as is postulated by philosophies which introduce the concept of God for want of a terser term for the ultimate, principal reality. Like Descartes and Spinoza, they allow the personal in God to fade and approach the age-old Indian pantheism evident in much of Vedic and post-Vedic philosophy in which the personal pronoun may be the only distinguishing mark between metaphysical logic and theology, similarly as in Hegel. The endowment postulated of God lends character to a theistic system of philosophy. Much of Hindu and Greek philosophy stresses the knowledge and ration aspect of the deity, thus producing an epistemological theism; Aristotle, in conceiving him as the prime mover, started a teleological one; mysticism is psychologically oriented in its theism, God being a feeling reality approachable in appropriate emotional states. The theism of religious faith is unquestioning and pragmatic in its attitude toward God; theology has often felt the need of offering proofs for the existence of God (see God) thus tending toward an ontological theism; metaphysics incorporates occasionally the concept of God as a thought necessity, advocating a logical theism. Kant's critique showed the respective fields of pure philosophic enquiry and theistic speculations with their past in historic creeds. Theism is left a possibility in agnosticism (q.v.). -- K.F.L.
The later thinkers commonly referred to in the histories as Hegelians fall mainly into two groups. One is the group more or less indifferent to the method of Hegel and interested primarily in the ramifications of his doctrine; the other is the group committed in principle to the method, to its "negativity" and not to its categories, and concerned by its means to build independently. The early Hegelians in Germany belong to the former group; outstanding representatives of the latter are the recent British and American philosophers sometimes called neo-Hegelians.
The mystical school, dominated by Eckehart, and the famous Peter Pomponazzi (+1525), is represented by Tauler (+1361) and Seuse (+1366), who tried to conform the Master's teaching with the Church's dogmas, and Jan van Ruysbroeck (+1381). From this school stemmed the anonymous "Deutsche Theologie" which Luther edited (1516). Gerson belonged to this group and also Nicholas of Cusa (+1464), the first systematic philosopher of modern times.
Theocrasy [from Greek theokrasia from theos god + krasia a mixing] Used by Iamblichus, among other Greek philosophers, to denote a state of divine intermingling in a universe, signifying that everything is inseparably interblended and conjoined or intermingled with all the rest of the whole.
Theodice, Theodicy [coined from Greek theos god + dike justice] A vindication of divine justice; a system or method of intellectual theorizing about the nature of so-called divine justice, having in view vindication of the justice and holiness of God, in connection with evil. Ancient philosophers all taught that the heart of things was divine harmony and that whatever evil, distortion, and obliquity might exist in the world is ultimately traceable back to the imperfect intelligence of evolving beings, who by their manifold conflicts of thought and will thus produce disharmony, relative confusion, and hence evil, in the scheme of things. This view was replaced during Christian ages by the attempt of many writers to rescue the reputation of the Christian God, who on the one hand is said to be the creator of everything and who yet is supposed to be the fountain of love, mercy, harmony, and goodness. In view of the evils and suffering in the world, such Christian attempts have been futile, for it is obvious that if God is the creator of all that is, He must have been either directly or indirectly the creator of all the disharmony, wickedness, and misery in the world, as was indeed alleged by many Jewish rabbis, following statements in the Hebrew scriptures. But this thought has been denied by Christians who refuse to accept their God of love and justice as the creator of evil, and thus they had recourse to the Devil, who himself must have been created by their omniscient God.
The original Avesta consisted of 21 Nasks of which very few remain intact. Tabari (9th century Iranian historian) writes: “Thirty years after the reign of Kay Goshtasp, Zartusht Spitaman produced a book which was written in gold on 12,000 cowhides. Kay Goshtasp ordered that this book be kept in Dejh-Nebeshtak and be guarded by the Hierbads (the learned) away from the reach of the profane.” (Persian translation of Tarikh-e-Tabari, Tabari Hisrory, Book 11, p. 477) The Pahlavi Dinkard (of the 9th century) states that two complete copies of the Avesta existed: the one kept in the Dezh-Nebeshtak of Persopolis and the other in Ganj-e-Shizegan, which most likely was in the town of Shiz of Azarpategan. When Alexander burned down Persopolis, the copy there was destroyed; but the one in Shizegan was translated into Greek and sent to Aristotle, Alexander’s tutor. This translation has been lost. Bal’ami, historian and the minister of the Samanid kings (early 10th century), writes that Alexander “gathered Iranian philosophers and had their writings translated into Greek and sent them to Aristotle and other Greek philosophers. He destroyed the cities of Babel, Eragh and Pars, killed all men of eminence, and burned down all King Dara’s (Darius) libraries.” (Tarikh-e-Balami, Book 11, p. 699)
theosophy ::: n. --> Any system of philosophy or mysticism which proposes to attain intercourse with God and superior spirits, and consequent superhuman knowledge, by physical processes, as by the theurgic operations of some ancient Platonists, or by the chemical processes of the German fire philosophers; also, a direct, as distinguished from a revealed, knowledge of God, supposed to be attained by extraordinary illumination; especially, a direct insight into the processes of the divine mind, and the interior relations of the divine nature.
The phenomenon of acquired association has long been recognized by philosophers. Plato cites examples of association by contiguity and similarity (Phaedo, 73-6) and Aristotle in his treatment of memory enumerated similarity, contrast and contiguity as relations which mediate recollection. (De Mem. II 6-11 (451 b)). Hobbes also was aware of the psychological importance of the phenomenon of association and anticipated Locke's distinct!p/n between chance and controlled association (Leviathan (1651), ch. 3; Human Nature (1650), ch. 4). But it was Locke who introduced the phrase "association of ideas" and gave impetus to modern association psychology.
The philosophy of Aristotle was continued after his death by other members of the Peripatetic school, the most important of whom were Theophrastus, Eudemus of Rhodes, and Strato of Lampsacus. In the Alexandrian Age, particularly after the editing of Aristotle's works by Andronicus of Rhodes (about 50 B.C.), Aristotelianism was the subject of numerous expositions and commentaries, such as those of Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, John Philoponus, and Simplicius. With the closing of the philosophical schools in the sixth century the knowledge of Aristotle, except for fragments of the logical doctrine, almost disappeared in the west. It was preserved, however, by Arabian and Syrian scholars; from whom, with the revival of learning in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it passed again to western Europe and became in Thomas Aquinas the philosophical basis of Christian theology. For the next few centuries the prestige of Aristotle was immense; he was "the philosopher," "the master of those who know." With the rise of modern science his authority has greatly declined. Yet Aristotelianism is still a force in modern thought: in Neo-Scholasticism; in recent psychology, whose behavioristic tendencies are in part a revival of Aristotelian modes of thought; in the various forms of vitalism in contemporary biology; in the dynamism of such thinkers as Bergson; and in the more catholic naturalism which has succeeded the mechanistic materialism of the last century, and which, whether by appeal to a doctrine of levels or by emphasis on immanent teleology, seems to be striving along Aristotelian lines for a conception of nature broad enough to include the religious, moral and artistic consciousness. Finally, a very large part of our technical vocabulary, both in science and in philosophy, is but the translation into modern tongues of the terms used by Aristotle, and carries with it, for better or worse, the distinctions worked out in his subtle mind. -- G.R.M.
The planets are individual manifestations of conscious intelligences, their distances from the sun being generally in rhythmical progression and their motions directed by mind and volition, as Kepler declared in his doctrine of Rectors, following the ancient teachings. The nebular hypothesis, once so popular in European scientific thought and now more or less rejected, was first suggested by Swedish seer Swedenborg and German philosopher Kant, and around the beginning of the 19th century was worked out in mathematical detail by the Frenchman Laplace. Though the nebular hypothesis as scientifically presented was unacceptable to theosophical thinkers, it nevertheless was based upon facts of cosmic evolution accepted by the ancient wisdom-religion and approximated somewhat more closely to what theosophy teaches as the facts of cosmogony than do the later tidal or planetesimal theories.
The Platonic theory of education is based on a drawing out (educatio) of what is already dimly known to the learner. (Meno, Repub. II-VII, Theaetetus, Laws.) The training of the philosopher-ruler, outlined in the Republic, requires the selection of the most promising children in their infancy and a rigorous disciplining of them in gymnastic, music (in the Greek sense of literary studies), mathematics and dialectic (the study of the Ideas). This training was to continue until the students were about thirty-five years of age; then fifteen years of practical apprenticeship in the subordinate offices of the state were required; finally, at the age of fifty, the rulers were advised to return to the study of philosophy. It should be noted that this program is intended only for an intellectual elite; the military class was to undergo a shorter period of training suited to its functions, and the masses of people, engaged in production, trading, and like pursuits, were not offered any special educational schedule.
The practice was ancient and widespread among the lower orders of the Greek and Roman peoples, and is expressly condemned by an uninterrupted testimony dating from archaic times, ancient legislators and philosophers condemning it, for it is a perversion of the real communion of the genuine spiritual theurgist with his own inner god. Modern Spiritualism is an unconscious blundering into necromancy; if the astral remains of the dead are really called up, then the normal processes of their dissolution are interfered with. If they are not called up, then they have been impersonated by still more harmful and dangerous denizens of the lower astral light.
The problem of attributes gave rise to extensive discussions. In general, the attempt is made to convey some knowledge about God and yet maintain that His essence is inconceivable. The number of attributes varies with individual philosophers, from three of Bahya to eight of Ibn Daud. Saadia counts one, living, potent and wise as essential attributes; Bahya one, existent, and eternal. Ha-Levi substitutes living for existent. Ibn Daud adds to those of Saadia and Bahya three more: true, willing, and potent. Maimonides considers living, potent, wise, and willing as those agreed upon by philosophers. The difficulty, however, does not consist in the number but in their content, or in other words, how to speak of essential attributes and not to impair the simplicity of God's essence. Bahya was the first to assert that their content is negative, e.g., existent means not non-existent. He was followed in this by all others. Maimonides is especially insistent upon the negative meaning and asserts that they are to be applied to God and man in an absolute homonymic manner, i.e., there is no possible relation between God and other beings. Gersonides and Crescas, on the other hand, believe that the essential attributes are positive though we cannot determine their content. There are, of course, other attributes which are descriptive of His action, but these are not essential.
The question of whether the operations must be specified or merely conceivable for the proposition to have meaning (which is analogous to the constructibility problem in mathematical discussions) has occasioned considerable criticism, for there appeared to be a danger that important scientific propositions might be excluded as meaningless. To this and other problems of operationalism the logical positivists (or empiricists) have contributed formulary modifications and refinements. See Logical Empiricism. In spite of their frequent difference with regard to the empirical foundation of logic and mathematics, pragmatism has received some support from the strict logicians and mathematical philosophers. One of the most important instances historically was C. I. Lewis' paper "The Pragmatic Element in Knowledge" (University of California Publications in Philosophy, 1926). Here he stated 'that the truth of experience must always be relative to our chosen conceptual systems", and that our choice between conceptual systems "will be determined consciously or not, on pragmatic grounds".
There are no absolute separations among the planes of the universe, because all of them, while existing distinctly from each other, on their frontiers blend insensibly with the contiguous planes. Thus the lower portions of the superastral blend insensibly with the higher portions of the astral. Astral in a general sense is equivalent to the cosmic astral light, itself composed of numerous subordinate planes ranging from the spiritual through the ethereal, until the lowest subplanes merge into and become the physical world. Thus the cosmic sea of fire spoken of by ancient mystics and philosophers is another way of speaking of pure spirit and the divine or superspirit; out to spirit and superspirit flows in emanational degrees what becomes through another unfolding the astral light.
There is, however, greater difficulty in making freedom of the will compatible with divine prescience of human action. The question arises, does God know beforehand what man will do or not? If he does, it follows that the action is determined, or if man can choose, His knowledge is not true. Various answers were proposed by Jewish philosophers to this difficult problem. Saadia says that God's knowledge is like gazing in a mirror of the future which does not influence human action. He knows the ultimate result. Maimonides says that God's knowledge is so totally different from human that it remains indefinable, and consequently He may know things beforehand, and yet not impair the possibility of man to choose between two actions. Ibn Daud and Gersonides limit God's knowledge and say that He only knows that certain actions will be present to man for choice but not the way he will choose. Crescas is more logical and comes to the conclusion that action is possible only per se, i.e., when looked upon singly, but is necessary through the causes. Free will is in this case nominal and consist primarily in the fact that man is ignorant of the real situation and he is rewarded and punished for his exertion to do good or for his neglect to exert himself.
The relation of God to the world includes, as we have seen, a number of problems. The general conception of the world with almost all Jewish philosophers is mainly Aristotelian. All, not excluding Saadia, who was to a considerable degree under the influence of the Mutazilites, all except Aristotle's theory of matter and form, i.e., that all bodies are composed of two elements, the substratum or the hyle and the particular form with which it is endewed. They all speak of primal matter which was the first creation, and all accept his view of the four elements, i.e., fire, air, water, and earth which are the components of all things in the lower world. They also accept his cosmogony, namely, the division of the universe of the upper world of the spheres and the lower or sublunar world, and also posit the influence of the spheres upon the course of events in this world. On the other hand, all oppose his view of the eternity of the world and champion creation de novo with slight variations.
::: "The silent mind is a result of yoga; the ordinary mind is never silent. . . . The thinkers and philosophers do not have the silent mind. It is the active mind they have; only, of course, they concentrate, so the common incoherent mentalising stops and the thoughts that rise or enter and shape themselves are coherently restricted to the subject or activity in hand. But that is quite a different matter from the whole mind falling silent.” Letters on Yoga
“The silent mind is a result of yoga; the ordinary mind is never silent. . . . The thinkers and philosophers do not have the silent mind. It is the active mind they have; only, of course, they concentrate, so the common incoherent mentalising stops and the thoughts that rise or enter and shape themselves are coherently restricted to the subject or activity in hand. But that is quite a different matter from the whole mind falling silent.” Letters on Yoga
The states of matter give clues by means of correspondence to the understanding of the primary elements. Gases are indefinitely expansible and their particles have great freedom and range of movement and are always in rapid motion. It would seem by analogy that the solid state corresponds to the physical planes, the liquid state to the astral or psychic plane, air to mind, and fire to spirit. Air may be called the vehicle of fire, as mind is the vehicle of spirit. Fire is analogous to points or foci of energy; air, being number two, suggests lines of force or radiation, motion. The air which, according to the teaching of the medieval Fire-philosophers, is the domain of sylphs is certainly not our familiar mixture of oxygen and nitrogen, which is merely a correspondence of the element on our plane; it is when on our own astral air plane that these beings may be encountered.
The term occult has noble, but largely forgotten origins. It properly defines anything which is undisclosed, concealed, or not easily perceived. Early theologians, for example, spoke of “the occult judgment of God,” while “occult philosopher” was a designation for the pre-Renaissance scientist who sought the unseen causes regulating nature’s phenomena. In astronomy, the term is still used when one stellar body “occults” another by passing in front of it, temporarily hiding it from view. Writing a century ago, when the word had not acquired today’s mixed connotations, H.P. Blavatsky defined occultism as “altruism pure and simple” — the divine wisdom or hidden theosophy within all religions.
The view of freedom of the will and the soul influenced to a great extent the ethics of the Jewish philosophers. A large number of thinkers accepted the Aristotelian norm of the golden mean as the rule of conduct, but considered that the laws and precepts of the Torah help towards obtaining right conduct. Maimonides, however, stated that the norm of the mean is only for the average man, but that the higher man should incline towards an extreme good way in conduct. Crescas' view of the good way follows from the theory of the soul, he stresses the emotional element, namely the necessity of the love of the Good and the desire to actualize it in life.
THIRD HUMAN TYPE The third type is the thinker, philosopher, mathematician (often the unpractical theorist), who examines everything from every side, etc. K 2.7.11
This rebuilding of the notion of creature permits St. Thomas also to analyze the problems that Averroism was making more and more prominent. Philosophical truth was discovered by the Greeks and the Arabians neither completely nor adequately nor without error. What the Christian thinker must do in their presence is not to divide his allegiance between them and Christianity, but to discover the meaning of reason and the conditions of true thinking. That discovery will enable him to learn from the Greeks without also learning their errors; and it would thus show him the possibility of the harmony between reason and revelation. He must learn to be a philosopher, to discover the philosopher within the Christian man, in order to meet philosophers. In exploring the meaning of a creature, St. Thomas was building a philosophy which permitted his contemporaries (at least, if they listened to him) to free themselves from the old eternalistic and rigid world of the Greeks and to free their thinking, therefore, from the antinomies which this world could raise up for them. In the harmony of faith and reason which St. Thomas defended against Averroism, we must see the culminating point of his activity. For such a harmony meant ultimately not only a judicious and synthetic diagnosis of Greek philosophy, as well as a synthetic incorporation of Greek ideas in Christian thought, it meant also the final vindication of the humanism and the naturalism of Thomistic philosophy. The expression and the defense of this Christian humanism constitute one of St. Thomas' most enduring contributions to European thought. -- A.C.P.
Three Jewish Philosophers (Philo, Saadya Gaon, Jehuda
Three senses of "Ockhamism" may be distinguished: Logical, indicating usage of the terminology and technique of logical analysis developed by Ockham in his Summa totius logicae; in particular, use of the concept of supposition (suppositio) in the significative analysis of terms. Epistemological, indicating the thesis that universality is attributable only to terms and propositions, and not to things as existing apart from discourse. Theological, indicating the thesis that no tneological doctrines, such as those of God's existence or of the immortality of the soul, are evident or demonstrable philosophically, so that religious doctrine rests solely on faith, without metaphysical or scientific support. It is in this sense that Luther is often called an Ockhamist. Bibliography: B. Geyer, Ueberwegs Grundriss d. Gesch. d. Phil., Bd. II (11th ed., Berlin 1928), pp. 571-612 and 781-786; N. Abbagnano, Guglielmo di Ockham (Lanciano, Italy, 1931); E. A. Moody, The Logic of William of Ockham (N. Y. & London, 1935); F. Ehrle, Peter von Candia (Muenster, 1925); G. Ritter, Studien zur Spaetscholastik, I-II (Heidelberg, 1921-1922). --E.A.M. Om, aum: (Skr.) Mystic, holy syllable as a symbol for the indefinable Absolute. See Aksara, Vac, Sabda. --K.F.L. Omniscience: In philosophy and theology it means the complete and perfect knowledge of God, of Himself and of all other beings, past, present, and future, or merely possible, as well as all their activities, real or possible, including the future free actions of human beings. --J.J.R. One: Philosophically, not a number but equivalent to unit, unity, individuality, in contradistinction from multiplicity and the mani-foldness of sensory experience. In metaphysics, the Supreme Idea (Plato), the absolute first principle (Neo-platonism), the universe (Parmenides), Being as such and divine in nature (Plotinus), God (Nicolaus Cusanus), the soul (Lotze). Religious philosophy and mysticism, beginning with Indian philosophy (s.v.), has favored the designation of the One for the metaphysical world-ground, the ultimate icility, the world-soul, the principle of the world conceived as reason, nous, or more personally. The One may be conceived as an independent whole or as a sum, as analytic or synthetic, as principle or ontologically. Except by mysticism, it is rarely declared a fact of sensory experience, while its transcendent or transcendental, abstract nature is stressed, e.g., in epistemology where the "I" or self is considered the unitary background of personal experience, the identity of self-consciousness, or the unity of consciousness in the synthesis of the manifoldness of ideas (Kant). --K.F.L. One-one: A relation R is one-many if for every y in the converse domain there is a unique x such that xRy. A relation R is many-one if for every x in the domain there is a unique y such that xRy. (See the article relation.) A relation is one-one, or one-to-one, if it is at the same time one-many and many-one. A one-one relation is said to be, or to determine, a one-to-one correspondence between its domain and its converse domain. --A.C. On-handedness: (Ger. Vorhandenheit) Things exist in the mode of thereness, lying- passively in a neutral space. A "deficient" form of a more basic relationship, termed at-handedness (Zuhandenheit). (Heidegger.) --H.H. Ontological argument: Name by which later authors, especially Kant, designate the alleged proof for God's existence devised by Anselm of Canterbury. Under the name of God, so the argument runs, everyone understands that greater than which nothing can be thought. Since anything being the greatest and lacking existence is less then the greatest having also existence, the former is not really the greater. The greatest, therefore, has to exist. Anselm has been reproached, already by his contemporary Gaunilo, for unduly passing from the field of logical to the field of ontological or existential reasoning. This criticism has been repeated by many authors, among them Aquinas. The argument has, however, been used, if in a somewhat modified form, by Duns Scotus, Descartes, and Leibniz. --R.A. Ontological Object: (Gr. onta, existing things + logos, science) The real or existing object of an act of knowledge as distinguished from the epistemological object. See Epistemological Object. --L.W. Ontologism: (Gr. on, being) In contrast to psychologism, is called any speculative system which starts philosophizing by positing absolute being, or deriving the existence of entities independently of experience merely on the basis of their being thought, or assuming that we have immediate and certain knowledge of the ground of being or God. Generally speaking any rationalistic, a priori metaphysical doctrine, specifically the philosophies of Rosmini-Serbati and Vincenzo Gioberti. As a philosophic method censored by skeptics and criticists alike, as a scholastic doctrine formerly strongly supported, revived in Italy and Belgium in the 19th century, but no longer countenanced. --K.F.L. Ontology: (Gr. on, being + logos, logic) The theory of being qua being. For Aristotle, the First Philosophy, the science of the essence of things. Introduced as a term into philosophy by Wolff. The science of fundamental principles, the doctrine of the categories. Ultimate philosophy; rational cosmology. Syn. with metaphysics. See Cosmology, First Principles, Metaphysics, Theology. --J.K.F. Operation: "(Lit. operari, to work) Any act, mental or physical, constituting a phase of the reflective process, and performed with a view to acquiring1 knowledge or information about a certain subject-nntter. --A.C.B. In logic, see Operationism. In philosophy of science, see Pragmatism, Scientific Empiricism. Operationism: The doctrine that the meaning of a concept is given by a set of operations. 1. The operational meaning of a term (word or symbol) is given by a semantical rule relating the term to some concrete process, object or event, or to a class of such processes, objectj or events. 2. Sentences formed by combining operationally defined terms into propositions are operationally meaningful when the assertions are testable by means of performable operations. Thus, under operational rules, terms have semantical significance, propositions have empirical significance. Operationism makes explicit the distinction between formal (q.v.) and empirical sentences. Formal propositions are signs arranged according to syntactical rules but lacking operational reference. Such propositions, common in mathematics, logic and syntax, derive their sanction from convention, whereas an empirical proposition is acceptable (1) when its structure obeys syntactical rules and (2) when there exists a concrete procedure (a set of operations) for determining its truth or falsity (cf. Verification). Propositions purporting to be empirical are sometimes amenable to no operational test because they contain terms obeying no definite semantical rules. These sentences are sometimes called pseudo-propositions and are said to be operationally meaningless. They may, however, be 'meaningful" in other ways, e.g. emotionally or aesthetically (cf. Meaning). Unlike a formal statement, the "truth" of an empirical sentence is never absolute and its operational confirmation serves only to increase the degree of its validity. Similarly, the semantical rule comprising the operational definition of a term has never absolute precision. Ordinarily a term denotes a class of operations and the precision of its definition depends upon how definite are the rules governing inclusion in the class. The difference between Operationism and Logical Positivism (q.v.) is one of emphasis. Operationism's stress of empirical matters derives from the fact that it was first employed to purge physics of such concepts as absolute space and absolute time, when the theory of relativity had forced upon physicists the view that space and time are most profitably defined in terms of the operations by which they are measured. Although different methods of measuring length at first give rise to different concepts of length, wherever the equivalence of certain of these measures can be established by other operations, the concepts may legitimately be combined. In psychology the operational criterion of meaningfulness is commonly associated with a behavioristic point of view. See Behaviorism. Since only those propositions which are testable by public and repeatable operations are admissible in science, the definition of such concepti as mind and sensation must rest upon observable aspects of the organism or its behavior. Operational psychology deals with experience only as it is indicated by the operation of differential behavior, including verbal report. Discriminations, or the concrete differential reactions of organisms to internal or external environmental states, are by some authors regarded as the most basic of all operations. For a discussion of the role of operational definition in phvsics. see P. W. Bridgman, The Logic of Modern Physics, (New York, 1928) and The Nature of Physical Theory (Princeton, 1936). "The extension of operationism to psychology is discussed by C. C. Pratt in The Logic of Modem Psychology (New York. 1939.) For a discussion and annotated bibliography relating to Operationism and Logical Positivism, see S. S. Stevens, Psychology and the Science of Science, Psychol. Bull., 36, 1939, 221-263. --S.S.S. Ophelimity: Noun derived from the Greek, ophelimos useful, employed by Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) in economics as the equivalent of utility, or the capacity to provide satisfaction. --J.J.R. Opinion: (Lat. opinio, from opinor, to think) An hypothesis or proposition entertained on rational grounds but concerning which doubt can reasonably exist. A belief. See Hypothesis, Certainty, Knowledge. --J.K.F- Opposition: (Lat. oppositus, pp. of oppono, to oppose) Positive actual contradiction. One of Aristotle's Post-predicaments. In logic any contrariety or contradiction, illustrated by the "Square of Opposition". Syn. with: conflict. See Logic, formal, § 4. --J.K.F. Optimism: (Lat. optimus, the best) The view inspired by wishful thinking, success, faith, or philosophic reflection, that the world as it exists is not so bad or even the best possible, life is good, and man's destiny is bright. Philosophically most persuasively propounded by Leibniz in his Theodicee, according to which God in his wisdom would have created a better world had he known or willed such a one to exist. Not even he could remove moral wrong and evil unless he destroyed the power of self-determination and hence the basis of morality. All systems of ethics that recognize a supreme good (Plato and many idealists), subscribe to the doctrines of progressivism (Turgot, Herder, Comte, and others), regard evil as a fragmentary view (Josiah Royce et al.) or illusory, or believe in indemnification (Henry David Thoreau) or melioration (Emerson), are inclined optimistically. Practically all theologies advocating a plan of creation and salvation, are optimistic though they make the good or the better dependent on moral effort, right thinking, or belief, promising it in a future existence. Metaphysical speculation is optimistic if it provides for perfection, evolution to something higher, more valuable, or makes room for harmonies or a teleology. See Pessimism. --K.F.L. Order: A class is said to be partially ordered by a dyadic relation R if it coincides with the field of R, and R is transitive and reflexive, and xRy and yRx never both hold when x and y are different. If in addition R is connected, the class is said to be ordered (or simply ordered) by R, and R is called an ordering relation. Whitehcid and Russell apply the term serial relation to relations which are transitive, irreflexive, and connected (and, in consequence, also asymmetric). However, the use of serial relations in this sense, instead ordering relations as just defined, is awkward in connection with the notion of order for unit classes. Examples: The relation not greater than among leal numbers is an ordering relation. The relation less than among real numbers is a serial relation. The real numbers are simply ordered by the former relation. In the algebra of classes (logic formal, § 7), the classes are partially ordered by the relation of class inclusion. For explanation of the terminology used in making the above definitions, see the articles connexity, reflexivity, relation, symmetry, transitivity. --A.C. Order type: See relation-number. Ordinal number: A class b is well-ordered by a dyadic relation R if it is ordered by R (see order) and, for every class a such that a ⊂ b, there is a member x of a, such that xRy holds for every member y of a; and R is then called a well-ordering relation. The ordinal number of a class b well-ordered by a relation R, or of a well-ordering relation R, is defined to be the relation-number (q. v.) of R. The ordinal numbers of finite classes (well-ordered by appropriate relations) are called finite ordinal numbers. These are 0, 1, 2, ... (to be distinguished, of course, from the finite cardinal numbers 0, 1, 2, . . .). The first non-finite (transfinite or infinite) ordinal number is the ordinal number of the class of finite ordinal numbers, well-ordered in their natural order, 0, 1, 2, . . .; it is usually denoted by the small Greek letter omega. --A.C. G. Cantor, Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers, translated and with an introduction by P. E. B. Jourdain, Chicago and London, 1915. (new ed. 1941); Whitehead and Russell, Princtpia Mathematica. vol. 3. Orexis: (Gr. orexis) Striving; desire; the conative aspect of mind, as distinguished from the cognitive and emotional (Aristotle). --G.R.M.. Organicism: A theory of biology that life consists in the organization or dynamic system of the organism. Opposed to mechanism and vitalism. --J.K.F. Organism: An individual animal or plant, biologically interpreted. A. N. Whitehead uses the term to include also physical bodies and to signify anything material spreading through space and enduring in time. --R.B.W. Organismic Psychology: (Lat. organum, from Gr. organon, an instrument) A system of theoretical psychology which construes the structure of the mind in organic rather than atomistic terms. See Gestalt Psychology; Psychological Atomism. --L.W. Organization: (Lat. organum, from Gr. organon, work) A structured whole. The systematic unity of parts in a purposive whole. A dynamic system. Order in something actual. --J.K.F. Organon: (Gr. organon) The title traditionally given to the body of Aristotle's logical treatises. The designation appears to have originated among the Peripatetics after Aristotle's time, and expresses their view that logic is not a part of philosophy (as the Stoics maintained) but rather the instrument (organon) of philosophical inquiry. See Aristotelianism. --G.R.M. In Kant. A system of principles by which pure knowledge may be acquired and established. Cf. Fr. Bacon's Novum Organum. --O.F.K. Oriental Philosophy: A general designation used loosely to cover philosophic tradition exclusive of that grown on Greek soil and including the beginnings of philosophical speculation in Egypt, Arabia, Iran, India, and China, the elaborate systems of India, Greater India, China, and Japan, and sometimes also the religion-bound thought of all these countries with that of the complex cultures of Asia Minor, extending far into antiquity. Oriental philosophy, though by no means presenting a homogeneous picture, nevertheless shares one characteristic, i.e., the practical outlook on life (ethics linked with metaphysics) and the absence of clear-cut distinctions between pure speculation and religious motivation, and on lower levels between folklore, folk-etymology, practical wisdom, pre-scientiiic speculation, even magic, and flashes of philosophic insight. Bonds with Western, particularly Greek philosophy have no doubt existed even in ancient times. Mutual influences have often been conjectured on the basis of striking similarities, but their scientific establishment is often difficult or even impossible. Comparative philosophy (see especially the work of Masson-Oursel) provides a useful method. Yet a thorough treatment of Oriental Philosophy is possible only when the many languages in which it is deposited have been more thoroughly studied, the psychological and historical elements involved in the various cultures better investigated, and translations of the relevant documents prepared not merely from a philological point of view or out of missionary zeal, but by competent philosophers who also have some linguistic training. Much has been accomplished in this direction in Indian and Chinese Philosophy (q.v.). A great deal remains to be done however before a definitive history of Oriental Philosophy may be written. See also Arabian, and Persian Philosophy. --K.F.L. Origen: (185-254) The principal founder of Christian theology who tried to enrich the ecclesiastic thought of his day by reconciling it with the treasures of Greek philosophy. Cf. Migne PL. --R.B.W. Ormazd: (New Persian) Same as Ahura Mazdah (q.v.), the good principle in Zoroastrianism, and opposed to Ahriman (q.v.). --K.F.L. Orphic Literature: The mystic writings, extant only in fragments, of a Greek religious-philosophical movement of the 6th century B.C., allegedly started by the mythical Orpheus. In their mysteries, in which mythology and rational thinking mingled, the Orphics concerned themselves with cosmogony, theogony, man's original creation and his destiny after death which they sought to influence to the better by pure living and austerity. They taught a symbolism in which, e.g., the relationship of the One to the many was clearly enunciated, and believed in the soul as involved in reincarnation. Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Plato were influenced by them. --K.F.L. Ortega y Gasset, Jose: Born in Madrid, May 9, 1883. At present in Buenos Aires, Argentine. Son of Ortega y Munillo, the famous Spanish journalist. Studied at the College of Jesuits in Miraflores and at the Central University of Madrid. In the latter he presented his Doctor's dissertation, El Milenario, in 1904, thereby obtaining his Ph.D. degree. After studies in Leipzig, Berlin, Marburg, under the special influence of Hermann Cohen, the great exponent of Kant, who taught him the love for the scientific method and awoke in him the interest in educational philosophy, Ortega came to Spain where, after the death of Nicolas Salmeron, he occupied the professorship of metaphysics at the Central University of Madrid. The following may be considered the most important works of Ortega y Gasset: Meditaciones del Quijote, 1914; El Espectador, I-VIII, 1916-1935; El Tema de Nuestro Tiempo, 1921; España Invertebrada, 1922; Kant, 1924; La Deshumanizacion del Arte, 1925; Espiritu de la Letra, 1927; La Rebelion de las Masas, 1929; Goethe desde Adentio, 1934; Estudios sobre el Amor, 1939; Ensimismamiento y Alteracion, 1939; El Libro de las Misiones, 1940; Ideas y Creencias, 1940; and others. Although brought up in the Marburg school of thought, Ortega is not exactly a neo-Kantian. At the basis of his Weltanschauung one finds a denial of the fundamental presuppositions which characterized European Rationalism. It is life and not thought which is primary. Things have a sense and a value which must be affirmed independently. Things, however, are to be conceived as the totality of situations which constitute the circumstances of a man's life. Hence, Ortega's first philosophical principle: "I am myself plus my circumstances". Life as a problem, however, is but one of the poles of his formula. Reason is the other. The two together function, not by dialectical opposition, but by necessary coexistence. Life, according to Ortega, does not consist in being, but rather, in coming to be, and as such it is of the nature of direction, program building, purpose to be achieved, value to be realized. In this sense the future as a time dimension acquires new dignity, and even the present and the past become articulate and meaning-full only in relation to the future. Even History demands a new point of departure and becomes militant with new visions. --J.A.F. Orthodoxy: Beliefs which are declared by a group to be true and normative. Heresy is a departure from and relative to a given orthodoxy. --V.S. Orthos Logos: See Right Reason. Ostensible Object: (Lat. ostendere, to show) The object envisaged by cognitive act irrespective of its actual existence. See Epistemological Object. --L.W. Ostensive: (Lat. ostendere, to show) Property of a concept or predicate by virtue of which it refers to and is clarified by reference to its instances. --A.C.B. Ostwald, Wilhelm: (1853-1932) German chemist. Winner of the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1909. In Die Uberwindung des wissenschaftlichen Materialistmus and in Naturphilosophie, his two best known works in the field of philosophy, he advocates a dynamic theory in opposition to materialism and mechanism. All properties of matter, and the psychic as well, are special forms of energy. --L.E.D. Oupnekhat: Anquetil Duperron's Latin translation of the Persian translation of 50 Upanishads (q.v.), a work praised by Schopenhauer as giving him complete consolation. --K.F.L. Outness: A term employed by Berkeley to express the experience of externality, that is the ideas of space and things placed at a distance. Hume used it in the sense of distance Hamilton understood it as the state of being outside of consciousness in a really existing world of material things. --J.J.R. Overindividual: Term used by H. Münsterberg to translate the German überindividuell. The term is applied to any cognitive or value object which transcends the individual subject. --L.W. P
Thumoeides (Greek) [from thymos passional soul + eidos form] The name given by Plato to a division of the psychomental nature, the animal or passional soul, kama-manas, in contrast with a still lower division of kama-manas which he called epithumetikon (appetitive, or that which has appetite for). Above both these, which together comprise what other Greek philosophers called the psyche, is the nous, the seat of inspiration, intuition, the highest intellection, and similar noble attributes or faculties, corresponding to the buddhi-manas or atma-buddhi-manas.
Timaeus (Greek) A dialogue of Plato in which the Pythagorean philosopher Timaeus gives an account of aspects of cosmogenesis and anthropogenesis. Timaeus himself is stated to have written what was regarded by Pythagoras as a book of great worth entitled Peri Psyche Kosmou Kai Physeos (On the Soul of the World and of Nature).
T'ime: The general medium in which all events take place in succession or appear to take place in succession. All specific and finite periods of time, whether past, present or future, constitute merely parts of the entire and single Time. Common-sense interprets Time vaguely as something moving toward the future or as something in which events point in that direction. But the many contradictions contained in this notion have led philosophers to postulate doctrines purporting to eliminate some of the difficulties implied in common-sense ideas. The first famous but unresolved controversy arose in Ancient Greece, between Parmenides, who maintained that change and becoming were irrational illusions, and Heraclitus, who asserted that there was no permanence and that change characterized everything without exception. Another great controversy arose centuries later between disciples of Newton and Leibniz. According to Newton, time was independent of, and prior to, events; in his own words, "absolute time, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without regard to anything external." According to Leibniz, on the other hand, there can be no time independent of events: for time is formed by events and relations among them, and constitutes the universal order of succession. It was this latter doctrine which eventually gave rise to the doctrine of space-time, in which both space and time are regarded as two systems of relations, distinct from a perceptual standpoint, but inseparably bound together in reality. All these controversies led many thinkers to believe that the concept of time cannot be fully accounted for, unless we distinguish between perceptual, or subjective, time, which is confined to the perceptually shifting 'now' of the present, and conceptual, or objective, time, which includes til periods of time and in which the events we call past, present and future can be mutually and fixedly related. See Becoming, Change, Duration, Persistence, Space-Time. -- R.B.W.
Time track: According to many esoteric philosophers and occultists, time sequence—past, present and future—is just a human concept; time is indivisible, externally extant, and past, present and future are merely concepts of the human mind which moves along a “time track” on a one-way trip through the reality which is time. Adherents to this view explain prescience, premonitions, prophecy, etc. as glimpses ahead along the time track.
torricellian ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Torricelli, an Italian philosopher and mathematician, who, in 1643, discovered that the rise of a liquid in a tube, as in the barometer, is due to atmospheric pressure. See Barometer.
Transcendentalists Those who assert that true knowledge is obtained by faculties of the mind which transcend sensory experience; those who exalt intuition above empirical knowledge, or that derived from the sense organs, and even that derived from ordinary mentation. Used in modern times of some post-Kantian German philosophers, and of the school of Emerson. The term, however, has been used in different senses by different people.
T'ung: Mere identity, or sameness, especially in social institutions and standards, which is inferior to harmony (ho) in which social distinctions and differences are in complete concord. (Confucianism). Agreement, as in "agreement with the superiors" (shang t'ung). The method of agreement, which includes identity, generic relationship, co-existence, and partial resemblance. "Identity means two substances having one name. Generic relationship means inclusion in the same whole. Both being in the same room is a case of co-existence. Partial resemblance means having some points of resemblance." See Mo chi. (Neo-Mohism). --W.T.C. T'ung i: The joint method of similarities and differences, by which what is present and what is absent can be distinguished. See Mo chi. --W.T.C. Tung Chung-shu: (177-104 B.C.) was the leading Confucian of his time, premier to two feudal princes, and consultant to the Han emperor in framing national policies. Firmly believing in retribution, he strongly advocated the "science of catastrophic and anomalies," and became the founder and leader of medieval Confucianism which was extensively confused with the Yin Yang philosophy. Extremely antagonistic towards rival schools, he established Confucianism as basis of state religion and education. His best known work, Ch-un-ch'iu Fan-lu, awaits English translation. --W.T.C. Turro y Darder, Ramon: Spanish Biologist and Philosopher. Born in Malgrat, Dec. 8 1854. Died in Barcelona, June 5, 1926. As a Biologist, his conclusions about the circulation of the blood, more than half a century ago, were accepted and verified by later researchers and theorists. Among other things, he showed the insufficiency and unsatisfactoriness of the mechanistic and neomechanistic explanations of the circulatory process. He was also the first to busy himself with endocrinology and bacteriological immunity. As a philosopher Turro combated the subjectivistic and metaphysical type of psychology, and circumscribed scientific investigation to the determination of the conditions that precede the occurrence of phenomena, considering useless all attempt to reach final essences. Turro does not admit, however, that the psychical series or conscious states may be causally linked to the organic series. His formula was: Physiology and Consciousness are phenomena that occur, not in connection, but in conjunction. His most important work is Filosofia Critica, in which he has put side by side two antagonistic conceptions of the universe, the objective and the subjectne conceptions. In it he holds that, at the present crisis of science and philosophy, the business of intelligence is to realize that science works on philosophical presuppositions, but that philosophy is no better off with its chaos of endless contradictions and countless systems of thought. The task to be realized is one of coming together, to undo what has been done and get as far as the original primordial concepts with which philosophical inquiry began. --J.A.F. Tychism: A term derived from the Greek, tyche, fortune, chance, and employed by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) to express any theory which regards chance as an objective reality, operative in the cosmos. Also the hypothesis that evolution occurs owing to fortuitous variations. --J.J.R. Types, theory of: See Logic, formal, § 6; Paradoxes, logical; Ramified theory of types. Type-token ambiguity: The words token and type are used to distinguish between two senses of the word word. Individual marks, more or less resembling each other (as "cat" resembles "cat" and "CAT") may (1) be said to be "the same word" or (2) so many "different words". The apparent contradiction therby involved is removed by speaking of the individual marks as tokens, in contrast with the one type of which they are instances. And word may then be said to be subject to type-token ambiguity. The terminology can easily be extended to apply to any kind of symbol, e.g. as in speaking of token- and type-sentences. Reference: C. S. Peirce, Collected Papers, 4.517. --M.B. Tz'u: (a) Parental love, kindness, or affection, the ideal Confucian virtue of parents. (b) Love, kindness in general. --W.T.C. Tzu hua: Self-transformation or spontaneous transformation without depending on any divine guidance or eternal agency, but following the thing's own principle of being, which is Tao. (Taoism). --W.T.C. Tzu jan: The natural, the natural state, the state of Tao, spontaneity as against artificiality. (Lao Tzu; Huai-nan Tzu, d. 122 B.C.). --W.T.C. U
U. Cassina, L'oeuvre philosophique de G. Peano, Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, vol. 40 (1933), pp. 481-491. Peirce, Charles Sanders: American Philosopher. Born in Cambridge, Mass, on September 10th, 1839. Harvard M.A. in 1862 and Sc. B. in 1863. Except for a brief cireer as lectuier in philosophy at Harvard, 1864-65 and 1869-70 and in logic at Johns Hopkins, 1879-84, he did no formal teaching. Longest tenure was with the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey for thirty years beginning in 1861. Died at Milford, Pa. in 1914 He had completed only one work, The Grand Logic, published posthumously (Coll. Papers). Edited Studies in Logic (1883). No volumes published during his lifetime but author of many lectures, essays and reviews in periodicals, particularly in the Popular Science Monthly, 1877-78, and in The Monist, 1891-93, some of which have been reprinted in Chance, Love and Logic (1923), edited by Morris R. Cohen, and. together with the best of his other work both published and unpublished, in Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (1931-35), edited by Charles Hartshorne ¦ind Paul Weiss. He was most influenced by Kant, who had he thought, raised all the relevant philosophical problems but from whom he differed on almost every solution. He was excited by Darwin, whose doctrine of evolution coincided with his own thought, and disciplined by laboratory experience in the physical sciences which inspired his search for rigor and demonstration throughout his work. Felt himself deeply opposed to Descartes, whom he accused of being responsible for the modern form of the nominalistic error. Favorably inclined toward Duns Scotus, from whom he derived his realism. Philosophy is a sub-class of the science of discovery, in turn a branch of theoretical science. The function of philosophy is to expliin and hence show unity in the variety of the universe. All philosophy takes its start in logic, or the relations of signs to their objects, and phenomenology, or the brute experience of the objective actual world. The conclusions from these two studies meet in the three basic metaphysical categories: quality, reaction, and representation. Quality is firstness or spontaneity; reaction is secondness or actuality; and representation is thirdness or possibility. Realism (q.v.) is explicit in the distinction of the modes of being actuality as the field of reactions, possibility as the field of quality (or values) and representation (or relations). He was much concerned to establish the realism of scientific method: that the postulates, implications and conclusions of science are the results of inquiry yet presupposed by it. He was responsible for pragmatism as a method of philosophy that the sum of the practical consequences which result by necessity from the truth of an intellectual conception constitutes the entire meaning of that conception. Author of the ethical principle that the limited duration of all finite things logically demands the identification of one's interests with those of an unlimited community of persons and things. In his cosmology the flux of actuality left to itself develops those systematic characteristics which are usually associated with the realm of possibility. There is a logical continuity to chance events which through indefinite repetition beget order, as illustrated in the tendency of all things to acquire habits. The desire of all things to come together in this certain order renders love a kind of evolutionary force. Exerted a strong influence both on the American pragmatist, William James (1842-1910), the instrumentalist, John Dewey (1859-), as well as on the idealist, Jociah Royce (1855-1916), and many others. -- J.K.F.
unphilosophize ::: v. t. --> To degrade from the character of a philosopher.
Urschleim (German) Primitive slime; the name given by natural philosopher Oken (1779-1851) to the primitive cell-stuff out of which organic beings were held to have been evolved. Oken, a member of the deductive or transcendental school of natural philosophy of Fichte and Schelling, sought to formulate a science of the physical world deductively from fundamental principles laid down by Kant and applied to the mental and moral worlds. Reasoning from these principles he inferred that all organic beings are formed from aggregates of cells containing urschleim, arriving at results which have been verified by microscopic observation.
Vedanta: The "end of the Veda" (q.v.), used both in the literal sense and that of final goal, or meaning. Applied to the Upanishads (q.v.) and various systems of thought based upon them. Specifically the doctrine elaborated in the Brahmasutras of Badarayana, restated, reinterpreted, and changed by later philosophers, notably Sankara, Ramanuja, Nimbarka, Madhva, and Vallabha (which see). The central theme is that enunciated in the Upanishads of the relation between world soul and individual soul or self. Within the Vedanta, a number of solutions were found and taught with varying success. Sankara supposed God and soul identical (see advaita), Madhva different (see dvaita), Ramanuja different yet identical (see visistadvaita), Vallabha had a theory of obscuration, etc. -- K.F.L.
Verbum (Latin) Word; adopted by later Latin-speaking philosophers and Christian theologians to represent the cosmic Logos (word), often used in the more concrete sense as the spoken word in reference to the vibratory power of sound; or in its application to Christos in theology.
V. Spanish Renaissance (16-17 cent.). This renaissance took place in the Thomistic school and was remotely prepared for by such figures as Thomas del Vio (Cajetan) (+1534), Peter Crockaert (+1514), Francis de Sylvestris (+1528), Conrad Koellin (1536) and Chrysostom Javellus (+1550). It began as a concerted movement under Francis Victoria (+1566) at Salamanca and Ignatius Loyola (+1556), founder of the Society of Jesus. Dominicans of note were: Dominic Soto (1560), Melchior Cano (+1560), de Medina (+1581), and Banez (+1604). Jesuits: Francis Toledo (+1596), Fonseca (+1599), Molina (+1600), Vasquez (+1604), Lessius (+1623), de Valentia (+1603), B»llarmine (+1625), Francis Suarez (+1617), the greatest philosopher and jurist of this period, whose Disputationes Metaphysicae constitutes perhaps the greatest philosophical work produced by Scholasticism. Others worthy of mention: Cosmas de Lerma (+1642), John a S. Thoma (+1644), Goudin (+1695), Philip a SS. Trinitate (+1671), Ruiz de Montoya (+1632), Cosmas Alamannus (+1634), Hurtado de Mendoza (+1651), De Lugo (+1660), Arriaga (+1667), Sylvester Maurus (+1687).
Water A primary cosmic element with almost innumerable manifestations, corresponding to the Hindu apas tattva and to the akasic waters of space. Its most fundamental meaning is that of space or akasa, the great mother of all, the feminine receptive principle over and in which broods the fire of spirit. “The first principle of things, according to Thales and other ancient philosophers. Of course this is not water on the material plane, but in a figurative sense for the potential fluid contained in boundless space. This was symbolized in ancient Egypt by Kneph, the ‘unrevealed’ god, who was represented as the serpent — the emblem of eternity — encircling a water-urn, with his head hovering over the waters, which he incubates with his breath. ‘And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.’ (Gen. i). The honey-dew, the food of the gods and of the creative bees on the Yggdrasil, falls during the night upon the tree of life from the ‘divine waters, the birth-place of the gods.’ Alchemists claim that when pre-Adamic earth is reduced by the Alkahest to its first substance, it is like clear water. The Alkahest is ‘the one and the invisible, the water, the first principle, in the second transformation’ ” (TG 368).
Waters of Space Chaos, the great deep, the great cosmic Mother, the universal cosmic matrix. According to Thales and other ancient philosophers, the water of cosmic space was the first principle emanating from the spatial deeps of spirit and producing the universe through emanational evolution. Various Greek philosophers have represented aether, fire, air, or water as the primordial cosmic principle; and each of these was true, though giving only a part of the truth. These philosophies as aspects of a whole in much the same way as the several great schools of Hindu philosophy are.
What is here called selfishness corresponds in the minds of Buddhist philosophers and scholars to the ideas they disputed grouped about the word atman. They never intended to deny the fundamental meaning of atman or selfhood, and yet this misconception of ancient Buddhist teaching has brought about the false idea that Gautama Buddha and his followers taught that man has no essential self or selfhood. Because selfishness was popularly considered the permanent soulhood in man, the doctrine of anatma (in Pali, anatta) was strongly and continuously taught. The deduction shows clearly that even in India at the time of the Buddha, selfhood in its popular sense of concentration on the lower self and its interests was as popular and widespread as today. It is a paradox that in selflessness is found the noblest and highest emanation of self-expression of the atman or spiritual self in man.
While these three types of necessity are generally recognized by philosophers, the weighting of the distinctions is a matter of considerable divergence of view. Those who hold that the distinctions are all radical, sharply distinguish between logical statements, statements of fact, and so-called ethical or value statements. On the other hand, the attempt to establish an a priori ethics may be regarded as an attempt to reduce moral necessity to logical necessity; while the attempt to derive ethical evaluations from the statements of science, e.g. from biology, is an attempt to reduce moral necessity to physical or causal necessity. -- F.L.W.
Whitehead, Alfred North: British philosopher. Born in 1861. Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, 1911-14. Lecturer in Applied Mathematics and Mechanics at University College, London, 1914-24. Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London. From 1924 until retirement in 1938, Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. Among his most important philosophical works are the Principia Mathematica, 3 vols. (1910-13) (with Bertrand Russell; An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge (1919); The Concept of Nature (1920); Science and the Modern World (1926); Religion tn the Making (1926); Symbolism (1928); Process and Reality (1929); and Adventures of Ideas (1933). The principle of relativity in physics is the key to the understanding of metaphysics. Whitehead opposes the current philosophy of static substance having qualities which he holds to be based on the simply located material bodies of Newtonian physics and the "pure sensations" of Hume. This 17th century philosophy depends upon a "bifurcation of nature" into two unequal systems of reality on the Cartesian model of mind and matter. The high abstractions of science must not be mistaken for concrete realities. Instead, Whitehead argues that there is only one reality, what appears, whatever is given in perception, is real. There is nothing existing beyond what is present in the experience of subjects, understanding by subject any actual entity. There are neither static concepts nor substances in the world; only a network of events. All such events are actual extensions or spatio-temporal unities. The philosophy of organism, as Whitehead terms his work, is based upon the patterned process of events. All things or events are sensitive to the existence of all others; the relations between them consisting in a kind of feeling. Every actual entity is then a "prehensive occasion", that is, it consists of all those active relations with other things into which it enters. An actual entity is further determined by "negative prehension", the exclusion of all that which it is not. Thus every feeling is a positive prehension, every abstraction a negative one. Every actual entity is lost as an individual when it perishes, but is preserved through its relations with other entities in the framework of the world. Also, whatever has happened must remain an absolute fact. In this sense, past events have achieved "objective immortality". Except for this, the actual entities are involved in flux, into which there is the ingression of eternal objects from the realm of possibilities. The eternal objects are universals whose selection is necessary to the actual entities. Thus the actual world is a certain selection of eternal objects. God is the principles of concretion which determines the selection. "Creativity" is the primal cause whereby possibilities are selected in the advance of actuality toward novelty. This movement is termed the consequent nature of God. The pure possibility of the eternal objects themsehes is termed his primordial nature. -- J.K.F.
White Stone “To him that overcometh will I give of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it” (Rev 2:17). In Revelation, a symbolic record of John’s initiation, the white stone is the new, pure, inner psychological vehicle in the person which the spirit within him is enabled to acquire and work through when the victory in initiation has been won; and the new name signifies the new self which has thus become manifest in him. The stone “had the word prize engraved on it, and was the symbol of that word given to the neophyte who, in his initiation, had successfully passed through all the trials in the Mysteries. It was the potent white cornelian of the mediaeval Rosicrucians, who took it from the Gnostics” (TG 369). In exoteric rites this truth was represented by the gift of an actual stone or gem, and we hear of the alba petra (white stone) of initiation; while the Gnostic gems and their inscriptions are well known. It also calls to mind the philosopher’s stone.
With reference to the approach to the central reality of religion, God, and man's relation to it, types of the Philosophy of Religion may be distinguished, leaving out of account negative (atheism), skeptical and cynical (Xenophanes, Socrates, Voltaire), and agnostic views, although insertions by them are not to be separated from the history of religious consciousness. Fundamentalism, mainly a theological and often a Church phenomenon of a revivalist nature, philosophizes on the basis of unquestioning faith, seeking to buttress it by logical argument, usually taking the form of proofs of the existence of God (see God). Here belong all historic religions, Christianity in its two principal forms, Catholicism with its Scholastic philosophy and Protestantism with its greatly diversified philosophies, the numerous religions of Hinduism, such as Brahmanism, Shivaism and Vishnuism, the religion of Judaism, and Mohammedanism. Mysticism, tolerated by Church and philosophy, is less concerned with proof than with description and personal experience, revealing much of the psychological factors involved in belief and speculation. Indian philosophy is saturated with mysticism since its inception, Sufism is the outstanding form of Arab mysticism, while the greatest mystics in the West are Plotinus, Meister Eckhart, Tauler, Ruysbroek, Thomas a Kempis, and Jacob Bohme. Metaphysics incorporates religious concepts as thought necessities. Few philosophers have been able to avoid the concept of God in their ontology, or any reference to the relation of God to man in their ethics. So, e.g., Plato, Spinoza, Leibniz, Schelling, and especially Hegel who made the investigation of the process of the Absolute the essence of the Philosophy of Religion.
Wolff. Christian: (1679-1754) A most outstanding philosopher of the German Enlightenment, and exponent of an all pervasive rationalism, who was professor of mathematics at Halle. He was a dry and superficial systematic popularizer of dogmatic philosophy whose laws have for him a purely logical and rational foundation. -- H.H.
World Soul: In mysticism and occultism, an intelligent, animating, indwelling principle of the cosmos, its organizing and integrating cause, which permeates and animates everything in nature. According to occult teachings, all sentient life is fused, blended and unified by the World Soul, so that in reality there is no such thing as separateness. Oriental occultists call it alaya; the medieval mystic philosophers referred to it as anima mundi. (See also akasha.)
Wundt, Wilhelm Max: (1832-1920) German physiologist, psychologist and philosopher, who after studying medicine at Heidelberg and Berlin and lecturing at Heidelberg, became Professor of Philosophy at Leipzig in 1875 where he founded the first psychological laboratory in 1879. Wundt's psychological method, as exemplified in his Principles of Physiological Psychology, 1873-4, combines exact physical and philological measurement of stimulus and response along with an introspective analysis of the "internal experience" which supervenes between stimulus and response; he affirmed an exact parallelism or one-to-one correspondence between the physiological and the psychological series. Wundt's psychology on its introspective side, classified sensations with respect to modality, intensity, duration, extension, etc.; and feelings as: (a) pleasant or unpleisant, (b) tense or relaxed, (c) excited or depressed. He advanced but later abandoned on introspective grounds the feeling of innervation (discharge of nervous energy in initiating muscular movement). Among psychologists influenced by Wundt are Cattell, Stanley Hall and Titchener. -- L.W.
Yesod: The Archetypal World of the Jewish Kabalistic mystic philosophers, in which the true or spirit forms of all things created exist. Many authors consider this Archetypal World to be the same as the astral world or astral plane of contemporary esoteric philosophy.
Zetetic [from Greek zetetikos he or that which has relation to inquiry, search, seeking — with truth as the objective] A name often given to the Skeptics among Greek philosophers, skeptic meaning originally one who is a searcher for truth at whatever cost.
Zeus, in the conception of the ancient Greek philosophers who nearly all were initiate-thinkers, was not the highest god. It was because all public mention of the cosmic hierarch was forbidden that Homer omitted to mention this first principle, and even the secondary, the Chaos and Aether of Orpheus and Hesiod, commencing his cosmogony with Night, which Zeus reverences — Night here being equivalent to the Hindu pradhana-prakriti.
KEYS (10k)
6 Manly P Hall
6 Sri Aurobindo
6 Meister Eckhart
4 Friedrich Nietzsche
4 Saint Thomas Aquinas
4 Confucius
2 William James
2 Sankara
2 Howard Thurman
2 Henry David Thoreau
2 George Gurdjieff
2 Francis Bacon
2 Clement of Alexandria
2 Bertrand Russell
2 Plato
2 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
1 Zhuang Zhou
1 Yahya Suhaward
1 Swami Ramdas
1 Stephen LaBerge
1 Socrates
1 S. Bulgakov
1 Sam Harris
1 Richard of Saint-Victor
1 Ramakrishna
1 Ralph W. Trine
1 Proclus
1 Osho
1 Nolini Kanta Gupta
1 Michel de Montaigne
1 Meister Eckhart (1260 - c. 1328) German theologian
1 Max Scheler
1 Martin Buber
1 Manly P Hall?
1 Luther Standing Bear
1 Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin
1 Louis Claude de Saint-Martin
1 Khalil Gibran
1 John O'Donohue
1 John Amos Comenius
1 James Allen
1 Irvin D Yalom
1 Hurrychund Chintamon
1 Howard Gardner
1 George W. Hegel
1 Frithjof Schuon
1 Francis of Assisi
1 Essential Integral
1 Epicurus
1 David Hume
1 Dante
1 Bruce Lee
1 Albert Camus
1 Alastair MacIntyre
1 The Mother
1 Sri Ramakrishna
1 Jorge Luis Borges
1 Heraclitus
1 Adi Shankara
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
43 Friedrich Nietzsche
32 Plato
28 Anonymous
24 Henry David Thoreau
19 Epictetus
17 Terry Pratchett
16 Jostein Gaarder
15 Karl Marx
15 Bertrand Russell
14 Ludwig Wittgenstein
13 Marcus Tullius Cicero
12 Ryan Holiday
12 Ralph Waldo Emerson
11 Socrates
11 David Hume
10 Blaise Pascal
10 Ambrose Bierce
9 Douglas Adams
8 Voltaire
8 George Santayana
1:A true philosopher is married to wisdom; he needs no other bride. ~ Proclus, #KEYS
2:Experiences are the chemicals of life with which the philosopher experiments.
~ Manly P Hall,#KEYS
3:Empty is the argument of the philosopher which does not relieve any human suffering. ~ Epicurus, #KEYS
4:By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher. ~ Socrates, #KEYS
5:The Self is the eternal 'I am'." ~ Sankara, 8th century Indian philosopher and theologian who consolidated the doctrine of Advaita Vedanta, Wikipedia., #KEYS
6:Beauty is merely the spiritual making itself known sensuously." ~ George W. Hegel, (1770 -1831) German philosopher, important figure of German idealism, Wikipedia., #KEYS
7:The 'work,' whether of the artist or the philosopher, invents the man who has created it, who is supposed to have created it. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good & Evil, #KEYS
8:Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language." ~ Meister Eckhart (1260 - c. 1328) German theologian, philosopher and mystic, Wikipedia., #KEYS
9:The possession of anything begins in the mind." ~ Bruce Lee, (1940 - 1973), Hong Kong-American actor, director, martial artist, martial arts instructor, and philosopher, Wikipedia., #KEYS
10:God and God still remains unspoken." ~ Meister Eckhart, (c. 1260 - c. 1328), German theologian, philosopher, acquired status as a great mystic, Wikipedia., #KEYS
11:The philosopher's soul dwells in his head, the poet's soul is in his heart; the singer's soul lingers about his throat, but the soul of the dancer abides in all her body.
~ Khalil Gibran,#KEYS
12:A philosophical system is only a section of the Truth which the philosopher takes as a whole. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, The Place of Study in Sadhana, #KEYS
13:I don't like religion much, and I am glad that in the Bible the word is not to be found." ~ Martin Buber, (1878 - 1965) Austrian philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, Wikipedia., #KEYS
14:A God who cannot smile could not have created this humorous universe." ~ Sri Aurobindo, (1872 - 1950) Indian philosopher, yogi, guru, poet, and nationalist, Wikipedia., #KEYS
15:Considered mystically, the story of the Flood is the wise man's mastery of adversity. It is the philosopher surviving the onslaughts of ignorance. It is ... ~ Manly P Hall?, Understand your Bible?, #KEYS
16:Love at its purest and most detached level is nothing else in itself than God." ~ Meister Eckhart, (c. 1260 - c. 1328), a German theologian, philosopher and mystic, Wikipedia., #KEYS
17:For the outer sense alone perceives visible things and the eye of the heart alone sees the invisible." ~ Richard of Saint-Victor, (1110 - 1173) Medieval Scottish philosopher, mystic and theologian Wikipedia., #KEYS
18:Our philosopher adheres to the three following things: first, contemplation; second, the fulfillment of the commandments; and third, the formation of people of virtue. ~ Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 2.10.46, #KEYS
19:There is only one path to Heaven. On Earth we call it Love." ~ Henry David Thoreau, (1817 - 1862) American essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading transcendentalist, best known for his book "Walden", Wikipedia, #KEYS
20:I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #KEYS
21:If the philosopher makes his thought substance of poetry, he ceases to be a philosophic thinker and becomes a poet-seer of Truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS
22:Look into the nature of things but with no idea, with no prejudice, with no presuppositions." ~ Osho, (aka Acharya Rajneesh, 1931 - 1990) Indian spiritual guru, philosopher and the leader of the Rajneesh movement, Wikipedia., #KEYS
23:The ego is the false, self-born out of fear and defensiveness." ~ John O'Donohue, (1956 -2008) an Irish poet, author, priest, and Hegelian philosopher. as an author is best known for popularizing Celtic spirituality, Wikipedia., #KEYS
24:Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #KEYS
25:Mind is only a cloud that hides the sun of Truth. Man is, in fact, God playing the fool. When He chooses, He liberates himself." ~ Swami Ramdas, (188 -1963), an Indian saint, philosopher, philanthropist, pilgrim, Wikipedia. See:, #KEYS
26:What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others." [Known as the Silver Rule'. Some think it's superior to the Golden Rule] ~ Confucius, (551-479), Chinese philosopher and politician, Wikipedia., #KEYS
27:In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of." ~ Confucius, (551-479), Chinese philosopher and politician, Wikipedia., #KEYS
28:A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." ~ Francis Bacon, (1561-1626), an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, orator, and author, Wikipedia., #KEYS
29:Nothing brings you nearer to God then the sweet bond of love. Let whoever has found this way seek no other." ~ Meister Eckhart, (c. 1260 - c. 1328), German theologian, philosopher and mystic, Wikipedia., #KEYS
30:The superior man does not set his mind either for or against anything." ~ Confucius, (551-479) a Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher of the Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history, Wikipedia., #KEYS
31:Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth." ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, (1844 - 1900) German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, and philologist, Wikipedia., #KEYS
32:When lies have been accepted for some time, the truth always astounds with an air of novelty." ~ Clement of Alexandria, (c. 150 - c. 215), Christian theologian and philosopher who taught at the Catechetical School of Alexandria, Wikipedia., #KEYS
33:There must be always remaining in every life, some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathless and beautiful." ~ Howard Thurman, (1899-1981) African-American author, philosopher, theologian, Wikipedia., #KEYS
34:The phenomenological philosopher, thirsting for the lived-experience of being, will above all seek to drink at the very sources in which the contents of the world reveal themselves. ~ Max Scheler, ' Phenomenology and the Theory of Cognition', #KEYS
35:Since philosophy arises out of wonder, it is clear that the philosopher is some kind of philo-myth, a lover of fables, which is proper to poets ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Commentary on Metaphysics 1, lect. 3)., #KEYS
36:The whole human race is so miserable and above all so blind that it is not conscious of its own miseries…" ~ John Amos Comenius, (1592-1670), a Czech philosopher, pedagogue and theologian, considered the father of modern education. His quotes:, #KEYS
37:God dwells in the nothing-at-all that 'was' prior to nothing, in the hidden Godhead of pure gnosis where of no man durst speak." ~ Meister Eckhart, (c. 1260 - c. 1328), German theologian and philosopher, Wikipedia., #KEYS
38:The intellect of an angel surpasses the human intellect much more than the intellect of the greatest philosopher surpasses the intellect of the most uncultivated simple person ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 1.3). #KEYS
39:The intellect of an angel surpasses the human intellect much more than the intellect of the greatest philosopher surpasses the intellect of the most uncultivated simple person ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 1.3)., #KEYS
40:Important truths are learned only in silence." ~ Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, (1743-1803), French philosopher, he was an influential of the mystic and human mind evolution and became the inspiration for the founding of the Martinist Order, Wikipedia., #KEYS
41:Always go too far because that is where you will find the truth." ~ Albert Camus, (1913 - 1960) French philosopher, author, and journalist, won the Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44 in 1957, the second youngest recipient in history, Wikipedia., #KEYS
42:There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do… contradict other philosophers." ~ William James, (1842 1910), an American philosopher and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, Wikipedia., #KEYS
43:We are constantly invited to be what we are." ~ Henry David Thoreau, (1817 -1862) American essayist, poet, and philosopher, leading transcendentalist, best known for his book "Walden," a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, Wikipedia., #KEYS
44:What I'm asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives." ~ Sam Harris, (b. 1967) American author, philosopher, neuroscientist, critic of religion, Wikipedia., #KEYS
45:It is only by grounding our awareness in the living sensation of our bodies that the 'I Am,' our real presence, can awaken." ~ George Gurdjieff, (c. 1870 - 1949) mystic, philosopher, spiritual teacher, and composer, of Armenian and Greek descent, Wikipedia., #KEYS
46:Never give a sword to a man who can't dance." ~ Confucius, (551-479), Chinese philosopher and politician. Emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice, kindness, and sincerity, Wikipedia., #KEYS
47:Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous." ~ David Hume, (1711 - 1776) Scottish philosopher, best known for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism." Wikipedia., #KEYS
48:Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible." ~ Francis of Assisi, (1181 or 1182 - 1226), venerated as Saint Francis of Assisi, Italian Catholic friar, deacon, philosopher, mystic, and preacher, Wikipedia., #KEYS
49:There is a road in the hearts of all of us, hidden and seldom traveled, which leads to an unknown, secret place." ~ Luther Standing Bear, (1868 - 1939) a Sicangu and Oglala Lakota chief, author, educator, philosopher, and actor of the twentieth century," Wikipedia., #KEYS
50:To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering." ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, (1844 - 1900) German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, philologist, whose work has exerted a profound influence on modern intellectual history, Wikipedia., #KEYS
51:Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine [his mind], man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave." ~ George Gurdjieff, (c. 1870 - 1949) mystic, philosopher, spiritual teacher, Wikipedia, #KEYS
52:For true success ask yourself these four questions: Why? Why not? Why not me? Why not now?" ~ James Allen, (1864 - 1912) British philosopher, wrote inspirational books and poetry, pioneer of the self-help movement. His best known work, "As a Man Thinketh," Wikipedia., #KEYS
53:The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love." ~ Meister Eckhart, (c. 1260 - c. 1328), German theologian, philosopher and mystic, Wikipedia, #KEYS
54:Whatever consists of parts and whole is not the eternal. To consider any particular object to be eternal It would be an error of the imagination." ~ Adi Shankara, (8th century) Indian philosopher and theologian, consolidated the doctrine of Advaita Vedanta, Wikipedia., #KEYS
55:A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." ~ William James, (1842 - 1910) American philosopher and psychologist, first to offer a psychology course in the U.S., labeled the "Father of American psychology," Wikipedia., #KEYS
56:You are the traveler; you are the path; you are the destination. Be careful never to lose the way to yourself." ~ Yahya Suhaward, (1154-1191) Persian philosopher and founder of the Iranian school of Illuminationism, an important school in Islamic philosophy, Wikipedia., #KEYS
57:All mystics speak the same language, for they come from the same country." ~ Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, (1743 - 1803) French philosopher, an influential of the mystic and human mind evolution and became the inspiration for the founding of the Martinist Order, Wikipedia., #KEYS
58:We do not know where death awaits us; so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave." ~ Michel de Montaigne, (1533 - 1592) French philosopher of the French Renaissance, Wikipedia, #KEYS
59:When the heart is right 'for' and 'against' are forgotten." ~ Zhuang Zhou, influential Chinese philosopher, lived around the 4th century BC, credited with writing—in part or in whole—a work known by his name, the Zhuangzi, one of the foundational texts of Taoism, Wikipedia, #KEYS
60:Love is in the depths of man as water is in the depths of the earth, and man suffers from not being able to enjoy this infinity that he carries within himself and for which he is made." ~ Frithjof Schuon, (1907 - 1998), Swiss spiritual master, philosopher, author, Wikipedia., #KEYS
61:What is important about philosophy is the way in which a life informed by... philosophical inquiry and guided by its conclusions will be significantly different from the life of someone in other respects like the philosopher, but untouched by philosophy. ~ Alastair MacIntyre, #KEYS
62:He who lives in the realization of his oneness with the Infinite Power becomes a magnet to attract to himself a continual supply of whatever things he desires… " ~ Ralph W. Trine, (1866-1958) American philosopher, author & teacher, wrote on the New Thought movement, Wikipedia., #KEYS
63:There must be always remaining in every life, some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathless and beautiful." ~ Howard Thurman, (1899 - 1981) African-American author, philosopher, theologian, educator, and civil rights leader, Wikipedia., #KEYS
64:Just as a second lamp is not necessary to illumine a lamp, so a second consciousness is not necessary to make known Pure Consciousness which is the nature of the Self." ~ Sankara, 8th century Indian philosopher and theologian, consolidated doctrine of Advaita Vedanta, Wikipedia, #KEYS
65:There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion." ~ Francis Bacon, (1561 - 1626), English philosopher and statesman. His works are credited with developing the scientific method and remained influential through the scientific revolution, Wikipedia., #KEYS
66:The philosopher cannot fly; he must ascend into the ether; but his wings inevitably melt in the heat of the sun, and he falls and breaks into fragments. On this flight, however, he sees something, and his philosophy speaks of this vision. ~ S. Bulgakov, The Tragedy of Philosophy, #KEYS
67:Philosophy is simply friendship with wisdom... thus in a certain sense we can call everyone a philosopher in accordance with the natural love that generates in everyone the desire to know. W/o love or without devotion one cannot be called a philosopher. ~ Dante, Convivio III.xi.6, #KEYS
68:Is not the whole of human life turned upside down; and are we not doing, as would appear, in everything the opposite of what we ought to be doing?" ~ Plato, (428/427 or 424/423 - 348/347 BC) Athenian philosopher during the Classical period in Ancient Greece, Wikipedia., #KEYS
69:Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods, and defend himself against his enemies, and win in the contest." ~ Plato, (428/427 or 424/423 - 348/347) Greek philosopher, Wikipedia., #KEYS
70:God dwells in the nothing-at-all that was prior to nothing." ~ Meister Eckhart, (c. 1260 - c. 1328), German theologian, philosopher and mystic, tried as a heretic by Pope John XXII, acquired a status as a great mystic within contemporary popular spirituality, Wikipedia., #KEYS
71:Love is an adventure and a conquest. It survives and develops, like the universe itself, only by perpetual discovery." ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, (1881 - 1955) French idealist philosopher and Jesuit priest, trained as a paleontologist and geologist, Wikipedia., #KEYS
72:The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day." ~ Heraclitus, ( c. 535 - c. 475 BC) pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, believed that change is fundamental essence of the universe, Wikipedia., #KEYS
73:Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves." ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, (1881 - 1955) French philosopher, Jesuit priest, paleontologist, Wikipedia, #KEYS
74:In Hindustan, as in England, there are doctrines for the learned, and dogmas for the unlearned; strong meat for men & milk for babes; facts for the few, & fictions for the many, realities for the wise, and romances for the simple; esoteric truth for the philosopher, & exoteric fable for the fool. ~ Hurrychund Chintamon, quoted by H. P. Blavatsky, in New York (20 Jan. 1877) #KEYS
75:Our natural being is a part of cosmic Nature and our spiritual being exists only by the supreme Transcendence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine: The Ascent towards Supermind
Inter-Relation
The brooding philosopher or the discovering scientist cannot indeed do without the aid of a greater power, intuition. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Sun of Poetic Truth,#KEYS
76:The occultist and the philosopher are entirely willing to accept the mystical truths of Christianity for they are a part of all truth, all revelation, and all mysteries. What the mystic seeks to escape is not true Christianity but the contendings of unnumbered jarring sects that have theologized Jesus out of existence and put in his place a figure of their own conception. ~ Manly P Hall, The Students Monthly Letter, 4th year #KEYS
77:If iron is once changed to gold by the touch of the philosopher's stone, it may be kept in the earth or thrown into a mass of ordure, but always it will be gold and can never go back to its first condition. So is it with him whose heart has touched, were it but a single time, the feet of the Almighty; let him dwell amidst the tumult of the world or in the solitude of the forest, by nothing can he again be polluted. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
78:An ancient philosopher once said that the bee extracts honey from the pollen of the flower, while from the same source the spider extracts poison. The problem which then confronts us is: are we bees or spiders ? Do we transform the experiences of life into honey, or do we change them into poison ? Do they lift us, or do we eternally rebel against the pricks? Many people become soured by experience, but the wise one takes the honey and builds it into the beehive of his own spiritual nature.
~ Manly P Hall, The Occult Anatomy Of Man,#KEYS
79:One alchemist announced that one grain of this powder would transmute into purest gold one hundred thousand times its own weight. But his readers did not realize that this powder is wisdom, one grain of which can transmute all the ignorance in the world. Nor did the reader properly understand that the PHILOSOPHER'S STONE IS KNOWLEDGE, the great miracle worker, or that the elixir of life was Truth, which makes all things new. It was sad that misunderstandings should exist, but wherever great truths are given to small minds, misunderstandings are inevitable. ~ Manly P Hall, (A Monthly Letter April 1937), #KEYS
80:Any limiting categorization is not only erroneous but offensive, and stands in opposition to the basic human foundations of the therapeutic relationship. In my opinion, the less we think (during the process of psychotherapy) in terms of diagnostic labels, the better. (Albert Camus once described hell as a place where one's identity was eternally fixed and displayed on personal signs: Adulterous Humanist, Christian Landowner, Jittery Philosopher, Charming Janus, and so on.8 To Camus, hell is where one has no way of explaining oneself, where one is fixed, classified-once and for all time.) ~ Irvin D Yalom, #KEYS
81:The poet-philosopher or the philosopher-poet, whichever way we may put it, is a new formation of the human consciousness that is coming upon us. A wide and rationalising (not rationalistic) intelligence deploying and marshalling out a deep intuitive and direct Knowledge that is the pattern of human mind developing in the new age. Bergson's was a harbinger, a definite landmark on the way. Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine arrives and opens the very portals of the marvellous temple city of a dynamic integral knowledge. ~ Nolini Kanta Gupta, Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, The Philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art, #KEYS
82:A man will cherish the illusion that he is the doer as long as he has not seen God, as long as he has not touched the Philosopher's Stone. So long will he know the distinction between his good and bad actions. This awareness of distinction is due to God's maya; and it is necessary for the purpose of running His illusory world. But a man can realize God if he takes shelter under His vidyamaya and follows the path of righteousness. He who knows God and realizes Him is able to go beyond maya. He who firmly believes that God alone is the Doer and he himself a mere instrument is a jivanmukta, a free soul though living in a body. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
83:I am not a philosopher, I am not a scholar, I am not a savant, and I declare it very loudly: neither a philosopher nor a scholar nor a savant. And no pretension. Nor a littérateur, nor an artist - I am nothing at all. I am truly convinced of this. And it's absolutely unimportant - that's perfection for human beings. There is no greater joy than to know that you can do nothing and are absolutely helpless, that you're not the one who does, and that what little is done - little or big, it doesn't matter - is done by the Lord; and the responsibility is fully His. That makes you happy. With that, you are happy. Voilà.
~ The Mother, Agenda Vol 5, Satprem,#KEYS
84:Einstein's breakthrough was classic in that it sought to unify the elements of a physical analysis, and it placed the older examples and principles within a broader framework. But it was revolutionary in that, ever afterward, we have thought differently about space and time, matter and energy. Space and time-no more absolute-have become forms of intuition that cannot be divorced from perspective or consciousness, anymore than can the colors of the world or the length of a shadow. As the philosopher Ernst Cassirer commented, in relativity, the conception of constancy and absoluteness of the elements is abandoned to give permanence and necessity to the laws instead. ~ Howard Gardner, #KEYS
85:Noah harkened to the voice of the Lord that is he lived according to the Law, perfecting his soul and enriching his consciousness with the many experiences which result from the mystery of living. As a consequence the "Lord" protects the life of Noah, and brings the Ark at the end to a safe testing place upon the Mount of the illumination, Ararat. Part of the thirty-third degree of Freemasonry includes an interpretation of the symbolism of Noah and his Ark. Considered mystically, the story of the Flood is the wise man's mastery of adversity. It is the philosopher surviving the onslaughts of ignorance. It is the illumined mystic floating safely over the chaos.
~ Manly P Hall, How To Understand Your Bible,#KEYS
86:It is the power given by wisdom and knowledge that makes the occultist superior to his fellow man, his superiority being proportionate to his superior intelligence. In every walk of life, the uninitiated will be confronted with mysteries. To the average person, the working of a gasoline engine is just as mysterious as calculus would be to a kindergarten child, but intimate relationship and study result in that familiarity which gives ease in handling and intelligence in directing. It has been well said that no man is a stranger to his own valet. The philosopher is a servant of God, and by perfect serving, soon becomes capable of thoroughly understanding the desires and dictates of his divine Master. ~ Manly P Hall, Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics, #KEYS
87:Our highest insights must - and should! - sound like stupidities, or possibly crimes, when they come without permission to people whose ears have no affinity for them and were not predestined for them. The distinction between the exoteric and the esoteric, once made by philosophers, was found among the Indians as well as among Greeks, Persians, and Muslims. Basically, it was found everywhere that people believed in an order of rank and not in equality and equal rights. The difference between these terms is not that the exoteric stands outside and sees, values, measures, and judges from this external position rather than from some internal one.What is more essential is that the exoteric sees things up from below - while the esoteric sees them down from above! There are heights of the soul from whose vantage point even tragedy stops having tragic effects; and who would dare to decide whether the collective sight of the world's many woes would necessarily compel and seduce us into a feeling of pity, a feeling that would only serve to double these woes?... What helps feed or nourish the higher type of man must be almost poisonous to a very different and lesser type. The virtues of a base man could indicate vices and weaknesses in a philosopher. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, The Free Spirit, #KEYS
88:But even when the desire to know exists in the requisite strength, the mental vision by which abstract truth is recognised is hard to distinguish from vivid imaginability and consonance with mental habits. It is necessary to practise methodological doubt, like Descartes, in order to loosen the hold of mental habits; and it is necessary to cultivate logical imagination, in order to have a number of hypotheses at command, and not to be the slave of the one which common sense has rendered easy to imagine. These two processes, of doubting the familiar and imagining the unfamiliar, are correlative, and form the chief part of the mental training required for a philosopher.
The naïve beliefs which we find in ourselves when we first begin the process of philosophic reflection may turn out, in the end, to be almost all capable of a true interpretation; but they ought all, before being admitted into philosophy, to undergo the ordeal of sceptical criticism. Until they have gone through this ordeal, they are mere blind habits, ways of behaving rather than intellectual convictions. And although it may be that a majority will pass the test, we may be pretty sure that some will not, and that a serious readjustment of our outlook ought to result. In order to break the dominion of habit, we must do our best to doubt the senses, reason, morals, everything in short. In some directions, doubt will be found possible; in others, it will be checked by that direct vision of abstract truth upon which the possibility of philosophical knowledge depends. ~ Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World,#KEYS
89:Philosophy, like all other studies, aims primarily at knowledge. The knowledge it aims at is the kind of knowledge which gives unity and system to the body of the sciences, and the kind which results from a critical examination of the grounds of our convictions, prejudices, and beliefs. But it cannot be maintained that philosophy has had any very great measure of success in its attempts to provide definite answers to its questions. If you ask a mathematician, a mineralogist, a historian, or any other man of learning, what definite body of truths has been ascertained by his science, his answer will last as long as you are willing to listen. But if you put the same question to a philosopher, he will, if he is candid, have to confess that his study has not achieved positive results such as have been achieved by other sciences. It is true that this is partly accounted for by the fact that, as soon as definite knowledge concerning any subject becomes possible, this subject ceases to be called philosophy, and becomes a separate science. The whole study of the heavens, which now belongs to astronomy, was once included in philosophy; Newton's great work was called 'the mathematical principles of natural philosophy'. Similarly, the study of the human mind, which was a part of philosophy, has now been separated from philosophy and has become the science of psychology. Thus, to a great extent, the uncertainty of philosophy is more apparent than real: those questions which are already capable of definite answers are placed in the sciences, while those only to which, at present, no definite answer can be given, remain to form the residue which is called philosophy.
~ Bertrand Russell,#KEYS
90:higher mind or late vision logic ::: Even more rare, found stably in less than 1% of the population and even more emergent is the turquoise altitude.
Cognition at Turquoise is called late vision-logic or cross-paradigmatic and features the ability to connect meta-systems or paradigms, with other meta-systems. This is the realm of coordinating principles. Which are unified systems of systems of abstraction to other principles. ... Aurobindo indian sage and philosopher offers a more first-person account of turquoise which he called higher-mind, a unitarian sense of being with a powerful multiple dynamism capable of formation of a multitude of aspects of knowledge, ways of action, forms and significances of becoming of all of which a spontaneous inherient knowledge.
Self-sense at turquoise is called Construct-aware and is the first stage of Cook-Greuter's extension of Loveigers work on ego-development. The Construct-aware stage sees individuals for the first time as exploring more and more complex thought-structures with awareness of the automatic nature of human map making and absurdities which unbridaled complexity and logical argumentation can lead. Individuals at this stage begin to see their ego as a central point of reference and therefore a limit to growth. They also struggle to balance unique self-expressions and their concurrent sense of importance, the imperical and intuitive knowledge that there is no fundamental subject-object separation and the budding awareness of self-identity as temporary which leads to a decreased ego-desire to create a stable self-identity. Turquoise individuals are keenly aware of the interplay between awareness, thought, action and effects. They seek personal and spiritual transformation and hold a complex matrix of self-identifications, the adequecy of which they increasingly call into question. Much of this already points to Turquoise values which embrace holistic and intuitive thinking and alignment to universal order in a conscious fashion.
Faith at Turquoise is called Universalising and can generate faith compositions in which conceptions of Ultimate Reality start to include all beings. Individuals at Turquoise faith dedicate themselves to transformation of present reality in the direction of transcendent actuality. Both of these are preludes to the coming of Third Tier. ~ Essential Integral, L4.1-54, Higher Mind,#KEYS
91:The poet-seer sees differently, thinks in another way, voices himself in quite another manner than the philosopher or the prophet. The prophet announces the Truth as the Word, the Law or the command of the Eternal, he is the giver of the message; the poet shows us Truth in its power of beauty, in its symbol or image, or reveals it to us in the workings of Nature or in the workings of life, and when he has done that, his whole work is done; he need not be its explicit spokesman or its official messenger. The philosopher's business is to discriminate Truth and put its parts and aspects into intellectual relation with each other; the poet's is to seize and embody aspects of Truth in their living relations, or rather - for that is too philosophical a language - to see her features and, excited by the vision, create in the beauty of her image.
No doubt, the prophet may have in him a poet who breaks out often into speech and surrounds with the vivid atmosphere of life the directness of his message; he may follow up his injunction "Take no thought for the morrow," by a revealing image of the beauty of the truth he enounces, in the life of Nature, in the figure of the lily, or link it to human life by apologue and parable. The philosopher may bring in the aid of colour and image to give some relief and hue to his dry light of reason and water his arid path of abstractions with some healing dew of poetry. But these are ornaments and not the substance of his work; and if the philosopher makes his thought substance of poetry, he ceases to be a philosophic thinker and becomes a poet-seer of Truth. Thus the more rigid metaphysicians are perhaps right in denying to Nietzsche the name of philosopher; for Nietzsche does not think, but always sees, turbidly or clearly, rightly or distortedly, but with the eye of the seer rather than with the brain of the thinker. On the other hand we may get great poetry which is full of a prophetic enthusiasm of utterance or is largely or even wholly philosophic in its matter; but this prophetic poetry gives us no direct message, only a mass of sublime inspirations of thought and image, and this philosophic poetry is poetry and lives as poetry only in so far as it departs from the method, the expression, the way of seeing proper to the philosophic mind. It must be vision pouring itself into thought-images and not thought trying to observe truth and distinguish its province and bounds and fences.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry,#KEYS
92:The perfect supramental action will not follow any single principle or limited rule.It is not likely to satisfy the standard either of the individual egoist or of any organised group-mind. It will conform to the demand neither of the positive practical man of the world nor of the formal moralist nor of the patriot nor of the sentimental philanthropist nor of the idealising philosopher. It will proceed by a spontaneous outflowing from the summits in the totality of an illumined and uplifted being, will and knowledge and not by the selected, calculated and standardised action which is all that the intellectual reason or ethical will can achieve. Its sole aim will be the expression of the divine in us and the keeping together of the world and its progress towards the Manifestation that is to be. This even will not be so much an aim and purpose as a spontaneous law of the being and an intuitive determination of the action by the Light of the divine Truth and its automatic influence. It will proceed like the action of Nature from a total will and knowledge behind her, but a will and knowledge enlightened in a conscious supreme Nature and no longer obscure in this ignorant Prakriti. It will be an action not bound by the dualities but full and large in the spirit's impartial joy of existence. The happy and inspired movement of a divine Power and Wisdom guiding and impelling us will replace the perplexities and stumblings of the suffering and ignorant ego.
If by some miracle of divine intervention all mankind at once could be raised to this level, we should have something on earth like the Golden Age of the traditions, Satya Yuga, the Age of Truth or true existence. For the sign of the Satya Yuga is that the Law is spontaneous and conscious in each creature and does its own works in a perfect harmony and freedom. Unity and universality, not separative division, would be the foundation of the consciousness of the race; love would be absolute; equality would be consistent with hierarchy and perfect in difference; absolute justice would be secured by the spontaneous action of the being in harmony with the truth of things and the truth of himself and others and therefore sure of true and right result; right reason, no longer mental but supramental, would be satisfied not by the observation of artificial standards but by the free automatic perception of right relations and their inevitable execution in the act. The quarrel between the individual and society or disastrous struggle between one community and another could not exist: the cosmic consciousness imbedded in embodied beings would assure a harmonious diversity in oneness.
In the actual state of humanity, it is the individual who must climb to this height as a pioneer and precursor. His isolation will necessarily give a determination and a form to his outward activities that must be quite other than those of a consciously divine collective action. The inner state, the root of his acts, will be the same; but the acts themselves may well be very different from what they would be on an earth liberated from ignorance. Nevertheless his consciousness and the divine mechanism of his conduct, if such a word can be used of so free a thing, would be such as has been described, free from that subjection to vital impurity and desire and wrong impulse which we call sin, unbound by that rule of prescribed moral formulas which we call virtue, spontaneously sure and pure and perfect in a greater consciousness than the mind's, governed in all its steps by the light and truth of the Spirit. But if a collectivity or group could be formed of those who had reached the supramental perfection, there indeed some divine creation could take shape; a new earth could descend that would be a new heaven, a world of supramental light could be created here amidst the receding darkness of this terrestrial ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom, 206,#KEYS
93:Attention on Hypnagogic Imagery The most common strategy for inducing WILDs is to fall asleep while focusing on the hypnagogic imagery that accompanies sleep onset. Initially, you are likely to see relatively simple images, flashes of light, geometric patterns, and the like.
Gradually more complicated forms appear: faces, people, and finally entire scenes. 6
The following account of what the Russian philosopher P. D. Ouspensky called "half-dream states" provides a vivid example of what hypnagogic imagery can be like:
I am falling asleep. Golden dots, sparks and tiny stars appear and disappear before my eyes. These sparks and stars gradually merge into a golden net with diagonal meshes which moves slowly and regularly in rhythm with the beating of my heart, which I feel quite distinctly. The next moment the golden net is transformed into rows of brass helmets belonging to Roman soldiers marching along the street below. I hear their measured tread and watch them from the window of a high house in Galata, in Constantinople, in a narrow lane, one end of which leads to the old wharf and the Golden Horn with its ships and steamers and the minarets of Stamboul behind them. I hear their heavy measured tread, and see the sun shining on their helmets. Then suddenly I detach myself from the window sill on which I am lying, and in the same reclining position fly slowly over the lane, over the houses, and then over the Golden Horn in the direction of Stamboul. I smell the sea, feel the wind, the warm sun. This flying gives me a wonderfully pleasant sensation, and I cannot help opening my eyes. 7
Ouspensky's half-dream states developed out of a habit of observing the contents of his mind while falling asleep or in half-sleep after awakening from a dream. He notes that they were much easier to observe in the morning after awakening than before sleep at the beginning of the night and did not occur at all "without definite efforts." 8
Dr. Nathan Rapport, an American psychiatrist, cultivated an approach to lucid dreaming very similar to Ouspensky's: "While in bed awaiting sleep, the experimenter interrupts his thoughts every few minutes with an effort to recall the mental item vanishing before each intrusion that inquisitive attention." 9 This habit is continued sleep itself, with results like the following:
Brilliant lights flashed, and a myriad of sparkles twinkled from a magnificent cut glass chandelier. Interesting as any stage extravaganza were the many quaintly detailed figurines upon a mantel against the distant, paneled wall adorned in rococo.
At the right a merry group of beauties and gallants in the most elegant attire of Victorian England idled away a pleasant occasion. This scene continued for [a] period of I was not aware, before I discovered that it was not reality, but a mental picture and that I was viewing it. Instantly it became an incommunicably beautiful vision. It was with the greatest stealth that my vaguely awakened mind began to peep: for I knew that these glorious shows end abruptly because of such intrusions.
I thought, "Have I here one of those mind pictures that are without motion?" As if in reply, one of the young ladies gracefully waltzed about the room. She returned to the group and immobility, with a smile lighting her pretty face, which was turned over her shoulder toward me. The entire color scheme was unobtrusive despite the kaleidoscopic sparkles of the chandelier, the exquisite blues and creamy pinks of the rich settings and costumes. I felt that only my interest in dreams brought my notice to the tints - delicate, yet all alive as if with inner illumination. 10
Hypnagogic Imagery Technique
1. Relax completely
While lying in bed, gently close your eyes and relax your head, neck, back, arms, and legs. Completely let go of all muscular and mental tension, and breathe slowly and restfully. Enjoy the feeling of relaxation and let go of your thoughts, worries, and concerns. If you have just awakened from sleep, you are probably sufficiently relaxed.
Otherwise, you may use either the progressive relaxation exercise (page 33) or the 61-point relaxation exercise (page 34) to relax more deeply. Let everything wind down,
slower and slower, more and more relaxed, until your mind becomes as serene as the calmest sea.
2. Observe the visual images
Gently focus your attention on the visual images that will gradually appear before your mind's eye. Watch how the images begin and end. Try to observe the images as delicately as possible, allowing them to be passively reflected in your mind as they unfold. Do not attempt to hold onto the images, but instead just watch without attachment or desire for action. While doing this, try to take the perspective of a detached observer as much as possible. At first you will see a sequence of disconnected, fleeting patterns and images. The images will gradually develop into scenes that become more and more complex, finally joining into extended sequences.
3. Enter the dream
When the imagery becomes a moving, vivid scenario, you should allow yourself to be passively drawn into the dream world. Do not try to actively enter the dream scene,
but instead continue to take a detached interest in the imagery. Let your involvement with what is happening draw you into the dream. But be careful of too much involvement and too little attention. Don't forget that you are dreaming now!
Commentary
Probably the most difficult part of this technique to master is entering the dream at Step 3. The challenge is to develop a delicate vigilance, an unobtrusive observer perspective, from which you let yourself be drawn into the dream. As Paul Tholey has emphasized, "It is not desirable to want actively to enter into the scenery,
since such an intention as a rule causes the scenery to disappear." 11 A passive volition similar to that described in the section on autosuggestion in the previous chapter is required: in Tholey's words, "Instead of actively wanting to enter into the scenery, the subject should attempt to let himself be carried into it passively." 12 A Tibetan teacher advises a similar frame of mind: "While delicately observing the mind, lead it gently into the dream state, as though you were leading a child by the hand." 13
Another risk is that, once you have entered into the dream, the world can seem so realistic that it is easy to lose lucidity, as happened in the beginning of Rapport's WILD described above. As insurance in case this happens, Tholey recommends that you resolve to carry out a particular action in the dream, so that if you momentarily lose lucidity, you may remember your intention to carry out the action and thereby regain lucidity.
~ Stephen LaBerge, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:To grow a philosopher's beard. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 2:Constant happiness is the philosopher's stone of the soul. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 3:Be a philosopher but, amid all your philosophy be still a man. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 4:To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 5:Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings? ~ diogenes, @wisdomtrove 6:On this point, the priest and the philosopher agree: We must die. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 7:What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the chameleon poet. ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove 8:To a philosopher no circumstance, however trifling, is too minute. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 9:The ideal state for a philosopher, indeed, is celibacy tempered by polygamy. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 10:Empty is the argument of the philosopher which does not relieve any human suffering. ~ epicurus, @wisdomtrove 11:All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher. ~ ambrose-bierce, @wisdomtrove 12:If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher's stone. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 13:The words of that philosopher who offers no therapy for human suffering are empty and vain. ~ epicurus, @wisdomtrove 14:According to the saying of an ancient philosopher, one should eat to live, and not live to eat ~ moliere, @wisdomtrove 15:There is no record in human history of a happy philosopher: they exist only in romantic legend. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 16:“To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.” ~ william-james, @wisdomtrove 17:He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 18:The philosopher says think your way out. The sensualist says play your way out but none of it works. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 19:There is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 20:A philosopher is a sort of intellectual yokel who gawks at things that sensible people take for granted. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 21:A man cannot be wise enough to be a great artist without being wise enough to wish to be a philosopher. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 22:To be a philosopher, just reverse everything you have ever been told... and have a sense of humor doing it. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 23:When I practice, I am a philosopher. When I teach, I am a scientist. When I demonstrate, I am an artist. ~ b-k-s-iyengar, @wisdomtrove 24:There is nothing so strange and so unbelievable that it has not been said by one philosopher or another. ~ rene-descartes, @wisdomtrove 25:To philosopher and historian the madness and imbecile wickedness of mankind ought to appear ordinary events. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 26:It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher. ~ arthur-schopenhauer, @wisdomtrove 27:By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher. ~ socrates, @wisdomtrove 28:“There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.” ~ william-james, @wisdomtrove 29:Plato used to say to Xenocrates the philosopher, who was rough and morose, "Good Xenocrates, sacrifice to the Graces. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 30:The theologian considers sin mainly as an offence against God; the moral philosopher as contrary to reasonableness. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove 31:The theologian considers sin mainly as an offence against God; the moral philosopher as contrary to reasonableness. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove 32:The task of the philosopher is to create the best story, because culture moves forward through us creating better stories. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 33:This is patently absurd; but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities. ~ bertrand-russell, @wisdomtrove 34:The critic ... should be not merely a poet, not merely a philosopher, not merely an observer, but tempered of all three. ~ margaret-fuller, @wisdomtrove 35:Life is a paradox. Every truth has its counterpart which contradicts it; and every philosopher supplies the logic his own undoing. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 36:The philosopher is he to whom the highest has descended, and the lowest has mounted up; who is the equal and kindly brother of all. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 37:If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I'm still waiting, it's all been to seduce women basically. ~ jean-paul-sartre, @wisdomtrove 38:“What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition!” ~ william-james, @wisdomtrove 39:Every remedy is a desperate remedy. Every cure is a miraculous cure. Curing a madman is not arguing with a philosopher; it is casting out a devil. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 40:We are often taught to look for the beauty in all things, so in finding it, the layman asks the philosopher while the philosopher asks the photographer. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 41:The great critic ‚Ķ must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 42:A man who leaves home to mend himself and others is a philosopher; but he who goes from country to country, guided by the blind impulse of curiosity, is a vagabond. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 43:Just look at life with more playful eyes. Don’t be serious. Seriousness becomes like a blindness. Don’t pretend to be a thinker, a philosopher. Just simply be a human being. ~ rajneesh, @wisdomtrove 44:Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove 45:Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove 46:The feelings of our heart, the agitation of our passions, the vehemence of our affections, dissipate all its conclusions, and reduce the profound philosopher to a mere plebeian ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 47:Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 48:When Eudæmonidas heard a philosopher arguing that only a wise man can be a good general, "This is a wonderful speech," said he; "but he that saith it never heard the sound of trumpets. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 49:At best, the true philosopher can fulfil his mission very imperfectly, which is to pilot himself, or at most a few voluntary companions who may find themselves in the same boat. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 50:I am no metaphysician, no philosopher, nay, no saint. But I am poor and I love the poor. I see what they call the poor of this country and how many there are who feel for them! ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 51:The greatest object in the universe, says a certain philosopher, is a good man struggling with adversity; yet there is still a greater, which is the good man who comes to relieve it. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 52:Put the world's greatest philosopher on a plank that is wider than need be; if there is a precipe below, although his reason may convince him that he is safe, his imagination will prevail. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 53:Well, I don't know if I can comment on Kant or Hegel because I'm no real philosopher in the sense of knowing what these people have said in any detail so let me not comment on that too much. ~ roger-penrose, @wisdomtrove 54:A man may be the greatest philosopher in the world but a child in RELIGION. When a man has developed a high state of spirituality he can understand that the kingdom of heaven is within him. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 55:You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher or the Christian by staring into his eyes as if he were your mistress: better fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 56:One does not have to be a philosopher to be a successful artist, but he does have to be an artist to be a successful philosopher. His nature is to view the world in an unpredictable albeit useful light. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 57:No one is anyone, one single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 58:As poet-philosopher Rabindranath Tagore reminds us, "We cannot cross the sea merely by staring at the water." Simplicity has power. And living on purpose comes to this: Just do it. How much simpler can we get? ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove 59:It often seems that the poet's derisive comment is not unjustified when he says of the philosopher: With his nightcaps and the tatters of his dressing-gown he patches the gaps in the structure of the universe. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 60:If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all. ~ bertrand-russell, @wisdomtrove 61:It is never ridicule, but a compliment, that knocks a philosopher off his feet. He is already positioned for every possible counter-attack, counter-argument, and retort... only to find a big bear hug coming his way. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 62:September's Baccalaureate A combination is Of Crickets - Crows - and Retrospects And a dissembling Breeze That hints without assuming - An Innuendo sear That makes the Heart put up its Fun And turn Philosopher. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 63:The stone that was rolled before Christ's tomb might appropriately be called the philosopher's stone because its removal gave not only the pharisees but, now for 1800 years, the philosophers so much to think about. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 64:The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove 65:You may be able to read Bernard Shaw's plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education? ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 66:And though the philosopher may live remote from business, the genius of philosophy, if carefully cultivated by several, must gradually diffuse itself throughout the whole society, and bestow a similar correctness on every art and calling. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 67:Both wit and understanding are trifles without integrity; it is that which gives value to every character. The ignorant peasant, without fault, is greater than the philosopher with many; for what is genius or courage without a heart? ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 68:Before you realize this truth, say the Yogis, you will always be in despair, a notion nicely expressed in this exasperated line from the Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus: & 69:A philosopher named Aristippus, who had quite willingly sucked up to Dionysus and won himself a spot at his court, saw Diogenes cooking lentils for a meal. "If you would only learn to compliment Dionysus, you wouldn't have to live on lentils." ~ diogenes, @wisdomtrove 70:Cold completely introspective logic places a philosopher on the road to the abstract. Out of this empty, artificial act of thinking there can result, of course, nothing which bears on the relation of man to himself, and to the universe. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove 71:To rove about, musing, that is to say loitering, is, for a philosopher, a good way of spending time, especially in that kind of mock rurality, ugly but odd, and partaking of two natures, which surrounds certain large cities, particularly Paris. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 72:Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher, and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately, it is the philosopher, not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance. ~ bertrand-russell, @wisdomtrove 73:What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational. On this conviction the plain man like the philosopher takes his stand,and from it philosophy starts in its study of the universe of mind as well as the universe of nature. ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 74:Many people have thought of me as a thinker, as a philosopher, or even as a mystic. Well the truth is that though I have found reality perplexing enough - in fact, I find it gets more perplexing all the time - I never think of myself as a thinker. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 75:True eloquence makes light of eloquence, true morality makes light of morality; that is to say, the morality of the judgment, which has no rules, makes light of the morality of the intellect... . To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 76:Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. For just as there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy either, if it does not expel the suffering of the mind. ~ epicurus, @wisdomtrove 77:The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement: "I think, therefore I am." He had, in fact, given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 78:One day, a philosopher asked, "What is the purpose of creation?" "Lovemaking," said the Master. Later, to his disciples, he said, "Before creation, love was. After creation, love was made. When love is consummated, creation will cease to be, and love will be forever." ~ anthony-de-mello, @wisdomtrove 79:When it was first said that the sun stood still and world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei [the voice of the people is the voice of God], as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 80:I do not think a philosopher who would apply himself so earnestly to the explaining the ultimate principles of the soul, would show himself a great master in the very science of human nature, which he pretends to explain, or very knowing in what is naturally satisfactory to the mind of man. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 81:There is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher. Fontenelle says he would undertake to persuade the whole public of readers to believe that the sun was neither the cause of light or heat, if he could only get six philosophers on his side. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 82:Christmas was close at hand, in all his bluff and hearty honesty; it was the season of hospitality, merriment, and open-heartedness; the old year was preparing, like an ancient philosopher, to call his friends around him, and amidst the sound of feasting and revelry to pass gently and calmly away. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 83:I am a man and alive. For this reason I am a novelist. And, being a novelist, I consider myself superior to the saint, te scientist, the philosopher, and the poet, who are all great masters of different bits of man alive, but never get the whole hog... .Only in the novel are all things given full play. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 84:The theistic philosopher has a tendency to devalue insufficient worldviews, ideologies, and quite often common sense for the greater good, and in such cases, one should not be discouraged when seen as a bad guy. If he stresses over man's perception of a righteous heart, then he has given his heart to man. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 85:The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosopher's or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself, and that is why you must know yourself - Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 86:I have held and hold souls to be immortal... . Speaking as a Catholic, they do not pass from body to body, but go to paradise, purgatory or hell. But I have reasoned deeply, and, speaking as a philosopher, since the soul is not found without body and yet is not body, it may be in one body or in another, and pass from body to body. ~ giordano-bruno, @wisdomtrove 87:Two Chinamen visiting Europe went to the theatre for the first time. One of them occupied himself with trying to understand the theatrical machinery, which he succeeded in doing. The other, despite his ignorance of the language, sought to unravel the meaning of the play. The former is like the astronomer, the latter the philosopher. ~ arthur-schopenhauer, @wisdomtrove 88:Dwell, O mind, within yourself; Enter no other's home. If you but seek there, you will find All you are searching for. God, the true Philosopher's Stone, Who answers every prayer, Lies hidden deep within your heart, The richest gem of all. How many pearls and precious stones Are scattered all about The outer court that lies before The chamber of your heart! ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 89:It is a fool only, and not the philosopher, nor even the prudent man, that will live as if there were no God... Were a man impressed as fully and strongly as he ought to be with the belief of a God, his moral life would be regulated by the force of belief; he would stand in awe of God and of himself, and would not do the thing that could not be concealed from either. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 90:No justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous. Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite skeptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‚Äòa gentleman does not cheat‚Äô, than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 91:Each one of us pray, day and night, for the downtrodden millions in India, who are held fast by poverty, priest craft, and tyranny - pray day and night for them. I am no meta physician, no philosopher, nay, no saint. But I am poor, I love the poor... . Let these people be your God - think of them, work for them, pray for them incessantly - the Lord will show you the way. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 92:People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher - a Roosevelt, a Tolstoi, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 93:Men may be very learned, and yet very miserable; it is easy to be a deep geometrician, or a sublime astronomer, but very difficult to be a good man. I esteem, therefore, the traveller who instructs the heart, but despise him who only indulges the imagination. A man who leaves home to mend himself and others, is a philosopher; but he who goes from country to country, guided by the blind impulse of curiosity, is only a vagabond. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 94:Across a chasm of eighteen hundred years, Jesus Christ makes a demand which is beyond all others difficult to satisfy; He asks for that which a philosopher may often seek in vain at the hands of his friends, or a father of his children, or a bride of her spouse, or a man of his brother. He asks for the human heart; He will have it entirely to Himself. He demands it unconditionally; and forthwith His demand is granted. Wonderful! ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 95:How can we satisfy ourselves without going on in infinitum? And, after all, what satisfaction is there in that infinite progression? Let us remember the story of the Indian philosopher and his elephant. It was never more applicable than to the present subject. If the material world rests upon a similar ideal world, this ideal world must rest upon some other; and so on, without end. It were better, therefore, never to look beyond the present material world. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 96:Philosophy and science have not always been friendly toward the idea of God, the reason being they are dedicated to the task of accounting for things and are impatient with anything that refuses to give an account of itself. The philosopher and the scientist will admit that there is much that they do not know; but that is quite another thing from admitting there is something which they can never know, which indeed they have no technique for discovering. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 97:Only a philosopher's mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine. A man who uses reminders of these things correctly is always at the highest, most perfect level of initiation, and he is the only one who is perfect as perfect can be. He stands outside human concerns and draws close to the divine; ordinary people think he is disturbed and rebuke him for this, unaware that he is possessed by god. ~ plato, @wisdomtrove 98:The bourgeois thinkers of the eighteenth century thus turned Aristotle's formula on its head: satisfactions which the Greek philosopher had identified with leisure were now transposed to the sphere of work, while tasks lacking in any financial reward were drained of all significance and left to the haphazard attentions of decadent dilettantes. It now seemed as impossible that one could be happy and unproductive as it had once seemed unlikely that one could work and be human. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 99:I believe that even a smattering of such findings in modern science and mathematics is far more compelling and exciting than most of the doctrines of pseudoscience, whose practitioners were condemned as early as the fifth century B.C. by the Ionian philosopher Heraclitus as ‚Äúnigh -walkers, magicians, priests of Bacchus, priestesses of the wine-vat, mystery-mongers.‚Äù But science is more intricate and subtle, reveals a much richer imiverse, and powerfully evokes our sense of wonder. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 100:The adoption of the required attitude of mind towards ideas that seem to emerge "of their own free will" and the abandonment of the critical function that is normally in operation against them seem to be hard of achievement for some people. The "involuntary thoughts" are liable to release a most violent resistance, which seeks to prevent their emergence. If we may trust that great poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller, however, poetic creation must demand an exactly similar attitude. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 101:& 102:Five hundred years before Christ was born, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus told his students that everything changes except the law of change". He said: "You cannot step in the same river twice." The river changes every second; and so does the man who stepped in it. Life is a ceaseless change. The only certainty is today. Why mar the beauty of living today by trying to solve the problems of a future that is shrouded in ceaseless change and uncertainty-a future that no one can possibly foretell? ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 103:Five hundred years before Christ was born, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus told his students that "everything changes except the law of change". He said: "You cannot step in the same river twice." The river changes every second; and so does the man who stepped in it. Life is a ceaseless change. The only certainty is today. Why mar the beauty of living today by trying to solve the problems of a future that is shrouded in ceaseless change and uncertainty-a future that no one can possibly foretell? ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 104:The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of single-pointed focus, he taught. But what about the benefits of living harmoniously among extremes? What if you could somehow create an expansive enough life that you could synchronize seemingly incongruous opposites into a worldview that excludes nothing? ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove 105:More investment sins are probably committed by otherwise quite intelligent people because of "tax considerations" than from any other cause. One of my friends-a noted West Coast philosopher-maintains that a majority of life's errors are caused by forgetting what one is really trying to do. This is certainly the case when an emotionally supercharged element like taxes enters the picture (I have another friend-a noted East Coast philosopher who says it isn't the lack of representation he minds-it's the taxation). ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 106:It is a wonderful thing to see a first-rate philosopher at prayer. Tough-minded thinking and tenderhearted reverence are friends, not enemies. We have for too long separated the head from the heart, and we are the lesser for it. We love God with the mind and we love God with the heart. In reality, we are descending with the mind into the heart and there standing before God in ceaseless wonder and endless praise. As the mind and the heart work in concert, a kind of loving rationality pervades all we say and do. This brings unity to us and glory to God. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 107:The external world of physics has … become a world of shadows. In removing our illusions we have removed the substance, for indeed we have seen that substance is one of the greatest of our illusions. Later perhaps we may inquire whether in our zeal to cut out all that is unreal we may not have used the knife too ruthlessly. Perhaps, indeed, reality is a child which cannot survive without its nurse illusion. But if so, that is of little concern to the scientist, who has good and sufficient reasons for pursuing his investigations in the world of shadows and is content to leave to the philosopher the determination of its exact status in regard to reality. ~ sir-arthur-eddington, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:into the philosopher's ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
2:I am not a philosopher. ~ Hans Bethe, #NFDB
3:I'm not a philosopher. ~ Truman Capote, #NFDB
4:To grow a philosopher's beard. ~ Horace, #NFDB
5:Your dog is your only philosopher. ~ Plato, #NFDB
6:A dog has the soul of a philosopher. ~ Plato, #NFDB
7:A philosopher's a lover of wisdom. ~ Cornel West, #NFDB
8:You win. You're the philosopher. ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
9:The best physician is also a philosopher. ~ Galen, #NFDB
10:I see you are philosopher by nature. ~ Donna Tartt, #NFDB
11:You're like a philosopher with tattoos. ~ J A Redmerski, #NFDB
12:A true philosopher must never give up. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
13:The philosopher is Nature's pilot. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
14:The man of science is a poor philosopher. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
15:I will keep still with my philosopher. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
16:Reality, n. The dream of a mad philosopher. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
17:the great philosopher of deconstruction: in ~ Sarah Bakewell, #NFDB
18:Are you a philosopher? Where's your sponge? ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
19:The elixir of life, the philosopher's stone ~ Hilda Doolittle, #NFDB
20:The philosopher creates, he doesn't reflect. ~ Gilles Deleuze, #NFDB
21:Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend. ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
22:A married philosopher belongs to comedy. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
23:A married philosopher is a comic character. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
24:A priest and a philosopher are two different things ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
25:Don't become a philosopher before you become rich. ~ Shahrukh Khan, #NFDB
26:Only as an individual can man become a philosopher. ~ Karl Jaspers, #NFDB
27:Only the true philosopher goes to heaven when he dies. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
28:Philosopher: A lover of wisdom, which is to say, Truth. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
29:A philosopher never gets quite used to the world. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
30:A philosopher must be more than a philosopher. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
31:They say: Philosopher's Stone; I hear: Lot's Wife! ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
32:Constant happiness is the philosopher's stone of the soul. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
33:God, of course, is the greatest philosopher of all. ~ Richard M Nixon, #NFDB
34:The philosopher caught in the nets of language. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
35:The true philosopher and the true poet are one, ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
36:The whole life of the philosopher is a preparation for death. ~ Plato, #NFDB
37:Woman's nudity is wiser than the philosopher's teachings. ~ Max Ernst, #NFDB
38:Being a philosopher, I have a problem for every solution. ~ Robert Zend, #NFDB
39:To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
40:As a doctor I had no choice. As a philosopher I had too many. ~ Hannibal, #NFDB
41:I have lived as a philosopher and die as a Christian. ~ Giacomo Casanova, #NFDB
42:...the philosopher's professional addiction to furniture... ~ J L Austin, #NFDB
43:To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
44:A true philosopher is beyond the reach of fortune. ~ Walter Savage Landor, #NFDB
45:There is nothing so ridiculous but some philosopher has said it. ~ Cicero, #NFDB
46:I don't see myself as a philosopher. That's awfully boring. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
47:Life is horrible, horrible, horrible, said the philosopher. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
48:You'll have a national Philosopher's strike on your hands! ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
49:A good philosopher is one who does not take ideas seriously. ~ Edward Abbey, #NFDB
50:A great scholar is seldom a great philosopher. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
51:A true philosopher is married to wisdom; he needs no other bride. ~ Proclus, #NFDB
52:Be a philosopher but, amid all your philosophy be still a man. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
53:Be a philosopher, but amid all your philosophy be still a man. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
54:To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
55:who but a career academic has a favorite philosopher?— ~ Guillermo del Toro, #NFDB
56:A true philosopher is married to wisdom; he needs no other bride. ~ Proclus, #NFDB
57:Coleridge: poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium. ~ Matthew Arnold, #NFDB
58:I hold firmly to my original views. After all I am a philosopher. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
59:Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings? ~ Diogenes, #NFDB
60:Even a mole may instruct a philosopher in the art of digging. ~ Ernest Bramah, #NFDB
61:There are more riddles in a stone than in a philosopher's head ~ Damon Knight, #NFDB
62:Work, the hobby of the philosopher and the poor man's friend. ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB
63:Be a philosopher; but amidst all your philosophy, be still a man. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
64:He thinks like a philosopher, but governs like a king. ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau, #NFDB
65:I am not a theologian or a philosopher. I am a story teller. ~ William Golding, #NFDB
66:Ones vision is not a roadmap but a compass. ~ Peter Block Business Philosopher, #NFDB
67:Should we care about philosopher if the world so clearly doesn't? ~ N D Wilson, #NFDB
68:The philosopher has to be the bad conscience of his age. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
69:To become a philosopher, start by walking very slowly. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
70:What shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the chameleon poet. ~ John Keats, #NFDB
71:Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
72:Everyone is a philosopher. Not everyone is good at it. ~ Alfred North Whitehead, #NFDB
73:On this point, the priest and the philosopher agree: We must die. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
74:What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the chameleon poet. ~ John Keats, #NFDB
75:A philosopher and honest journalist? Does he plan to die of hunger? ~ Rius, #NFDB
76:What does the philosopher say? Odi ergo sum. I hate therefore I am. ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
77:The true philosopher lives his life as a dress rehearsal for death. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
78:Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder. ~ Plato, #NFDB
79:An old philosopher said you can never step in the same river twice. ~ Louisa Morgan, #NFDB
80:Tripp was like this—a suburban-dad philosopher. “You tell me.” “It’s ~ Harlan Coben, #NFDB
81:Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and all philosophy begins in wonder ~ Plato, #NFDB
82:All the things an artist must be: poet, explorer of nature, philosopher! ~ Paul Klee, #NFDB
83:Concepts for a philosopher are only nets for catching sense. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty, #NFDB
84:What is it to be a philosopher? Is it not to be prepared against events? ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
85:British philosopher Isaiah Berlin and the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
86:I don't pretend to be an intellectual or a philosopher. I just look. ~ Josef Koudelka, #NFDB
87:Someone once quoted Shakespeare to the philosopher W. V. O. Quine: There ~ Chet Raymo, #NFDB
88:story of a philosopher who runs when a bear charges him and his friend. ~ Matt Ridley, #NFDB
89:To a philosopher no circumstance, however trifling, is too minute. ~ Oliver Goldsmith, #NFDB
90:What the first philosopher taught the last will have to repeat. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
91:Which is better off, a lizard basking in the sun or a philosopher? ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
92:Don't call me a mindless philosopher, you overweight glob of grease. ~ Anthony Daniels, #NFDB
93:I don’t have to,” replies the philosopher. “I only have to outrun you.”) ~ Matt Ridley, #NFDB
94:I don't really know what that job [experimental philosopher] entails. ~ Jonathon Keats, #NFDB
95:Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings? ~ Diogenes of Sinope, #NFDB
96:If thou canst see sharp, look and judge wisely, says the philosopher. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
97:The act of philosophizing involves the character of the philosopher. ~ Jacques Maritain, #NFDB
98:The whole life of a philosopher is the meditation of his death. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
99:As a philosopher, I'm not obliged to explore every unknown wilderness. ~ Harry Frankfurt, #NFDB
100:As useful as an unhappy artist. As useless as a happy philosopher. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
101:For there was never yet philosopher That could endure the toothache patiently. ~ Various, #NFDB
102:Experiences are the chemicals of life with which the philosopher experiments ~ Manly Hall, #NFDB
103:if a philosopher wishes to be useful to human society, he must announce a God. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
104:I would like to be a philosopher in ancient Athens and a poet in ancient China. ~ Shan Sa, #NFDB
105:The philosopher is someone who doesn't know, but who wants to find out. ~ Simon Critchley, #NFDB
106:There is no statement so absurd that no philosopher will make it. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
107:There is nothing so ridiculous but some philosopher has said it. ~ Cicero De Divinatione., #NFDB
108:Vain is the word of that philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. ~ Epicurus, #NFDB
109:Humour is human. Why? Well, because the Philosopher, Aristotle, says so. ~ Simon Critchley, #NFDB
110:If Socrates died like a philosopher, Jesus Christ died like a God. ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau, #NFDB
111:The ideal state for a philosopher, indeed, is celibacy tempered by polygamy. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
112:Experiences are the chemicals of life with which the philosopher experiments ~ Manly P Hall, #NFDB
113:I will not die, it's the world that will end." paraphrase of unknown philosopher ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
114:Know that the philosopher has power over the stars, and not the stars over him. ~ Paracelsus, #NFDB
115:The philosopher ought never to try to avoid the duty of making up his mind. ~ Mortimer Adler, #NFDB
116:The scholar without good breeding is a pedant; the philosopher, a cynic. ~ Lord Chesterfield, #NFDB
117:It’s a pity you are a torturer,” Ultan said. “You might have been a philosopher. ~ Gene Wolfe, #NFDB
118:The Philosopher said that a man alone is either a god or a monster. I'm no god. ~ Brent Weeks, #NFDB
119:Ants that encounter in their path a dead philosopher may make good use of him. ~ Stanis aw Lem, #NFDB
120:People can think only in images. If you want to be a philosopher, write novels. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
121:Seneca, the Roman philosopher. Sometimes, even to live is an act of courage. ~ Janet Evanovich, #NFDB
122:All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
123:Empty is the argument of the philosopher which does not relieve any human suffering. ~ Epicurus, #NFDB
124:Experiences are the chemicals of life with which the philosopher experiments.
~ Manly P Hall,#NFDB
125:I could be wrong. Not being certain is what being a philosopher is all about. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
126:In the words of that great comedic philosopher Kevin Hart, “We gon’ learn today! ~ Kennedy Ryan, #NFDB
127:is not just any bint,” he said. “This is a philosopher-queen, a sultana . . . ~ G Willow Wilson, #NFDB
128:Posterity for the philosopher is what the other world is for the religious man. ~ Denis Diderot, #NFDB
129:Therefore, even the lover of myth is a philosopher; for myth is composed of wonder. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
130:There was never yet philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
131:Things do not change; we change. —Henry David Thoreau, writer and philosopher T ~ Marci Shimoff, #NFDB
132:All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
133:Empty is the argument of the philosopher which does not relieve any human suffering. ~ Epicurus, #NFDB
134:Why I'm an artist, not a philosopher? Because I think in words rather than ideas. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
135:Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder. ~ Plato Theaetetus, 155, #NFDB
136:You don’t have to be a
philosopher; you just have to want to know who you are ~ Padmasambhava,#NFDB
137:All the hungers will kill, but hunger of loneliness turns you into a philosopher. ~ M F Moonzajer, #NFDB
138:I am neither a philosopher nor a thinker, but simply follower of my own thoughts. ~ M F Moonzajer, #NFDB
139:If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher's stone. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
140:The man who enters his wife's dressing room is either a philosopher or a fool. ~ Honore de Balzac, #NFDB
141:There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
142:To utter a word and meaning nothing by it is unworthy of a philosopher. Berkeley ~ Simon Critchley, #NFDB
143:An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. ~ John W Gardner, #NFDB
144:Great novelists are philosopher novelists - that is, the contrary of thesis-writers. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
145:They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth. -Plato, philosopher (427-347 BCE) ~ Plato, #NFDB
146:For there was never yet philosopher That could endure the toothache patiently, ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
147:For there was never yet philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
148:In the philosopher, conversely, there is nothing whatever that is impersonal;7 ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
149:The philosopher's treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #NFDB
150:You scoundrel, you have wronged me," hissed the philosopher, "May you live forever! ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
151:How easy it is, Doctor, to be a philosopher on paper, and how difficult in real life! ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
152:I am not primarily an entrepreneurial businessman. I'm primarily a playboy philosopher. ~ Hugh Hefner, #NFDB
153:Mr. Pickwick was a philosopher, but philosophers are only men in armour, after all. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
154:Occupy thyself with few things, says the philosopher, if thou wouldst be tranquil.- ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
155:There is no opinion so stupid that it can't be expressed by some philosopher. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
156:to put it as philosopher-poet Ralph Waldo Emerson did, “To be simple is to be great. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
157:The true philosopher is a man who says "All right," and goes to sleep in his armchair. ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB
158:The words of that philosopher who offers no therapy for human suffering are empty and vain. ~ Epicurus, #NFDB
159:This sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher. Philosophy indeed has no other origin. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
160:Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep/ Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind. ~ William Wordsworth, #NFDB
161:Nobody ever became a famous philosopher by being a champion of ecumenical hybridism. ~ Daniel C Dennett, #NFDB
162:The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence. ~ Wallace Stevens, #NFDB
163:To decide to become a philosopher seemed as foolish to me as to decide to become a poet. ~ Karl Jaspers, #NFDB
164:According to the saying of an ancient philosopher, one should eat to live, and not live to eat ~ Moliere, #NFDB
165:his secretary-press-agent-private-philosopher, Lee Sarason, yielded nothing to others’. ~ Sinclair Lewis, #NFDB
166:The philosopher is not the spokesman of his age, but an angel imprisoned in time. ~ Nicol s G mez D vila, #NFDB
167:The American philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, said, “Man is what he thinks all day long. ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
168:Whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
169:The philosopher is lacking who interprets the deed and does not merely transpose it. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
170:You don’t need schooling to be a philosopher. Just an active mind and experience with life. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
171:Essayist and philosopher Alain de Botton describes art as “an apothecary for the soul. ~ Arianna Huffington, #NFDB
172:The philosopher king said, "Everything stinks sometimes. Some of it can't be explained. ~ Richard Stevenson, #NFDB
173:To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking. ~ William James, #NFDB
174:In order to be a really good investor, you need to be a little bit of a philosopher as well. ~ Daniel S Loeb, #NFDB
175:John Dewey, an American philosopher and writer, said that “a problem well put is half solved. ~ Eric Schmidt, #NFDB
176:No philosopher's stone of a constitution can produce golden conduct from leaden instincts. ~ Herbert Spencer, #NFDB
177:The business of the philosopher is well done if he succeeds in raising genuine doubt. ~ Morris Raphael Cohen, #NFDB
178:the philosopher Isaiah Berlin sagely pointed out, liberty for wolves means death to lambs.124 ~ Naomi Oreskes, #NFDB
179:There is no record in human history of a happy philosopher: they exist only in romantic legend. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
180:you could almost define a philosopher as someone who won’t take common sense for an answer. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
181:As a philosopher, I have a right to ask for a rational explanation of religious faith. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
182:Heraclitus was proud, and when a philosopher exhibits pride, it is a great pride indeed. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
183:If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher. ~ Jeff Wheeler, #NFDB
184:I am a philosopher, not a scientist, and we philosophers are better at questions than answers. ~ Daniel Dennett, #NFDB
185:Socrates is without doubt the most influential and famous philosopher who never wrote anything. ~ Peter Adamson, #NFDB
186:The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead has advised us to “seek simplicity and distrust it. ~ Scott Richard Shaw, #NFDB
187:The philosopher cannot seriously put to himself questions that his civilization has not lived. ~ William Barrett, #NFDB
188:When life does not find a singer to sing her heart she produces a philosopher to speak her mind. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
189:As a great philosopher had once said, “People are most concerned about the pebble in their shoe. ~ Vaughn Heppner, #NFDB
190:Candide, who trembled like a philosopher, hid himself as well as he could during this heroic butchery. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
191:Get out of the way,’ he said. As Harry moved aside he felt the Philosopher’s Stone against his leg. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
192:I said his line of thought - referring to the philosopher, because this is also a story of men. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
193:Is literature better, is politics better, for having discarded the moralist and the philosopher? ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
194:It is easy to be a philosopher in academia, but it is very difficult to be a philosopher in life. ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
195:I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to be than a good dancer. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
196:Marry a good woman, and be happy the rest of your life. Or, marry a bad, and become a good philosopher ~ Socrates, #NFDB
197:Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life. - Omar Khayyam, Persian philosopher (1048-1131) ~ Dani DiPirro, #NFDB
198:He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
199:If you wish to understand a philosopher, do not ask what he says, but find out what he wants ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
200:No man was ever yet a great poet, without at the same time being a profound philosopher. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, #NFDB
201:No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, #NFDB
202:Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases. ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau, #NFDB
203:The French have never produced a great philosopher. Great wine maybe, but no great philosophers. ~ Michael O Leary, #NFDB
204:To rove about, musing, that is to say loitering, is, for a philosopher, a good way of spending time. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
205:I had a five-year plan once. It was a good one, too. Then life happened. —Unknown street philosopher ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
206:The philosopher says think your way out. The sensualist says play your way out but none of it works. ~ Billy Graham, #NFDB
207:As that great philosopher, Mary Poppins, once said, 'A spoonful of sugar makes the feminism go down. ~ Irene Ziegler, #NFDB
208:Faith which does not doubt is dead faith. -Miguel de Unamuno, philosopher and writer (1864-1936) ~ Miguel de Unamuno, #NFDB
209:For the whole life of a philosopher is, as the same philosopher says, a meditation on death. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
210:There is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher. ~ Oliver Goldsmith, #NFDB
211:Was it John Searle who called Jacques Derrida the sort of philosopher who gives bullshit a bad name? ~ David Markson, #NFDB
212:which is to say, stand with the philosopher, or else with the mob!” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.15.13 W ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
213:A philosopher is a sort of intellectual yokel who gawks at things that sensible people take for granted. ~ Alan Watts, #NFDB
214:Eckhart Tolle, the new age philosopher, says, “What you do is secondary. How you do it is primary. ~ Jennifer L Scott, #NFDB
215:If you wish to be a writer; write!
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Epictetus (50-120) Greek philosopher. ~ Epictetus,#NFDB
216:I’m not going to give you a song and dance that I’m a great scholar, philosopher, or man of wealth. ~ Sholom Aleichem, #NFDB
217:A cleric who loses his faith abandons his calling; a philosopher who loses his redefines his subject. ~ Ernest Gellner, #NFDB
218:For this feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy. ~ Plato, #NFDB
219:I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus, and I would prefer to be even a satyr than a saint. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
220:If you wanted to explore the castle forever and ever, you’d need to get hold of the Philosopher’s Stone. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
221:It is good to renew one's wonder, said the philosopher. Space travel has again made children of us all. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
222:The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers. ~ Denis Diderot, #NFDB
223:To a philosopher all news is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
224:A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #NFDB
225:The philosopher is not a citizen of any community of ideas, that is what makes him a philosopher. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #NFDB
226:To be a philosopher, just reverse everything you have ever been told...and have a sense of humor doing it. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
227:What the philosopher is seeking is not truth, but rather the metamorphosis of the world into man. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
228:It is good to renew one’s wonder,” said the philosopher. “Space travel has again made children of us all. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
229:The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity. ~ Plato, #NFDB
230:Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana, philosopher and essayist ~ Betsy Beyer, #NFDB
231:When I practice, I am a philosopher. When I teach, I am a scientist. When I demonstrate, I am an artist. ~ B K S Iyengar, #NFDB
232:A man becomes a philosopher by reason of a certain perplexity, from which he seeks to free himself. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
233:Every child's bedroom is as important as a telescope orbiting the planet earth or a philosopher's study. ~ Jerry Spinelli, #NFDB
234:In the words of the philosopher Sceptum, the founder of my profession: am I going to get paid for this? ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
235:Misfortune can present people with moral tests they simply cannot pass, writes philosopher Nir Eisikovits. ~ Michelle Kuo, #NFDB
236:My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
237:Or, as Sextus, the ancient Pythagorian philosopher, said, “The wise man is always similar to himself. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
238:Roman philosopher Seneca wrote: “All those who summon you to themselves, turn you away from your own self. ~ Rolf Dobelli, #NFDB
239:the human being is by nature a philosopher ~ Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Fides et Ratio, Chapter 64, 14 September 1998., #NFDB
240:There is nothing so strange and so unbelievable that it has not been said by one philosopher or another. ~ Rene Descartes, #NFDB
241:To philosopher and historian the madness and imbecile wickedness of mankind ought to appear ordinary events. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
242:A great philosopher in the wrong is like a beacon on the reefs which says to seamen: steer clear of me. ~ Jacques Maritain, #NFDB
243:By all means marry,if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher". ~ Socrates, #NFDB
244:Every fool becomes a philosopher after ten days of rain, so I spare you the inside view of my heart. ~ Marian Hooper Adams, #NFDB
245:Every man who is not a monster, a mathematician, or a mad philosopher, is the slave of some woman or other. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
246:Jesus came into this world not as a philosopher or a general but as a carpenter. All work matters to God. ~ Timothy Keller, #NFDB
247:the greater part of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly influenced by his instincts, ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
248:The options available to a creative person are ever limited by the choices offered by a philosopher. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
249:The soul is healed by being with children.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Russian novelist and philosopher ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,#NFDB
250:All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher. ~ Lucretius, #NFDB
251:A philosopher is a fool who torments himself while he is alive, to be talked of after he is dead. ~ Jean le Rond d Alembert, #NFDB
252:Philosophy is an act of seduction between one true lover and another, most often the philosopher and himself. ~ Neel Burton, #NFDB
253:Seventeenth-century philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote: “The eternal silence of the infinite spaces terrifies me. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
254:That great philosopher anonymous once said, never argue with a fool. People might not know the difference. ~ Tucker Carlson, #NFDB
255:The philosopher Didactylos has summed up an alternative hypothesis as ‘Things just happen. What the hell. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
256:The philosopher Didactylos has summed up an alternative hypothesis as “Things just happen. What the hell. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
257:Greek philosopher Epictetus says, “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants. ~ Neil Pasricha, #NFDB
258:Or, as Sextus, the ancient Pythagorian philosopher, said, "The wise man is always similar to himself." - ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
259:the only way to truly conquer something, as every great philosopher and geneticist will tell you, is to love it. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
260:The philosopher Didactylos has summed up an alternative hypothesis as "Things just happen. What the hell". ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
261:To become a successful philosopher king, it is much better to start as a king than as a philosopher, ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
262:You can argue with a philosopher, but you can’t argue with a good song. And I think I’ve got a few good songs. ~ Cat Stevens, #NFDB
263:As the great philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “He who has a why to live for, can bear almost any how. ~ Russ Harris, #NFDB
264:Following Pythagoras, Plato, the great Grecian philosopher, taught the old-new doctrine of Rebirth. ~ William Walker Atkinson, #NFDB
265:How small a thought it takes to fill someone’s whole life,” the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee, #NFDB
266:It is good a philosopher should remind himself, now and then, that he is a particle pontificating on infinity. ~ Ariel Durant, #NFDB
267:One of the drawbacks to being a philosopher was that you became aware of what you should not do, and ~ Alexander McCall Smith, #NFDB
268:There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers. ~ William James, #NFDB
269:They who search after the Philosopher's Stone [are] by their own rules obliged to a strict and religious life. ~ Isaac Newton, #NFDB
270:Whence is thy learning? Hath thy toil O'er books consum'd the midnight oil? ~ John Gay, Shepherd and Philosopher, line 15., #NFDB
271:You beat the liver out of a goose to get a pâté; you pound the muscles of a man's cardia to get a philosopher. ~ Djuna Barnes, #NFDB
272:A man cannot be wise enough to be a great artist without being wise enough to wish to be a philosopher. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
273:A philosopher being asked what was the first thing necessary to win the love of a woman, answered, Opportunity! ~ Thomas Moore, #NFDB
274:By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
275:It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
276:Socrates was a philosopher. He went around pointing out errors in the way things were done. They fed him hemlock. ~ Gil Amelio, #NFDB
277:By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
278:By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
279:The Greek philosopher Epictetus said, “First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do. ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB
280:The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it. ~ Alfred North Whitehead, #NFDB
281:The old men ask for more time; the young waste it. And the philosopher simply smiles, knowing there is none there. ~ R S Thomas, #NFDB
282:The philosopher must become non-philosopher so that non-philosophy becomes the earth and people of philosophy. ~ Gilles Deleuze, #NFDB
283:The spirit of poetry combines the profundity of the philosopher and the child's delight in bright pictures. ~ Franz Grillparzer, #NFDB
284:To be a philosopher... is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
285:Where other powers of entertainment are wanting, the true philosopher will derive benefit from such as are given. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
286:Why should I vapor and play the philosopher, instead of ballasting, the best I can, this dancing balloon? ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
287:Epictetus, a Greek philosopher, once wrote, “Circumstances do not make the man. They merely reveal him to himself. ~ Brian Tracy, #NFDB
288:I see the beard and cloak, but I don't yet see a philosopher. -Video barbam et pallium; philosophum nondum video ~ Aulus Gellius, #NFDB
289:Plato used to say to Xenocrates the philosopher, who was rough and morose, "Good Xenocrates, sacrifice to the Graces. ~ Plutarch, #NFDB
290:What I understand by "philosopher": a terrible explosive in the presence of which everything is in danger. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
291:A German philosopher once wrote that he who fights monsters must take care that he doesn't become one himself. ~ Anthony Horowitz, #NFDB
292:A philosopher once asked, "Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human"? ~ Jane Goldman, #NFDB
293:As the social philosopher and mystic Simone Weil said, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber, #NFDB
294:Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” Philo of Alexandria (circa 20 BC–AD 50)
PHILOSOPHER ~ Rhonda Byrne,#NFDB
295:I have a theory that you can make any sentence seem profound by writing the name of a dead philosopher at the end of it. ~ Banksy, #NFDB
296:It has often been said, and certainly not without justification, that the man of science is a poor philosopher. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
297:Those who seek to achieve things should show no mercy. Kautilya, Indian philosopher third century B.C. OBSERVANCE ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
298:[W]here other powers of entertainment are wanting, the true philosopher will derive benefit from such as are given. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
299:French philosopher Voltaire once famously pointed out, the main problem with common sense is that it is not so common. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
300:It has been said that every individual is the conscious or unconscious follower of some influential philosopher. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
301:No sceptical philosopher can ask any questions that may not equally be asked by a tired child on a hot afternoon. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
302:Schiller is an important philosopher because he shows just how integral the idea of beauty is in normal life. ~ Frederick C Beiser, #NFDB
303:The only way to conquer something, as every great philosopher and geneticist will tell you, is to love it. ~ Christopher McDougall, #NFDB
304:A philosopher philosophizes what people need to hear. A motivational speaker speaks what people want to hear. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
305:As the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard noted, life can only be understood backwards—but it must be lived forwards. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
306:Peter James Stanlis. Robert Frost: The Poet as Philosopher. Second Edition. Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2008, ~ Stephen Cope, #NFDB
307:The greatest modern philosopher was moved by nothing more than by duty. His life, in consequence, was unremarkable. ~ Roger Scruton, #NFDB
308:We are disturbed not by what happens to us, but by our thoughts about what happens. —Epictetus, Greek philosopher I ~ Marci Shimoff, #NFDB
309:According to Nietzche," said a sharp new voice, making them all jump, "philosophy is the biography of the philosopher. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
310:all means marry. If you get a good wife, you will become happy. If you get a bad one, you will become a philosopher. ~ Preeti Shenoy, #NFDB
311:By all means marry. If you get a good spouse you'll become happy, while if you get a bad one you'll become a philosopher. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
312:I keep reverting (to Duke Ellington), he to me is the greatest ever and my favorite jazz philosopher, as such. ~ Cannonball Adderley, #NFDB
313:It has been said that every individual is the conscious or unconscious follower of some influential philosopher. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
314:Wonder [said Socrates] is very much the affection of a philosopher; for there is no other beginning of philosophy than this. ~ Plato, #NFDB
315:Can an ass be tragic? To perish under a burden one can neither bear nor throw off? The case of the philosopher. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
316:Don’t touch me,” I snarl. “What was that? What happened? Where am I?” “Careful, you’re turning into a philosopher. ~ Victoria Aveyard, #NFDB
317:Dostoevsky is such a bad writer it is hard to take him seriously as a novelist, though he is a wonderful philosopher. ~ John Banville, #NFDB
318:Every good mathematician is at least half a philosopher, and every good philosopher is at least half a mathematician. ~ Gottlob Frege, #NFDB
319:It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher not to occupy himself with questions which do not concern him. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #NFDB
320:That's life" said the philosopher each time he was almost laid prostrate, "It's often our best friends who make us fall ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
321:The philosopher had rescued her. The unknown letter writer had saved her from the triviality of everyday existence. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
322:The political philosopher Francis Fukuyama captured the spirit of the time best in his 1989 essay “The End of History. ~ Neil Strauss, #NFDB
323:the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard noted, life can only be understood backwards—but it must be lived forwards. ~ Benjamin Graham, #NFDB
324:What does a philosopher demand of himself, first and last? To overcome his time in himself, to become "timeless. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
325:A philosopher once noted that something is odd if a person is not liberal when he is young and conservative when he is old. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
326:Confirmations, corroborations rather than disillusionment. At eighteen I was as much of a philosopher as I ever will be. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
327:Each philosopher, each bard, each actor has only done for me, as by a delegate, what one day I can do for myself. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
328:I call myself an experimental philosopher which is as ambiguous a term as comprehensive anticipatory design scientist. ~ Jonathon Keats, #NFDB
329:You ask a philosopher a question and after he or she has talked for a bit, you don’t understand your question any more. ~ Philippa Foot, #NFDB
330:All are sure in their days except the most wise ... He is the wisest philosopher who holds his theory with some doubt. ~ Michael Faraday, #NFDB
331:An English philosopher said that whatever is cosmic is also comic. Do the best you can and don't take it so seriously. ~ Bernie Glassman, #NFDB
332:Descartes’ dictum: ‘There is nothing so absurd or incredible that it has not been asserted by one philosopher or another. ~ Paul Johnson, #NFDB
333:No sceptical philosopher can ask any questions that may not equally be asked by a tired child on a hot afternoon. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
334:The only way to truly conquer something, as every great philosopher and geneticist will tell you, is to love it. ~ Christopher McDougall, #NFDB
335:the only way to truly conquer something, as every great philosopher and geneticist will tell you, is to love it. ~ Christopher McDougall, #NFDB
336:To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
337:A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
338:As the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard noted, life can only be understood backwards—but it must be lived forwards. ~ Benjamin Graham, #NFDB
339:Eastern philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti,26 who explained: “It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a sick society. ~ Johann Hari, #NFDB
340:Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of resurrection. —ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, German philosopher ~ Bernd Heinrich, #NFDB
341:The man of science, the artist, the philosopher are attached to their nations as much as the day-laborer and the merchant. ~ Julien Benda, #NFDB
342:The philosopher who would fain extinguish his passions resembles the chemist who would like to let his furnace go out. ~ Nicolas Chamfort, #NFDB
343:Thus, I blush to add, you can not be a philosopher and a good man, though you may be a philosopher and a great one. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
344:Under conditions of tyranny, it is far easier to act than to think.” —Hannah Arendt, philosopher and Holocaust scholar ~ Preston Fleming, #NFDB
345:Can an ass be tragic?--To perish under a burden that one can neither bear nor cast off? The case of the philosopher. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
346:our manner of knowing is so weak that no philosopher could perfectly investigate the nature of even one little fly. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #NFDB
347:Roman philosopher Seneca who some two thousand years ago said, ‘Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. ~ Richard Branson, #NFDB
348:The critic ... should be not merely a poet, not merely a philosopher, not merely an observer, but tempered of all three. ~ Margaret Fuller, #NFDB
349:The great man of science, unless he is also a philosopher, … deserves the title of genius as little as the man of action. ~ Otto Weininger, #NFDB
350:The philosopher says that God's knowledge is the measure of things, and that things are the measure of man's knowledge. ~ Jacques Maritain, #NFDB
351:There's no greater sign of being a poor philosopher and wise man than wanting all of life to be wise and philosophical. ~ Giacomo Leopardi, #NFDB
352:The savage lives simply through ignorance and idleness or laziness, but the philosopher lives simply through wisdom. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
353:The straight trees are cut down, the crooked ones are left standing. Kautilya, Indian philosopher, third century B.C. KEYS ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
354:The theologian considers sin mainly as an offence against God; the moral philosopher as contrary to reasonableness. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #NFDB
355:This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientists do, each in his own fashion. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
356:Who lives as a citizen, may write as a philosopher - but write as a philosopher, it is to teach materialism! ~ Julien Offray de La Mettrie, #NFDB
357:a quotation from the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset as an epigraph for Stoner: “A hero is one who wants to be himself. ~ John Williams, #NFDB
358:Being a philosopher requires a lot of thinking and no action. Being a model requires a lot of action and no thinking. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
359:Every work turns against its author: the poem will crush the poet, the system the philosopher, the event the man of action. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
360:I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
361:Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one’s own sunshine. —Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher ~ Marci Shimoff, #NFDB
362:Plato dramatically puts the detachment of the philosopher from his time this way: to philosophize is to prepare to die. ~ Rebecca Goldstein, #NFDB
363:And Numenius, the Pythagorean philosopher, expressly writes: 'For what is Plato, but Moses speaking in Attic Greek.' ~ Clement of Alexandria, #NFDB
364:A philosopher will not believe what he sees because he is too busy speculating about what he does not see. ~ Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, #NFDB
365:Don’t touch me,” I snarl. “What was that? What happened? Where am I?”
“Careful, you’re turning into a philosopher. ~ Victoria Aveyard,#NFDB
366:The great man of science, unless he is also a philosopher, ... deserves the title of genius as little as the man of action. ~ Otto Weininger, #NFDB
367:This seems plainly absurd; but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities. One ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
368:Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
369:I also dreamt about finally meeting the leftist Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek. He is a great role model for me. ~ Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, #NFDB
370:If someone asks, ‘But what in the end is a philosopher?’ I would say ‘A philosopher is a human being who fights in theory.’ ~ Louis Althusser, #NFDB
371:One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, #NFDB
372:The proof that a philosopher does not know what he is talking about is apt to sadden his followers before it reacts on himself. ~ Henry Adams, #NFDB
373:There is nothing as dangerous as an economist who only knows economics except the moral philosopher who knows no economics. ~ Peter J Boettke, #NFDB
374:A philosopher always finds more grass to feed upon in the valleys of stupidity than on the arid heights of intelligence. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #NFDB
375:By nature a philosopher is not in genius and disposition half so different from a street porter, as a mastiff is from a greyhound ~ Adam Smith, #NFDB
376:Death comes in endless forms. Of the body. Of the soul. Of the heart. - Catriona Mercant, philosopher and warrior. (circa 1419) ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
377:If you can imagine something, then it is possible within the physical laws of this universe. So says some Greek philosopher. ~ Heather O Neill, #NFDB
378:Some arguments require a knife if you’re to cut to the quick, others require the breaking of heads with a philosopher’s stone. ~ Mark Lawrence, #NFDB
379:Trin Tragula—for that was his name—was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or as his wife would have it, an idiot. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
380:Unless there is a God, all morality is just opinion and belief. And virtually every atheist philosopher has acknowledged this. ~ Dennis Prager, #NFDB
381:What history teaches us is that men have never learned anything from it.” —G. W. F. Hegel, nineteenth-century German philosopher ~ Frank Viola, #NFDB
382:Seek simplicity, but distrust it,” Alfred North Whitehead, the mathematician and philosopher, once advised his students. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee, #NFDB
383:Sometimes when a philosopher's views are widely rejected by the world, the fault is not with the philosopher but with the world. ~ Allen W Wood, #NFDB
384:To live alone one must be a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both - a philosopher. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
385:A cleric who loses his faith abandons his calling; a philosopher who loses his redefines his subject. ~ Ernest Gellner, Words and Things (1959)., #NFDB
386:Marx dreamt of a society where man could be "a farmer in the morning, a labourer in the afternoon and a philosopher in the evening". ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
387:The devotee of myth is in a way a philosopher, for myth is made up of things that cause wonder.
(Metaphysics, I, 982b 18–19) ~ Aristotle,#NFDB
388:All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking." by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) German-Swiss philosopher and writer. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
389:A philosopher who says, 'There are no truths, only interpretations,' risks the retort: 'Is that true, or only an interpretation?' ~ Roger Scruton, #NFDB
390:Being a professional philosopher is, I would say, feeling natural to think about small and great problems. It is the only pleasure. ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
391:One believed what one was told to believe, what it made sense to believe. Unless one was a foreigner, of course, or a philosopher. ~ Iain M Banks, #NFDB
392:philosopher Walter Benjamin put it: “There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
393:What's a philosopher?' said Brutha. Someone who's bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting,' said a voice in his head. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
394:Consistency is a virtue for trains: what we want from a philosopher is insights, whether he comes by them consistently or not. ~ Stephen Vizinczey, #NFDB
395:He said that the only decent German philosopher was Lichtenberg, who was less a philosopher than the ultimate jokester and clown. ~ Roberto Bola o, #NFDB
396:Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher, Marcus Aurelius said it best: “The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it. ~ Darius Foroux, #NFDB
397:The picture which the philosopher draws of the world is surely not one in which every stroke is necessitated by pure logic. ~ Morris Raphael Cohen, #NFDB
398:When prosperous the fool trembles for the evil that is to come; in adversity the philosopher smiles for the good that he has had. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
399:A great human philosopher nearly let our secret out when he said that where virute is concerned, "Experience is the mother of illusion. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
400:Besides, he was a philosopher; he smoked a good many cigars over his disappointment, and in the
fulness of time he got used to it. ~ Henry James,#NFDB
401:Life is a paradox. Every truth has its counterpart which contradicts it; and every philosopher supplies the logic his own undoing. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
402:The philosopher: he alone knows how to live for himself. He is the one, in fact, who knows the fundamental thing: how to live. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
403:The philosopher is a person who refuses no pleasures which do not produce greater sorrows, and who knows how to create new ones. ~ Giacomo Casanova, #NFDB
404:The philosopher is Nature's pilot. And there you have our difference: to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
405:Trin Tragula—for that was his name—was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot. And ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
406:With respect to the doctrine of a future life, a North American Indian knows just as much as any ancient or modern philosopher. ~ Thomas B Macaulay, #NFDB
407:As the philosopher Bertrand Russell once said, “In the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. ~ David McRaney, #NFDB
408:It's no use trying to talk philosophy to our politicians. And I'm not a moral or political philosopher. I'm not interested in that. ~ Marjorie Grene, #NFDB
409:‘Life is not a series of problems,’ said the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel, ‘it is a network of mysteries.’ ~ Alan McGlashan, Gravity and Levity, #NFDB
410:One philosopher has rightly said that property is theft. But I'd like to use my future ownership of property to give something back. ~ George Carlin, #NFDB
411:Prussian philosopher Alexandre von Humbolt. “The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those who have not viewed the world. ~ Malcolm W Nance, #NFDB
412:Some philosopher had once said that the wise man learns to win what he wants by appearing to lose what his enemy believes he wants. ~ Joseph Brassey, #NFDB
413:The philosopher is he to whom the highest has descended, and the lowest has mounted up; who is the equal and kindly brother of all. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
414:This is too difficult for a mathematician. It takes a philosopher. The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
415:Unfortunately robots capable of manufacturing robots do not exist. That would be the philosopher's stone, the squaring of the circle. ~ Ernst J nger, #NFDB
416:What's a philosopher?' said Brutha.
Someone who's bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting,' said a voice in his head. ~ Terry Pratchett,#NFDB
417:A true philosopher is like an elephant; he never puts the second foot down until the first one is solidly in place. ~ Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, #NFDB
418:If a philosopher is not a man, he is anything but a philosopher; he is above all a pedant, and a pedant is a caricature of a man. ~ Miguel de Unamuno, #NFDB
419:I feel that we are all philosophers, and that those who describe themselves as a 'philosopher' simply do not have a day job to go to. ~ Kevin Warwick, #NFDB
420:Port is not for the very young, the vain and the active. It is the comfort of age and the companion of the scholar and the philosopher ~ Evelyn Waugh, #NFDB
421:The philosopher seeks to hear within himself the echoes of the world of symphony and to re-project them in the form if concepts ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
422:The true philosopher and the true poet are one, and a beauty, which is truth, and a truth, which is beauty, is the aim of both. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
423:to be a philosopher in all that you do, and if you wish also to be seen as one, show yourself first that you are and you will succeed. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
424:What is reality? Is it not merely a term for the philosopher to conjure with, behind which he may craftily conceal his ignorance? ~ John Grier Hibben, #NFDB
425:As another philosopher, Myisha Cherry, has recently argued, “I want to convince you that there are types of anger that are not bad. ~ Rebecca Traister, #NFDB
426:As one philosopher noted, the human brain is an "anticipation machine," and "making future" is the most important thing it does. ~ Daniel Todd Gilbert, #NFDB
427:But nobody has ever yet called a philosopher "a hired conscience," though everybody gives the lawyer this nickname. Why this partiality? ~ Lev Shestov, #NFDB
428:Last night I dreamed I went to hillbilly heaven and you know who greeted me at the gate? The ole cowboy-philosopher himself, Will Rogers. ~ Tex Ritter, #NFDB
429:The Country is both the Philosopher's Garden and his Library, in which he Reads and Contemplates the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God. ~ William Penn, #NFDB
430:The ruler must be a philosopher as well as a king; and he must govern unwillingly, because he loves philosophy better than dominion. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
431:To live alone one must be either a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both - a philosopher. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
432:When a philosopher says something that is true then it is trivial. When he says something that is not trivial then it is false. ~ Carl Friedrich Gauss, #NFDB
433:All the persecutors declare against each other mortal war, while the philosopher, oppressed by them all, contents himself with pitying them. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
434:By all means, marry, I told him. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher. Myrddin ~ Jeff Wheeler, #NFDB
435:I have said my philosophy - I'm a backyard philosopher, I guess - is that the dirtiest word in the English language is "retirement." ~ Frank Sinatra Jr, #NFDB
436:I mean it as a compliment when I say that you could almost define a philosopher as someone who won't take common sense for an answer. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
437:I mean it as a compliment when I say that you could almost define a philosopher as someone who won’t take common sense for an answer. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
438:You might think you’re thinking your own thoughts. You’re not. You’re thinking your culture’s thoughts. Jiddu Krishnamurti, Philosopher ~ Carol Sanford, #NFDB
439:Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher and scientist, proclaimed in a treatise written in 350 BC that women have fewer teeth than men. ~ Frederic Laloux, #NFDB
440:If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I'm still waiting, it's all been to seduce women basically. ~ Jean Paul Sartre, #NFDB
441:I have never seen the Philosopher's Stone that turns lead into Gold, but I have known the pursuit of it turn a Man's Gold into Lead. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
442:So the highest and the happiest of endeavors is to be a philosopher ? Doesn't it seem self-serving for a philosopher to make that claim? ~ Irvin D Yalom, #NFDB
443:The philosopher is not someone who has thought instead of us but rather someone who makes us think. ~ Joxe Azurmendi, Oraingo gazte eroak (1998), p. 35., #NFDB
444:True peace of mind," said this Chinese philosopher, "comes from accepting the worst. Psychologically, I think, it means a release of energy. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
445:Versatility of education can be found in our best poetry, but the depth of mankind should be found in the philosopher. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, #NFDB
446:When you make music you are acting as a philosopher. You can either do that consciously or you can do it unconsciously, but you're doing it. ~ John Cage, #NFDB
447:Racism is man’s gravest threat to man—the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reasons. —Abraham J. Heschel, rabbi and philosopher (1907–72) ~ Brenda Novak, #NFDB
448:The atheist philosopher of science Michael Ruse says that Dawkins’s arguments are so bad that he’s embarrassed to call himself an atheist.10 ~ Paul Copan, #NFDB
449:The British philosopher Bertrand Russell said that philosophy went downhill after Democritus and did not recover until the Renaissance. ~ Leon M Lederman, #NFDB
450:What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak. George Santayana, Spanish philosopher ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
451:Attitude drives actions. Actions drive results. Results drive lifestyles.” That’s a quote from America’s business philosopher, Jim Rohn. ~ Jeffrey Gitomer, #NFDB
452:He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has. — EPICTETUS, Greek philosopher ~ Michael J Gelb, #NFDB
453:If what charms you is nothing but abstract principles, sit down and turn them over quietly in your mind: but never dub yourself a Philosopher. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
454:Nature will not be Buddhist: she resents generalizing, and insults the philosopher in every moment with a million fresh particulars. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
455:Seek simplicity, but distrust it,” Alfred North Whitehead, the mathematician and philosopher, once advised his students. Dobzhansky ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee, #NFDB
456:The Christian on his knees sees more than the philosopher on tiptoe. God sends no one away empty except those who are full of themselves. ~ Dwight L Moody, #NFDB
457:What does a woman who has lost her children care about a philosopher's definitions of good and evil?
But what if life itself is evil? ~ Vasily Grossman,#NFDB
458:What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition! ~ William James, #NFDB
459:whoever is so stupid as to imagine God to be either masculine or feminine openly shows that he is as bad a philosopher as a theologian. ~ Marie de Gournay, #NFDB
460:as the philosopher Walter Benjamin put it: “There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.”24 ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
461:In my early youth - he would later write to his friend, the philosopher Constantin Noica- seduced me solely the libraries and the brothels. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
462:Lawn looked down at his patient. "In the words of the philosopher Sceptum, the founder of my profession: am I going to get paid for this? ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
463:The English philosopher Michael Oakeshott notes that one of the signs of being cold today is that one knows what one doesn't have to know. ~ Joseph Epstein, #NFDB
464:When Zeno received news of a shipwreck and heard that all his luggage had been sunk he said, "Fortune bids me to be a less encumbered philosopher. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
465:When Zeno received news of a shipwreck and heard that all his luggage had been sunk he said, 'Fortune bids me to be a less encumbered philosopher. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
466:In my early youth - he would later write to his friend, the philosopher Constantin Noica - seduced me solely the libraries and the brothels. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
467:Only a philosopher would consider taking Oedipus as a model for a normal, unproblematic relation between an action and the maxim of the act. ~ Jerry A Fodor, #NFDB
468:Some great poet or philosopher once said that " he who goes to nature for comfort must go to her empty handed " , and I think he was right. ~ Flora Thompson, #NFDB
469:The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement: “I think, therefore I am. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
470:The introduction of the word ‘intuition’ by a moral philosopher is always a signal that something has gone badly wrong with an argument. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre, #NFDB
471:This is a question too difficult for a mathematician. It should be asked of a philosopher"(when asked about completing his income tax form) ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
472:advocates of opinions who attack one another in daily politics are grouped together over against their common adversary, the philosopher. When ~ Eric Voegelin, #NFDB
473:I am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers. ~ William James, #NFDB
474:I’m an outlaw not a philosopher, but I know this much: there’s meaning in everything, all things are connected, and a good champagne is a drink. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
475:La Rochefoucauld, the French philosopher, said: “If you want enemies, excel your friends; but if you want friends, let your friends excel you. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
476:Talent hits a target that no one else can hit,” wrote the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. “Genius hits a target no one else can see. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
477:To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
478:A true philosopher should never lose sight of language, the true barometer, whose variations announce infallibly good and bad times. ~ Joseph de Maistre, #NFDB
479:By all implies marry if you get a great wife/husband, you are going to be pleased. If you get a bad a single, you are going to become a philosopher. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
480:Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth. —MARCUS AURELIUS, ROMAN EMPEROR AND PHILOSOPHER ~ Josh Kaufman, #NFDB
481:Francisco Varela once told me that a European philosopher, Edmund Husserl, already suggested a similar approach to the study of consciousness. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
482:He had the philosopher's disease of seeing so far ahead that all the little pleasant shapes and colors of existence passed under his nose unseen. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
483:Perhaps no philosopher is more correct than the cynic. The happiness of the animal, that thorough cynic, is the living proof of cynicism. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
484:The Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu once said that being loved deeply by someone gives you strength, and loving someone deeply gives you courage. ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
485:Then she told me about a philosopher who said that observation is at its core an expression of love which doesn’t get caught up in sentiment. ~ Takashi Hiraide, #NFDB
486:Aristotle is the last Greek philosopher who faces the world cheerfully; after him, all have, in one form or another, a philosophy of retreat. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
487:Bertrand Russell started off as a mathematician and then degenerated into a philosopher and finally into a humanist; he went downhill rapidly! ~ Gregory Chaitin, #NFDB
488:Courage is the enabling virtue for any philosopher - for any human being, I think, in the end. Courage to think, courage to love, courage to hope. ~ Cornel West, #NFDB
489:So too Plato was, in my view, a very unreliable Platonist. He was too much of a philosopher to think that anything he had said was the last word. ~ Gilbert Ryle, #NFDB
490:The great critic … must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things. ~ W Somerset Maugham, #NFDB
491:When standing before certain men the philosopher regrets that thinkers are but perishable tissue, the artist that perishable tissue has to think. ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
492:British philosopher Alan Watts observed, a sense of wonder “distinguishes men from other animals, and intelligent and sensitive people from morons. ~ Eric Weiner, #NFDB
493:Laozi was an ancient Chinese philosopher. According to Chinese tradition, Laozi lived in the 6th century BC, however many historians contend that Laozi ~ Lao Tzu, #NFDB
494:The great German philosopher Friedrich Schiller was right to claim—as Jane too liked to say—that people are only completely human when they play. ~ Gary Ferguson, #NFDB
495:To live alone, you need to be either an animal or a god–says Aristotle. But he left out the third case: you can be both–a philosopher . . . ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
496:A philosopher who uses his professional competence for anything other except a disinterested search for truth is guilty of a kind of treachery. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
497:As the seventeenth-century French philosopher Montaigne once said, 'My life has been filled with terrible misfortune, most of which never happened. ~ Kristin Neff, #NFDB
498:Being able to make friends and keep them, welcoming others and sharing with them, a guide, philosopher and friend. One like this will be praised. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
499:I have decided, it is fruitless. For I am no longer sure of anything concerning my existance. A philosopher is a dead poet and a dying theologian. ~ Roger Zelazny, #NFDB
500:Science fiction has a way of letting you talk about where we are in the world and letting you be a bit of a pop philosopher without being didactic. ~ Brit Marling, #NFDB
501:Watching a woman make Russian pancakes, you might think that she was calling on the spirits or extracting from the batter the philosopher's stone. ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
502:A farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter, even a philosopher, may be daunted; but nothing can deter a poet, for he is actuated by pure love. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
503:A philosophical system is only a section of the Truth which the philosopher takes as a whole. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, The Place of Study in Sadhana, #NFDB
504:As the great nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche so brilliantly noted, “He whose life has a why can bear almost any how.”61 ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
505:It would be no reproach to a philosopher, that he knew the future better than the past, or even than the present. It is better worth knowing. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
506:One trait in the philosopher's character we can assume is his love of the knowledge that reveals eternal reality, the realm unaffected by change and decay. ~ Plato, #NFDB
507:Scottish philosopher William Drummond, read: “He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot reason is a fool; he who dares not reason is a slave. ~ Jonathan Eig, #NFDB
508:I have always a sacred veneration for anyone I observe to be a little out of repair in his person, as supposing him either a poet or a philosopher. ~ Jonathan Swift, #NFDB
509:it is wise in such circumstances to heed the advice of the venerable North American philosopher Pamela Anderson: “Never get married on vacation. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
510:It’s no easier being an artist in modern Florence than it is a philosopher in modern Athens. The past can educate and inspire. It can also imprison. A ~ Eric Weiner, #NFDB
511:Only a philosopher's mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine. ~ Plato, #NFDB
512:Socrates had famously said, ‘By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you will become happy. If you get a bad one, you will become a philosopher. ~ Preeti Shenoy, #NFDB
513:The philosopher Karl Popper (1902–94) often remarked “We don’t know anything” and believed that this was the most important philosophical truth.16 ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
514:There is only one thing I should like better; and that would be to see the Philosopher making the same sort of meal himself, with the same relish. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
515:Although astronomy had made Thales rich, this has remained the stereotype of the philosopher—lost in the stars rather than having his feet on the ground. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
516:As the great nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche so brilliantly noted, “He whose life has a why can bear almost any how.”61 ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
517:Do you come to a philosopher as to a cunning man, to learn something by magic or witchcraft, beyond what can be known by common prudence and discretion? ~ David Hume, #NFDB
518:For example, it is said that someone at a party once asked the famous philosopher Ly Tin Weedle “Why are you here?” and the reply took three years. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
519:Morally, a philosopher who uses his professional competence for anything except a disinterested search for truth is guilty of a kind of treachery. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
520:Remember your philosopher’s doubts, Miles. Beware! The mind of the believer stagnates. It fails to grow outward into an unlimited, infinite universe. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
521:The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
522:The trouble with cliche's, some philosopher remarked, probably with a yawn, is that they are so boringly true. But 'love at first sight' is never boring. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
523:We are often taught to look for the beauty in all things, so in finding it, the layman asks the philosopher while the philosopher asks the photographer. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
524:We say that the dangerous criminal is the educated criminal. We say that the most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
525:It is decidedly not true that "nice guys finish last," as that highly original American baseball philosopher, Leo Durocher, was alleged to have said. ~ Alan Greenspan, #NFDB
526:The apparent facts, if you like. I'm not a philosopher. We lawyers don't deal in ultimate realities. Who knows what they are? We deal in appearances. ~ Ross Macdonald, #NFDB
527:The biggest reason people don’t succeed is because they don’t expose themselves to existing information.” - Jim Rohn, America’s business philosopher ~ Jeffrey Gitomer, #NFDB
528:The philosopher Elaine Scarry has observed that "beauty always takes place in the particular." Cruelty, on the other hand, prefers abstraction. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer, #NFDB
529:Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses. ~ Plato, Philosopher ~ M J DeMarco, #NFDB
530:A man becomes a philosopher by reason of a certain perplexity, from which he seeks to free himself. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, The World As Will And Idea, Volume I, p. 41., #NFDB
531:I do not think your problem is an old philosopher. I do not think your problem is the renegade Dora Milaje. Your problem, T'Challa... is the people. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
532:The earliest Greek philosopher's criticized Homer's mythology because the gods resembled mortals too much and were just as egotistic and treacherous. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
533:The philosopher's school, ye men, is a surgery: you ought not to go out of it with pleasure, but with pain. For you are not in sound health when you enter. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
534:These individuals have riches just as we say that we ‘have a fever,’ when really the fever has us.” –Seneca Roman Stoic philosopher, famed playwright ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
535:When Zeno received news of a shipwreck and heard that all his luggage had been sunk he said, “Fortune bids me to be a less encumbered philosopher.” Creation ~ Seneca, #NFDB
536:A couturier must be an architect for design, a sculptor for shape, a painter for color, a musician for harmony, and a philosopher for temperance. ~ Cristobal Balenciaga, #NFDB
537:A vulgar man, in any ill that happens to him, blames others; a novice in philosophy blames himself; and a philosopher blames neither, the one nor the other. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
538:But I was no philosopher, and the sun was beginning to let me know that it was the hour when only mad dogs and Englishmen exposed themselves to its rays. ~ Anne Fortier, #NFDB
539:The ‘work,’ whether of the artist or the philosopher, invents the man who has created it, who is supposed to have created it. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good & Evil, #NFDB
540:Why is it apparently the philosopher who is expected to be "easier" and not some scientist or other who is even more inaccessible to the same readers? ~ Jacques Derrida, #NFDB
541:Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy. ~ Friedrich von Schlegel (1772–1829), German philosopher. From Aphorism 259, Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798), #NFDB
542:Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am;" as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
543:Every remedy is a desperate remedy. Every cure is a miraculous cure. Curing a madman is not arguing with a philosopher; it is casting out a devil. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
544:Jean-Paul Sartre, the existentialist philosopher who celebrated the anguish of decision as a hallmark of responsibility, has no place in Silicon Valley. ~ Evgeny Morozov, #NFDB
545:So in the first place, such things show clearly that the philosopher more
than other men frees the soul from association with the body as much
as possible? ~ Plato,#NFDB
546:The German philosopher Walter Benjamin had the curious notion that we could change the past. For most of us, the past is fixed while the future is open. ~ Terry Eagleton, #NFDB
547:“Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.” ~ Meister Eckhart (1260 – c. 1328) German theologian, philosopher and mystic, Wikipedia, #NFDB
548:When I read, I was a philosopher and it was up to me to figure out the meaning of things. Reading made me feel as if I were the center of the universe. ~ Heather O Neill, #NFDB
549:Contemporary philosopher Max More describes the goal of humanity as a transcendence to be “achieved through science and technology steered by human values. ~ Ray Kurzweil, #NFDB
550:Uncompromising thought is the luxury of the closeted recluse. Untrammeled reasoning is the indulgence of the philosopher, of the dreamer of sweet dreams. ~ Woodrow Wilson, #NFDB
551:A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading. ~ Leszek Ko akowski, #NFDB
552:A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading. ~ Leszek Kolakowski, #NFDB
553:'But the man who is ready to taste every form of knowledge, is glad to learn and never satisfied - he's the man who deserves to be called a philosopher, isn't he?' ~ Plato, #NFDB
554:On every hand we observe a truly wise practice, in education, in morals, and in the arts of life, the embodied wisdom of many an ancient philosopher. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
555:sixteenth-century philosopher Michel de Montaigne once wrote, “When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not playing with me rather than I with her? ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB
556:The trouble with cliché's, some philosopher remarked, probably with a yawn, is that they are so boringly true. But "love at first sight" is never boring. ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB
557:A philosopher once said, 'It is necessary for the very existence of science that the same conditions always produce the same results.' Well, they don't! ~ Richard P Feynman, #NFDB
558:Aristotle says that in order to live alone one must either be an animal or a god. The third alternative is lacking. A man must be both; a philosopher. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
559:But Einstein had always admired Freud as a philosopher more than as a scientist, and had found his essays more thought-provoking than they were definitive. ~ Robert Masello, #NFDB
560:For a courageous man cannot die dishonorably, a man who has attained the consulship cannot die before his time, a philosopher cannot die wretchedly. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
561:His nemesis, the physicist turned philosopher Ernst Mach, maintained that science should focus only on relationships among directly observable quantities. ~ C sar A Hidalgo, #NFDB
562:Human intelligence is a function of man’s evolutionary urge; the scientist and the philosopher hunger for truth because they are tired of being merely human. ~ Colin Wilson, #NFDB
563:The Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu once said that being loved deeply by someone gives you strength, and loving someone deeply gives you courage. I understand ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
564:A philosopher might find the general work unsophisticated, and scientists are often bemused by esoteric talk of zombies, supervenience, and possible worlds. ~ David Chalmers, #NFDB
565:As philosopher Andy Clark has claimed for years, culture ‘supersizes’ our brains. A brain is an organ connected to other brain organs in the sea of culture ~ Daniel L Everett, #NFDB
566:Cowardice was undoubtedly one of the most terrible vices - thus spoke Yeshua Ha-Nozri. 'No, philosopher, I disagree with you: it is the most terrible vice! ~ Mikhail Bulgakov, #NFDB
567:“Love at its purest and most detached level is nothing else in itself than God.” ~ Meister Eckhart (c. 1260 – c. 1328), a German theologian, philosopher and mystic, Wikipedia, #NFDB
568:The untaught peasant beheld the elements around him and was acquainted with their practical uses. The most learned philosopher knew little more. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
569:For a philosopher to see a problem in the value of life thus even constitutes an objection to him, a question-mark as to his wisdom, a piece of unwisdom. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
570:I was born in France. My father was a renowned French philosopher and journalist, and my mother was a painter. So I grew up in Parisian intellectual circles. ~ Matthieu Ricard, #NFDB
571:The philosopher Edmund Burke said “there is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination. ~ Sean Patrick, #NFDB
572:As a philosopher, you define constraints for any good theory explaining what you are interested in, then you go out and search for help in other disciplines. ~ Thomas Metzinger, #NFDB
573:If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
574:Nor am I nostalgic, as a French philosopher once wrote, for a lost poverty. I am nostalgic for the solidarity and sharing a modest existence can sometimes bring. ~ Alice Walker, #NFDB
575:surely you’re enough of an armchair philosopher to realize that everything is a reconstruction of something else? Reality is a desperate and evasive creature. ~ Jeff VanderMeer, #NFDB
576:The Fur Person learned then and there that it is better to be a philosopher than to be a king and that, all things considered, wisdom was to be preferred to power. ~ May Sarton, #NFDB
577:Bill Russell, a famous philosopher from Boston Celtics once "When things go bad, things go bad." The [Iraq] war was terribly mismanaged-it was terribly mismanaged. ~ Jon Stewart, #NFDB
578:harsh verdict of the great philosopher Lucretius: all religions were fundamentally immoral, because the superstitions they peddled wrought more evil than good. ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB
579:Sed nescio quo modo nihil tam absurde dici potest quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosphorum. (There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.) ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
580:The philosopher calmly defined the exact difference between life and love: "Life is just one fool thing after another: love is just two fool things after each other. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
581:A philosopher who had made philosophy his speciality, who had first murdered his humanity and then buried it in his philosophy, … ~ Miguel de Unamuno, Tragic Sense of Life (1913), #NFDB
582:So soon as I hear that such or such a man gives himself out for a philosopher, I conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman, he must have "broken his digester. ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
583:The philosopher Charles Taylor, following Hegel, points out that struggles over identity are inherently political because they involve demands for recognition. ~ Francis Fukuyama, #NFDB
584:I make no claim to be a philosopher, but this much I have observed: that whenever a thing seems at its zenith, you may be sure its destruction has already started. ~ Robert Harris, #NFDB
585:Plato, the Ancient Greek philosopher, thought human beings made correct choices when one part of the soul, rationality, prevailed over another part, irrational desire. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
586:The philosopher's lecture room is a 'hospital': you ought not to walk out of it in a state of pleasure, but in pain; for you are not in good condition when you arrive. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
587:You are never alone or helpless. The force that guides the stars guides you too. —Shrii Shrii Anandamurti; Indian philosopher, social revolutionary, author, composer ~ Jen Sincero, #NFDB
588:...nothing stands so much in the way of the production and propagation of the great philosopher by nature as does the bad philosopher who works for the state. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
589:There are few circumstances which so strongly distinguish the philosopher, as the calmness with which he can reply to criticisms he may think undeservedly severe. ~ Charles Babbage, #NFDB
590:This man has conquered the world! What have you done?" The philosopher replied without an instant's hesitation, "I have conquered the need to conquer the world. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
591:This may sound somewhat obvious but, as the French philosopher Voltaire once famously pointed out, the main problem with common sense is that it is not so common. ~ Richard Wiseman, #NFDB
592:When you want to hear a philosopher, do not say, 'You say nothing to me'; only show yourself worthy or fit to hear, and then you will see how you will move the speaker. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
593:As the French philosopher Alain has written, “You don’t need to be a sorcerer to cast a spell over yourself by saying ‘This is how I am. I can do nothing about it. ~ Matthieu Ricard, #NFDB
594:According to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle, chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
595:religions of the Roman Empire “were all considered by the people, as equally true, by the philosopher, as equally false, and by the magistrate, as equally useful.”8 ~ Steven Weinberg, #NFDB
596:The Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper summed it up when he said that “the abuse of political power is fundamentally connected with the sophistic abuse of the word. ~ Charles J Chaput, #NFDB
597:The myth that John Locke was the philosopher behind the American Republic, is easily refuted by examining how Locke's philosophy steered Thomas Jefferson, for example. ~ Robert Trout, #NFDB
598:A man who leaves home to mend himself and others is a philosopher; but he who goes from country to country, guided by the blind impulse of curiosity, is a vagabond. ~ Oliver Goldsmith, #NFDB
599:Let the world wag as it will, I’ve the philosopher’s stone in my waistcoat pocket, and the elixir of life in my cupboard;12 I’m independent of both Fate and Fortune! ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
600:My definition (of a philosopher) is of a man up in a balloon, with his family and friends holding the ropes which confine him to earth and trying to haul him down. ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
601:The really royal calling of the philosopher (as expressed by Alcuin the Anglo-Saxon): To correct what is wrong, and strengthen the right, and raise what is holy. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
602:This man has conquered the world! What have you done?"
The philosopher replied without an instant's hesitation, "I have conquered the need to conquer the world. ~ Steven Pressfield,#NFDB
603:What verse is for the poet, dialectical thinking is for the philosopher. He grasps for it in order to get hold of his own enchantment, in order to perpetuate it. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
604:A philosopher is someone who promotes moral excellence, argues for moral excellence, and gets other people to behave morally and excellently based on those arguments. ~ Stefan Molyneux, #NFDB
605:I thought of the words of the Renaissance philosopher Michel de Montaigne. "If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I. ~ Josh Lanyon, #NFDB
606:Wisdom of the ages, this,” said Didactylos. “Got to write a book, see, to prove you’re a philosopher. Then you get your scroll and free official philosopher’s loofah. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
607:He who studies with a philosopher should take away with him some one good thing every day: he should daily return home a sounder man, or on the way to become sounder. ~ William B Irvine, #NFDB
608:Please tell me I’m not the only one who finds it endearing and encouraging that a legendary Roman philosopher had to reassure himself that it’s okay not to be Plato. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
609:Shall I show you the sinews of a philosopher? What sinews are those? - A will undisappointed; evils avoided; powers daily exercised; careful resolutions; unerring decisions. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
610:An angry electronic twang came from the Artoo unit. “Don’t call me a mindless philosopher,” Threepio snapped back, “you overweight, unstreamlined glob of grease!” Threepio ~ George Lucas, #NFDB
611:The Mad Philosopher
The flabby wine-skin of his brain
Yields to some pathologic strain,
And voids from its unstored abysm
The driblet of an aphorism.
~ Ambrose Bierce,#NFDB
612:The philosopher's soul dwells in his head, the poet's soul is in his heart; the singer's soul lingers about his throat, but the soul of the dancer abides in all her body. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
613:Throughout the whole of life one must continue to learn to live and what will amaze you even more, throughout life you must learn to die. Seneca (Roman philosopher) ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
614:Voltaire learned that he was again on the way to the Bastille. Like a good philosopher, he took to his heels—merely utilizing the occasion to elope with another man’s wife. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
615:A philosopher may deplore the eternal discords of the human race, but he will confess, that the desire of spoil is a more rational provocation than the vanity of conquest. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
616:He who has lived as a true philosopher has reason to be of good cheer when he is about to die, and that after death he may hope to receive the greatest good in the other world. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
617:My dreams were therefore undisturbed by reality; and I entered with the greatest diligence into the search of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
618:My dreams were therefore undisturbed by reality; and I entered with the greatest diligence into the search of the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
619:Nineteen centuries ago, the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus said, “Nature hath given men one tongue but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak. ~ Daniel H Pink, #NFDB
620:NOVELIST AND EXISTENTIALIST PHILOSOPHER ALBERT CAMUS POSED the question, “Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?” His point was that everything in life is choice. ~ Barry Schwartz, #NFDB
621:To be a colored man in America ... and enjoy it, you must be greatly daring, greatly stolid, greatly humorous and greatly sensitive. And at all times a philosopher. ~ Jessie Redmon Fauset, #NFDB
622:A philosopher is a blind man in a dark cellar at midnight looking for a black cat that isn't there. He is distinguished from a theologian, in that the theologian finds the cat. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
623:I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #NFDB
624:I maintain that to-day many an inventor, many a diplomat, many a financier is a sounder philosopher than all those who practise the dull craft of experimental psychology. ~ Oswald Spengler, #NFDB
625:My instinct as a philosopher is that we are effectively approaching a multicentric world, which means we need to ask new, and for the traditional left, unpleasant questions. ~ Slavoj Zizek, #NFDB
626:Passion adds eyes; is a magnifying glass. Sonnets of lovers are mad enough, but are valuable to the philosopher, as are prayers of saints, for their potent symbolism. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
627:Utopias of equality are biologically doomed, and the best that the amiable philosopher can hope for is an approximate equality of legal justice and educational opportunity. A ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
628:We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” The only quote I could dredge up by the French priest-philosopher. ~ Kathy Reichs, #NFDB
629:What becomes of the heart, when the heart’s hand grasps the hand of a sweetheart?
What becomes of the dross copper, when it hears the welcoming voice of the philosopher’s stone? ~ Rumi,#NFDB
630:An old philosopher said to Monsieur Coignard, a Reverend Father: 'You are a pig!' To which Abad Coignard answered: 'You flatter me, sir. But unfortunately, I'm only a man.' ~ Anatole France, #NFDB
631:A philosopher has the moderate love for wisdom and the courage to act according to wisdom. Wisdom is knowledge about the Good or the right relations between all that exists. Wherein ~ Plato, #NFDB
632:Indeed the measure of our intellectual maturity, one philosopher suggests, is our capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers to better and better problems. ~ Gordon W Allport, #NFDB
633:Smith, quoting British philosopher Edmund Burke, ended Who Speaks for Birmingham? by saying: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. ~ Douglas Brinkley, #NFDB
634:The feelings of our heart, the agitation of our passions, the vehemence of our affections, dissipate all its conclusions, and reduce the profound philosopher to a mere plebeian ~ David Hume, #NFDB
635:The philosopher's soul dwells in his head, the poet's soul is in his heart; the singer's soul lingers about his throat, but the soul of the dancer abides in all her body.
~ Khalil Gibran,#NFDB
636:When one admists that nothing is certain", proposed the philosopher Betrand Russell, "one must, I think, also add that some things are much more nearly certain than others. ~ Kathryn Schulz, #NFDB
637:Whilst thus the poet animates nature with his own thoughts, he differs from the philosopher only herein, that the one proposes Beauty as his main end; the other Truth. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
638:I already knew about this friendship between St. John Paul II and this philosopher [Ana Teresa Tymieniecka] when I was in Buenos Aires. It was known. Also her books are known. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
639:There is no philosopher in the world so great but he believes a million things on the faith of other people and accepts a great many more truths than he demonstrates. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB
640:If Madison in the 1780s was a philosopher king, Madison in the 1790s was a formidable practicing politician, and so skillful at cutting deals that he was dubbed "the big knife". ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
641:Saddam, for all his crimes, did not have a hand in September 11, but President Bush is a philosopher. September 11 was evil, Saddam is evil, all evil is connected. Ergo, Iraq. ~ Norman Mailer, #NFDB
642:A man can deceive his fiancee or his mistress as much as he likes and, in the eyes of a woman he loves, an ass may pass for a philosopher. But a daughter is a different matter. ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
643:As German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer pointed out, Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will. (One can choose what to do, but not what to want.) ~ Christopher Ryan, #NFDB
644:But facts obscure the truth, which is that writing prose doesn't make you a prose writer any more than philosophizing makes you a philosopher or fooling around makes you a fool. ~ Mark Forsyth, #NFDB
645:In the words of the Iranian political philosopher Abdolkarim Soroush, “We no longer claim that a genuinely religious government can be democratic, but that it cannot be otherwise. ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
646:The philosopher may sometimes love the infinite; the poet always loves the finite. For him the great moment is not the creation of light, but the creation of the sun and moon. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
647:The philosopher strives to find the liberating word, that is, the word that finally permits us to grasp what up to now has intangibly weighed down upon our consciousness. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #NFDB
648:Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #NFDB
649:Men, the philosopher’s lecture-hall is a hospital—you shouldn’t walk out of it feeling pleasure, but pain, for you aren’t well when you enter it.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.23.30 ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
650:that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
651:The definition of a philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black hat, which isn’t really there. And the definition of a theologian is he’s somebody who finds it. ~ Michael Ruse, #NFDB
652:Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #NFDB
653:It brings joy in sorrow, victory in battle, light to darkness, life to the dead. That is the power of the blood-red jewel which men honor with the name "The Philosopher's Stone. ~ Hiromu Arakawa, #NFDB
654:The boxer-philosopher Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” As we wander through life, what punches us in the face repeatedly is our environment. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
655:What does it take to live a good life?” The philosopher had written something about this quite early on in the course. Everybody needs food, warmth, love, and care. Such basics ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
656:If the philosopher makes his thought substance of poetry, he ceases to be a philosophic thinker and becomes a poet-seer of Truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #NFDB
657:In the words of the English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, “Civilization advances by extending the number of operations which we can perform without thinking about them.”19 ~ Gerd Gigerenzer, #NFDB
658:It might seem that the empirical philosopher is the slave of his material, but that the pure mathematician, like the musician, is a free creator of his world of ordered beauty. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
659:Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
660:The Irish philosopher John O’Donohue had a concept he called the “reverence of approach.” He said, “When we approach [things] with reverence, great things decide to approach us.” ~ Francis Weller, #NFDB
661:The philosopher is in love with truth, that is, not with the changing world of sensation, which is the object of opinion, but with the unchanging reality which is the object of knowledge. ~ Plato, #NFDB
662:When Eudæmonidas heard a philosopher arguing that only a wise man can be a good general, "This is a wonderful speech," said he; "but he that saith it never heard the sound of trumpets. ~ Plutarch, #NFDB
663:At best, the true philosopher can fulfil his mission very imperfectly, which is to pilot himself, or at most a few voluntary companions who may find themselves in the same boat. ~ George Santayana, #NFDB
664:I am no metaphysician, no philosopher, nay, no saint. But I am poor and I love the poor. I see what they call the poor of this country and how many there are who feel for them! ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
665:The philosopher as an analyst is not concerned with the physical properties of things, but only with the way in which we speak about them. ~ Alfred Jules Ayer in Language, Truth, and Logic (1936)., #NFDB
666:A philosopher once asked, "Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human?" Pointless, really..."Do the stars gaze back?" Now that's a question. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
667:British philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s eighteenth-century conception of the Panopticon, a building design he believed would allow institutions to effectively control human behavior. ~ Glenn Greenwald, #NFDB
668:Considered mystically, the story of the Flood is the wise man's mastery of adversity. It is the philosopher surviving the onslaughts of ignorance. It is ... ~ Manly P Hall?, Understand your Bible?, #NFDB
669:I don’t know where being a servant came into disrepute. It is the refuge of a philosopher, the food of the lazy, and, properly carried out, it is a position of power, even of love. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
670:Like the philosopher, the author views his task as one of establishing a clear connection between life and history, and of making the past bear fruit for the present and future. ~ Lion Feuchtwanger, #NFDB
671:The Greek philosopher Epictetus recognised this two thousand years ago when he wrote: ‘What disturbs and alarms man are not the things but his opinions and fancies about the things. ~ Robert Harris, #NFDB
672:A philosopher once asked, "Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human?" Pointless, really..."Do the stars gaze back?" Now, that's a question. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
673:A poet is not somebody who has great thoughts. That is the menial duty of the philosopher. A poet is somebody who expresses his thoughts, however commonplace they may be, exquisitely. ~ Mark Forsyth, #NFDB
674:Death. Life. A fish dies. A billion mites eat it and live. In the swamp there is no difference.”
“There is to the fish,” Janet said. “You’re a shitty philosopher, so don’t try. ~ Lev Grossman,#NFDB
675:Poor Capablanca! Thou wert a brilliant technician, but no philosopher. Thou wert not capable of believing that in chess, another style could be victorious than the absolutely correct one. ~ Max Euwe, #NFDB
676:The occasional woman philosopher such as Gargi, who is often quoted to prove the high status of women in ancient times, is actually the proverbial swallow and does not make a summer. ~ Romila Thapar, #NFDB
677:The pained way she pinched her back legs to her front and flagged her tail, and her little arsehole apertured and bulged, and then she squinted like a philosopher when she eliminated. ~ Lauren Groff, #NFDB
678:Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
679:"I have been astonished to find how accurately the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard pictured the dilemma of the individual more than a century ago, with deep psychological insight." ~ Carl Rogers, #NFDB
680:Imagination,” says futurist and philosopher Jason Silva, “allows us to conceive of delightful future possibilities, pick the most amazing one, and pull the present forward to meet it. ~ Steven Kotler, #NFDB
681:The late philosopher Morris R. Cohen of CCNY was asked by a student in the metaphysics course, Professor Cohen, how do I know that I exist? The keen old prof replied, And who is asking? ~ Saul Bellow, #NFDB
682:The pressure exerted by a gas on the walls of its container does not depend upon the individual histories of the molecules composing it,” says the French existentialist philosopher. ~ John Dos Passos, #NFDB
683:Being a physicist, not a philosopher, I have devised an entirely new theory of consciousness, allowing one to numerically calculate the level of consciounsess of humans and even animals. ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB
684:FAUSTUS. To have fooled the philosopher.
MAGUS. One finds, in my profession, sir, the greater the intellect, the more ease in its misdirection.
FAUSTUS. One finds the same in mine. ~ David Mamet,#NFDB
685:The arrow shot by the archer may or may not kill a single person. But stratagems devised by a wise man can kill even babes in the womb. KAUTILYA, INDIAN PHILOSOPHER, THIRD CENTURY B.C. ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
686:The hunter for aphorisms on human nature has to fish in muddy water, and he is ever condemned to find much of his own mind. ~ Francis Herbert Bradley (1846–1924), British philosopher. Aphorisms (1930), #NFDB
687:A philosopher of imposing stature doesn't think in a vacuum. Even his most abstract ideas are, to some extent, conditioned by what is or is not known in the time when he lives. ~ Alfred North Whitehead, #NFDB
688:Never call yourself a philosopher, nor talk a great deal among the unlearned about theorems, but act conformably to them. Thus, at an entertainment, don't talk how persons ought to eat, but ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
689:One afternoon late in October of the year 1697, Euclide Auclair, the philosopher apothecary of Quebec, stood on the top of Cap Diamant gazing down the broad, empty river far beneath him. ~ Willa Cather, #NFDB
690:Soros regards himself as more a philosopher than a hit man. His book The Alchemy of Finance (1987) begins with a bold critique of the fundamental assumptions of economics as a subject, ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
691:The greatest object in the universe, says a certain philosopher, is a good man struggling with adversity; yet there is still a greater, which is the good man who comes to relieve it. ~ Oliver Goldsmith, #NFDB
692:This is what distinguishes the philosopher from the Christian. The Christian, in spite of logic, has only one incarnation of the Logos; the philosopher has never finished with incarnations. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
693:And involuntarily I compared the childish sarcasm, the religious sarcasm of Voltaire with the irresistible irony of the German philosopher whose influence is henceforth ineffaceable. ~ Guy de Maupassant, #NFDB
694:I worry that we don't currently have a democracy in the United States. Instead we have what [political philosopher] Sheldon Wolin has recently labeled a sort of inverted totalitarianism. ~ Thomas L Dumm, #NFDB
695:I consider myself a 3-D philosopher. I am not a designer at all. I studied aerodynamics, I studied philosophy, I studied sculpture. High technology on one side, and on the other side, art. ~ Luigi Colani, #NFDB
696:The art critic and philosopher John Berger once said that we like to look at animals because it reminds us of the past and the agrarian life that included the regular presence of animals. ~ Susan Orlean, #NFDB
697:To make the moral achievement implicit in science a source of strength to civilization, the scientist will have to have the cooperation also of the philosopher and the religious teacher. ~ Arthur Compton, #NFDB
698:Camus believed in dialogue and diplomacy, and enlisted his work as a philosopher to the need to find nonviolent solutions, whereas Sartre called for violent conflicts and justified terror. ~ Michel Onfray, #NFDB
699:Do or do not. There is no try," says Yoda, the bewitching philosopher warrior created by George Lucas in Star Wars. Yoda is quoted at least as often as the founding fathers on this topic. ~ Jerry I Porras, #NFDB
700:If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present. —Lao Tzu; ancient Chinese philosopher, ~ Jen Sincero, #NFDB
701:In teaching the young you have to satisfy the schoolchild in yourself and enter the region where all meanings start. That is where, in any case, the philosopher has perpetually to start. ~ William Barrett, #NFDB
702:My doctor said to me afterwards, 'When you were ill you behaved like a true philosopher. Every time you came to yourself you made a joke.' I never had a compliment that pleased me more. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
703:Put the world's greatest philosopher on a plank that is wider than need be; if there is a precipe below, although his reason may convince him that he is safe, his imagination will prevail. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
704:What does a philosopher demand of himself, first and last? To overcome his time in himself, to become “timeless.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, The Case of Wagner, Preface, cited in Kauffman, Nietzsche, pp. 406., #NFDB
705:When the philosopher's argument becomes tedious, complicated, and opaque, it is usually a sign that he is attempting to prove as true to the intellect what is plainly false to common sense. ~ Edward Abbey, #NFDB
706:From the philosopher Catulus, never to be dismissive of a friend's accusation, even if it seems unreasonable, but to make every effort to restore the relationship to its normal condition. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
707:Indulge your passion for science…but let your science be human, and such as may have a direct reference to action and society. Be a philosopher; but amidst all your philosophy, be still a man. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
708:The Stoic philosopher and playwright Seneca is said to have owned five hundred tripod tables with ivory legs—no small irony, since he was a vocal critic of the empire's extravagances. ~ William J Bernstein, #NFDB
709:He raged for hours. And the skeleton, ever the frail and solelmn philosopher, hung quietly inside, saying not a word, suspended like a delicate insect within a chrysalis, waiting and waiting. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
710:Jeremy Bentham, the great utilitarian philosopher, once spiked this argument. He said, ‘There are two types of people in the world, those who divide people into two types, and those who do not. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
711:Put the world’s greatest philosopher on a plank that is wider than need be: if there is a precipice below, although his reason may convince him that he is safe, his imagination will prevail. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
712:Well, I don’t know if I can comment on Kant or Hegel because I’m no real philosopher in the sense of knowing what these people have said in any detail so let me not comment on that too much. ~ Roger Penrose, #NFDB
713:"When we do not know what harbor we are making for," the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote, "no wind is the right wind." Persons have vision only when they have a dream that drives them on. ~ Joan D Chittister, #NFDB
714:if it is true, as Nietzsche claims, that a philosopher, to deserve our respect, must preach by example, you can appreciate the importance of that reply, for it will precede the definitive act. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
715:The youth who is capable of becoming a philosopher will be distinguished among his fellows as just and gentle, fond of learning, possessed of a good memory and a naturally harmonious mind. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
716:All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
717:A pipe is the fountain of contemplation, the source of pleasure, the companion of the wise; and the man who smokes, thinks like a philosopher and acts like a Samaritan. ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton 1st Baron Lytton, #NFDB
718:The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education. ~ Adam Smith, #NFDB
719:The unambitious sluggard pretends that the eminence is not worth attaining, declines altogether the struggle, and calls himself a philosopher. I say he is a poor-spirited coward. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray, #NFDB
720:The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
721:A man may be the greatest philosopher in the world but a child in RELIGION. When a man has developed a high state of spirituality he can understand that the kingdom of heaven is within him. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
722:As Kant says, the contribution of any common laborer would be greater than that of the greatest philosopher unless the philosopher makes some contribution to establishing the rights of humanity. ~ Allen W Wood, #NFDB
723:The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote that when you look into the darkness of the abyss the abyss looks into you. Probably no other line or thought more inspires or informs my work. ~ Michael Connelly, #NFDB
724:The true cook is the perfect blend, the only perfect blend, of artist and philosopher. He knows his worth: he holds in his palm the happiness of mankind, the welfare of generations yet unborn. ~ Norman Douglas, #NFDB
725:Without at all invalidating what we have just said, we believe that a perpetual remembrance of the tomb is proper for the living. On this point, the priest and the philosopher agree: We must die. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
726:You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher, or the Christian by staring in his eyes as if he were your mistress: better fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
727:All our contemporary philosophers perhaps without knowing it are looking through eyeglasses that Baruch Spinoza polished. Spinoza was a philosopher who earned his livelihood by grinding lenses. ~ Heinrich Heine, #NFDB
728:A thirsty ambition for truth and virtue, and a frenzy to conquer all lies and vices which are not recognized as such nor desire to be; herein consists the heroic spirit of the philosopher. ~ Johann Georg Hamann, #NFDB
729:You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher or the Christian by staring into his eyes as if he were your mistress: better fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
730:It is disgraceful for a philosopher to say: the good and the beautiful are one; if he adds 'also the true', one ought to beat him. Truth is ugly. We possess art lest we perish of the truth. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
731:Most influential of all is the philosopher Stanley Cavell, and a younger generation of philosophers who have attempted to follow his pioneering work in thinking about literature philosophically. ~ Philip Kitcher, #NFDB
732:We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."
Teilhard de Chardin - French geologist, Jesuit priest, philosopher, mystic (1881-1955) ~ Angela Jeffs,#NFDB
733:You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher, or the Christian by staring into his eyes as if he were your mistress: better fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
734:Whoever writes in blood and aphorisms wants not to be learned but to be learned by heart. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), German philosopher. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, First Part, 'On Reading and Writing' (1883), #NFDB
735:and I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his art, and finally also his only piety, his “service of God. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
736:And when a philosopher looks to poets, to a great poet like Milosz, for lessons in how to individualize the world, he soon becomes convinced that the world is not so much a noun as an adjective. ~ Gaston Bachelard, #NFDB
737:How is that even possible?” the philosopher says. “He’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever met.” She knows. She knows. So it begs the question, doesn’t it? Did she unkind and ungood and untrue him? ~ Jenny Offill, #NFDB
738:The philosopher should be a man willing to listen to every suggestion,but determined to judge for himself.He should not be a respector of persons,but of things.Truth should be his primary object. ~ Michael Faraday, #NFDB
739:To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school . . . it is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
740:And usually [the philosopher] philosophizes either in order to resign himself to life, or to seek some finality in it, or to distract himself and forget his griefs, or for pastime and amusement. ~ Miguel de Unamuno, #NFDB
741:Indeed, if one would explain how the abstrusest metaphysical claims of a philosopher really came about, it is always well (and wise) to ask first: at what morality does all this (does he) aim? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
742:Most expert, skilled behavior works this way, whether it is playing tennis or a musical instrument, or doing mathematics and science. Experts minimize the need for conscious reasoning. Philosopher ~ Donald A Norman, #NFDB
743:So the life of a philosopher extends widely: he is not confined by the same boundary as are others. He alone is free from the laws that limit the human race, and all ages serve him as though he were a god. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
744:For there is such a pleasure in complaining,
That a philosopher I've heard maintaining
One ought to seek a sorrow and be vain of it,
In order to be privileged to complain of it. ~ Pedro Calder n de la Barca,#NFDB
745:He who esteems trifles for themselves is a trifler; he who esteems them for the conclusions to be drawn from them, or the advantage to which they can be put, is a philosopher. ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton 1st Baron Lytton, #NFDB
746:[L]e philosophe n'a jamais tué de prêtres et le prêtre a tué beaucoup de philosophes...
(The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.) ~ Denis Diderot,#NFDB
747:One does not have to be a philosopher to be a successful artist, but he does have to be an artist to be a successful philosopher. His nature is to view the world in an unpredictable albeit useful light. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
748:philosopher in question made much of human existence as a tragedy that need not have been were it not for the intervention in our lives of a single, calamitous event: the evolution of consciousness— ~ Thomas Ligotti, #NFDB
749:30. A philosopher without clothes and one without books. “I have nothing to eat,” says he, as he stands there half-naked, “but I subsist on the logos.” And with nothing to read, I subsist on it too. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
750:Being an artist or an author or even as a filmmaker, I bring my All to every project as who I am - artist, mother, daughter, wife, friend, citizen, teacher, philosopher, believer, and human. - Kailin Gow ~ Kailin Gow, #NFDB
751:No one system reveals the entire truth; at best, each organizes one point of view or perspective. We must consider many perspectives, and a philosopher should not imprison his thought in one system. ~ Walter Kaufmann, #NFDB
752:APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom. The flabby wine-skin of his brain Yields to some pathologic strain, And voids from its unstored abysm The driblet of an aphorism. "The Mad Philosopher," 1697 ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
753:Don’t ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. —Howard Thurman, philosopher and theologian ~ Vicki Robin, #NFDB
754:I am fascinated by Spinoza's pantheism, but admire even more his contributions to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and the body as one, not two separate things ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
755:I fear that, in the end, the famous debate among materialists, idealists, and dualists amounts to a merely verbal dispute that is more a matter for the linguist than for the speculative philosopher ~ Moses Mendelssohn, #NFDB
756:In Hitler the rare union has taken place between the most acute logical thinker and truly profound philosopher, and the iron man of action...I follow no leadership but that of Adolf Hitler and of God. ~ Hermann Goring, #NFDB
757:It is the diversity of life that renders thinking difficult. Many a beginning philosopher has been on the point of grasping the problem of suffering, but what sage can cope with that of happiness? At ~ Thornton Wilder, #NFDB
758:No one is anyone, one single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
759:She goes on to recount how she “once found the philosopher Richard Rorty standing in a bit of a daze in Davidson’s food market. He told me in hushed tones that he’d just seen Gödel in the frozen food aisle. ~ Jim Holt, #NFDB
760:The fact is, every thinker, every philosopher, the moment he is forced to abandon his one-sided intellectual occupation by practical necessity, immediately returns to the general point of view of mankind. ~ Ernst Mach, #NFDB
761:The French philosopher Jacques Derrida likens writing fiction to a software code that operates in the hardware of your mind. Stringing together separate macros that, combined, will create a reaction. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
762:The negative cautions of science are never popular. If the experimentalist would not commit himself, the social philosopher, the preacher, and the pedagogue tried the harder to give a short-cut answer. ~ Margaret Mead, #NFDB
763:The pipe draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the mouth of the foolish; it generates a style of conversation, contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaffected. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray, #NFDB
764:The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
765:You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher or the Christian by staring in his eyes as if he were your mistress: better fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him. ~ Diana Pavlac Glyer, #NFDB
766:Both for a philosopher and for a scientist it can be important not to reject the possibility of finding a white crow. You might almost say that hunting for 'the white crow' is science's principal task ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
767:Philosophy is a purely personal matter. A genuine philosopher's credo is the outcome of a single complex personality; it cannot be transferred. No two persons, if sincere, can have the same philosophy. ~ Havelock Ellis, #NFDB
768:Put more than one philosopher together and you’ll birth an argument,” Erlin commented. “A truism I’ve observed the world over. In fact, I once saw one argue with himself, it got quite violent in the end. ~ Anthony Ryan, #NFDB
769:As long ago as 340 B.C. the Greek philosopher Aristotle, in his book On the Heavens, was able to put forward two good arguments for believing that the earth was a round sphere rather than a flat plate. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
770:Come over,’ he said. ‘I’ll order in Chinese.’
‘You speak Chinese now?’
‘Funny guy, Libor. Be here at eight.’
‘You sure you’re up for it?’
‘I’m a philosopher, I’m not sure about anything.’.. ~ Howard Jacobson,#NFDB
771:If he was a wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would have comprehended that work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
772:Never call yourself a philosopher, nor talk a great deal among the unlearned about theorems, but act conformably to them. Thus, at an entertainment, don’t talk how persons ought to eat, but eat as you ought. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
773:Stoic philosopher Epictetus put it best: “The life of wisdom is a life of reason. It is important to learn how to think clearly. Clear thinking is not a haphazard enterprise. It requires proper training. ~ Darius Foroux, #NFDB
774:A famous philosopher (either Aristotle or Judith Krantz, I forget who) once said about being a woman in Los Angeles: If you're blonde and beautiful, you're interchangeable. If you're not, you're invisible. ~ Laura Levine, #NFDB
775:An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection. Baudelaire thought him a profound philosopher... Poe was much the greater charlatan of the two, as well as the greater genius. ~ Henry James, #NFDB
776:I think you must remember that a writer is a simple-minded person to begin with and go on that basis. He's not a great mind, he's not a great thinker, he's not a great philosopher, he's a story-teller. ~ Erskine Caldwell, #NFDB
777:The significance of a political philosopher does not depend on the practical success of the plans he lays down but rather on their absolute truth and the influence they exert on the progress of mankind. If ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
778:We look for the Secret - the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of the Wise, Supreme Enlightenment, 'God' or whatever...and all the time it is carrying us about...It is the human nervous system itself. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, #NFDB
779:According to the philosopher Andre Comte-Sponville: The wise man has nothing left to expect or to hope for. Because he is entirely happy, he needs nothing. Because he needs nothing, he is entirely happy. ~ Matthieu Ricard, #NFDB
780:Alan Watts, the mid-20th-century British contemporary philosopher, perhaps said it best when he stated, “You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean. ~ Ziad Masri, #NFDB
781:And there is still value in
Ibn Tufayl’s thought experiment, the story of Hayy Ibn Yaqzān, one philosopher’s
effort to conceive the tenor of human thinking free of the constraints of tradition. ~ Lenn Evan Goodman,#NFDB
782:I am aware that a philosopher's ideas are not subject to the judgment of ordinary persons, because it is his endeavour to seek the truth in all things, to the extent permitted to human reason by God. ~ Nicolaus Copernicus, #NFDB
783:Moral philosophy is very largely a branch of fiction. Despite this, a philosopher has yet to write a great novel. The fact should not be surprising. In philosophy the truth about human life is of no interest ~ John N Gray, #NFDB
784:For according to the trollish philosopher Plateau, ‘if you want to understan’ an enemy, you gotta walk a mile in his shoes. Den, if he’s still you enemy, at least you’re a mile away and he’s got no shoes. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
785:Jesus, as a philosopher is wonderful. There's no greater role model, in my view, than Jesus Christ. It's just a shame that most of the people who follow him and call themselves Christians act nothing like him. ~ Bill Maher, #NFDB
786:MEPHISTO. Good fortune’s closely linked to merit, A thought that never enters foolish minds; The Philosopher’s Stone’s there in their hands? The Philosopher’s searching everywhere for it. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
787:The philosopher finds only two books in all the world--two divine, original books, viz., the Volume of Nature, and the Revelations of God. All others are mere commentaries upon these two original, divine books. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
788:Jesus was no ivory-tower philosopher but a down-to-earth man who understood that much of the good of human life is to be found in taste, touch, smell, and the small attentions of one human being for another. ~ Thomas Cahill, #NFDB
789:Alexander the Great found the philosopher looking attentively at a pile of human bones. Diogenes explained, "I am searching for the bones of your father but cannot distinguish them from those of a slave. ~ Diogenes of Sinope, #NFDB
790:A religion is not the church a man goes to but the cosmos he lives in; and if any sceptic forgets it, the maddest fanatic beating an Orange drum about the Battle of the Boyne is a better philosopher than he. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
791:Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy , looking for the philosopher's stone. That was the pebble by the seashore he really wanted to find. ~ Fritz Leiber, #NFDB
792:give the man of color an equal opportunity with the white, from the cradle to manhood, and from manhood to the grave, and you would discover the dignified statesman, the man of science, and the philosopher. ~ Maria W Stewart, #NFDB
793:I would have looked away, should have, but I had never seen a green one. A weaker man might have plucked out his own eyes, but being a philosopher, I knew the sight could never be unseen, so I persevered. ~ Christopher Moore, #NFDB
794:Horace once told me that laws were powerless against the private passions of the human heart, and only he who has no power over it, such as the poet or the philosopher, may persuade the human spirit to virtue. ~ John Williams, #NFDB
795:I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his 'divine service.' ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
796:Man is brilliant at solving problems; but solving them only makes him the victim of his own childishness and laziness. It is this recognition that has made almost every major philosopher in history a pessimist. ~ Colin Wilson, #NFDB
797:I'm not sure that I 'am' a philosopher - but I do engage with questions that are generally recognized as philosophical questions, such as the character of human existence and what makes for a good human life. ~ George Pattison, #NFDB
798:In any hard discipline, whether it be gardening, structural engineering, or Russian,” the philosopher and motorcycle mechanic Matthew Crawford writes, “one submits to things that have their own intractable ways. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
799:It often seems that the poet's derisive comment is not unjustified when he says of the philosopher: “With his nightcaps and the tatters of his dressing-gown he patches the gaps in the structure of the universe. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
800:The philosopher Edmund Burke said “there is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.” Imagination is the life force of the genius code. ~ Sean Patrick, #NFDB
801:[A]s in the infancy of science its various branches were confused and confounded, so in a like stage of society we often find the same person uniting the parts of philosopher, savant and priest. ~ Encyclopedia Brittanica (1875), #NFDB
802:He is the organiser of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in [London]. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. Sherlock Holmes in ‘The Final Problem ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
803:I could identify for virtually every important figure in the history of modern continental philosophy an idea (or more than one) absolutely central to that philosopher's thought, whose original author was Fichte. ~ Allen W Wood, #NFDB
804:It is never ridicule, but a compliment, that knocks a philosopher off his feet. He is already positioned for every possible counter-attack, counter-argument, and retort...only to find a big bear hug coming his way. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
805:The Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo makes a similar point to Rorty: “We don’t reach agreement when we have discovered the truth,” he observes; “we say we have discovered the truth when we reach agreement. ~ Stephen Batchelor, #NFDB
806:To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
807:If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
808:My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher." - Socrates (470-399 B.C.) "Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't ~ Erica Jong, #NFDB
809:There was a Greek philosopher who taught that, of all things, not to have been born is the sweetest state. But I believe sleep is the sweetest state. You're dead, yet alive. There's no sensation so exquisite. ~ Joyce Carol Oates, #NFDB
810:An Indian philosopher, being asked what were, according to his opinion, the two most beautiful things in the universe, answered: The starry heavens above our heads, and the feeling of duty in our hearts. ~ Jacques Benigne Bossuet, #NFDB
811:Come to the edge. We can’t. We’re afraid. Come to the edge. We can’t. We will fall! Come to the edge. And they came. And he pushed them. And they flew. Guillaume Apollinaire, 1880-1918 French poet, philosopher ~ Ajit Harisinghani, #NFDB
812:if you just need to talk to someone about your circumstances in order to make sense of them, or in order to discern their meaning, purpose and value in your life, then a philosopher may be the right helper for you. ~ Lou Marinoff, #NFDB
813:The duty of a philosopher is clear. He must take every pain to ascertain the truth; and, having arrived at a conclusion, he should noise it abroad far and wide, utterly regardless of what opinions he shocks. ~ Henry Thomas Buckle, #NFDB
814:The philosopher aspires to explain away all mysteries, to dissolve them into light. Mystery, on the other hand, is demanded and pursued by the religious instinct; mystery constitutes the essence of worship. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel, #NFDB
815:The philosopher seeks a generality beyond the boundaries of science; he attempts to frame a comprehensive and coherent framework of ideas within which the partial results of science may become more intelligible. ~ William Barrett, #NFDB
816:The philosopher will ask himself ... if the criticism we are now suggesting is not the philosophy which presses to the limit that criticism of false gods which Christianity has introduced into our history. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty, #NFDB
817:But the Philosopher startles us by arguing that even if you are one of the few people who breaks through and accomplishes all you hope for, it’s all for nothing, for in the end there are no lasting achievements. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
818:Caleb had been my imperfection, with his slightly Americanized British accent, and the way he could play any sport and quote any philosopher. He was such a mix of class and jock, romance and jerk, it made me crazy. ~ Tarryn Fisher, #NFDB
819:Even that Dionysus is a philosopher, and that gods, too, thus philosophy, seems to me a novelty that is far from innocuous and might arouse suspicion precisely among philosophers. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1886), #NFDB
820:Philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah of Princeton University makes the point that, “In life, the challenge is not so much to figure out how best to play the game; the challenge is to figure out what game you are playing. ~ Sue Johnson, #NFDB
821:What I wonder is how I’ve managed to find him, this white knight. Life is so random. I would have to be a philosopher to even begin to understand how life isn’t really lived in the big picture, but moment to moment. ~ Susan Wilson, #NFDB
822:I should like to meet a philosopher like Nietzsche somewhere in a train or a steamer, and to spend the whole night talking to him. I consider his philosophy won't last long, however. It's more showy than convincing. ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
823:Like the famous mad philosopher said, when you stare into the void, the void stares also; but if you cast into the void, you get a type conversion error. (Which just goes to show Nietzsche wasn't a C++ programmer.) ~ Charles Stross, #NFDB
824:The atheistic philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was once asked what made him so negative toward Christians. He replied, “I would believe in their salvation if they looked a little more like people who have been saved. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
825:You must be one man, either good or bad. You must cultivate either your own ruling faculty or externals, and apply yourself either to things within or without you; that is, be either a philosopher, or one of the vulgar. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
826:Choosing a religion, says philosopher Ernest Gellner, has become akin to choosing a wallpaper pattern or menu item—an area of life where it is considered acceptable to act on purely personal taste or feelings. Most ~ Nancy R Pearcey, #NFDB
827:I love to read, but I’m not a writer. I love philosophy, but I’m not a philosopher. I love art, but I can’t paint, I can’t draw or sculpt. I love movies and the theater, but I’m a terrible actor. Therefore, I’m a patron ~ Penny Reid, #NFDB
828:No man of sense in the whole world believes in devils any more than he does in mermaids, vampires, gorgons, hydras, naiads, dryads, nymphs, fairies, the Fountain of Youth, [or] the Philosopher's Stone. . . . ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
829:Ask yourself whether you are happy', observed the philosopher John Stuart Mill, 'and you cease to be so.' At best, it would appear, happiness can only be glimpsed out of the corner of an eye, not stared at directly. ~ Oliver Burkeman, #NFDB
830:Every other science presupposes intelligence as already existing and complete: the philosopher contemplates it in its growth, and as it were represents its history to the mind from its birth to its maturity. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, #NFDB
831:It is because I was foolish then that I am now wise. O philosopher who see nothing save in a flash, how short is your vision! Your eye is not made to follow the underground working of the passions. FRAU VON GOETHE This ~ Stendhal, #NFDB
832:Master-meaning! Concealed revealment! I spent my twenties wanting to be Lévi-Strauss – which is ironic, since he spent most of his life wanting to be somebody or something else: a philosopher, say, or novelist, or poet. ~ Tom McCarthy, #NFDB
833:No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher. For poetry is the blossom and the fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, #NFDB
834:September's Baccalaureate A combination is Of Crickets - Crows - and Retrospects And a dissembling Breeze That hints without assuming - An Innuendo sear That makes the Heart put up its Fun And turn Philosopher. ~ Emily Dickinson, #NFDB
835:The stone that was rolled before Christ's tomb might appropriately be called the philosopher's stone because its removal gave not only the pharisees but, now for 1800 years, the philosophers so much to think about. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
836:The stone that was rolled before Christ's tomb might appropriately be called the philosopher's stone because its removal gave not only the pharisees but, now for 1800 years, the philosophers so much to think about. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
837:The twentieth-century philosopher of religion Rudolf Otto famously characterized the transcendent God as the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, the mystery that fascinates us even as it causes us to tremble with fear— ~ Robert E Barron, #NFDB
838:Whether this young girl was a human being, a fairy, or an angel, is what Gringoire, sceptical philosopher and ironical poet that he was, could not decide at the first moment, so fascinated was he by this dazzling vision. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
839:As Preach waited for her to appear, he couldn’t get a quote from Kierkegaard out of his mind. “The truth is a trap,” the philosopher had once written. “You cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you. ~ Layton Green, #NFDB
840:But as the late- seventeenth-century philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz said, 'To be neutral is rather like someone who lives in the middle of a house and is smoked out from below and drenched with urine from above. ~ Eleanor Herman, #NFDB
841:Finally, it follows from the preceding proposition that the joy by which the drunkard is enslaved is altogether different from the joy which is the portion of the philosopher,--a think I wished just to hint in passing. ~ Baruch Spinoza, #NFDB
842:Nietzsche claimed that a philosopher’s system of thought always arises from his autobiography, and I believe that to be true for all therapists—in fact, for anyone who thinks about thought. At a conference approximately ~ Irvin D Yalom, #NFDB
843:The poet…is the man of metaphor: while the philosopher is interested only in the truth of meaning, beyond even signs and names, and the sophist manipulates empty signs…the poet plays on the multiplicity of signifieds. ~ Jacques Derrida, #NFDB
844:Has a philosopher like you failed to discover that our country is more to be valued and higher and holier far than mother or father or any ancestor, and more to be regarded in the eyes of the gods and of men of understanding? ~ Socrates, #NFDB
845:The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard observed that the most common form of despair is that of not being who we really are, adding that an even deeper form of despair stems from choosing to be someone other than oneself. ~ Howard Sasportas, #NFDB
846:The work of the historian is not the work of the critic or of the moralist; it is the work of the sleuth and the storyteller, the philosopher and the scientist, the keeper of tales, the sayer of sooth, the teller of truth. ~ Jill Lepore, #NFDB
847:Furthermore, plot, as JG wisely put it, is the storyteller's equivalent to the philosopher's argument; its importance lies in it being an interpretation (one based on causation) of why the world works the way it does. ~ Charles R Johnson, #NFDB
848:I WOULD GO TO ATHENS. FOR IT IS ONLY IN ATHENS THAT I MAY SPEND ALL MORN ARGUING REAL TRUTHS WITH A PHILOSOPHER, ALL AFTERNOON WATCHING CLEVER LIES FROM A DRAMATURG, AND ALL NIGHT DRINKING LIES INTO TRUTHS WITH A SENATOR. ~ Gene Doucette, #NFDB
849:If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
850:The philosopher is like a man fasting in the midst of universal intoxication. He alone perceives the illusion of which all creatures are the willing playthings; he is less duped than his neighbour by his own nature. ~ Henri Fr d ric Amiel, #NFDB
851:To be a philosopher,” said Thoreau, “is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
852:He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
853:If Tom had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. ~ Dan Ariely, #NFDB
854:It was the 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer who said that all truth passes through three distinct stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. ~ Ziad Masri, #NFDB
855:We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free. EPICTETUS, Roman philosopher and former slave, Discourses ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
856:When Marx, in the Theses on Feuerbach, says that only idealism up to now has understood the active side of material Praxis, what he says is more true of Fichte than of any other philosopher in the classical German tradition. ~ Allen W Wood, #NFDB
857:When the great theologian and philosopher Rabbi Hillel was challenged to explain the Torah in the time he could stand on one foot, he replied, “Do not do unto others that which is repugnant to you. All else is commentary. ~ Edward O Wilson, #NFDB
858:What makes a philosopher is the movement which leads back without ceasing from knowledge to ignorance, from ignorance to knowledge, and a kind of rest in this movement. ~ Maurice Merleau-Ponty, In Praise of Philosophy (Chicago: 1963), p. 5., #NFDB
859:Epictetus, the pagan philosopher, proved in his life the truth of his own words — "A man can be happy without wealth, without family, without office or honor, without health, without anything that the world seeks after. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
860:The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife. Trin Tragula – for that was his name – was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
861:As the philosopher and writer Paul Valéry explained in 1938, “A poet’s function . . . is not to experience the poetic state: that is a private affair. His function is to create it in others.” That is, his job is to produce work. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
862:for my own part I cannot cordially approve, I merely tolerate, a philosopher who talks of setting bounds to the desires. Is it possible for desire to be kept within bounds? It ought to be destroyed, uprooted altogether. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
863:He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
864:If a lion could talk, we could not understand him,' the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said.
'It's clear that Wittgenstein hadn't spent much time with lions,' commented the gambler and conservationist John Aspinall. ~ John N Gray,#NFDB
865:If you make a product good enough... the public will make a path to your door, says the philosopher. But if you want the public in sufficient numbers, you would better construct a highway. Advertising is that highway. ~ William Randolph Hearst, #NFDB
866:It is why God created matter, most of all the human body, which has the greatest power to make spirit visible. (Thus the philosopher Wittgenstein, asked what a human soul could possibly look like, answered, “Like a human body.”) ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
867:The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
868:An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog. ~ Friedrich von Schlegel (1772–1829), German philosopher. Aphorism 206 in Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798), #NFDB
869:Dad was a philosopher and had what he called his Theory of Purpose, which held that everything in life had a purpose, and unless it achieved that purpose, it was just taking up space on the planet and wasting everybody's time. ~ Jeannette Walls, #NFDB
870:It is often difficult to know about one's own era which philosophers in it will be remembered as the most important ones, but I think it is already clear that John Rawls is the greatest moral philosopher of the twentieth century. ~ Allen W Wood, #NFDB
871:It was a strange man, a kind of black humorist, a true philosopher. One day he said: "If my books could ensure an increase in the number of murders, well, it will mean that they have been quite useful in some way or another." ~ William C Brown, #NFDB
872:My favorite American philosopher is Ralph Waldo Emerson, who once observed, “If you write a better book, or preach a better sermon, or build a better mousetrap than your neighbor, the world will make a beaten path to your door. ~ Steve Chandler, #NFDB
873:A philosopher of imposing stature doesn't think in a vacuum. Even his most abstract ideas are, to some extent, conditioned by what is or is not known in the time when he lives. ~ Alfred North Whitehead, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), #NFDB
874:A woman finds the natural lay of the land almost unconsciously; and not feeling it incumbent on her to be guide and philosopher to any successor, she takes little pains to mark the route by which she is making her ascent. ~ Alice Stone Blackwell, #NFDB
875:for the man of war must learn the art of number or he will not know how to array his troops, and the philosopher also, because he has to rise out of the sea of change and lay hold of true being, and therefore he must be an arithmetician. ~ Plato, #NFDB
876:He is only a philosopher in the manner of Socrates, whom he revered above all others because he left behind no dogma, no teachings, no law, no system, only an example: the man who seeks himself in all and who seeks all in himself. ~ Stefan Zweig, #NFDB
877:I'm the company philosopher and the burr in the saddle. I'm the one who says we need to try harder, improve the quality of our products, become a part of the political process, help elect people who are good for the environment. ~ Yvon Chouinard, #NFDB
878:Philosopher Jean Gebser wrote that ‘Everything that is happening to me is a challenge to have insight into it’. And another philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, summed up this attitude in a concise formula: amor fati, ‘love of fate’. ~ Gary Lachman, #NFDB
879:So – a true philosopher is under no obligation to respect vulgar opinion as to what is religious or irreligious, what is just or unjust. What dishonour he brings on philosophers in general if he did! That’s not what you learned here. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
880:The simple style is bad for the savage because he does worse than to obtain the luxuries of life; it is good for the philosopher because he does better than to work for them. The question is whether you can bear freedom.... ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
881:‘Aphorizein’, from which we get the word ‘aphorism’, means to retreat to such a distance that a horizon of thought is formed which never again closes on itself. ~ Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007), French philosopher and writer. Cool Memories V (2006), #NFDB
882:I am certainly interested in a tribunal in which, for having used my reason, I was deemed little less than a heretic. Who knows but men will reduce me from the profession of a philosopher to that of historian of the Inquisition! ~ Galileo Galilei, #NFDB
883:I believe the Scottish philosopher David Hume was closer to the truth than was Plato when he said, “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. ~ Jonathan Haidt, #NFDB
884:If ever there comes a time when the women of the world come together purely and simply for the benefit of mankind, it will be a force such as the world has never known. MATTHEW ARNOLD, NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH POET AND PHILOSOPHER ~ Lisa Bevere, #NFDB
885:My dreams were therefore undisturbed by reality; and I entered with the greatest diligence into the search of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. But the latter obtained my undivided attention: wealth was ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
886:One of the reasons my name is Rushdie is that my father was an admirer of Ibn Rush'd, the 12th century Arab philosopher known as Averroes in the West. In his time, he was making the non-literalist case for interpreting the Koran. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
887:Those who are conquered," wrote the philosopher Ibn Khaldun in the fourteenth century, "always want to imitate the conqueror in his main characteristics—in his clothing, his crafts, and in all his distinctive traits and customs. ~ Adam Hochschild, #NFDB
888:Before you realize this truth, say the Yogis, you will always be in despair, a notion nicely expressed in this exasperated line from the Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus: 'You bear God within you, poor wretch, and know it not. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
889:In terms of insight practice, a lawyer who is terrible at insight practices but tries to do them anyway is vastly superior to a world-class philosopher who is merely an intellectual master of this theory but practices not at all. ~ Daniel M Ingram, #NFDB
890:Only the free-wheeling artist-explorer, non-academic, scientist-philosopher, mechanic, economist-poet who has never waited for patron-starting and accrediting of his co-ordinate capabilities holds the prime initiative today. ~ R Buckminster Fuller, #NFDB
891:Philosophy is said to console a man under disappointment, although Shakespeare asserts that it is no remedy for a toothache; so Mr Easy turned philosopher, the very best profession a man can take up who is fit for nothing else. ~ Frederick Marryat, #NFDB
892:The flabby wine-skin of his brain Yields to some pathologic strain, And voids from its unstored abysm The driblet of an aphorism. "The Mad Philosopher," 1697 ~ Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914?), American writer. The Devil’s Dictionary (1911), #NFDB
893:The philosopher says--I am, and the church scouts his philosophy. She answers:--No! you are NOT, you have no existence of your own. You were and are and ever will be only a part of the supreme I AM, of which the church is the emblem. ~ Henry Adams, #NFDB
894:James Watt was equally distinguished as a natural philosopher and chemist; his inventions demonstrate his profound knowledge of those sciences, and that peculiar characteristic of genius - the union of them for practical application. ~ Humphry Davy, #NFDB
895:MONAD, n. The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter (see Molecule). The monad has body without bulk, and mind without manifestation - containing all the powers and possibilities needful to his evolution into a German philosopher . . ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
896:O time! The beautifier of the dead, Adorner of the ruin, comforter And only healer when the heart hath bled— Time! The corrector where our judgments err, The test of truth, love, sole philosopher. —Lord Byron, Childe Harold IV, 1818 ~ Jack McDevitt, #NFDB
897:The English philosopher and geometer, Keith Critchlow, brings his own light to the same point: “The human mind takes apart with its analytic habits of reasoning but the human heart puts things together because it loves them . . .”18 ~ Wendell Berry, #NFDB
898:the outcome, if successful, in both alchemy and individuation is a union of opposites—the coniunctionis or transcendent function—leading to alchemical gold, the philosopher’s stone, the elixir of life, or, in Jungian terms, the Self. ~ Gary Lachman, #NFDB
899:Certainly the philosopher of 'possible worlds' must take care that his technical apparatus not push him to ask questions whose meaningfulness is not supported by our original intuitions of possibility that gave the apparatus its point. ~ Saul Kripke, #NFDB
900:Dad was a philosopher and had what he called his Theory of Purpose, which held that everything in life had a purpose, and unless it achieved that purpose, it was just taking up space on the planet and wasting everybody’s time. That ~ Jeannette Walls, #NFDB
901:God grant, that not only the Love of Liberty, but a thorough Knowledge of the Rights of Man, may pervade all the Nations of the Earth, so that a Philosopher may set his Foot anywhere on its Surface, and say, 'This is my Country.' ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
902:I have become solitary,” wrote the eighteenth-century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “because to me the most desolate solitude seems preferable to the society of wicked men which is nourished only in betrayals and hatred. ~ Michael Finkel, #NFDB
903:The modern philosopher had told me again and again that I was in the right place, and I still felt depressed even in acquiescence. But I had heard that I was in the wrong place, and my soul sang for joy like a bird in spring. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
904:This book is the best treatment of the best American Marxist philosopher-and the best philosopher to emerge from American slums. Young Sidney Hook is essential reading for anyone interested in democratic theory and practice in America. ~ Cornel West, #NFDB
905:You awakened a philosopher today, Guzmán. I prefer to maintain my illusions.” “As El Señor wishes. But time is always a disappointment; foreseen, it promises us only the certainty of death; recaptured, it makes a mockery of freedom. ~ Carlos Fuentes, #NFDB
906:It is commonly assumed that on some given occasion in prehistoric times, the basic mythological ideas were "invented" by a clever old philosopher or prophet, and ever afterward "believed" by a credulous and uncritical people. P. 69 ~ Carl Gustav Jung, #NFDB
907:One begins to go about with the sluggish step of a philosopher or a clochard, as more and more vital gestures become reduced to mere instincts of preservation, to a conscience more alert not to be deceived than to grasp truth. ~ Julio Cort zar, #NFDB
908:When the ordinary thought of a highly cultivated people begins to regard “having children” as a question of pro’s and con’s,’ Oswald Spengler, the German historian and philosopher, once observed, ‘the great turning point has come.’2 ~ Eric P Kaufmann, #NFDB
909:And though the philosopher may live remote from business, the genius of philosophy, if carefully cultivated by several, must gradually diffuse itself throughout the whole society, and bestow a similar correctness on every art and calling. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
910:Aristotle was the first accurate critic and truest judge nay, the greatest philosopher the world ever had; for he noted the vices of all knowledges, in all creatures, and out of many men's perfections in a science he formed still one Art. ~ Ben Jonson, #NFDB
911:French economist/philosopher Frederic Bastiat (1801–50) gave a test for immoral government acts: “See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. ~ Walter E Williams, #NFDB
912:I feel that we are all philosophers, and that those who describe themselves as a philosopher simply do not have a day job to go to. ~ Kevin Warwick, quoted in Hendricks, V: "Feisty Fragments for Philosophy", King's College Publications, London (2004)., #NFDB
913:The principle of laissez-faire may be safely trusted to in some things but in many more it is wholly inapplicable; and to appeal to it on all occasions savors more of the policy of a parrot than of a statesman or a philosopher. ~ John Ramsay McCulloch, #NFDB
914:There is a famous formula, perhaps the most compact and famous of all formulas - developed by Euler from a discovery of de Moivre: e^(i pi) + 1 = 0... It appeals equally to the mystic, the scientist, the philosopher, the mathematician. ~ Edward Kasner, #NFDB
915:To mourn deeply for the death of another loosens from myself the petty desire for, and the animal adherence to life. We have gained the end of the philosopher, and view without shrinking the coffin and the pall. ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton 1st Baron Lytton, #NFDB
916:To quote Shirley Polanski, head waitress at the Humdinger Diner: "Beware of a big man whose stomach doesn't move when he laughs."
I think a Chinese philosopher said it first, but these things trickle down to the food service community. ~ Joan Bauer,#NFDB
917:What resists phenomenology within us--natural being, the 'barbarian' source Schelling spoke of--cannot remain outside phenomenology. The philosopher must bear his shadow, which is not simply the factual absence of future light. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty, #NFDB
918:A philosopher's words are empty if they do not heal the suffering of mankind. For just as medicine is useless if it does not remove sickness from the body, so philosophy is useless if it does not remove suffering from the soul. —Epicurus ~ Hiram Crespo, #NFDB
919:Both wit and understanding are trifles without integrity; it is that which gives value to every character. The ignorant peasant, without fault, is greater than the philosopher with many; for what is genius or courage without a heart? ~ Oliver Goldsmith, #NFDB
920:Philosopher John Gray, though himself an atheist, writes that “when atheism becomes a political project, the invariable result is an ersatz religion that can only be maintained by tyrannical means” 64—by secret police and death camps. ~ Nancy R Pearcey, #NFDB
921:That all who are happy are equally happy is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. A small drinking glass and a large one may be equally full, but the large one holds more than the small. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
922:The philosopher aspires to explain away all mysteries, to dissolve them into light. Mystery on the other hand is demanded and pursued by the religious instinct; mystery constitutes the essence of worship, the power of proselytism. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel, #NFDB
923:The thing is this: Even if the husband leaves her in this awful craven way, she will still have to count it as a miracle, all of those happy years she spent with him. “It was a fucking miracle that I found him,” she tells the philosopher. ~ Jenny Offill, #NFDB
924:Spi·no·za Baruch (or Benedict) de (1632-77), Dutch philosopher. Spinoza espoused a pantheistic system, seeing “God or nature” as a single infinite substance, with mind and matter being two incommensurable ways of conceiving the one reality. ~ Erin McKean, #NFDB
925:The Roman politician and philosopher Cicero once said: ‘Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labours of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge. ~ Ha Joon Chang, #NFDB
926:The worse things are, the more they play philosopher. The more obvious the nonsense, the profounder their thoughts. The more lawlessness there is, the more laws. The more widespread the chaos, the more insistent their love of symmetry. ~ Tadeusz Konwicki, #NFDB
927:When the author has no idea of what to reply to a critic, he then likes to say: you could not do it better anyway. This is the same as if a dogmatic philosopher reproached a skeptic for not being able to devise a system. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, #NFDB
928:If we contrast the rapid progress of this mischievous discovery [gunpowder] with the slow and laborious advances of reason, science, and the arts of peace, a philosopher, according to his temper, will laugh or weep at the folly of mankind. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
929:It's best not to get too hungry if you can avoid it. If you get hungry enough, you will start feeling that your bad ideas are your good idea. If you get truly famished, you'll start feeling like a French philosopher, and that's unwise. ~ Katherine Rundell, #NFDB
930:Philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe explained that “no one is as hopelessly enslaved as the person who thinks he’s free.” That’s becoming an apt description for Americans who are oblivious to—or ignorant of—the liberties we’ve lost. ~ Walter E Williams, #NFDB
931:Were I a philosopher, I should write a philosophy of toys, showing that nothing else in life need to be taken seriously, and that Christmas Day in the company of children is one of the few occasions on which men become entirely alive. ~ Robert Wilson Lynd, #NFDB
932:A French philosopher once said that every man is born a blank slate. No one is either good or bad, not until they come in contact with other people. Only then, a man takes shape and becomes something, a monster or a god. Often times, both. ~ Saffron A Kent, #NFDB
933:As a Roman philosopher, Cicero, said of him a few hundred years later, Socrates 'called philosophy down from the sky and established her in the towns and introduced her into homes and forced her to investigate life, ethics, good and evil. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
934:But Adam Smith was a philosopher as well as well as an economist, famous in his time as much for his Theory of Moral Sentiments as for The Wealth of Nations. And as he understood so well, society is more than the sum of its individual parts. ~ Paul Ormerod, #NFDB
935:Cold completely introspective logic places a philosopher on the road to the abstract. Out of this empty, artificial act of thinking there can result, of course, nothing which bears on the relation of man to himself, and to the universe. ~ Albert Schweitzer, #NFDB
936:I have a friend, physically magnificent, who combines within himself the intellect of a philosopher, the diplomacy of a statesman, the executive ability of the general of an army, the courtesy of a Chesterfield - and the emotions of a rabbit. ~ Myrtle Reed, #NFDB
937:It has only been very slowly that scientific method, which seeks to reach principles inductively from observations of particular facts, has replaced the Hellenic belief in deduction from luminous axioms derived from the mind of the philosopher. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
938:I write - poignantly, in the most heartfelt way - about how I miss her and how I detest my life in this school and she responds with detailed plans for her future life as an archaeologist or philosopher or - new, this - a veterinary surgeon. ~ William Boyd, #NFDB
939:The Greek philosopher Epictetus said, ‘First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.’ Good old Epictetus. I would be Confident Girl, and that means unplastering myself from the side of this building, for starters. ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB
940:Against spatialized clock time, [philosopher] Henri Bergson wrote of what he called “duration,” our immediate awareness of inner states. This immediate inner awareness, which we all experience, was, he believed, evidence of life's uniqueness. ~ Gary Lachman, #NFDB
941:For my future I have no concern, and as a true philosopher, I never would have any, for I know not what it may be: as a Christian, on the other hand, faith must believe without discussion, and the stronger it is, the more it keeps silent. ~ Giacomo Casanova, #NFDB
942:I would welcome the passing of the idea of philosophy as defined by a method of conceptual analysis. But that is not the passing of philosophy, and it leaves the philosopher with the task of grasping natures or essences (among other things). ~ Robert Adams, #NFDB
943:The teacher, like the artist, the philosopher, and the man of letters, can only perform his work adequately if he feels himself to be an individual directed by an inner creative impulse, not dominated and fettered by an outside authority. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
944:C-3PO —Thou shalt not label me A mindless, brute philosopher! Nay, nay, Thou overladen glob of grease, thou imp, Thou rubbish bucket fit for scrap, thou blue And silver pile of bantha dung! Now, come, And get thee hence away lest someone sees. ~ Ian Doescher, #NFDB
945:Just as a novelist may sometimes wonder why he invents characters who do not exist and makes them do things which do not matter, so a philosopher may wonder why he invents cases that cannot occur in order to determine what must be the case. ~ Edward St Aubyn, #NFDB
946:Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher, and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately it is the philosopher, not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
947:the philosopher Alan Watts used to refer to as “the backwards law”—the idea that the more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
948:To rove about, musing, that is to say loitering, is, for a philosopher, a good way of spending time, especially in that kind of mock rurality, ugly but odd, and partaking of two natures, which surrounds certain large cities, particularly Paris. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
949:Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher; and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately, it is the philosopher, not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
950:That scientifically savvy philosopher Daniel Dennett pointed out that evolution counters one of the oldest ideas we have: 'the idea that it takes a big fancy smart thing to make a lesser thing. I call that the trickle-down theory of creation. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
951:As the existential philosopher Albert Camus said (and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t on LSD at the time): ‘You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
952:As the existential philosopher Albert Camus said (and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t on LSD at the time): “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
953:Hatred for mediocrity is unworthy of a philosopher: it is almost a question mark against his right to philosophy. Precisely because he is an exception he has to take the rule under his protection, he has to keep the mediocre in good heart. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
954:I'm not a great one for beds, said the muskrat. They are unnecessary furniture, really. It was the only hole I lived in, but I was happy there. Of course, it's all the same to a philosopher whether he is happy or not, but it was a good hole . . . ~ Tove Jansson, #NFDB
955:Life is a chaplet of little miseries which the philosopher counts with a smile. Be philosophers, as I am, gentlemen; sit down at the table and let us drink. Nothing makes the future look so bright as surveying it through a glass of chambertin. ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
956:There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
957:A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security. ~ Tom Stoppard, #NFDB
958:If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” –Marcus Aurelius Emperor of Rome and Stoic philosopher, author of Meditations ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
959:The philosopher is Nature’s pilot. And there you have our difference: to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer. ~ Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903), Act III, line 509. Reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 596-97., #NFDB
960:View the gradients of adversity as the colors that paint your story, and the power of experience as what makes you a great teacher, creator, philosopher, entrepreneur, artist, and human.
Everything works out eventually.
I promise. ~ Jennifer Sodini,#NFDB
961:What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational. On this conviction the plain man like the philosopher takes his stand,and from it philosophy starts in its study of the universe of mind as well as the universe of nature. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, #NFDB
962:Action without desire is possible, action without attachment is possible, action without ego is possible. ~ Sri Aurobindo#thegoldenpath #sriaurobindo #philosopher #spiritualteacher #auroville #pondicherryauroville #aurobindoghosh #spirituality #spiritualawakening, #NFDB
963:An Intellect, is someone whose assets have not been precedently capitalized upon by her/his own local society. And a Philosopher, is someone who presents his/her assets to the local society as if it were its own unalienable long-awaited capital. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
964:He [Professor Moriarty] is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
965:It was modesty that invented the word "philosopher" in Greece and left the magnificent overweening presumption in calling oneselfwise to the actors of the spirit--the modesty of such monsters of pride and sovereignty as Pythagoras, as Plato. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
966:And for a dreamer of words, what calm there is in the word round. How peacefully it makes one's mouth, lips, and the being of breath become round. Because this too should be spoken by a philosopher who believes in the poetic substance of speech. ~ Gaston Bachelard, #NFDB
967:Being wealthy gives them the option to live what author/philosopher Ayn Rand called “an unrestricted existence.” This means having the ability to do what they want, when they want, with whom they want, for as long as they want, without limitations. ~ Steve Siebold, #NFDB
968:I once had a friend at Oxford who drifted into the study of Hegel, that famously impenetrable German philosopher, and was never seen again. There are intellectual black holes, vortexes of endless regression, that mortals out to stay clear of. ~ Charles Krauthammer, #NFDB
969:The thinker who should turn aside from slang would resemble a surgeon who should avert his face from an ulcer or a wart. He would be like a philologist refusing to examine a fact in language, a philosopher hesitating to scrutinize a fact in humanity. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
970:We're in a post-conceptual era where it's really the artist's idea and vision that are prized rather than the ability to master the crafts that support the work. Today, our understanding of an artist is closer to a philosopher than to a craftsman. ~ Jeffrey Deitch, #NFDB
971:Death and dying makes us into children once again, in truth, one last time, there in our final wailing cries. More than one philosopher has claimed that we ever remain children, far beneath the indurated layers that make up the armour of adulthood. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
972:Learn that there are no basilisks in nature, that people are always healthy with sobriety and exercise, and that the art of making intemperance and health together is as chimerical as the philosopher's stone, judicial astrology, and the theology of magi. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
973:This is the fundamental idea of culture, insofar as it sets but one task for each of us: to further the production of the philosopher, of the artist, and of the saint within us and outside us, and thereby to work at the consummation of nature. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
974:Historically the first philosopher to enquire deeply into the nature of corruption in society was Ibn Khaldun (1322-1406), whose wandering life was largely spent in the northern littoral of Africa at a time when kingdoms and sultanates were crumbling. ~ Robert Payne, #NFDB
975:It is a mistake to think that the past is dead. Nothing that has ever happened is quite without influence at this moment. The present is merely the past rolled up and concentrated in this second of time.As quoted in "The Gentle Philosopher" Will Durant ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
976:As the Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe has presciently pointed out, neoliberal corporate globalism threatens to exploit that advantage like never before, and it seems set to turn vast swathes of humanity into "the Negros of a new racism." ~ Andre Naffis Sahely, #NFDB
977:Habits count for more than maxims, because habit is a living maxim, becomes flesh and instinct. To reform one's maxims is nothing: it is but to change the title of the book. ~ Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821-1881), Swiss philosopher, poet and critic. Journal Intime (1882), #NFDB
978:I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again 'I know that that’s a tree', pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: 'This fellow isn’t insane. We are only doing philosophy. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #NFDB
979:I’m a philosopher. If you don’t argue with me, I don’t know what to think. So if we argue, I have to say “thank you,” because owing to the courtesy of your taking a different point of view, I understand what I think and mean. So I can’t get rid of you. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
980:It helps to not confuse theological philosophers with evangelists. There is a difference but objectively neither better than the other: an evangelist's mission is to convert; a theological philosopher's mission is to build an understanding of a position. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
981:Many people have thought of me as a thinker, as a philosopher, or even as a mystic. Well the truth is that though I have found reality perplexing enough - in fact, I find it gets more perplexing all the time - I never think of myself as a thinker. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
982:The physician and the philosopher have different ways of defining the diseases of the soul. For instance anger for the philosopher is a sentiment born of the desire to return an offense, whereas for the physician it is a surging of blood around the heart. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
983:True eloquence makes light of eloquence, true morality makes light of morality; that is to say, the morality of the judgment, which has no rules, makes light of the morality of the intellect.... To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
984:Don't say anything about this to anybody. Any one would say that I am trying to play the good-natured philosopher. I am neither benefactor nor philosopher, but just a human being, and my charities are the pleasantest expense I have on these journeys. ~ Baron d Holbach, #NFDB
985:It’s what the philosopher Alan Watts used to refer to as “the backwards law”—the idea that the more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
986:Pakistan is heir to an intellectual tradition of which the illustrious exponent was the poet and philosopher Mohammad Iqbal. He saw the future course for Islamic societies in a synthesis between adherence to the faith and adjustment to the modern age. ~ Benazir Bhutto, #NFDB
987:Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. For just as there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy either, if it does not expel the suffering of the mind. ~ Epicurus, #NFDB
988:A farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter, even a philosopher, may be daunted; but nothing can deter a poet, for he is actuated by pure love. Who can predict his comings and goings? His business calls him out at all hours, even when doctors sleep. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
989:In case you’re worried about BLUE HADES, Professoe O’Brien speaks the language and is qualified to Liase. She’s also completed her certification fixation on combat epistemology and can operate as your staff philosopher, should circumstances require it. ~ Charles Stross, #NFDB
990:I think if we could turn the dial a bit, and try to take what the philosopher Henry Sidgwick called "the point of view of the universe", and look from above, and realize that we are not special, none of us are, I think it would just cause a transformation. ~ Paul Bloom, #NFDB
991:The condition and characteristic of an uninstructed person is this: he never expects from himself profit (advantage) nor harm, but from externals. The condition and characteristic of a philosopher is this: he expects all advantage and all harm from himself. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
992:When Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: ‘Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun.’ It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government. ~ Henry Hazlitt, #NFDB
993:When Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: “Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun.” It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government. ~ Henry Hazlitt, #NFDB
994:Ever heard of Heraclitus?” Varya shakes her head. “Greek philosopher. Character is fate—that’s what he said. They’re bound up, those two, like brothers and sisters. You wanna know the future?” She points at Varya with her free hand. “Look in the mirror. ~ Chloe Benjamin, #NFDB
995:No philosopher who was really philosophical could think anything except that, in that central sea, the wave of the world had risen to its highest, seeming to touch the stars. But the wave was already stooping; for it was only the wave of the world. That ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
996:to be a fiction writer, you also need to be a psychologist (understanding people’s personalities and intentions), a philosopher (asking big questions about meaning and human nature), and a poet (breathing life into your words and the spaces between them). ~ Steven James, #NFDB
997:A poet is not somebody who has great thoughts. That is the menial duty of the philosopher. A poet is somebody who expresses his thoughts, however commonplace they may be, exquisitely. That is the one and only difference between the poet and everybody else. ~ Mark Forsyth, #NFDB
998:I want a little girl with your smile and your smarts. I want Christmases and birthdays and a chocolate Lab who wears an American flag bandana that you name after a political philosopher or something. We can even include him in the family campaign photos. ~ Chanel Cleeton, #NFDB
999:The ancient study of alchemy is concerned with making the Philosopher’s Stone, a legendary substance with astonishing powers. The Stone will transform any metal into pure gold. It also produces the Elixir of Life, which will make the drinker immortal. There ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
1000:Enlightenment writer and philosopher Voltaire likened life to a game of cards. Players must accept the cards dealt to them. However, once they have those cards in hand, they alone choose how they will play them. They decide what risks and actions to take. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
1001:In the philosopher, on the contrary, there is absolutely nothing impersonal; and above all, his morality furnishes a decided and decisive testimony as to WHO HE IS,—that is to say, in what order the deepest impulses of his nature stand to each other. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1002:[Owen] Barfield believed that as we look back into the history of language, we see that it becomes more figurative, more metaphorical, more, in a sense, alive and poetic; our own age is, as the literary philosopher Erich Heller said, much more one of prose. ~ Gary Lachman, #NFDB
1003:suddenly remembered a beautiful verse by the great Lebanese philosopher Kahlil Gibran: “Mayhap a funeral among men is a wedding feast among the angels.” I imagined my mother at the side of her mother and father, with her own little ones gathered in her arms. ~ Jean Sasson, #NFDB
1004:I'm not a critic. I'm not a journalist. I'm not a philosopher. Arguing that punk has run its course is like saying painting ran its course after the Renaissance. Punk is an idea. It's freedom. And it'll be around 200 years from now for the people who want it. ~ Patti Smith, #NFDB
1005:masterful warrior carries everything she needs and no more, just as a masterful painter uses all of the paint that she needs and no more, and a master chef uses all of the ingredients that she needs and no more. In the same way, a masterful philosopher will ~ Eric Greitens, #NFDB
1006:philosopher Kurt Gödel reached a similar conclusion in his 1931 “incompleteness theorem.” We are thus left with the perplexing situation of being able to define a problem, to prove that a unique answer exists, and yet know that the answer can never be found. ~ Ray Kurzweil, #NFDB
1007:There was a German philosopher who is very well known, his name was Immanuel Kant, and he said there are two things that don’t have to mean anything, one is music and the other is laughter. Don’t have to mean anything that is, in order to give us deep pleasure. ~ John Cage, #NFDB
1008:With Ameen Rihani the matter is diametrically opposite to Alois Musil's Arabian Desert, in purpose, in point of view and, above all, in personal psychology... I have considerable admiration for Mr. Rihani as a writer, an authentic poet and a philosopher. ~ William Seabrook, #NFDB
1009:The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement: “I think, therefore I am.” He had, in fact, given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
1010:Grandeur . . . consists in form, and not in size: and to the eye of the philosopher, the curve drawn on a paper two inches long, is just as magnificent, just as symbolic of divine mysteries and melodies, as when embodied in the span of some cathedral roof. ~ Charles Kingsley, #NFDB
1011:Now in giving honor to one’s parents or to the gods, as indeed the Philosopher says, it is impossible to repay them measure for measure; but it suffices that man repay as much as he can, for friendship does not demand measure for measure, but what is possible. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
1012:Socrates
The philosopher offered us a way out of two powerful delusions: that we should always or never listen to the dictates of public opinion.
To follow his example, we will best be rewarded if we strive instead to listen to the dictates of reason ~ Alain de Botton,#NFDB
1013:The scientist, by the very nature of his commitment, creates more and more questions, never fewer. Indeed the measure of our intellectual maturity, one philosopher suggests, is our capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers to better problems. ~ Gordon Allport, #NFDB
1014:But a philosopher named William James responded that sometimes Clifford's advice is bad strategy. He said doubt is the wrong alternative when three conditions are met: when we have live options, when the stakes are momentous, and when we must make a choice.3 ~ John Ortberg Jr, #NFDB
1015:How I understand the philosopher - as a terrible explosive, endangering everthing... my concept of the philosopher is worlds removed from any concept that would include even a Kant, not to speak of academic "ruminants" and other professors of philosophy. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1016:I think Eddie Izzard is one of the brightest minds of our generation. I don't see him as a comedian as much as I see him as a philosopher. I hope I get to work with him on everything until I die, because I think he has a great mind and is a very talented actor. ~ Bryan Fuller, #NFDB
1017:If we contrast the rapid progress of this mischievous discovery [of gunpowder] with the slow and laborious advances of reason, science, and the arts of peace, a philosopher, according to his temper, will laugh or weep at the folly of mankind" (Chapter 65,p. 68) ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
1018:In the philosopher, conversely, there is nothing whatever that is impersonal;7 and above all, his morality bears decided and decisive witness to who he is—that is, in what order of rank the innermost drives of his nature stand in relation to each other. 7 ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1019:The very fact of having fixed conclusions to strive for in orthodox belief does not render the Christian philosopher dogmatic but rather intellectually fruitful, willing to take and follow reason further than the putatively undogmatic unbelieving philosopher ~ Gregory B Sadler, #NFDB
1020:We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun. We are not afraid of the darkness. We trust that the moon shall guide us. We are determining the future at this very moment. We know that the heart is the philosopher's stone. Our music is our alchemy. ~ Saul Williams, #NFDB
1021:In this lengthy riposte, the philosopher informs Paulinus that “learning how to live takes a whole life,” and the sense most of us have that our lives are cruelly brief is a specious one: “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. ~ Zadie Smith, #NFDB
1022:My understanding – of course, I’m not a philosopher or a scientist – of an aspect of Goethe’s theory of color is that he felt that color came out of tension between light and dark. I think that is very appropriate when you think about the kind of color that I shoot. ~ Alex Webb, #NFDB
1023:Sophie saw that the philosopher was right. Grownups took the world for granted. They had let themselves be lulled into the enchanted sleep of their humdrum existence once and for all. ‘You’ve just grown so used to the world that nothing surprises you any more. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
1024:There is a point in every philosophy at which the "conviction" of the philosopher appears on the scene; or, to put it in the words of an ancient mystery: adventavit asinus, / pulcher et fortissimus. (Translation: The ass arrives, beautiful and most brave.) ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1025:We need the historian and philosopher to give us with trenchant pen, the story of our forefathers, and let our soul and body, with phosphorescent light, brighten the chasm that separates us. We should cling to them just as blood is thicker than water. ~ Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, #NFDB
1026:A poet or philosopher should have no fault to find with his age if it only permits him to do his work undisturbed in his own corner; nor with his fate if the corner granted him allows of his following his vocation without having to think about other people. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
1027:Hegel, installed from above, by the powers that be, as the certified Great Philosopher, was a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
1028:The Christian philosopher has a perfect right to the point of view and prephilosophical assumptions he brings to philosophic work; the fact that these are not widely shared outside the Christian or theistic community is interesting but fundamentally irrelevant. ~ Alvin Plantinga, #NFDB
1029:The opinion that the survival of Islam itself depended on the use of military slavery was shared by the great Arab historian and philosopher Ibn Khaldun, who lived in North Africa in the fourteenth century, contemporaneously with the Mamluk sultanate in Egypt. ~ Francis Fukuyama, #NFDB
1030:A thirsty ambition for truth and virtue, and a frenzy to conquer all lies and vices which are not recognized as such nor desire to be; herein consists the heroic spirit of the philosopher. ~ Johann Georg Hamann, Socratic Memorabilia, J. Flaherty, trans. (Baltimore: 1967), p. 147., #NFDB
1031:Chaler, who had finished his ale, left the cup where it was, making no effort to procure more, indicating that he was capable of what the natural philosopher calls "learning behaviour," which turn of phrase pleases us so much that we cannot resist making use of it. ~ Steven Brust, #NFDB
1032:Chalet, who had finished his ale, left the cup where it was, making no effort to procure more, indicating that he was capable of what the natural philosopher calls "learning behaviour," which turn of phrase pleases us so much that we cannot resist making use of it. ~ Steven Brust, #NFDB
1033:He provides the example of a philosopher who puzzles about the reality of time, but who nonetheless applies for a research grant to work on the philosophical problem of time during next year’s sabbatical—without doubting the reality of next year’s arrival. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
1034:Plato Plato the philosopher lived in ancient Greece in the fourth century B.C. Plato founded a school called the Academy. In both his teachings and his writings, Plato explored the best way for a government to be set up. His ideas are still talked about today. ~ Mary Pope Osborne, #NFDB
1035:The concept of Multiculturalism was actually first propounded by Count Richard Nikolaus Eijiro Coudenhove-Kalergi, an Austrian eugenics-philosopher, who was the principle founding father of the European Union and diplomat of mixed Japanese and Austrian parentage and ~ Citizen One, #NFDB
1036:To mount and descend in the words themselves-this is a poet's life. To mount too high or descend too low, is allowed in the case of poets, who bring earth and sky together. Must the philosopher alone be condemned by his peers always to live on the ground floor? ~ Gaston Bachelard, #NFDB
1037:My laps-meter, the first caliper of the soul and the first hope of bridging the dread chasm that has rent the soul of Western man ever since the famous philosopher Descartes ripped body loose from mind and turned the very soul into a ghost that haunts its own house. ~ Walker Percy, #NFDB
1038:The philosopher and the scientist emphasize different features of the world, follow different interests and inspire different passions in the soul. But the aim of their study is in each case the same: the supreme good which consists in the adequate knowledge of God ~ Roger Scruton, #NFDB
1039:When you break the heart of the philosopher, you must apply great force and cunning strategy, but when the deed is completed, the heart lies in great stony ruin at your feet. If you succeed in breaking it, the job is done once and for all. It will not be repaired. ~ Charles Baxter, #NFDB
1040:Is a poet someone who only wants to describe things, while a philosopher is someone who wants to describe things so that they will reflect and even explain the differences and forces that relate them all and hold them all together?
Or sometimes tear them apart. ~ Samuel R Delany,#NFDB
1041:Jacques Derrida is a very important thinker and philosopher who has made serious contributions to both philosophy and literary criticism. Roland Barthes is the one I feel most affinity for, and Michel Foucault, well, his writing influenced my novel, 'Middlesex.' ~ Jeffrey Eugenides, #NFDB
1042:What decent philosopher was ever an appeaser? The former is a rare catch among the multitudes of modern opinionists. His role is to be one who loves truth. That is a place where his love for humanity is more powerful than his love for hot air about empowering humanity. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
1043:If you turn to the right, you will marry, if to the left, you will be killed." A true philosopher never chooses the middle course; he needs no riches, he does not know what to do with money. But whether he turns to the right or to the left, nothing pleasant awaits him. ~ Lev Shestov, #NFDB
1044:The French philosopher André Comte-Sponville argues that politeness is the prerequisite for the great virtues: “Morality is like a politeness of the soul, an etiquette of inner life, a code of duties.”21 It is a series of practices that make you considerate of others. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
1045:There’s no answer that ends the search, you know. Obviously, there never will be. The artist seeks to capture the world because the nature of every single object is a mystery to him. The philosopher addresses human nature because he’s a stranger to every part of it. It ~ Ethan Canin, #NFDB
1046:This queer crotchet [of Hamilton's] that algebra is the science of pure time has attracted many philosophers, and quite recently it has been exhumed and solemnly dissected by owlish metaphysicians seeking the philosopher's stone in the gall bladder of mathematics. ~ Eric Temple Bell, #NFDB
1047:Who, however, is in doubt ‘and’ awe (thaumázein) about a matter doesn’t believe in the thing to begin with. That is why the friend of Stories (mŷthos) is also in a certain way a philosopher; because the Story arises out of awe.’ (Aristotle’s Metaphysics: Book I. Part II) ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
1048:One doesn't diminish a philosopher's achievement, and doesn't undermine its soundness, by showing how the particular set of questions on which he focused, the orientation he brought to bear on his focus, has some causal connection to the circumstances of his life. ~ Rebecca Goldstein, #NFDB
1049:September's Baccalaureate
September's Baccalaureate
A combination is
Of Crickets - Crows - and Retrospects
And a dissembling Breeze
That hints without assuming An Innuendo sear
That makes the Heart put up its Fun
And turn Philosopher.
~ Emily Dickinson,#NFDB
1050:I'm really clear about what my life mission is now. There's no more depression or lethargy, and I feel like I've returned to the athlete I once was. I'm integrating all the parts of me - jock, musician, writer, poet, philosopher - and becoming stronger as a result. ~ Alanis Morissette, #NFDB
1051:I was introduced to Mr. Davy, who has rooms adjoining mine (in the Royal Institution); he is a very agreeable and intelligent young man, and we have interesting conversation in an evening; the principal failing in his character as a philosopher is that he does not smoke. ~ John Dalton, #NFDB
1052:only dare tread the waters of insanity at night as they lie dreaming. Cowards. Dive deep into your psychopathy. Let loose the demons of delusion and know, in the end, when they finally devour you, you swam with sharks. —VERSKLAVEN SCHWACHE, GEFAHRGEIST PHILOSOPHER ~ Michael R Fletcher, #NFDB
1053:The artist-philosopher. Higher concept of art. Whether a man can remove himself far enough from other men, in order to give them form. 1. the one who gives himself form, the hermit; 2, the artist hitherto, as the insigificant perfecter of a piece of raw material. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1054:The philosopher's conception of things will, above all, be truer than other men's, and his philosophy will subordinate all the circumstances of life. To live like a philosopher is to live, not foolishly, like other men, but wisely and according to universal laws. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1055:thought he was philosopher enough to allow that there was no murder in politics. In politics, my dear fellow, you know, as well as I do, there are no men, but ideas—no feelings, but interests; in politics we do not kill a man, we only remove an obstacle, that is all. ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
1056:When we call a philosopher distinguished, we are not saying that she is worthy and not saying that she is recognized, but we are saying that she occupies the intersection of both - that she is recognized and worthy; even that she is recognized because she's worthy. ~ Rebecca Goldstein, #NFDB
1057:pagan Natural Law does not have a basis for functioning properly, has no consensus on any more than a handful of principles85 and lends itself rather well to a tyranny of philosopher kings that would be every bit as tyrannical as a totalitarian regime based on positive law. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1058:Since Pawlow [Pavlov] and his pupils have succeeded in causing the secretion of saliva in the dog by means of optic and acoustic signals, it no longer seems strange to us that what the philosopher terms an 'idea' is a process which can cause chemical changes in the body. ~ Jacques Loeb, #NFDB
1059:Dandamis then looked at Alexander with pity. 'You have nothing I want,' he said. 'Once, you might have been a passable philosopher, but now you value no opinion save your own. You wander because you cannot bear to be still-you conquer because you cannot bear to rule. ~ Christian Cameron, #NFDB
1060:For the time being, it need only be said that the philosopher in question made much of human existence as a tragedy that need not have been were it not for the intervention in our lives of a single, calamitous event: the evolution of consciousness—parent of all horrors. ~ Thomas Ligotti, #NFDB
1061:He who pretends to look on death without fear lies. All men are afraid of dying, this is the great law of sentient beings, without which the entire human species would soon be destroyed.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778)
French philosopher and writer. ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau,#NFDB
1062:Modo verus amor sit et vera quam ames sapientia, philosophus verus eris. - As long as your love is true and the wisdom true which you love, you shall be a true philosopher. ~ Petrarch, “On the Various Academic Titles,” De remediis utriusque fortunae, C. Rawski, trans. (1967), p. 65., #NFDB
1063:One day, a philosopher asked, "What is the purpose of creation?" "Lovemaking," said the Master. Later, to his disciples, he said, "Before creation, love was. After creation, love was made. When love is consummated, creation will cease to be, and love will be forever." ~ Anthony de Mello, #NFDB
1064:When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles. —WORDS OF AN ANCIENT PHILOSOPHER (ATTRIBUTED BY HARQ AL-ADA TO ONE LOUIS VEUILLOT) ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1065:Between the philosopher's attitude towards the issue of reality and that of the mathematician there is this essential difference: for the philosopher the issue is paramount; the mathematician's love for reality is purely platonic. ~ Tobias Dantzig, Number: The Language of Science (1930)., #NFDB
1066:So even these stages of progression, whether it's your career or whatever, you get somewhere, but then it always brings a new host of issues that are relative dissatisfactions to a certain degree. I think it was a great philosopher who once said, "Mo' money, mo' problems." ~ Steve Zissis, #NFDB
1067:The intimate and the infinite are tangled together in this incandescent book, lit by Aristotle’s bright spark of a daughter. Lucid even in nightmare, The Sweet Girl slips sideways around the philosopher to examine the lives of girls and women when we were not yet human. ~ Marina Endicott, #NFDB
1068:Eventually you ascend the stairs to the street. You think of Plato's pilgrims climbing out of the cave, from the shadow world of appearances toward things as they really are, and you wonder if it is possible to change in this life. Being with a philosopher makes you think. ~ Jay McInerney, #NFDB
1069:is desirable that a man be clad so simply that he can lay his hands on himself in the dark, and that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1070:The French philosopher Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973) distinguished between a problem, “something met which bars my passage” and “is before me in its entirety,” and a mystery, “something in which I find myself caught up, and whose essence is not before me in its entirety.”69 ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
1071:The Philosopher, too, says of the wicked (Ethic. ix, 4) that "their soul is divided against itself . . . one part pulls this way, another that"; and afterwards he concludes, saying: "If wickedness makes a man so miserable, he should strain every nerve to avoid vice. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #NFDB
1072:What difference is there, do you think, between those in Plato's cave who can only marvel at the shadows and images of various objects, provided they are content and don't know what they miss, and the philosopher who has emerged from the cave and sees the real things? ~ Desiderius Erasmus, #NFDB
1073:An aphorism, honestly stamped and molded, has not yet been “deciphered” once we have read it over; rather, its exegesis—for which an art of exegesis is needed—has only just begun. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), German philosopher. On the Genealogy of Morals, 'Preface', Section 8 (1887), #NFDB
1074:Go! Go! Go! Go!' said that officer, with an expression as though he considered our Cap an individual of the animal kingdom whom neither Buffon nor any other natural philosopher had ever classified, and who, as a creature of unknown habits, might sometimes be dangerous. ~ E D E N Southworth, #NFDB
1075:I set apart with high reverence the name of Heraclitus. When the rest of the philosopher crowd rejected the evidence of the senses because these showed plurality and change, he rejected their evidence because they showed things as if they possessed duration and unity. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1076:Every soul, the philosopher says, is involuntarily deprived of truth; consequently in the same way it is deprived of justice and temperance and benevolence and everything of the kind. It is most necessary to keep this in mind, for thus thou wilt be more gentle towards all. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1077:I’m not a philosopher, but I have pondered whether we’re born with a blank slate and life experiences become the writing on our wall. Or is some of that writing on the wall already there—a kind of invisible ink? Does it become more legible the more we find out who we are in life? ~ Tom Lowe, #NFDB
1078:The Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti once remarked that observing without evaluating is the highest form of human intelligence. When I first read this statement, the thought, 'What nonsense!' shot through my mind before I realized that I had just made an evaluation. ~ Marshall B Rosenberg, #NFDB
1079:The Philosopher
“Those who speak know nothing;
Those who know are silent.”
These words, as I am told,
Were spoken by Lao Tzu.
If we are to believe that Lao Ttzu
Was himself one who knew,
How comes it that he wrote a book
Of five thousand words?
~ Bai Juyi,#NFDB
1080:When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles. —WORDS OF AN ANCIENT PHILOSOPHER (ATTRIBUTED BY HARQ AL-ADA TO ONE LOUIS VEUILLOT) ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
1081:In Old English they don't say I had a dream, but there's another usage of the word - "life is but a dream," to be corny about it. It's implied with eyes wide open, rather than asleep. But I'm not a philosopher to explain myself. I wish I could. Maybe that's why I'm a musician. ~ Tom Verlaine, #NFDB
1082:only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1083:The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides taught that the only things that are real are things which never change... and the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus taught that everything changes. If you superimpose their two views, you get this result: Nothing is real. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
1084:When it was first said that the sun stood still and world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei [the voice of the people is the voice of God], as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
1085:Buddhist Barbie"
In the 5th century B.C.
an Indian philosopher
Gautama teaches "All is emptiness"
and "There is no self."
In the 20th century A.D.
Barbie agrees, but wonders how a man
with such a belly could pose,
smiling, and without a shirt. ~ Denise Duhamel,#NFDB
1086:Buddhist Barbie"
In the 5th century B.C.
an Indian philosopher
Gautama teaches "All is emptiness"
and "There is no self."
In the 20th century A.D.
Barbie agrees, but wonders how a man
with such a belly could pose,
smiling, and without a shirt. ~ Denise Duhamel,#NFDB
1087:Even materialists often admit that, in practice, it is impossible for humans to live any other way. One philosopher jokes that if people deny free will, then when ordering at a restaurant they should say, “Just bring me whatever the laws of nature have determined I will get. ~ Nancy R Pearcey, #NFDB
1088:Had this author [Sir W Drummond Academical Questions, chap. iii.], instead of inveighing against the guilt and absurdity of atheism, demonstrated its falsehood, his conduct would have, been more suited to the modesty of the skeptic and the toleration of the philosopher. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, #NFDB
1089:I don't see myself as a deep philosopher. The things I write about tend to be what we all have to face, or consider, or experience, that I talk about with my friends and brothers. It's universal stuff, told in my own voice, my own details and truth, which is all I have to offer. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
1090:In his essay, ‘Perpetual Peace,’ the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, argued that perpetual peace would eventually come to the world in one of two ways, by human insight or by conflicts and catastrophes of a magnitude that left humanity no other choice. We are at such a juncture. ~ Henry Kissinger, #NFDB
1091:It is desirable that a man be clad so simply that he can lay his hands on himself in the dark, and that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly, that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1092:Only a tiny percentage of people in the world care about moral theory in the sense I have been discussing, whereas 100 percent of the people in the world like stories. Most moral insights come from stories, but it is the special virtue of the philosopher to organize those insights ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1093:The Chinese philosopher Mencius believed that man is innately good. He argued that anyone who saw a child falling into a well would immediately feel shock and alarm, and that this impulse, this universal capacity for commiseration, was proof positive that man is inherently good. ~ T Greenwood, #NFDB
1094:The Italian philosopher Paolo Virno says we have moved from having a “proletariat”—a solid block of manual workers with jobs—to a “precariat,” a shifting mass of chronically insecure people who don’t know whether they will have any work next week and may never have a stable job. ~ Johann Hari, #NFDB
1095:The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
1096:But no moral philosopher, from Aristotle to Aquinas, to John Locke and Adam Smith, divorced economics from a set of moral ends or held the production of wealth to be an end in itself; rather it was seen as a means to the realization of virtue, a means of leading a civilized life. ~ Daniel Bell, #NFDB
1097:Daniel Dennett is our best current philosopher. He is the next Bertrand Russell. Unlike traditional philosophers, Dan is a student of neuroscience, linguistics, artificial intelligence, computer science, and psychology. He's redefining and reforming the role of the philosopher. ~ Marvin Minsky, #NFDB
1098:Just look at life with more playful eyes. Don’t be serious. Seriousness becomes like a blindness. Don’t pretend to be a thinker, a philosopher. Just simply be a human being. The whole world is showering its joy on you in so many ways, but you are too serious, you cannot open your heart. ~ Osho, #NFDB
1099:My friend the philosopher and martial artist Daniele Bolelli once gave me a helpful metaphor. He explained that training was like sweeping the floor. Just because we’ve done it once, doesn’t mean the floor is clean forever. Every day the dust comes back. Every day we must sweep. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
1100:Buddhist Barbie
In the 5th century B.C.
an Indian philosopher
Gautama teaches 'All is emptiness'
and 'There is no self.'
In the 20th century A.D.
Barbie agrees, but wonders how a man
with such a belly could pose,
smiling, and without a shirt.
~ Denise Duhamel,#NFDB
1101:Have we,” asks Claude de Saint-Martin, the great ‘unknown philosopher,’ “have we advanced one step further on the radiant path of enlightenment, that leads to the simplicity of men?” Let us wait in silence: perhaps ere long we shall be conscious of “the murmur of the gods. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck, #NFDB
1102:I learned that the world has a soul, and that whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of things. I learned that many alchemists realized their Personal Legends, and wound up discovering the Soul of the World, the Philosopher’s Stone, and the Elixir of Life. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1103:In all assemblies, though you wedge them ever so close, we may observe this peculiar property, that over their heads there is room enough; but how to reach it is the difficult point. To this end the philosopher's way in all ages has been by erecting certain edifices in the air. ~ Jonathan Swift, #NFDB
1104:In his essay, ‘Perpetual Peace,’ the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, argued that perpetual peace would eventually come to the world in one of two ways, by human insight or by conflicts and catastrophes of a magnitude that left humanity no other choice. We are at such a juncture. ~ Henry A Kissinger, #NFDB
1105:The king! I thought he was philosopher enough to allow that there was no murder in politics. In politics, my dear fellow, you know, as well I do, there are no men but ideas - no feelings, but interests; in politics we do not kill a man, we only remove an obstacle, that is all. ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
1106:We need Christ-the real Christ. A Christ born of empty speculation or created to squeeze into the philosopher's pattern
simply won't do. A recycled Christ, a Christ of compromise, can redeem no one. A Christ watered down, stripped of power, debased of glory, reduced to a symbol, ~ R C Sproul,#NFDB
1107:At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each one of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.” Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965)
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE–WINNING
MEDICAL MISSIONARY AND PHILOSOPHER ~ Rhonda Byrne,#NFDB
1108:It is foolish, generally speaking, for a philosopher to set fire to another philosopher in Smithfield Market because they do not agree in their theory of the universe. That was done very frequently in the last decadence of the Middle Ages, and it failed altogether in its object. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
1109:Maybe...in a way, this coffee reminds me of something. Maybe...maybe only a philosopher or a mad man would make this connection, but it's a little like life. I mean it's powerful going down and that doesn't even take into account the aftertaste, which really takes getting used to. ~ Bette Greene, #NFDB
1110:The French philosopher Camus used to tell himself quietly to live to the point of tears, not as a call for maudlin sentimentality, but as an invitation to the deep privilege of belonging and the way belonging affects us, shapes us and breaks our heart at a fundamental level. ~ David Whyte, #NFDB
1111:You're not very good at being contemplative," Milo said. "You always sound like some bad caricature of a philosopher, like those fortune cookies with 'Confucius say' or the Nietzsche guy from Mystery Men that's always saying 'when you walk on the ground, the ground walks on you. ~ Amanda Hocking, #NFDB
1112:I'm not a philosopher, Harry," [Michael] said. "But here's something for you to think about, at least. What goes around comes around. And sometimes you get what's coming around." He paused for a moment, frowning faintly, pursing his lips. "And sometimes you are what's coming around. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
1113:We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun.
We are not afraid of the darkness.
We trust that the moon shall guide us.
We are determining the future at this very moment.
We know that the heart is the philosopher's stone.
Our music is our alchemy. ~ Saul Williams,#NFDB
1114:And in declaring true every theory that does not contravene the evidence of the senses, Epicurus does not blink the fact that the philosopher may arrive at more than one explanation for a given phenomenon—in some cases, even at explanations that are mutually exclusive or contradictory. ~ Lucretius, #NFDB
1115:The growth of higher feeling within us is like the growth of faculty, bringing with it a sense of added strength. We can no more wish to return to a narrower sympathy than a painter or a musician can wish to return to his cruder manner, or a philosopher to his less complete formula. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1116:As Chris Hedges, the philosopher and journalist, wrote, “In an age of images and entertainment, in an age of instant emotional gratification, we neither seek nor want honesty or reality. Reality is complicated. Reality is boring. We are incapable or unwilling to handle its confusion. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
1117:Earnsha was not to be civilized with a wish, and my young lady was no philosopher, and no paragon of patience; but both their minds tending to the same point - one loving and desiring to esteem, and the other loving and desiring to be esteemed - they contrived in the end to reach it. ~ Emily Bronte, #NFDB
1118:The king! I thought he was philosopher enough to allow that there was no murder in politics. In politics, my dear fellow, you know, as well as I do, there are no men, but ideas - no feelings, but interests; in politics we do not kill a man, we only remove an obstacle, that is all. ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
1119:The philosopher Zeng said, "I daily examine myself on three points: whether, in transacting business for others, I may have been not faithful; whether, in intercourse with friends, I may have been not sincere; whether I may have not mastered and practiced the instructions of my teacher. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
1120:All sincere Bible students must be mindful of the words of Synesius, Bishop of Alexandria: "Therefore, as a bishop of the church, I will continue to disseminate the fables of the church, but in my private capacity I shall remain a philosopher to the end." ~ Manly P Hall, How to Understand Your Bible, #NFDB
1121:Two thousand three hundred years ago, the Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu dreamt he was a butterfly. Upon waking, he considered this question: how would I know if I was Chuang Tzu dreaming I’m a butterfly – or instead, if right now I’m a butterfly dreaming I’m a man named Chuang Tzu? ~ David Eagleman, #NFDB
1122:I'd just like to see thinking come back in style. I haven't heard a new idea in eight years. Let's get ordinary people arguing and talking again. I want to trigger new circuits in their nervous systems. That's the philosopher's job and I am the most important philosopher at this time. ~ Timothy Leary, #NFDB
1123:In the entire first Christian century Jesus is not mentioned by a single Greek or Roman historian, religion scholar, politician, philosopher or poet. His name never occurs in a single inscription, and it is never found in a single piece of private correspondence. Zero! Zip references! ~ Bart D Ehrman, #NFDB
1124:Just look at life with more playful eyes. Don't be serious. Seriousness becomes like a blindness. Don't pretend to be a thinker, a philosopher. Just simply be a human being. The whole world is showering its joy on you in so many ways, but if you are too serious, you cannot open your heart. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1125:Every soul, the philosopher says, is involuntarily deprived of truth; consequently in the same way it is deprived of justice and temperance and benevolence and everything of the kind. It is most necessary to bear this constantly in mind, for thus thou wilt be more gentle towards all. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1126:There is another possibly apocryphal story about the philosopher Jerry Fodor (he’s the Yogi Berra of philosophy). Someone asked what his stream of consciousness was like as he wrote philosophy. His reply was that it mostly said, “Come on, Jerry, you can do it, Jerry, keep going, Jerry. ~ Alison Gopnik, #NFDB
1127:The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord. The ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
1128:The young are hasty in falling in love. Youths always wish to hurry romance and commit their hearts. King Drew was such and told me he wished to have a bride. By all means, marry, I told him. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher. ~ Jeff Wheeler, #NFDB
1129:What is a good definition? For the philosopher or the scientist, it is a definition which applies to all the objects to be defined, and applies only to them; it is that which satisfies the rules of logic. But in education it is not that; it is one that can be understood by the pupils. ~ Henri Poincare, #NFDB
1130:After the lectures at the university he used to argue this point with a young Rumanian intellectual who reassured him: “There’s no evidence that Goethe ever had a ‘conflict’ in the modern sense, or a man like Jung, for instance. You’re not a romantic philosopher—you’re a scientist. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
1131:the English philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that silencing an opinion is “a peculiar evil.” If the opinion is right, we are robbed of the “opportunity of exchanging error for truth”; and if it’s wrong, we are deprived of a deeper understanding of the truth in “its collision with error. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
1132:The Muslim philosopher’s limpid faith in reason as the guide to and through the
highest apprehensions of the soul strikingly contrasts with his darker view of all
human activities that do not aim toward our perfection, the realization of our deep
inner affinity with God. ~ Lenn Evan Goodman,#NFDB
1133:Thinking should be like musical meditation. Has any philosopher pursued a thought to its limits the way Bach or Beethoven develop and exhaust a musical theme? Even after having read the most profound thinkers, one still feels the need to begin anew. Only music gives definitive answers. ~ Emile M Cioran, #NFDB
1134:Vices which are punished by our legal code had not prevented Diogenes from being a philosopher and a teacher. Caesar and Cicero were profligates and at the same time great men. Cato in his old age married a young girl, and yet he was regarded as a great ascetic and a pillar of morality. ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
1135:For my own part, without breach of truth or modesty, I may affirm that my life has been, on the whole, the life of a philosopher: from my birth I was made an intellectual creature, and intellectual in the highest sense my pursuits and pleasures have been, even from my schoolboy days. ~ Thomas de Quincey, #NFDB
1136:I do not think a philosopher who would apply himself so earnestly to the explaining the ultimate principles of the soul, would show himself a great master in the very science of human nature, which he pretends to explain, or very knowing in what is naturally satisfactory to the mind of man. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
1137:There is a familiar formula—perhaps the most compact and famous of all formulas—developed by Euler from a discovery of De Moivre: eiπ + 1 = 0. ...It appeals equally to the mystic, the scientist, the philosopher, the mathematician. ~ Edward Kasner, James R. Newman, Mathematics and the Imagination (1940)., #NFDB
1138:We seem to have a fear of empty spaces. The philosopher Spinoza called this a horror vacui. We want to fill up what is empty. Our lives stay very full. And when we are not blinded by busyness, we fill our inner space with guilt about things of the past or worries about things to come. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
1139:You are the patient one, Mademoiselle,' said Poirot to Miss Debenham. She shrugged her shoulders slightly. 'What else can one do?' You are a philosopher, Mademoiselle.' That implies a detached attitude. I think my attitude is more selfish. I have learned to save myself useless emotion. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
1140:A philosopher is one who, as an athlete of totality, is laden with the weight of the world. The essence of philosophy as a form of living is philponia — friendship with the entirety of weighty and worth things. The love of wisdom and the love of the weight of the one whole are unified. ~ Peter Sloterdijk, #NFDB
1141:If it be knowledge or wisdom one is seeking, then one had better go direct to the source. And the source is not the scholar or philosopher, not the master, saint, or teacher, but life itself - direct experience of life. The same is true for art. Here, too, we an dispense with "the masters. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
1142:As the philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote, "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they know only their own side of the question. ~ Daniel Todd Gilbert, #NFDB
1143:I believe that dance was the first art. A philosopher has said that dance and architecture were the first arts. I believe that dance was first because it's gesture, it's communication. That doesn't mean it's telling a story, but it means it's communicating a feeling, a sensation to people. ~ Martha Graham, #NFDB
1144:If you ever happen to turn your attention to externals, for the pleasure of any one, be assured that you have ruined your scheme of life. Be contented, then, in everything, with being a philosopher; and if you with to seem so likewise to any one, appear so to yourself, and it will suffice you. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
1145:In fact, I think it was the philosopher Hume who argued that it's far more likely that a miracle is a new physical phenomenon that we have yet to discover and have now discovered in that moment than it is a spiritual force coming down from God making something happen in front of you. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
1146:Intelligence may indeed be a benign influence creating isolated groups of philosopher-kings far apart in the heavens... On the other hand, intelligence may be a cancer of purposeless technological exploitation, sweeping across a galaxy as irresistibly as it has swept across our own planet. ~ Freeman Dyson, #NFDB
1147:One of my colleagues in Birmingham University, where I come from,’ said Trevair, ‘is a moral philosopher. He taught me that one of the ways to judge a course of action is to consider what company it puts one in. I doubt if that’s very good philosophy, but I find it a good rule of thumb. ~ Jill Paton Walsh, #NFDB
1148:There is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher. Fontenelle says he would undertake to persuade the whole public of readers to believe that the sun was neither the cause of light or heat, if he could only get six philosophers on his side. ~ Oliver Goldsmith, #NFDB
1149:You are a philosopher.” “I’m a tool, Paco. I’m the most recent tip for a very old machine in the hands of a very old man, who wishes to penetrate something and has so far failed to do so. Your employer fumbles through a thousand tools and somehow chooses me . . .” “You are a poet as well! ~ William Gibson, #NFDB
1150:If here and there an honest student of the black art still survives, he is regarded as a mad but harmless enthusiast; and as for the pretended searchers for the philosopher's stone, they are, if possible, less interesting objects than the dupes they still continue to cheat. ~ Encyclopedia Brittanica (1875), #NFDB
1151:so-called worst-case event, when it happened, exceeded the worst case at the time. I have called this mental defect the Lucretius problem, after the Latin poetic philosopher who wrote that the fool believes that the tallest mountain in the world will be equal to the tallest one he has observed. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1152:A philosopher knows that in reality he knows very little. That is why he constantly strives to achieve true insight. Socrates was one of these rare people. He knew that he knew nothing about life and about the world. And now comes the important part: it troubled him that he knew so little. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
1153:EPICURUS WROTE, “Empty is that philosopher’s argument by which no human suffering is therapeutically treated. For just as there is no use in a medical art that does not cast out the sicknesses of bodies, so too there is no use in philosophy, unless it casts out the suffering of the soul. ~ Martha C Nussbaum, #NFDB
1154:Wittgenstein imagined that the philosopher was like a therapist whose task was to put problems finally to rest, and to cure us ofbeing bewitched by them. So we are told to stop, to shut off lines of inquiry, not to find things puzzling nor to seek explanations. This is intellectual suicide. ~ Simon Blackburn, #NFDB
1155:Learning to live ought to mean learning to die - to acknowledge, to accept, an absolute mortality - without positive outcome,or resurrection, or redemption, for oneself or for anyone else. That has been the old philosophical injunction since Plato: to be a philosopher is to learn how to die. ~ Jacques Derrida, #NFDB
1156:The artist must be a philosopher. Socrates the skilled sculptor, Jean-Jacques [Rousseau] the good musician, and the immortal Poussin, tracing on the canvas the sublime lessons of philosophy, are so many proofs that an artistic genius should have no other guide except the torch of reason. ~ Jacques Louis David, #NFDB
1157:The young are hasty in falling in love. Youths always wish to hurry romance and commit their hearts. King Drew was such and told me he wished to have a bride. By all means, marry, I told him. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher. Myrddin ~ Jeff Wheeler, #NFDB
1158:Above all the genuine philosopher will generally seek lucidity and clarity and will always strive not to be like a turbid, raging, rain-swollen stream, but much more like a Swiss lake, which, in its peacefulness, combines great depth with a great clarity that just reveals its great depth. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
1159:Socrates ... is the first philosopher of life [Lebensphilosoph], ... Thinking serves life, while among all previous philosophers life had served thought and knowledge. ... Thus Socratic philosophy is absolutely practical: it is hostile to all knowledge unconnected to ethical implications. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1160:What can a philosopher show for himself? His life. If someone writes a book, but it is not accompanied by a philosophical life, it is not worth our time. Wisdom is measured in details: it is found in what one says and doesn't say, what one does and doesn't do, what one thinks and doesn't think. ~ Michel Onfray, #NFDB
1161:A nation which has no great philosophers will never have any great scientists. Heidegger says that the philosopher is a man who is always capable of wonder. This also characterizes the scientist. The utilitarian man is not capable of wonder. Hence, it is doubtful whether he can develop science ~ Pervez Hoodbhoy, #NFDB
1162:Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock. A man toting a sack of blood manure across his lawn is kin to Atlas letting the world spin easy on his shoulder. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
1163:The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful.
Gibbon, Edward. HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE COMPLETE VOLUMES 1 - 6 ~ Edward Gibbon,#NFDB
1164:We need Christ-the real Christ. A Christ born of empty speculation or created to squeeze into the philosopher's pattern
simply won't do. A recycled Christ, a Christ of compromise, can redeem no one. A Christ watered down, stripped of power, debased of glory, reduced to a symbol, or made impotent ~ R C Sproul,#NFDB
1165:Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hem-lock. A man toting a sack of blood manure across his lawn is kin to Atlas letting the world spin easy on his shoulder. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
1166:The simplicity of winter has a deep moral. The return of Nature, after such a career of splendor and prodigality, to habits so simple and austere, is not lost either upon the head or the heart. It is the philosopher coming back from the banquet and the wine to a cup of water and a crust of bread. ~ John Burroughs, #NFDB
1167:To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1168:Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher's stone. That was the pebble by the seashore he really wanted to find. ~ Fritz Leiber, in "Poor Superman" (1951), also in the anthology Tomorrow (1952) edited by Robert Heinlein, #NFDB
1169:The spiritual experience of the philosopher is the nourishing soil of philosophy; that without it there is no philosophy; and that, even so, spiritual experience does not, or must not, enter into the intelligible texture of philosophy. The pulp of the fruit must consist of nothing but the truth. ~ Jacques Maritain, #NFDB
1170:Unable to bring himself to believe in a God who offers salvation, the philosopher is above all one who believes that by understanding the world, by understanding ourselves and others as far our intelligence permits, we shall succeed in overcoming fear, through clear-sightedness rather than blind faith. ~ Luc Ferry, #NFDB
1171:Christmas was close at hand, in all his bluff and hearty honesty; it was the season of hospitality, merriment, and open-heartedness; the old year was preparing, like an ancient philosopher, to call his friends around him, and amidst the sound of feasting and revelry to pass gently and calmly away. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1172:So far there has been no philosopher in whose hands philosophy has not grown into an apology for knowledge; on this point, at least, every one is an optimist, that the greatest usefulness must be ascribed to knowledge. They are all tyrannized over by logic, and this is optimism in its essence. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1173:The King! I thought him enough of a philosopher to realize that there is no such thing as murder in politics. You know as well as I do, my dear boy, that in politics there are no people, only ideas; no feelings, only interests. In politics, you don't kill a man, you remove an obstacle, that's all. ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
1174:These hermits often wonder how the rest of the world can be so blind, not to notice what we’re doing to ourselves. “I have become solitary,” wrote the eighteenth-century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “because to me the most desolate solitude seems preferable to the society of wicked men ~ Michael Finkel, #NFDB
1175:Holy Virgin!" cried she, "what will become of us? A man killed in my apartment! If the officers of justice come, we are lost!"
"Had not Pangloss been hanged," said Candide, "he would give us good counsel in this emergency, for he was a profound philosopher. Failing him let us consult the old woman. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1176:I am a man and alive. For this reason I am a novelist. And, being a novelist, I consider myself superior to the saint, te scientist, the philosopher, and the poet, who are all great masters of different bits of man alive, but never get the whole hog....Only in the novel are all things given full play. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
1177:If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present. —Lao Tzu; ancient Chinese philosopher, founder of Taoism, could have been one guy or a mythical compilation of many, nobody really knows for sure I ~ Jen Sincero, #NFDB
1178:One must be oneself very little of a philosopher not to feel that the finest privilege of our reason consists in not believing in anything by the impulsion of a blind and mechanical instinct, and that it is to dishonour reason to put it in bonds as the Chaldeans did. Man is born to think for himself. ~ Denis Diderot, #NFDB
1179:This has completely disturbed my peace," he complained. "A philosopher should be protected against the rude happenings of everyday life."
"Never mind," said Moominmamma, consolingly. "You'll soon feel better."
"But I do mind," said the Muskrat peevishly. "Never any peace ... " And he mumbled on. ~ Tove Jansson,#NFDB
1180:To the mass of mankind, therefore, the philosopher may appear as a spiritual saboteur, a subverter of things lawfully established, and an apologist for the devil. So Spinoza appeared to his contemporaries, and for many years after his death he was regarded as the greatest heretic of the 17th century. ~ Roger Scruton, #NFDB
1181:Wise men can learn as much from a fool as from a philosopher. A fool is a splendid book to read from, because every leaf is open before you; there is a dash of the comic in the style, which entices you to read on, and if you gather nothing else, you are warned not to publish your own folly. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
1182:CONVERSATION in which neither party is listening to the other was dubbed a “duologue” by Abraham Kaplan, a philosopher who died in 1993. A duologue, he suggested, is more than a monologue but less than a dialogue. (Multiply a duologue by a roomful of people, he cynically added, and you have a conference.) ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1183:I can’t really do much with Nietzsche. He is more an artist than a philosopher; he doesn’t have the crystal-clear understanding of Schopenhauer. Of course, I value Nietzsche as a genius. He writes possibly the most beautiful language that German literature has to offer us today, but he is not my guide. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
1184:To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. The ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1185:I am a philosopher in the natural sciences. Matters of the heart I leave to the poets, but it has occurred to me, as a failed poet myself, that the cruelest aspect of love is its inviolable integrity. We do not choose to love—or I should say, we cannot choose not to love. Do you understand? ~ Rick Yancey, #NFDB
1186:Love from its very nature must be transitory. To seek for a secret that would render it constant would be as wild a search as for the philosopher’s stone or the grand panacea: and the discovery would be equally useless, or rather pernicious to mankind. The most holy band of society is friendship. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft, #NFDB
1187:The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, 'Seek simplicity and distrust it. ~ Alfred North Whitehead, #NFDB
1188:The theistic philosopher has a tendency to devalue insufficient worldviews, ideologies, and quite often common sense for the greater good, and in such cases, one should not be discouraged when seen as a bad guy. If he stresses over man's perception of a righteous heart, then he has given his heart to man. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
1189:We make sense of the world, some philosopher once said, only through its rearrangement, through a constant shift in perspective coupled with a slight movement of this or that here and there and then here again. In that manner, in the imperfections such movements reveal, the truth becomes apparent. ~ John Gregory Brown, #NFDB
1190:Where there have been powerful governments, societies, religions, public opinions, in short wherever there has been tyranny, there the solitary philosopher has been hated; for philosophy offers an asylum to a man into which no tyranny can force it way, the inward cave, the labyrinth of the heart. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1191:As the act of birth deserves no consideration in the whole process and procedure of heredity, so “being conscious” is not in any decisive sense the opposite of what is instinctive: most of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly guided and forced into certain channels by his instincts. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1192:Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change,”35 the British philosopher Bertrand Russell once wrote. Elsewhere he continued, “It is not a finished Utopia that we ought to desire, but a world where imagination and hope are alive and active.”36 ~ Rutger Bregman, #NFDB
1193:The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be ``Seek simplicity and distrust it.'' ~ Alfred North Whitehead, #NFDB
1194:The photographer in Blow-Up, who is not a philosopher, wants to see things closer up. But it so happens that, by enlarging too far, the object itself decomposes and disappears. Hence there's a moment in which we grasp reality, but then the moment passes. This was in part the meaning of Blow-Up. ~ Michelangelo Antonioni, #NFDB
1195:Thus the man who is responsive to artistic stimuli reacts to the reality of dreams as does the philosopher to the reality of existence; he observes closely, and he enjoys his observation: for it is out of these images that he interprets life, out of these processes that he trains himself for life. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1196:Candide drew near and saw his benefactor, who rose above the water one moment and was then swallowed up for ever. He was just going to jump after him, but was prevented by the philosopher Pangloss, who[Pg 19] demonstrated to him that the Bay of Lisbon had been made on purpose for the Anabaptist to be drowned. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1197:Oh, I’m not talking about the poor bugger in the pit,” said the philosopher. “I’m talking about the people throwing the stones. They were sure all right. They were sure it wasn’t them in the pit. You could see it in their faces. So glad it wasn’t them that they were throwing just as hard as they could. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1198:You're of a mind with Mr. Staines.'
'Am I?'
'Yes,' Anna said. 'That is precisely the sort of thing that he would say.'
'Your Mr. Staines is quite the philosopher, Miss Wetherell.'
'Why, Reverend,' Anna said, smiling suddenly, 'I believe you've just paid yourself a compliment. ~ Eleanor Catton,#NFDB
1199:Djali trotted along behind them, so overjoyed at seeing Gringoire again that she constantly made him stumble by affectionately putting her horns between his legs. 'That's life,' said the philosopher, each time he narrowly escaped falling flat on his face. 'It's often our best friends who cause our downfall. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1200:Information is the atmosphere—what the philosopher Luciano Floridi calls the infosphere—of our lives.7 But the fact that we live in the infosphere, that it is becoming ordinary, doesn’t mean that we understand it, nor how it is changing us and what Ludwig Wittgenstein might have called our form of life. ~ Michael P Lynch, #NFDB
1201:In October 2014 files released from the National Archives revealed that MI5 ‘opened personal files on the popular historian A. J. P. Taylor, the writer Iris Murdoch and the moral philosopher Mary Warnock after they and [Christopher] Hill signed a letter supporting a march against the nuclear bomb in 1959’. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
1202:Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs; and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way. ~ William James, #NFDB
1203:The history of philosophy is, to a great extent, that of a certain clash of human temperaments…Of whatever temperament a philosopher is, he tries, when philosophizing, to sink the fact of his temperament…Yet his temperament really gives him a stronger bias than any of his more strictly objective premises. ~ William James, #NFDB
1204:According to Law, confidence alone was the basis for public credit; with confidence, banknotes would serve just as well as coins. ‘I have discovered the secret of the philosopher’s stone, he told a friend, ‘it is to make gold out of paper.’40 The Duke demurred, saying ‘I am not rich enough to ruin myself. ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
1205:This idea was carried forward by the British philosopher C.D. Broad who wrote: The function of the brain and the nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and otherwise irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive. ~ Anthony Peake, #NFDB
1206:Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher and scientist, proclaimed in a treatise written in 350 BC that women have fewer teeth than men.1 Today we know this is nonsense. But for almost 2,000 years, it was accepted wisdom in the Western World. Then one day, someone had the most revolutionary of ideas: let’s count! ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1207:I am no philosopher, but I know this. Your religions cause wars and prevent marriages. There will be no peace on earth until every synagogue, every mosque, every church, and every temple is razed to the ground or made into a barn, and when that happens, no one will be happier than the Lord God Himself. ~ Louis de Berni res, #NFDB
1208:Mind has erected the objective outside world of the natural philosopher out of its own stuff. Mind could not cope with this gigantic task otherwise than by the simplifying device of excluding itself—withdrawing from its conceptual creation. Hence the latter does not contain its creator. ~ Erwin Schrödinger, Mind and Matter, #NFDB
1209:My maternal grandmother was not a philosopher, and she used to say that “words have no bones, but they can break bones.” She knew what we all know: a word can cause more pain, more damage than the sharpest knife. As far as she was concerned, saying something and doing something were exactly the same. ~ Theodor Kallifatides, #NFDB
1210:To paraphrase the philosopher Nietzsche, he who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how. I've found that 20 percent of any change is knowing how; but 80 percent is knowing why. If we gather a set of strong enough reasons to change, we can change in a minute something we've failed to change for years. ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
1211:What man needs is not just the persistent posing of ultimate questions, but the sense of what is feasible, what is possible, what is correct, here and now. The philosopher, of all people, must, I think, be aware of the tension between what he claims to achieve and the reality in which he finds himself. ~ Hans Georg Gadamer, #NFDB
1212:Isn't it distinctly to be seen in the development of each philosopher's theory, that he knows what is the chief significance of life beforehand, just as positively as the peasant Fyodor, and not a bit more clearly than he, and is simply trying by a dubious intellectual path to come back to what everyone knows? ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1213:My philosopher friend, who gazed on life and decided that any responsible, thinking individual should have the right to reject this gift that had never been asked for—and whose noble gesture reemphasised with each passing decade the compromise and littleness that most lives consist of. 'Most lives': my life. ~ Julian Barnes, #NFDB
1214:Surely, argued the British philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806–73), it was better for a Breton to accept French citizenship “than to sulk on his own rocks, the half-savage remnant of past times, revolving in his own little mental orbit, without participation or interest in the general movement of the world. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
1215:The philosopher of science is not much interested in the thought processes which lead to scientific discoveries; he looks for a logical analysis of the completed theory, including the establishing its validity. That is, he is not interested in the context of discovery, but in the context of justification. ~ Hans Reichenbach, #NFDB
1216:You are the patient one, Mademoiselle,' said Poirot to Miss Debenham.
She shrugged her shoulders slightly. 'What else can one do?'
You are a philosopher, Mademoiselle.'
That implies a detached attitude. I think my attitude is more selfish. I have learned to save myself useless emotion. ~ Agatha Christie,#NFDB
1217:A sense of growth is so important to happiness that it’s often preferable to be progressing to the summit rather than to be at the summit. Neither a scientist nor a philosopher but a novelist, Lisa Grunwald, came up with the most brilliant summation of this happiness principle: “Best is good, better is best. ~ Gretchen Rubin, #NFDB
1218:I love Osho. I don't know if you would call him a philosopher; I would just call him a really cool dude. Osho really changed my life. Because the way that he spoke about emotion and the male and female energies in the world and how people react to the world around them, it's so simple, yet it has such a depth. ~ Willow Smith, #NFDB
1219:Perfect love is rare indeed - for to be a lover will require that you continually have the subtlety of the very wise, the flexibility of the child, the sensitivity of the artist, the understanding of the philosopher, the acceptance of the saint, the tolerance of the scholar and the fortitude of the certain. ~ Leo F Buscaglia, #NFDB
1220:Rufus tells his patients when they come to him feeling deeply depressed or anxious: You’re not crazy to feel so distressed. You’re not broken. You’re not defective. He sometimes quotes the Eastern philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti,26 who explained: “It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a sick society. ~ Johann Hari, #NFDB
1221:There was this philosopher-slash-historian called Foucault, who wrote about how society is like this legendary prison called the panopticon. In the panopticon, you might be under constant observation, except you can never be sure whether someone is watching or not, so you wind up following the rules anyway. ~ Robyn Schneider, #NFDB
1222:The Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger (tutor to Nero) complained that his peers were wasting time and money accumulating too many books, admonishing that "the abundance of books is a distraction." Instead, Seneca recommended focusing on a limited number of good books, to be read thoroughly and repeatedly. ~ Daniel Levitin, #NFDB
1223:The thirteenth-century philosopher Roger Bacon claimed that “nobody can obtain to proficiency in the science of mathematics by the method hitherto known unless he devotes to its study thirty or forty years.” Today, the entire body of mathematics known to Bacon is now acquired by your average high school junior. ~ Joshua Foer, #NFDB
1224:With Napoleon and the Napoleonic philosopher
Hegel, the period of efficacy begins. Before Napoleon, men had discovered space and the universe; with
Napoleon, they discovered time and the future in terms of this world; and by this discovery the spirit of
rebellion is going to be profoundly transformed. ~ Albert Camus,#NFDB
1225:Carlyle's axiom that the true university of these days is a good collection of books has remained valid as far as I'm concerned, and even today I am convinced that one can become an excellent philosopher, historian, philologist, lawyer, or what will you, without having attended a university or even a Gymnasium. ~ Stefan Zweig, #NFDB
1226:Forty years ago the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead thought it self-evident that you would get a good government if you took power out of the hands of the acquisitive and gave it to the learned and the cultivated. At present, a child in kindergarten knows better than that. ~ Eric Hoffer, Before the Sabbath (1979), p. 40-41, #NFDB
1227:...Since divine truth and scripture clearly teach us that God, the Creator of all things, is Wisdom, a true philosopher will be a lover of God. That does not mean that all who answer to the name are really in love with genuine wisdom, for it is one thing to be and another to be called a philosopher. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
1228:When they asked some old Roman philosopher or other how he wanted to die, he said he would open his veins in a warm bath. I thought it would be easy, lying in the tup and seeing the redness flower from my wrists, flush after flush through the clear water, till I sank into sleep under a surface gaudy as poppies. ~ Sylvia Plath, #NFDB
1229:In some universes, all possible pasts funnel towards a single fixed ending, Ω.
It you are of millenarian bent, you might call Ω Armageddon, If you are of grammatical bent, you might call it punctuation on a cosmological scale.
If you are a philosopher in such a universe, you might call Ω inevitable. ~ Yoon Ha Lee,#NFDB
1230:It is said that even the philosopher cannot bear to endure a toothache. Words contain great wisdom, but it is only in the manifestation of these experiences that the wisdom settles into our bones and guides us to act. You see, the words printed here are but concepts. You must go through the experiences yourself. ~ Jeff Wheeler, #NFDB
1231:The Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger (tutor to Nero) complained that his peers were wasting time and money accumulating too many books, admonishing that “the abundance of books is a distraction.” Instead, Seneca recommended focusing on a limited number of good books, to be read thoroughly and repeatedly. ~ Daniel J Levitin, #NFDB
1232:A dining club which I was involved in at Oxford University invited Sir Isaiah Berlin to dinner, who I believe was probably the greatest liberal philosopher in the 20th century. I sat beside him and we spoke about liberal philosophy and the events of the 20th century all night over dinner - it was unforgettable! ~ George Brandis, #NFDB
1233:Strengthen the individual. Start with yourself. Take care with yourself. Define who you are. Refine your personality. Choose your destination and articulate your Being. As the great nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche so brilliantly noted, “He whose life has a why can bear almost any how. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
1234:"You cannot believe what you are saying." "Well, no. Hardly ever. But the philosopher is like the poet. The latter composes ideal letters for an ideal nymph, only to plumb with his words the depths of passion. The philosopher tests the coldness of his gaze, to see how far he can undermine the fortress of bigotry." ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
1235:I recall the story of the philosopher and the theologian... The two were engaged in disputation and the theologian used the old quip about a philosopher resembling a blind man, in a dark room, looking for a black cat — which wasn't there. ‘That may be,’ said the philosopher, ‘but a theologian would have found it. ~ Julian Huxley, #NFDB
1236:The life of a seamstress is no smaller than the life of a queen, the life of a child with Down syndrome no less filled with promise than the life of a philosopher, because the only significant measure of your life is the positive effect you have on others, either by conscious acts of will or by unconscious example. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
1237:Trin Tragula—for that was his name—was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.”
Excerpt From: Adams, Douglas. “The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.” Random House Publishing Group, 2010-09-29. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright. ~ Douglas Adams,#NFDB
1238:Aphorisms are short, pithy sayings; they are individual passages that can be recited and remain intelligible out of context; they can stand on their own without further support. ~ Dr. Louis Groarke, Canadian philosopher. Philosophy as Inspiration: Blaise Pascal and the Epistemology of Aphorisms. Essay in, Poetics Today, Fall 2007, #NFDB
1239:I believe it was the great ogre philosopher Gary who observed that complexity is, generally speaking, an illusion of conscious desire. All things exist in as simple a form as necessity dictates. When a thing is labeled 'complex,' that's just a roundabout way of saying you're not observant enough to understand it. ~ A Lee Martinez, #NFDB
1240:In Radical Optimism, Beatrice Bruteau sets forth a deep and shining vision of spirituality, one that guides the reader into the contemplative life and the very root of our being. Dr. Bruteau is a philosopher of great measure whose work should be required reading for all who seek the deepest truth about themselves. ~ Sue Monk Kidd, #NFDB
1241:learned that the world has a soul, and that whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of things. I learned that many alchemists realized their Personal Legends, and wound up discovering the Soul of the World, the Philosopher’s Stone, and the Elixir of Life. “But, above all, I learned that these ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1242:Philosophy, certainly, is some account of truths the fragments and very insignificant parts of which man will practice in this workshop; truths infinite and in harmony with infinity, in respect to which the very objects and ends of the so-called practical philosopher will be mere propositions, like the rest. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1243:Strengthen the individual. Start with yourself. Take care with yourself. Define who you are. Refine your personality. Choose your destination and articulate your Being. As the great nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche so brilliantly noted, “He whose life has a why can bear almost any how. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
1244:The philosopher forms his principles on an infinity of particular observations. He does not confuse truth with plausibility, he takes for truth what is true, for false what is false, for doubtful what is doubtful, and probable what is probable. The philosophical spirit is thus a spirit of observation and accuracy. ~ Denis Diderot, #NFDB
1245:To mix science up with philosophy is only to produce a philosophy that has lost all its ideal value and a science that has lost all its practical value. It is for my private physician to tell me whether this or that food will kill me. It is for my private philosopher to tell me whether I ought to be killed. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
1246:[…] but I remember I preferred the soldier to the philosopher at the time; a preference which life has only confirmed. One was a man, and the other was either more – or less. However, they are both dead, and Mrs Beard is dead, and youth, strength, genius, thoughts, achievements, simple hearts – all dies… No matter. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
1247:The philosopher believes that the value of his philosophy lies in the whole, in the building: posterity discovers it in the bricks with which he built and which are then often used again for better building: in the fact, that is to say, that building can be destroyed and nonetheless possess value as material. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1248:A fin-de-siècle philosopher had once remarked—and been roundly denounced for his pains—that Walter Elias Disney had contributed more to genuine human happiness than all the religious teachers in history. Now, half a century after the artist’s death, his dreams were still proliferating across the Florida landscape. ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB
1249:Let no Christian therefore, whether philosopher or theologian, embrace eagerly and lightly whatever novelty happens to be thought up from day to day, but rather let him weigh it with painstaking care and a balanced judgment, lest he lose or corrupt the truth he already has, with grave danger and damage to his faith. ~ Pope Pius XII, #NFDB
1250:You never hear of a sportsman losing his sense of smell in a tragic accident and for good reason; in order for the universe to teach excruciating lessons that are unable to apply in later life, the sportsman must lose his legs, the philosopher his mind, the painter his eyes, the musician his ears, the chef his tongue. ~ Steve Toltz, #NFDB
1251:I am by turns a petulant adolescent and a mature man, a melancholy loner and a wit telling actors their trade. I cannot decide whether I'm a philosopher or a moping teenager, a poet or a murderer, a procrastinator or a man of action. I might be truly mad or sane pretending to be mad or even mad pretending to be sane. ~ Jasper Fforde, #NFDB
1252:If the God of revelation is most appropriately worshipped in the temple of religion, the God of nature may be equally honored in the temple of science. Even from its lofty minarets the philosopher may summon the faithful to prayer, and the priest and sage exchange altars without the compromise of faith or knowledge. ~ David Brewster, #NFDB
1253:And what magnificent instruments of observation we possess in our senses! This nose, for example, of which no philosopher has yet spoken with reverence and gratitude, is actually the most delicate instrument so far at our disposal: it is able to detect tiny chemical concentrations that even elude a spectroscope. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1254:Since we tend to see ourselves primarily in light of our intentions, which are invisible to others,” said philosopher J. G. Bennett, “while we see others mainly in the light of their actions, which are all that’s visible to us, we have a situation in which misunderstanding and injustice are the order of the day.” And ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
1255:A kind and generous man by nature, he had stumbled, by chance, over that common Philosopher`s stone (much more easily discovered than the object of the alchemist`s researches), which sometimes trips up kind and generous men, and has the fatal property of turning gold to dross and every precious thing to poor account. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1256:My primary object is to defend and advance a principle in which I see the only possible relief from much that enthralls and degrades and distorts, turning light to darkness and good to evil, rather than to gage a philosopher or weigh a philosophy. Yet the examination I propose must lead to a decisive judgment upon both. ~ Henry George, #NFDB
1257:No one can tell you for certain if we have free will or we don't. [...] Whatever you choose to believe, you will probably want to agree with the philosopher John Locke, who argued that the whole debate is largely irrelevant. If it feels to us like free will, then let's treat it as free will and get on with our lives. ~ John Ironmonger, #NFDB
1258:There was some ground for this appropriation of Nietzsche as one of the originators of the Nazi Weltanschauung. Had not the philosopher thundered against democracy and parliaments, preached the will to power, praised war and proclaimed the coming of the master race and the superman—and in the most telling aphorisms? ~ William L Shirer, #NFDB
1259:It is the man of science, eager to have his every opinion regenerated, his every idea rationalized, by drinking at the fountain of fact, and devoting all the energies of his life to the cult of truth, not as he understands it, but as he does not yet understand it, that ought properly to be called a philosopher. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce, #NFDB
1260:The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau speculated that states are formed by a social contract, a rational decision reached when people calculated their self-interest, came to the agreement that they would be better off in a state than in simpler societies, and voluntarily did away with their simpler societies. But ~ Jared Diamond, #NFDB
1261:The philosopher Edmund Burke said “there is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.” Imagination is the life force of the genius code. This force amplifies and colors every other piece of the code, and unlocks our potential for understanding and ~ Sean Patrick, #NFDB
1262:We can call this view liberalism, employing a definition by the self-described liberal philosopher Peter Berkowitz. In his words, “Each generation of liberal thinkers” focuses on “dimensions of life previously regarded as fixed by nature,” then seeks to show that in reality they are “subject to human will and remaking. ~ Nancy R Pearcey, #NFDB
1263:In truth, knowledge is a great and very useful quality; those who despise it give evidence enough of their stupidity. Yet I do not set its value at that extreme measure that some attribute to it, such as the philosopher Herillus, who find in it the sovereign good and think it has the power to make us wise and happy. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
1264:Marcus reminded himself: “Don’t await the perfection of Plato’s Republic.” He wasn’t expecting the world to be exactly the way he wanted it to be, but Marcus knew instinctively, as the Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper would later write, that “he alone can do good who knows what things are like and what their situation is. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
1265:The creator of the heavens obeys a carpenter; the God of eternal glory listens to a poor virgin. Has anyone ever witnessed anything comparable to this? Let the philosopher no longer disdain from listening to the common laborer; the wise, to the simple; the educated, to the illiterate; a child of a prince, to a peasant. ~ Anthony of Padua, #NFDB
1266:And although I have seen nothing but black crows in my life, it doesn't mean that there's no such thing as a white crow. Both for a philosopher and for a scientist it can be important not to reject the possibility of finding a white crow. You might almost say that hunting for 'the white crow' is science's principal task. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
1267:For when you have really heard the sound of rain you can hear, and see and feel, everything else in the same way—as needing no translation, as being just that which it is, though it may be impossible to say what. I have tried for years, as a philosopher, but in words it comes out all wrong: in black and white with no color. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
1268:It was a clever saying of Bion, the philosopher, that, just as the suitors, not being able to approach Penelope, consorted with her maid-servants, so also do those who are not able to attain to philosophy wear themselves to a shadow over the other kinds of education which have no value. ~ Plutarch, “The education of children,” Moralia, 7D, #NFDB
1269:Jetzt wage ich es, der Weisheit selber nachzugehen und selber Philosoph zu sein; früher verehrte ich die Philosophen. - Now I dare to pursue wisdom itself and to be myself a philosopher; formerly I worshipped the philosophers. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Letter to Karl Fuchs, June 1878, cited in Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche (Baltimore: 1997), p. 46., #NFDB
1270:One day he asked a visitor whence he came. “From Mr. Haller’s.” “He is a great man,” said Voltaire; “a great poet, a great naturalist, a great philosopher, almost a universal genius.” “What you say, sir, is the more admirable, as Mr. Haller does not do you the same justice.” “Ah,” said Voltaire, “perhaps we are both mistaken. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
1271:The German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, who had syphilis, said that only a person of deep faith could afford the luxury of religious skepticism. Humanists, by and large educated, comfortably middle-class persons with rewarding lives like mine, find rapture enough in secular knowledge and hope. Most people can't. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1272:To me, a philosopher who says that the distinction between human and nonhuman depends on whether you have a white or a black skin, and a philosopher who says that the distinction between human and nonhuman depends on whether or not you know the difference between a subject and a predicate, are more alike than they are unlike. ~ J M Coetzee, #NFDB
1273:But at the bottom, the immanent philosopher sees in the entire universe only the deepest longing for absolute annihilation, and it is as if he clearly hears the call that permeates all spheres of heaven: Redemption! Redemption! Death to our life! and the comforting answer: you will all find annihilation and be redeemed! ~ Philipp Mainl nder, #NFDB
1274:Mere subtlety may qualify you as a sceptic but not as a philosopher. On the other hand, scepticism is in philosophy what the Opposition is in Parliament; it is just as beneficial, and indeed necessary. It rests everywhere on the fact that philosophy is not capable of producing the kind of evidence mathematics produces. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
1275:With all due respect to Israel’s primo king, David and I are not on the same page here. I’m more with the seventeenth-century philosopher Blaise Pascal, who lived when modern science was coming into its own, and who had public nervous breakdowns in his Pensées such as: “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
1276:Burns points out that the basic idea of cognitive therapy—that our thoughts affect our emotions and mood, not the other way around—goes back a long way: The ancient philosopher Epictetus rested his career on the idea that it is not events that determine your state of mind, but how you decide to feel about the events. This ~ Tom Butler Bowdon, #NFDB
1277:Inside every prostitute is an actress, psychologist, and philosopher. Her philosophy is a private interpretation of life to make it bearable. High-lifers talk about “philosophy” to look smart, to stroke the ego—something that she sold long ago. We are just chickens. Chickens are supposed to be dumb, with feelings only for money. ~ Jason Y Ng, #NFDB
1278:The philosopher, who with calm suspicion examines the dreams and omens, the miracles and prodigies, of profane or even of ecclesiastical history, will probably conclude that, if the eyes of the spectators have sometimes been deceived by fraud, the understanding of the readers has much more frequently been insulted by fiction. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
1279:But that (physical attractiveness), as the late great Irish poet and philosopher of beauty John O’Donohue helpfully distinguished, is glamour. I’ve taken his definition as my own, for naming beauty in all its nuance in the moment-to-moment reality of our days: beauty is that in the presence of which we feel more alive. ~ Krista Tippett, #NFDB
1280:To the artist He is the one altogether lovely, and to the educator He is the master teacher. To the philosopher He is the wisdom of God, and to the lonely He is a brother; to the sorrowful, a comforter to the bereaved, the resurrection and the life. And to the sinner he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin from the world. ~ John Gerstner, #NFDB
1281:I did not intend to be a writer. I first wanted to be a lawyer, like my father. Then I got bit by the bug of philosophy and wanted to be a philosophy professor. I went to graduate school and quickly discovered it was impossible for a woman in those days - this was the early fifties - to be a philosopher, so I gave that up. ~ Alix Kates Shulman, #NFDB
1282:In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, published in 1748, the Scottish philosopher David Hume reduced the principles of association to three: resemblance, contiguity in time and place, and causality. Our concept of association has changed radically since Hume’s days, but his three principles still provide a good start. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
1283:Perhaps it is worthwhile mentioning in this context a phenomenon as uncalled for as it is irritating, and that is the philosopher, or the so-called philosopher, who imagines he can support his aberrant theses by means of novels and plays, which amounts to inventing aberrant stories in order to prove that two and two make five ~ Frithjof Schuon, #NFDB
1284:Like a certain philosopher I would, upon my soul, have all young men from eighteen to twenty-five kept under barrels; seeing how often, in the lack of some such sequestering process, the woman sits down before each as his destiny, and too frequently enervates his purpose, till he abandons the most promising course ever conceived! ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
1285:Prophetically, poetically, philosophically: for he thought of himself as all those things, prophet, poet and philosopher, he wondered if anyone ever really knew another person. Oh, they think they do, would swear that they knew another’s heart. But does one person ever really know the evil that lurks inside another? He laughed ~ Vickie McKeehan, #NFDB
1286:When they can't win a debate (can they ever?), leftists deploy what the late novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand called the argument from intimidation. Instead of trying to refute the other side, they label their opponents' position evil, attribute sinister motives to its adherents, and charge that its proponents are encouraging violence. ~ Don Feder, #NFDB
1287:A habitual indulgence in the inarticulate is a sure sign of the philosopher who has not learned to think, the poet who has not learned to write, the painter who has not learned to paint, and the impression that has not learned to express itself--all of which are compatible with an immensity of genius in the inexpressible soul. ~ George Santayana, #NFDB
1288:The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once remarked that if you ask a man how much is two plus two and he tells you five, that is a mistake. But if you ask a man how much is two plus two and he tells you ninety-seven, that is no longer a mistake. The man you are talking to is operating with a wholly different logic from your own. ~ Thomas Friedman, #NFDB
1289:...the physicist cannot simply surrender to the philosopher the critical contemplation of the theoretical foundations; for, he himself knows best, and feels more surely where the shoe pinches...Physical conceptions are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
1290:If you should ever turn your will to things outside your control in order to impress someone, be sure that you have wrecked your whole purpose in life. Be content, then, to be a philosopher in all that you do, and if you wish also to be seen as one, show yourself first that you are and you will succeed.” —EPICTETUS, ENCHIRIDION, 23 ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
1291:I have held and hold souls to be immortal.... Speaking as a Catholic, they do not pass from body to body, but go to paradise, purgatory or hell. But I have reasoned deeply, and, speaking as a philosopher, since the soul is not found without body and yet is not body, it may be in one body or in another, and pass from body to body. ~ Giordano Bruno, #NFDB
1292:I just realized, sometime early on in college, that I wanted to be a philosopher. I basically decided that I wanted to spend my life thinking as deeply and carefully and reflectively as I could about the nature of reality and our human engagement with it, and that taking a philosophical approach was the best way to go about doing this. ~ L A Paul, #NFDB
1293:One of the interesting characteristics of the Ego Tunnel is that it creates (as Finnish philosopher Antti Revonsuo called it) a robust "out-of-the brain experience", a highly realistic experience of not operating on internal models, but of effortlessly being in direct and immediate contact with the external world - and oneself. ~ Thomas Metzinger, #NFDB
1294:The British philosopher and novelist Raymond Tallis, writing in the New Scientist (January 2010), commented on how the ‘material world, far from being the noisy, colourful, smelly place we live in, is colourless, silent, full of odourless molecules, atoms, particles, whose nature and behaviour is best described mathematically’. ~ Emma Restall Orr, #NFDB
1295:The girl had taken the Ph.D. in philosophy and this left Mrs. Hopewell at a complete loss. You could say, “My daughter is a nurse,” or “My daughter is a school teacher,” or even, “My daughter is a chemical engineer.” You could not say, “My daughter is a philosopher.” That was something that had ended with the Greeks and Romans ~ Flannery O Connor, #NFDB
1296:A novel is a wish list of who you subliminally want to be and can be. Writing is an arrogant pursuit. In the secret heart of every novelist there are two people: a politician and a philosopher certain that he/she knows best while, at the same time, remains an outsider who believes nothing matters much, and few things matter at all. ~ Chloe Thurlow, #NFDB
1297:As the philosopher Pamela Hieronymi says, “A past wrong against you, standing in your history without apology, atonement, retribution, punishment, restitution, condemnation, or anything else that might recognize it as a wrong, makes a claim. It says, in effect, that you can be treated in this way, and that such treatment is acceptable ~ Paul Bloom, #NFDB
1298:A stranger could drive through Miguel Street and just say “Sum!” because he could see no more. But we who lived there saw our street as a world, where everybody was quite different from everybody else. Mam-man was mad; George was stupid; Big Foot was a bully; hat was an adventurer; Popo was a philosopher; and Morgan was our comedian. ~ V S Naipaul, #NFDB
1299:One can never wrestle enough with God if one does so out of a pure regard for truth,” wrote French philosopher, activist, and mystic Simone Weil. “Christ likes for us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms. ~ James H Cone, #NFDB
1300:One cannot help reflecting on the irony that the celebrated philosopher of freedom, the great atheist, maintained an almost religious faith in an ideology that vandalized the very face of freedom. In fact, Sartre was largely unpolitical during the 1930s (he did not vote), and Nausea is political only, as it were, at its margins. ~ Jean Paul Sartre, #NFDB
1301:There is nothing more inspiring than a speaker who makes clear to his audience that he has need of them. [37] Tell me – has anyone who has ever heard you read or discourse felt self-remorse as a result, or experienced self-realization, or afterwards left thinking, ‘The philosopher touched a nerve there; I can’t go on acting as I have’? ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
1302:To be a philosopher is not of course necessarily to be in agreement with Aristotle. But it was increasingly an Aristotelian point of view that prevailed among Islamic philosophers and, when the greatest of the Islamic critics of philosophy, al-Ghazal!, attacks philosophers he identifies philosophy with Aristotelian philosophy. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre, #NFDB
1303:While war ravaged Rome, Mithradates gloried in the victories of the Greek campaign. Halley’s Comet was taken as a good omen by Mithradates’ Magi and by his allies. In Athens, the philosopher Aristion succeeded Athenion, elected on a pro-Mithradates platform; Aristion’s name appeared with Mithradates’ on Athenian coins of 87–86 BC. ~ Adrienne Mayor, #NFDB
1304:Because humans are capable of knowing, the first cause that produced them must have a mind. Because humans are capable of choosing, the first cause must have a will. And so on. Philosopher Étienne Gilson captures the argument neatly: because a human is a someone and not a something, the source of human life must be also a Someone. ~ Nancy R Pearcey, #NFDB
1305:I decided to do philosophy at university, with a view to becoming a professional philosopher. Being a rather unstable character, at some points I had doubts about becoming a professional philosopher, but the example of two of my teachers, Ezequiel de Olaso and Juan Rodriguez Larreta, made me confirm my original decision. ~ Gonzalo Rodriguez Pereyra, #NFDB
1306:Only a fool or philosopher would make sweeping generalizations about the nature of happiness. I am no philosopher, so here goes: Money matters, but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude. ~ Eric Weiner, #NFDB
1307:The greatest modern philosopher was moved by nothing more than by duty. His life, in consequence, was unremarkable. For Kant, the virtuous man is so much the master of his passions as scarcely to be prompted by them, and so far indifferent to power and reputation as to regard their significance as nothing beside that of duty itself. ~ Roger Scruton, #NFDB
1308:A philosopher ... is not fairly judged by his eccentricities, nor by the frailties to which he is liable; still less should his philosophy as a whole fall into ill-repute because of those among its devotees who have stumbled into wells, or who aimlessly pass their lives in whetting their faculties and then neglecting to use them. ~ John Grier Hibben, #NFDB
1309:As the philosopher Hilary Putnam put it: ‘The difference between science and previous ways of trying to find out truth is, in large part, that scientists are willing to test their ideas, because they don’t regard them as infallible . . . You have to put questions to nature and be willing to change your ideas if they don’t work.’FN4811 ~ Matthew Syed, #NFDB
1310:Calling for the humane treatment of animals, seventeenth-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham argued, “The question is not, ‘Can they reason?’ nor, ‘Can they talk?’ but rather, ‘Can they suffer?’” The question of sentience—the ability to feel pleasure and pain—has been at the center of arguments surrounding both human and animal welfare. ~ Melanie Joy, #NFDB
1311:The greatest achievement of the human brain is its ability to imagine objects and episodes that do not exist in the realm of the real, and it is this ability that allows us to think about the future. As one philosopher noted, the human brain is an “anticipation machine,” and “making future” is the most important thing it does.2 ~ Daniel Todd Gilbert, #NFDB
1312:Every choice we make is a testament to our autonomy, to our sense of self-determination. Almost every social, moral, or political philosopher in the Western tradition since Plato has placed a premium on such autonomy. And each new expansion of choice gives us another opportunity to assert our autonomy, and this display our character. ~ Barry Schwartz, #NFDB
1313:French philosopher whom professional philosophers generally accord highest honors is Descartes. Montaigne and Pascal, Voltaire and Rousseau, Bergson and Sartre do not enjoy their greatest vogue among philosophers, and of these only Rousseau has had any considerable influence on the history of philosophy (through Kant and Hegel). ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1314:I am the Muskrat,” said the wretched creature faintly. “A philosopher, you know. I should just like to point out that your bridge-building activities have completely ruined my house in the river bank, and although ultimately it doesn't matter what happens, I must say even a philosopher does not care for being soaked to the skin. ~ Tove Jansson, #NFDB
1315:The Norweigian philosopher Tonnesen said that to think about anything but death is evasion. Society, art, culture, the whole of civilisation is nothing but evasion, one great collective self delusion, the intention of which is to make us forget that all the time we are falling through the air, at every moment getting closer to death. ~ Sven Lindqvist, #NFDB
1316:wretched existence … Patience, they say, is what I must now choose for my guide, and I have done so—Perhaps I shall get better, perhaps not; I am ready.—Forced to become a philosopher already in my twenty-eighth year.—Divine One, thou seest my inmost soul; thou knowest that therein dwells the love of mankind and the desire to do good … ~ Stephen Cope, #NFDB
1317:The rise of the Oligarchy will always remain a cause of secret wonder to the historian and the philosopher. Other great historical events have their place in social evolution. They were inevitable. Their coming could have been predicted with the same certitude that astronomers to-day predict the outcome of the movements of stars. Without ~ Jack London, #NFDB
1318:When I was twelve, I was interviewed by a doctoral candidate in education and asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said that I either wanted to be a philosopher or a clown, and I understood then, I think, that much depended on whether or not I found the world worth philosophizing about, and what the price of seriousness might be. ~ Judith Butler, #NFDB
1319:Abstruse thought and profound researches I prohibit, and will severely punish, by the pensive melancholy which they introduce, by the endless uncertainty in which they involve you, and by the cold reception which your pretended discoveries shall meet with, when communicated. Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
1320:(Mind you, according to Walter Benjamin, the twentieth century’s great philosopher of collecting, browsing and what we’d now call vintage shopping, ‘the non-reading of books’ is a defining characteristic of serious bibliomaniacs; he cites Anatole France, who blithely admitted that he’d barely read one-tenth of the books in his library.) ~ Simon Reynolds, #NFDB
1321:Two Chinamen visiting Europe went to the theatre for the first time. One of them occupied himself with trying to understand the theatrical machinery, which he succeeded in doing. The other, despite his ignorance of the language, sought to unravel the meaning of the play. The former is like the astronomer, the latter the philosopher. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
1322:At length it became high time to remember the first clause of that great discovery made by the ancient philosopher, for securing health, riches, and wisdom; the infallibility of which has been for generations verified by the enormous fortunes constantly amassed by chimney-sweepers and other persons who get up early and go to bed betimes. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1323:Even if you have knowledge, do not disturb the childlike faith of the ignorant. On the other hand, go down to their level and gradually bring them up (note 30). That is a very powerful idea, and it has become the ideal in India. That is why you can see a great philosopher going into a temple and worshipping images. It is not hypocrisy. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1324:Faith is one of the forces by which men live,” said philosopher and psychologist William James, and he was right. People act by faith when they step into an elevator, order food in a restaurant, drive on the highway, or say their marriage vows. The Christian believer lives by faith in the living God and what He has revealed in His Word. ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
1325:Philosopher Ken Wilber offered some explanation in his book Grace and Grit: “The ego ... is kept in existence by a collection of emotional insults; it carries its personal bruises as the fabric of its very existence. It actively collects hurts and insults, even while resenting them, because without its bruises, it would be, literally, nothing. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1326:It is not science which leads to unbelief but rather ignorance. The ignorant man thinks he understands something provided that he sees it every day. The natural philosopher walks amid enigmas, always striving to understand and always half-understanding. He learns to believe what he does not understand, and that is a step on the road to faith. ~ Jan Potocki, #NFDB
1327:One trait in the philosopher's character we can assume is his love of the knowledge that reveals eternal reality, the realm unaffected by change and decay. He is in love with the whole of that reality, and will not willingly be deprived even of the most insignificant fragment of it - just like the lovers and men of ambition we described earlier on. ~ Plato, #NFDB
1328:Philosophy is the art of dying.Philosophy is an activity that has always been concerned with how one seizes hold of one's mortality, and I see myself continuing a very ancient tradition that goes back to Socrates and Epicurus, which is that to be a philosopher is to try and learn how to die. In learning how to die, one learns how to live. ~ Simon Critchley, #NFDB
1329:In his theory of the sublime, eighteenth-century philosopher Edmund Burke proposes the notion of “negative pain”: the idea that a feeling of fear—paired with a sense of safety, and the ability to look away—can produce a feeling of delight. One woman can sit on her couch with a glass of Chardonnay and watch another woman drink away her life. ~ Leslie Jamison, #NFDB
1330:I don't think that anything of any consequence is known a priori: all our knowledge is built up by modifying the lore passed on to us by our ancestors in light of our experiences, and the best a philosopher can do is to learn as much about what has been discovered in various empirical fields, and use it to try to craft an improved synthesis. ~ Philip Kitcher, #NFDB
1331:Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs; and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way. ~ William James, The Sentiment of Rationality (1882)., #NFDB
1332:There are twelve tasks to complete, when you step through this door,” Hadrian replied, his tone jittery. It was clear he had no love for this place. “There are t-twelve, in homage to the great mage philosopher Orpheus, to c-commemorate the twelve labors of Hercules, and also to symbolize the twelve years it takes for Jupiter to orbit the sun. ~ Bella Forrest, #NFDB
1333:The value of a philosopher’s thought is not in its answers—no philosopher has any that are more helpful than saying nothing at all—but in how well they speak to the prejudgments of their consumers. Such is the importance—and the nullity—of rhetoric. Ask any hard-line pessimist, but do not expect him to expect you to take his words seriously. ~ Thomas Ligotti, #NFDB
1334:We need Christ—the real Christ. A Christ born of empty speculation or created to squeeze into the philosopher’s pattern simply won’t do. A recycled Christ, a Christ of compromise, can redeem no one. A Christ watered down, stripped of power, debased of glory, reduced to a symbol, or made impotent by scholarly surgery is not Christ but Antichrist. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
1335:An Austrian philosopher named Jean Améry, tortured by the Gestapo because of his activity with the Belgian resistance and then deported to Auschwitz because he was a Jew, wrote that anyone who has been tortured remains forever tortured and can never again be at ease in the world. One’s faith in humanity is broken and can never be acquired again. ~ Chaim Potok, #NFDB
1336:An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water. ~ John Gardner, #NFDB
1337:But is all this true?" said Brutha. Didactylos shrugged. "Could be. Could be. We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends towards guesswork." "You mean you don't KNOW it's true?" said Brutha. "I THINK it might be," said Didactylos. "I could be wrong. Not being certain is what being a philosopher is all about. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1338:Nothing like the act of eating for equalising men. Dying is nothing to it. The philosopher dies sententiously--the pharisee ostentatiously--the simple-hearted humbly--the poor idiot blindly, as the sparrow falls to the ground; the philosopher and idiot, publican and pharisee, all eat after the same fashion--given an equally good digestion. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell, #NFDB
1339:Perhaps he was recalling the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who wrote in the nineteenth century: “When we are ascending the hill of life, death is not visible: it lies down at the bottom of the other side. But once we have crossed the top of the hill, death comes in view—death, which, until then, was known to us only by hearsay.”) ~ Pamela Druckerman, #NFDB
1340:She’s particularly taken by a French philosopher named Paul Virilio, who writes about the Accident—the idea that every time you introduce a new technology, you also introduce the accident of that technology, so you have a responsibility to anticipate not just the good it can do but also the bad it can wreak, not just the glory but also the ruin. ~ Elan Mastai, #NFDB
1341:There are, of course, a number of epistemological questions, some of which lie more in the province of the philosopher than they do the economist or the social scientist. The one with which I am particularly concerned here is that of the role of knowledge in social systems, both as a product of the past and as a determinant of the future. ~ Kenneth E Boulding, #NFDB
1342:(Perhaps he was recalling the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who wrote in the nineteenth century: “When we are ascending the hill of life, death is not visible: it lies down at the bottom of the other side. But once we have crossed the top of the hill, death comes in view—death, which, until then, was known to us only by hearsay.”) ~ Pamela Druckerman, #NFDB
1343:Scientists are people of very dissimilar temperaments doing different things in very different ways. Among scientists are collectors, classifiers and compulsive tidiers-up; many are detectives by temperament and many are explorers; some are artists and others artisans. There are poet-scientists and philosopher-scientists and even a few mystics. ~ Peter Medawar, #NFDB
1344:I illustrate with a quotation from the atheist philosopher Richard Rorty, who died recently and is, I suspect, now having a lengthy conversation with his maker. Rorty argued that secular professors ought “to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our own. ~ Richard Rorty, #NFDB
1345:Life is getting through the moment. The philosopher William James says to cultivate the cheerful attitude. Now nobody had more trouble than he did -- except me. I had more trouble in my life than anybody. But your first big trouble can be a bonanza if you live through it. Get through the first trouble, you'll probably make it through the next one. ~ Ruth Gordon, #NFDB
1346:We need Christ-the real Christ. A Christ born of empty speculation or created to squeeze into the philosopher's pattern
simply won't do. A recycled Christ, a Christ of compromise, can redeem no one. A Christ watered down, stripped of power, debased of glory, reduced to a symbol, or made impotent by scholarly surgery is not Christ but Antichrist. ~ R C Sproul,#NFDB
1347:Because real alchemists understand that the test tube is just a vehicle. Alchemy is about the process of transformation, my boy. Not of lead to gold, but of the spirit. Understanding the universe. Applying the secrets of the ancients to the follies of the present. The elixir, the philosopher’s stone: they’re not just recipes. They are life itself. ~ Layton Green, #NFDB
1348:No one wanted to get in a fight with Amos," said the psychologist Irv Beaterman. "Not in public. I only once ever say anyone do it. It was this philosopher at a conference. He gets up to give his talk. He's going to challenge heuristics. Amos was there. When he finished talking, Amos got up to rebut. It was like an ISIS beheading but with humour. ~ Michael Lewis, #NFDB
1349:That educating philosopher of whom I dreamed would, I came to think, not only discover the central force, he would also know how to prevent its acting destructively on the other forces: his educational task would, it seemed to me, be to mould the whole man into a living solar and planetary system and to understand its higher laws of motion. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1350:More than one philosopher has claimed that we ever remain children, far beneath the indurated layers that make up the armour of adulthood. Armour encumbers, restricts the body and soul within it. But it also protects. Blows are blunted. Feelings lose their edge, leaving us to suffer naught but a plague of bruises, and, after a time, bruises fade. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
1351:But except in rare circumstances, you can train until you’re blue in the face and you’d never be as good as if you just focused on one thing at a time.” What we’re doing when we multitask “is learning to be skillful at a superficial level.” The Roman philosopher Seneca May have put it best two thousand years ago: “To be everywhere is to be nowhere. ~ Nicholas Carr, #NFDB
1352:Many people have written about the economic meaning of globalization; in One World Peter Singer explains its moral meaning. His position is carefully developed, his tone is moderate, but his conclusions are radical and profound. No political theorist or moral philosopher, no public official or political activist, can afford to ignore his arguments. ~ Michael Walzer, #NFDB
1353:Songs: What if for the next three hundred years, we sang about love and justice (which has been defined by philosopher Cornel West as “what love looks like in public”) as much as we’ve sung about sin and forgiveness over the last three hundred years? Imagine if every week God were praised and worshipped above all as the source and epitome of love. ~ Brian D McLaren, #NFDB
1354:That he liked to think of himself as a philosopher. That he questioned all things, even the most simple, to the extent that when someone passing him on the street raised his hat and said, 'Good day,' Litvinoff often paused so long to weigh evidence that by the time he'd settled on an answer the person had gone on his way, leaving him standing alone. ~ Nicole Krauss, #NFDB
1355:The philosopher places himself at the summit of thought; from there he views what the world has been and what it must become. He is not just an observer, he is an actor; he is an actor of the highest kind in a moral world because it is his opinion of what the world must become that regulates society. ~ Henri de Saint-Simon, Mémoire sur la science de l'homme (1813)., #NFDB
1356:We are so far from knowing all the forces of nature and their various modes of action that it would be unworthy of the philosopher to deny phenomena simply because they are inexplicable at the present state of our knowledge. The more difficult it is to acknowledge their existence, the greater the care with which we must study these phenomena. ~ Pierre Simon Laplace, #NFDB
1357:Hegel, the great eighteenth-century German philosopher, maintained that the essence of tragedy derives not from one character being right and the other being wrong, or from the conflict of good versus evil, but from a conflict in which both characters are right, and thus the tragedy is one of "right against right," being carried to its logical conclusion. ~ Syd Field, #NFDB
1358:philosopher Isaiah Berlin made an important distinction between “negative liberty” and “positive liberty.” Negative liberty is “freedom from”—freedom from constraint, freedom from being told what to do by others. Positive liberty is “freedom to”—the availability of opportunities to be the author of your life and to make it meaningful and significant. ~ Barry Schwartz, #NFDB
1359:With all willing we are dealing simply with commanding and obeying, on the foundation... of a social structure of many "souls", which is why a philosopher should exercise the right to conceive willing itself under the horizon of morality: that is, morality understood as a doctrine of the power relations under which the phenomenon "life" emerges. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1360:A Greek philosopher said, 'All men think it is only the other man who is mortal'. The way we scurry about accumulating things is testimony to our unspoken doctrine that we are exceptions to the law of death. The events of September 11, 2001, were a shocking reminder to millions of Americans of something we should have already understood - our mortality. ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
1361:But is all this true?" said Brutha.
Didactylos shrugged. "Could be. Could be. We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends towards guesswork."
"You mean you don't KNOW it's true?" said Brutha.
"I THINK it might be," said Didactylos. "I could be wrong. Not being certain is what being a philosopher is all about. ~ Terry Pratchett,#NFDB
1362:If religions are diseases of the human psyche, as the philosopher Grintholde asserts, then religious wars must be reckoned the resultant sores and cankers infecting the aggregate corpus of the human race. Of all wars, these are the most detestable, since they are waged for no tangible gain, but only to impose a set of arbitrary credos upon another's mind. ~ Jack Vance, #NFDB
1363:the biggest risk we face as a civilization,” comparing the creation of it to “summoning the demon.” Intellectual celebrities such as the late cosmologist Stephen Hawking have joined Musk in the dystopian camp, many of them inspired by the work of Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom, whose 2014 book Superintelligence captured the imagination of many futurists. ~ Kai Fu Lee, #NFDB
1364:As a bio-philosopher - as someone who draws upon the scriptures of nature, recognizing that we are the product of the process of evolution, and in a sense, we have become the process itself - through the emergence and evolution of our consciousness, our awareness, our capacity to imagine and to anticipate the future and to choose from amongst alternatives. ~ Jonas Salk, #NFDB
1365:In Hindustan, as in England, there are doctrines for the learned, and dogmas for the unlearned; strong meat for men & milk for babes; facts for the few, & fictions for the many, realities for the wise, and romances for the simple; esoteric truth for the philosopher, & exoteric fable for the fool. ~ Hurrychund Chintamon quoted by H. P. Blavatsky, New York (20 Jan. 1877), #NFDB
1366:Not long ago you are in a room where someone asks the philosopher Judith Butler what makes language hurtful. You can feel everyone lean in. Our very being exposes us to the address of another, she answers. We suffer from the condition of being addressable. Our emotional openness, she adds, is carried by our addressability. Language navigates this. For ~ Claudia Rankine, #NFDB
1367:philosopher Galen Strawson, the denial of consciousness “is surely the strangest thing that has ever happened in the whole history of human thought.” It shows “that the power of human credulity is unlimited, that the capacity of human minds to be gripped by theory, by faith, is truly unbounded.” It reveals “the deepest irrationality of the human mind. ~ Nancy R Pearcey, #NFDB
1368:The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, "Seek simplicity and distrust it." ~ Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature (1919), Chapter VII, p.143., #NFDB
1369:Which is more important: money or wisdom? “Wisdom,” says the philosopher. “Ha!” scoffs the cynic. “If wisdom is more important than money, why is it that the wise wait on the rich, and not the rich on the wise?” “Because,” says the scholar, “the wise, being wise, understand the value of money; but the rich, being only rich, do not know the value of wisdom. ~ Leo Rosten, #NFDB
1370:Heraclitus, a philosopher born in the Persian Empire back in the fifth century BC, had it right when he wrote about men on the battlefield. “Out of every one hundred men,” he wrote, “ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior… ~ David Goggins, #NFDB
1371:The soul of the philosopher achieves a calm from such emotions; it follows reason and ever stays with it contemplating the true, the divine, which is not the object of opinion. Nurtured by this, it believes that one should live in this manner as long b as one is alive and, after death, arrive at what is akin and of the same kind, and escape from human evils. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1372:A few modern philosopher's assert that an individual's intelligence is a fixed quantity, a quantity which cannot be increased. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism.... With practice, training, and above all, method, we manage to increase our attention, our memory, our judgment and literally to become more intelligent than we were before. ~ Alfred Binet, #NFDB
1373:American philosopher and psychologist Alan Watts imagined this web as a multidimensional spiderweb. He said, “Imagine this web in the early morning, covered with dewdrops. And every dewdrop contains the reflection of all the other dewdrops. And, in each reflected dewdrop, the reflections of all the other dewdrops in that reflection. And so on ad infinitum. ~ Stephen Cope, #NFDB
1374:Our natural being is a part of cosmic Nature and our spiritual being exists only by the supreme Transcendence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine: The Ascent towards Supermind
Inter-Relation
The brooding philosopher or the discovering scientist cannot indeed do without the aid of a greater power, intuition. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Sun of Poetic Truth,#NFDB
1375:In his Treatise on Human Nature, the Scots philosopher David Hume posed the issue in the following way (as rephrased in the now famous black swan problem by John Stuart Mill): No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
1376:Psychologist and philosopher James Allen states, “You cannot travel within and stand still without.”2 Soon, what is happening within us will affect what is happening without. A hardened attitude is a dreaded disease. It causes a closed mind and a dark future. When the attitude is positive and conducive to growth, the mind expands, and the progress begins. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
1377:The philosopher Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus, "If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils." Said Diogenes, "Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king. ~ Anthony de Mello, #NFDB
1378:Galen Strawson, a philosopher who states with great bravado, “The impossibility of free will … can be proved with complete certainty.” Yet in an interview, Strawson admits that, in practice, no one accepts his deterministic view. “To be honest, I can’t really accept it myself,” he says. “I can’t really live with this fact from day to day. Can you, really? ~ Nancy R Pearcey, #NFDB
1379:In Hindustan, as in England, there are doctrines for the learned, and dogmas for the unlearned; strong meat for men & milk for babes; facts for the few, & fictions for the many, realities for the wise, and romances for the simple; esoteric truth for the philosopher, & exoteric fable for the fool. ~ Hurrychund Chintamon, quoted by H. P. Blavatsky, in New York (20 Jan. 1877), #NFDB
1380:Franz Kafka, the Austrian philosopher and poet, once said, “You need not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, simply wait. You need not even wait, just learn to become quiet, and still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1381:Let us confess a truth, humiliating to human pride; - a very small part only of the opinions of the coolest philosopher are the result of fair reasoning; the rest are formed by his education, his temperament, by the age in which he lives, by trains of thought directed to a particular track through some accidental association - in short, by prejudice. ~ Anna Letitia Barbauld, #NFDB
1382:The dedicated seeker of Paul will also find several letters, including a fourth century forgery of the very warm correspondence between Paul and the Stoic philosopher Seneca, and prayers, as well as two travels to Heaven: the Apocalypse of Paul, a Catholic account that appears to have inspired Dante's Inferno, and the Coptic Apocalypse of Paul, a Gnostic text. ~ Wyatt North, #NFDB
1383:A philosopher named Aristippus, who had quite willingly sucked up to Dionysus and won himself a spot at his court, saw Diogenes cooking lentils for a meal. "If you would only learn to compliment Dionysus, you wouldn't have to live on lentils."
Diogenes replied, "But if you would only learn to live on lentils, you wouldn't have to flatter Dionysus. ~ Diogenes of Sinope,#NFDB
1384:As the MIT philosopher Kieran Setiya expands in his modern interpretation of the Ethics, if your life consists only of actions whose "worth depends on the existence of problems, difficulties, needs, which these activities aim to solve," you're vulnerable to the existential despair that blooms in response to the inevitable question, Is this all there is to life? ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1385:Dwell, O mind, within yourself; Enter no other's home. If you but seek there, you will find All you are searching for. God, the true Philosopher's Stone, Who answers every prayer, Lies hidden deep within your heart, The richest gem of all. How many pearls and precious stones Are scattered all about The outer court that lies before The chamber of your heart! ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
1386:Then a miracle occurred in the form of a plate of sandwiches. Geryon took three and buried his mouth in a delicious block of white bread filled with tomatoes and butter and salt. He thought about how delicious it was, how he liked slippery foods, how slipperiness can be of different kinds. I am a philosopher of sandwiches, he decided. Things good on the inside. ~ Anne Carson, #NFDB
1387:The religion department introduced me to the philosopher and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, whose work resonated with me deeply. Niebuhr saw the evil in the world, understood that human limitations make it impossible for any of us to really love another as ourselves, but still painted a compelling picture of our obligation to try to seek justice in a flawed world. ~ James Comey, #NFDB
1388:Wanting positive experience is a negative experience; accepting negative experience is a positive experience. It’s what the philosopher Alan Watts used to refer to as “the backwards law”—the idea that the more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
1389:For a philosopher should not see in the eyes of the poor limitary creature calling himself a man of the world, and filled with the narrow and self-regarding prejudices of birth and education, but should look upon himself as a Catholic creature, and as standing in an equal relation to high and low - to educated and uneducated, to the guilty and the innocent. ~ Thomas de Quincey, #NFDB
1390:Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher, said that what he resented in most Christians was what he perceived as a constant underlying resentment: (1) a denied resentment toward God for demanding sacrifice, (2) toward others for not appreciating our sacrifice, (3) sacrificing as much as we sacrifice, (4) and a resentment toward others for not having to do it! ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
1391:The man of science, whether he knows it or not (most often, obviously, he does know it), whether he wishes it or not (ordinarily he does not wish it), cannot help but be a realist in the medieval sense of the term. He is distinguished from the philosopher only by the fact that the philosopher must, in addition, explain and justify the realism practiced by science ~ Lev Shestov, #NFDB
1392:I am aware of many things being quite as important as good writing and good reading; but in all things it is wiser to go directly to the quiddity, to the text, to the source, to the essence—and only then evolve whatever theories may tempt the philosopher, or the historian, or merely please the spirit of the day. Readers are born free and ought to remain free. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
1393:The matter lies before the eyes of all; everybody sees it, touches it, loves it, but knows it not. It is glorious and vile, precious and of small account, and is found everywhere... But, to be brief, our Matter has as many names as there are things in this world; that is why the foolish know it not. ~ The Golden Tract concerning the Philosopher's Stone in the Musaeum Hermeticum, #NFDB
1394:When a philosopher, scientist, or psychologist discusses the discrepancy between the actual and the ideal, he or she attempts to convince us with the tools of discursive thought ... An artist does it differently ... their primary approach is different, even though both groups, if you will, are investigating the actual, the ideal, and the discrepancy in between. ~ Stephen Dobyns, #NFDB
1395:An Italian philosopher said that "time was his estate"; an estate indeed which will produce nothing without cultivation, but will always abundantly repay the labors of industry, and generally satisfy the most extensive desires, if no part of it be suffered to lie in waste by negligence, to be overrun with noxious plants, or laid out for show rather than for use. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
1396:Faced with a world of "modern ideas" which would like to banish everyone into a corner and a "specialty," a philosopher, if there could be a philosopher these days, would be compelled to establish the greatness of mankind, the idea of "greatness," on the basis of his own particular extensive range and multiplicity, his own totality in the midst of diversity. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1397:Franz Rosenthal, the late professor of Arabic studies, said the following about him: The modern reader can hardly fail to notice that the Muslim philosopher succeeded in giving a true description of the essentials of democracy. He also captured the full meaning and significance of the concept of political freedom for the happiness and development of the individual. ~ Mustafa Akyol, #NFDB
1398:It is a fool only, and not the philosopher, nor even the prudent man, that will live as if there were no God... Were a man impressed as fully and strongly as he ought to be with the belief of a God, his moral life would be regulated by the force of belief; he would stand in awe of God and of himself, and would not do the thing that could not be concealed from either. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
1399:It is told of Faraday that he refused to be called a physicist; he very much disliked the new name as being too special and particular and insisted on the old one, philosopher, in all its spacious generality: we may suppose that this was his way of saying that he had not over-ridden the limiting conditions of class only to submit to the limitation of a profession. ~ Lionel Trilling, #NFDB
1400:No justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous. Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite skeptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not cheat’, than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1401:The image of the Zen philosopher is the monk up in the green, quiet hills, or in a beautiful temple on some rocky cliff. The Stoics are the antithesis of this idea. Instead, they are the man in the marketplace, the senator in the Forum, the brave wife waiting for her soldier to return from battle, the sculptor busy in her studio. Still, the Stoic is equally at peace. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
1402:The world is a lively place enough, in which we must accommodate ourselves to circumstances, sail with the stream as glibly as we can, be content to take froth for substance, the surface for the depth, the counterfeit for the real coin. I wonder no philosopher has ever established that our globe itself is hollow. It should be, if Nature is consistent in her works. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1403:When God “died” in the 19th century, “social-ism” took the form of materialist scientism (hence the philosopher Eric Voegelin’s observation that under Marxism, “Christ the Redeemer is replaced by the steam engine as the promise of the realm to come”). It’s worth recalling that both Marx and Engels came to their socialism via their atheism, not the other way around. ~ Jonah Goldberg, #NFDB
1404:Wisdom—seems to the rabble a kind of escape, a means and a trick for getting well out of a wicked game. But the genuine philosopher—as it seems to us, my friends?—lives 'unphilosophically' and 'unwisely,' above all imprudently, and feels the burden and the duty of a hundred attempts and temptations of life—he risks himself constantly, he plays the wicked game. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1405:Every other art,—as poetry, music, painting,—may be practised without the process showing forth the rules according to which it is conducted;—but in the self-cognizant art of the philosopher, no step can be taken without declaring the grounds upon which it proceeds. ~ Johann Gottlieb Fichte, The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), as translated by William Smith (1847), p. 14., #NFDB
1406:I am only astonished that, while so many women have intelligent things to say and so many men are still unknown, a publisher cared to print such a little book, and at such a price. That confirms what Schopenhauer reveals to us, among other truths: philosophy is a matter of death. A philosopher living and thinking life is a priori suspect in our philosophical culture. ~ Luce Irigaray, #NFDB
1407:This is precisely where philosophers are a notable exception. A philosopher never gets quite used to the world. to him or her, the world continues to seem a bit unreasonable - bewildering, even enigmatic. Philosophers and small children thus have an important faculty in common. You might say that throughout his life a philosopher remains as thin-skinned as a child. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
1408:It is just as little necessary for the saint to be a philosopher as for the philosopher to be a saint; just as it is not necessary for a perfectly beautiful person to be a great sculptor, or for a sculptor to be himself a beautiful person. In general it is a strange demand on a moralist that he should commend no other virtue than that which he himself possesses. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
1409:One could say that what differentiates ancient from modern philosophy is the fact that, in ancient philosophy, it was not only Chrysippus or Epicurus who, just because they had developed a philosophical discourse, were considered philosophers. Rather, every person who lived according to the precepts of Chrysippus or Epicurus was every bit as much a philosopher as they. ~ Pierre Hadot, #NFDB
1410:The honest ratepayer and his healthy family have no doubt often mocked at the dome-like forehead of the philosopher, and laughed over the strange perspective of the landscape that lies beneath him. If they really knew who he was, they would tremble. For Chuang Tsǔ spent his life in preaching the great creed of Inaction, and in pointing out the uselessness of all things. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
1411:While we’re defining things, let’s take a moment for feminism: “the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes.” Not domination. Not oppression. Equality. Or as the English writer and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft put it 225 years ago, “I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves. ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton, #NFDB
1412:A man's interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself. When you are a child your vessel is not yet full;so you care for nothing but your own affairs. When you grow up, your vessel overflows; and you are a politician, a philosopher, or an explorer and adventurer. In old age the vessel dries up: there is no overflow: you are a child again. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
1413:I knew it! I knew it! ”
“Are we allowed to speak yet?” said Ron grumpily. Hermione ignored him.
“Nicolas Flamel,” she whispered dramatically, “is the only known maker of the Philosopher's Stone!”
This didn’t have quite the effect she’d expected.
“The what?” said Harry and Ron.
“Oh, honestly, don’t you two read? Look — read that, there. ~ J K Rowling,#NFDB
1414:It seems to me that your doctor [Tronchin] is more of a philosopher than a physician. As for me, I much prefer a doctor who is anoptimist and who gives me remedies that will improve my health. Philosophical consolations are, after all, useless against real ailments. I know only two kinds of sickness--physical and moral: all the others are purely in the imagination. ~ Lord Chesterfield, #NFDB
1415:I would have to go back into my past and deal with Adrian. My philosopher friend, who gazed on life and decided that any responsible, thinking individual should have the right to reject this gift that had never been asked for - and whose noble gesture re-emphasised with each passing decade the compromise and littleness that most lives consist of. 'Most lives': my life. ~ Julian Barnes, #NFDB
1416:A hundred years after his death, a statue of Lavoisier was erected in Paris and much admired until someone pointed out that it looked nothing like him. Under questioning the sculptor admitted that he had used the head of the mathematician and philosopher the Marquis de Condorcet—apparently he had a spare—in the hope that no one would notice or, having noticed, would care. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
1417:Cygnus Atratus In his Treatise on Human Nature, the Scots philosopher David Hume posed the issue in the following way (as rephrased in the now famous black swan problem by John Stuart Mill): No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
1418:In all willing it is absolutely a question of commanding and obeying, on the basis, as already said, of a social structure composed of many “souls,” on which account a philosopher should claim the right to include willing-as-such within the sphere of morals—regarded as the doctrine of the relations of supremacy under which the phenomenon of “life” manifests itself. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1419:The political trend is always to be observed, partly as a spectacle, partly for one’s own safety. The liberal is dissatisfied with regime; the anarch passes through their sequence – as inoffensively as possible – like a suite of rooms. This is the recipe for anyone who cares more about the substance of the world than its shadow – the philosopher, the artist, the believer. ~ Ernst J nger, #NFDB
1420:The political trend is always to be observed, partly as a spectacle, partly for one's own safety. The liberal is dissatisfied with regime; the anarch passes through their sequence - as inoffensively as possible - like a suite of rooms. This is the recipe for anyone who cares more about the substance of the world than its shadow - the philosopher, the artist, the believer. ~ Ernst Junger, #NFDB
1421:Waldo Emerson may have been a prize catch—“mine own angel-man,” Lidian called him in an early letter to her sister. Yet becoming the wife of the free-lance philosopher also required “the giving up of an existence she thoroughly enjoyed,” as one of the Emerson children later wrote, describing their mother’s transformation from self-sufficient intellectual to genius domi. ~ Megan Marshall, #NFDB
1422:It might be suggested, and not easily disproven that anything, no matter how exotic, can be believed by someone. On the other hand, abstract belief is largely impossible; it is the concrete, the actuality of the cup, the candle, the sacrificial stone, which hardens belief; the statue is nothing until it cries, the philosophy is nothing until the philosopher is martyred. ~ Shirley Jackson, #NFDB
1423:American philosopher William James wrote of the mysterious formation of identity, “that the best way to define a man’s character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely alive and active. At such moments, there is a voice inside which speaks and says, ‘This is the real me! ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin, #NFDB
1424:In this land of unlimited opportunity, a place where, to paraphrase Woody Allen, any man or woman can realize greatness as a patient or as a doctor, we have only one commercial American filmmaker who consistently speaks with his own voice. That is Woody Allen, gag writer, musician, humorist, philosopher, playwright, stand-up comic, film star, film writer and film director. ~ Vincent Canby, #NFDB
1425:Like Spinoza, he has a certain kind of moral purity and loftiness, which is very impressive. He is always sincere, never shrill or censorious, invariably concerned to tell the reader, as simply as he can, what he believes to be important. Whatever one may think of him as a theoretical philosopher, it is impossible not to love him as a man. The life of Plotinus is known, ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1426:Various accounts of Empedocle's death are given in ancient sources. His enemies said that his desire to be thought a god led him to throw himself into the crater of Mount Etna so that he might vanish from the world completely and thus lead men to believe he had achieved apotheosis. Unfortunately the volcano defeated his design by throwing out one of the philosopher's sandals. ~ Empedocles, #NFDB
1427:Cartesian,adj. Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author of the celebrated dictum, Cogito ergo sum- whereby he was pleased to suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence. The dictum might be improved, however, thus: Cogito cogito ergo sum- 'I think I think, therefore I think that I am'; as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
1428:Each one of us pray, day and night, for the downtrodden millions in India, who are held fast by poverty, priest craft, and tyranny - pray day and night for them. I am no meta physician, no philosopher, nay, no saint. But I am poor, I love the poor.... Let these people be your God - think of them, work for them, pray for them incessantly - the Lord will show you the way. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1429:Nothing like the act of eating for equalising men. Dying is nothing to it. The philosopher dies sententiously—the pharisee ostentatiously—the simple-hearted humbly—the poor idiot blindly, as the sparrow falls to the ground; the philosopher and idiot, publican and pharisee, all eat after the same fashion—given an equally good digestion. There's theory for theory for you! ~ Elizabeth Gaskell, #NFDB
1430:As [Gershom] Scholem explains, this [Shabbetaian] doctrine is connected to the idea that 'the elect are fundamentally different from the crowd and not to be judged by its standards. Standing under a new spiritual law and representing as it were a new kind of reality, they are beyond good and evil'. Strauss's philosopher-prophet is a secularized version of the same conceit. ~ Shadia Drury, #NFDB
1431:In his book The Four Loves, Lewis describes the pleasure of working with one’s colleagues side by side. In fact, he builds his whole theory of friendship upon this very idea: “You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher or the Christian by staring in his eyes as if he were your mistress: better fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him. ~ Diana Pavlac Glyer, #NFDB
1432:The precious stones shall all unite, the scent of time shall fill the night, once time links the fraternity, one man lives for eternity.
Under the sign of the twelvefold star, all sickness and ill will flee afar.
The philosopher's stone shall eternally bind.
New strength will arise in the young at that hour,
Making one man immortal, for he holds the power. ~ Kerstin Gier,#NFDB
1433:We must not leap to the fatalistic conclusion that we are stuck with the conceptual scheme that we grew up in. We can change it, bit by bit, plank by plank, though meanwhile there is nothing to carry us along but the evolving conceptual scheme itself. The philosopher's task was well compared by Neurath to that of a mariner who must rebuild his ship on the open sea. ~ Willard Van Orman Quine, #NFDB
1434:What is truth to the philosopher, would not be Truth, nor have the effect of Truth, to the peasant. The religion of the many must necessarily be more incorrect than that of the refined and reflective few, not so much in the essence as in its forms, not so much in the spiritual idea which lies latent at the bottom of it, as the symbols and dogmas in which that idea is embodied. ~ Albert Pike, #NFDB
1435:The task of the moral philosopher-thinker is to support and strengthen the voice of human conscience, to recognize what is good or what is bad for people, whether they are good or bad for society in a period of evolution. May be a "voice crying in the wilderness", but only if that voice remains lively and uncompromising, it is possible to transform the desert into fertile land. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
1436:Was not Hypatia the greatest philosopher of Alexandria, and a true martyr to the old values of learning? She was torn to pieces by a mob of incensed Christians not because she was a woman, but because her learning was so profound, her skills at dialectic so extensive that she reduced all who queried her to embarrassed silence. They could not argue with her, so they murdered her. ~ Iain Pears, #NFDB
1437:When I open a book now, I was seized with desperation. I felt as if I was madly in love. It was as if I were in a confession booth and the characters in the book were on the other side telling me their most intimate secrets. When I read, I was a philosopher and it was up to me to figure out the meaning of things. Reading made me feel as if I were the center of the universe. ~ Heather O Neill, #NFDB
1438:The Grand Duke [of Tuscany] ...after observing the Medicaean plants several times with me ... has now invited me to attach myself to him with the annual salary of one thousand florins, and with the title of Philosopher and Principal Mathematicial to His Highness; without the duties of office to perform, but with the most complete leisure; so that I can complete my Treatises. ~ Galileo Galilei, #NFDB
1439:There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. … To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. ~ Thoreau, Walden (1854), “Economy” ¶ A19. Reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 596-97., #NFDB
1440:16 December. In his book The Poetics of Space (1958) the critic and philosopher Gaston Bachelard quotes the advice of a dictionary of botany: ‘Reader, study the periwinkle in detail, and you will see how detail increases an object’s stature.’ ‘To use a magnifying glass’, Bachelard comments a little later, ‘is to pay attention.’ (From The Man with a Blue Scarf by Martin Gayford.) ~ Alan Bennett, #NFDB
1441:BERTRAND RUSSELL, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism We've associated that word philosophy with academic study that in its own way has gotten so far beyond the layman that if you read contemporary philosophy you've no clue, because it's almost become math. And it's odd that if you don't do that and you call yourself a philosopher that you always get 'homespun' attached to it. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1442:Ibn Rushd's writings were translated into Latin and Hebrew by European scholars. There soon appeared super-commentaries on his commentaries. Many of the writings exist only in these two languages, the original Arabic writings being long lost. This itself is a commentary on the extent to which Ibn Rushd, as a rationalist philosopher, was able to influence the mood of his times ~ Pervez Hoodbhoy, #NFDB
1443:There was a posh girl in my year at Cambridge, also a philosopher, who gave names to every significant possession in her life. She had a teddy bear, of course, but her car had a name too. So did her phone. So did both of her laptops and her camera. For all I know, she gave names to her knives and forks as well - I don't know how far these things go with the English aristocracy. ~ Harry Bingham, #NFDB
1444:When I opened a book now, I was seized with desperation. I felt as if I was madly in love. It was as if I were in a confession booth and the characters in the book were on the other side telling me their most intimate secrets. When I read, I was a philosopher and it was up to me to figure out the meaning of things. Reading made me feel as if I were the center of the universe. ~ Heather O Neill, #NFDB
1445:It is well, when the wise and the learned discover new truths; but how much better to diffuse the truths already discovered, amongst the multitude! Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power; and while a philosopher is discovering one new truth, millions may be propagated amongst the people. Diffusion, then, rather than discovery, is the duty of our government. ~ Horace Mann, #NFDB
1446:My message will be very clear; it is that I think we have to continue to read novels. Because I think that the novel is a very good means to question the current world without having an answer that is too schematic, too automatic. The novelist, he’s not a philosopher, not a technician of spoken language. He’s someone who writes, above all, and through the novel asks questions. ~ J M G Le Cl zio, #NFDB
1447:at no time in my life have I been a person to hold myself polluted by the touch or approach of any creature that wore a human shape: on the contrary, from my very earliest youth it has been my pride to converse familiarly, more Socratico, with all human beings, man, woman, and child, that chance might fling my way; a practice …. which becomes a man who would be a philosopher. ~ Thomas de Quincey, #NFDB
1448:Finding such a duality turns out to be totally logical. Discoveries of the past 100 years have shown that duality is ubiquitous in all the workings of nature. Duality is in no way unique to the potential duality that we seek for the origins of our thoughts. The formal search for a duality of mind/brain goes back at least to the writings of the 17th century philosopher Rene Descartes. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1449:To quote a famous philosopher revered in my time 'But this is no different from regular life. When have you ever known what's going to happen in the future?'" Wait a minute, Jonah thought. I said that. Back at Westminster, with Katherine. Does that mean I'm going to be a famous philosopher in the future? Does that mean I'm going to be revered? There wasn't time to ask. ~ Margaret Peterson Haddix, #NFDB
1450:So the life of the philosopher extends widely: he is not confined by the same boundary as are others. He alone is free from the laws that limit the human race, and all ages serve him as though he were a god. Some time has passed: he grasps it in his recollection. Time is present: he uses it. Time is to come: he anticipates it. This combination of all times into one gives him a long life. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
1451:This idea the Greeks had of him is best summed up not by a poet, but by a philosopher, Plato: “Love—Eros—makes his home in men’s hearts, but not in every heart, for where there is hardness he departs. His greatest glory is that he cannot do wrong nor allow it; force never comes near him. For all men serve him of their own free will. And he whom Love touches not walks in darkness. ~ Edith Hamilton, #NFDB
1452:This philosopher named Blaise Pascal said that if you have a choice of believing in God or not believing in God, it's a better gamble to believe. Because if you believe in God and you're wrong—well, nothing happens. You just die into the nothingness of the universe. But if you don't believe in God and you're wrong, then you go to hell for eternity, at least according to some folks. ~ Allen Eskens, #NFDB
1453:All things die,' she told him. Such a truism, it was the trite utterance of any street-corner philosopher, but coming from Inaspe Raimm it sounded different. 'All things reach the end of their journey, be they trees, insects, people or even principalities. All things die so that others may take their place. To die is no tragedy. The tragedy is dying with a purpose unfulfilled. ~ Adrian Tchaikovsky, #NFDB
1454:But before he knew it, Harry was shouting. ‘SO YOU HAVEN’T BEEN IN THE MEETINGS, BIG DEAL! YOU’VE STILL BEEN HERE, HAVEN’T YOU? YOU’VE STILL BEEN TOGETHER! ME, I’VE BEEN STUCK AT THE DURSLEYS’ FOR A MONTH! AND I’VE HANDLED MORE THAN YOU TWO’VE EVER MANAGED AND DUMBLEDORE KNOWS IT – WHO SAVED THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE? WHO GOT RID OF RIDDLE? WHO SAVED BOTH YOUR SKINS FROM THE DEMENTORS? ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
1455:But you want to know about the influence of books on my life, and as I’ve said, there was only one. Seneca. Do you know who he was? He was a Roman philosopher who wrote letters to imaginary friends
telling them how to behave for the rest of their lives.. Maybe that sounds dull, but the letters aren’t – they’re witty. I think you learn more if you’re laughing at the same time. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer,#NFDB
1456:Her predicament (the word she had come to prefer in her mind, rather than "circumstances") had turned her into quite a philosopher, when by nature she'd always been a pragmatist. For instance, one allegedly wasn't rewarded for all of the good one did until on departed the Earthly Plane. But if you committed one (albeit epic) transgression, a lifetime of damnation seemed required. ~ Julie Anne Long, #NFDB
1457:In his version of the theory, information becomes conscious when certain “workspace” neurons broadcast it to many areas of the brain at once, making it simultaneously available for, say, language, memory, perceptual categorization, action planning, and so on. In other words, consciousness is “cerebral celebrity,” as the philosopher Daniel Dennett has described it, or “fame in the brain. ~ Jim Holt, #NFDB
1458:It may be objected that the meaning of names can guide us at most only to the opinions, possibly the foolish and groundless opinions, which mankind have formed concerning things, and that as the object of philosophy is truth, not opinion, the philosopher should dismiss words and look into things themselves, to ascertain what questions can be asked and answered in regard to them. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
1459:So the life of the philosopher extends widely: he is not confined by the same boundaries as are others. He alone is free from the laws that limit the human race, and all ages serve him as though he were a god. Some time has passed: he grasps it in his recollection. Time is present: he uses it. Time is to come: he anticipates it. This combination of all times into one gives him a long life ~ Seneca, #NFDB
1460:the world has a soul, and that whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of things. I learned that many alchemists realized their Personal Legends, and wound up discovering the Soul of the World, the Philosopher’s Stone, and the Elixir of Life. “But, above all, I learned that these things are all so simple that they could be written on the surface of an emerald. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1461:I learned that the world has a soul, and that whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of things. I learned that many alchemists realized their destinies, and wound up discovering the Soul of the World, the Philosopher's Stone, and the Elixir of Life. But above all, I learned that these things are all so simple they could be written on the surface of an emerald. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1462:I think that the philosopher must, for his own purposes, carry methodological strictness to an extreme when he is investigating and pursuing his truths, but when he is ready to enunciate them and give them out, he ought to avoid the cynical skill with which some scientists, like a Hercules at the fair, amuse themselves by displaying to the public the biceps of their technique. ~ Jose Ortega y Gasset, #NFDB
1463:If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
1464:He was . . . a strange blending of Puritan and Cavalier, with a touch of the ancient philosopher, and more than a touch of the pagan. . . . A hunger in his soul drove him on and on, an urge to right all wrongs, protect all weaker things. . . . Wayward and restless as the wind, he was consistent in only one respect—he was true to his ideals of justice and right. Such was Solomon Kane. ~ Robert E Howard, #NFDB
1465:In 1975 the Jesuit philosopher John Kavanaugh . . . For the dialogue between Kavanaugh and Mother Teresa, see Brennan Manning’s Ruthless Trust. An account of Mother Teresa’s journey in a collection of her letters is Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (edited by Brian Kolodiejchuk). The name of the home has since been changed to “Home of the Pure Heart” as has the name of the city to Kolkata. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
1466:The philosopher is like a man fasting in the midst of universal intoxication. He alone perceives the illusion of which all creatures are the willing playthings; he is less duped than his neighbor by his own nature. He judges more sanely, he sees things as they are. It is in this that his liberty consists - in the ability to see clearly and soberly, in the power of mental record. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel, #NFDB
1467:This time she wasn't facing racial cleansing that aimed to create physical perfection, size and color to achieve purity. Now it was a cleansing of ideas. It was people's minds they were afraid of, not their physical traits. The doubts expressed by a crazy philosopher from her own country whom she used to read flitted through her mind: "Is man God's mistake, or God man's mistake? ~ Armando Lucas Correa, #NFDB
1468:Where there have been powerful governments, societies, religions, public opinions, in short wherever there has been tyranny, there the solitary philosopher has been hated; for philosophy offers an asylum to a man into which no tyranny can force it way, the inward cave, the labyrinth of the heart. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, trans. Hollingdale, “Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.3, p. 139, #NFDB
1469:And now, my friend, I am going to expose to you all my weaknesses. All men, I believe, are under a necessity of paying tribute at some time or other to Love, and it is vain to strive to avoid it. I was a philosopher, yet this tyrant of the mind triumphed over all my wisdom; his darts were of greater force than all my reasonings, and with a sweet constraint he led me wherever he pleased. ~ Peter Abelard, #NFDB
1470:As the philosopher Karl Popper wrote: ‘For if we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories. In this way it is only too easy to obtain . . . overwhelming evidence in favour of a theory which, if approached critically, would have been refuted.14’ V ~ Matthew Syed, #NFDB
1471:...bravo...' Mister Kindly said,'..if only I had hands to applaud..'
Mia smacked her backside. 'I'd settle for lips to kiss my sweet behind.
'...I would have to find it first...'
Arses are like fine wine, Mister Kindly. Better too little than too much.
' ...a beauty and a philosopher. be still my beating heart...' The not-cat looked down at its translucent chest '...O,wait... ~ Jay Kristoff,#NFDB
1472:But this is also why Jesus calls us to come to HIm. By coming to Jesus, we remember who we are and who we are not. By coming to Him, we come face to face with God and with ourselves. "It is only in our encounter with a personal God," writes philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand, "that we become fully aware of our condition as creatures, and fling from us the last particle of self-glory. ~ Hannah Anderson, #NFDB
1473:If it can be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a car, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
1474:If one proceeds philosophically before proceeding poetically, and this is central to the philosopher, pleasure is crushed, But if one begins by having pleasure, it is like knowing how to swim: one never forgets it [Clarice Lispector, The Stream of Life, trans Elizabeth Lowe & Earl Fitz, Foreword by Hélène Cixous trans Verena Conley, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989]. ~ H l ne Cixous, #NFDB
1475:The explanatory gap has never been bridged. And the inescapable reason is this: a neural state is not a mental state. The mind is not the brain, though it depends on the material brain for its existence (as far as we know). As the philosopher Colin McGinn says, “The problem with materialism is that it tries to construct the mind out of properties that refuse to add up to mentality. ~ Jeffrey M Schwartz, #NFDB
1476:When the boy begins to understand that the visible point is preceded by an invisible point, that the shortest distance between two points is conceived as a straight line before it is ever drawn with pencil and paper...the fountain of all thought has been opened to him...the philosopher can reveal him nothing new, as a geometrician he has discovered the basis of all thought. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
1477:In the Middle Ages, as in Classical times, the academy possessed freedom unknown to other bodies and persons because the philosopher, the scholar, and the student were looked upon as men consecrated to the service of the Truth; and that Truth was not simply a purposeless groping after miscellaneous information , but a wisdom to be obtained, however imperfectly, from a teleological search. ~ Russell Kirk, #NFDB
1478:In the preface to her translation of the philosopher, economist, and satirist Bernard Mandeville’s 1714 social allegory The Fable of the Bees, Du Châtelet wrote: If I were king, I would wish to make this scientific experiment. I would reform an abuse that cuts out, so to speak, half of humanity. I would allow women to share in all the rights of humanity, and most of all those of the mind. ~ Maria Popova, #NFDB
1479:The philosopher who travels the world in order to learn must put up with all customs, all religions, all kinds of weather and climate, all beds and all kinds of food, and leave to the voluptuous, indolent man in the capital his prejudices...his luxury...that obscene luxury that, as it never contains any real needs, creates artificial ones every day at the expense of fortune and health. ~ Marquis de Sade, #NFDB
1480:A real philosopher, Sophie, is completely different kettle of fish - the direct opposite, in fact. A philosopher knows that in reality he knows very little. That is why he constantly strives to achieve true insight. Socrates was one of these rare people. He knew that he knew nothing about life and about the world. And now comes the important part: it troubled him that he knew so little. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
1481:Has any scientist, politician, educator, or philosopher been able to refute the words of Solomon? Are we willing to ignore universal integrity and trust our fate and future upon nuclear fission, chemical warfare, and the strategies of materialistically-minded economists? It would seem that the Bible is trying to tell us something, but we are slow of learning. ~ Manly P Hall, The Bible, the Story of a Book, #NFDB
1482:These subjects were reasoning. They were working quite hard at reasoning. But it was not reasoning in search of truth; it was reasoning in support of their emotional reactions. It was reasoning as described by the philosopher David Hume, who wrote in 1739 that “reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. ~ Jonathan Haidt, #NFDB
1483:The leap of faith is a strategic impasse that confronts every Christian in search of converts; and, as he sees the matter, there is no wrong way to become a Christian. It is the end that is importnat, not the means; it does not matter why you believe, so long as you believe. For the philosopher, in contrast, the paramount issue is the justification of belief, not the fact of belief itself. ~ George H Smith, #NFDB
1484:How well do you know yourself?” He thought about the years, the goals he’d achieved, and the ultimate goal it was serving. “The Philosopher said that a man alone is either a god or a monster,” Gavin said. “I’m no god.” She stared at him for one moment more, those intense blue eyes unreadable. She smiled. “Well then. Maybe the times call for a monster.” She knelt at his feet, and he blessed her. ~ Brent Weeks, #NFDB
1485:On solemn festivals, Julian, who felt and professed an unfashionable dislike to these frivolous amusements, condescended to appear in the Circus; and, after bestowing a careless glance on five or six of the races, he hastily withdrew with the impatience of a philosopher, who considered every moment as lost that was not devoted to the advantage of the public or the improvement of his own mind. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
1486:A certain kind of methodologically-minded philosopher of science is quick to read off metaphysical conclusions from features of scientific practice. Chemists don't derive their laws from fundamental physics, so reductive physicalism must be false. Biologists refer to natural numbers in some of their explanations, so numbers must exist. I think that this kind of thing makes for bad philosophy. ~ David Papineau, #NFDB
1487:the more you become a connoisseur of gratitude, the less you are a victim of resentment, depression, and despair. Gratitude will act as an elixir that will gradually dissolve the hard shell of your ego—your need to possess and control—and transform you into a generous being. The sense of gratitude produces true spiritual alchemy, makes us magnanimous—large souled. —Sam Keen, philosopher ~ Marshall B Rosenberg, #NFDB
1488:Truth has no path, and that is the beauty of truth, it is living. A dead thing has a path to it because it is static, but when you see that the truth is something living, moving, which has no resting place, which is in no temple, mosque or church, which no religion, no teacher, no philosopher, nobody can lead you to - then you will also see that this living thing is what you actually are. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
1489:With the rise of capitalism, it became more obvious that people pursue individual self-interest. The great nationalist in Italy, Giuseppe Mazzini, a wonderful philosopher, said that we need the nation. We need something that people can lean on, from which they can then reach out to the whole world. The idea of all humanity is too vague. It can't motivate human aspiration in a reliable way. ~ Martha C Nussbaum, #NFDB
1490:An enthusiastic philosopher, of whose name we are not informed, had constructed a very satisfactory theory on some subject or other, and was not a little proud of it. "But the facts, my dear fellow," said his friend, "the facts do not agree with your theory."—"Don't they?" replied the philosopher, shrugging his shoulders, "then, tant pis pour les faits;"—so much the worse for the facts! ~ Charles Mackay, #NFDB
1491:If we only look far enough off for the consequence of our actions, we can always find some point in the combination of results by which those actions can be justified: by adopting the point of view of a Providence who arranges results, or of a philosopher who traces them, we shall find it possible to obtain perfect complacency in choosing to do what is most agreeable to us in the present moment. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1492:In my acquaintance with John Rawls, I found him to be a simple and honest man, who just by chance also happened to be the greatest moral philosopher of the twentieth century. I would like to think that I could emulate at least his modesty - his refusal to exaggerate his perception of himself and his place in the larger scheme of things - even if my work never compares with his in its importance. ~ Allen W Wood, #NFDB
1493:Plato assumes somehow that government is a way in which you put unselfish and ungreedy men in charge of selfish and greedy men. But government is an institution whereby the people who have the greatest drive to get power over their fellow men, get in a position of controlling them. Look at the record of government. Where are these philosopher kings that Plato supposedly was trying to develop? ~ Milton Friedman, #NFDB
1494:(...) wizards still have not found a way of reuniting body and soul once death has occurred. As the eminent wizarding philosopher Bertrand de Pensées-Profondes writes in his celebrated work A Study into the Possibility of
Reversing the Actual and Metaphysical Effects of Natural Death, with Particular Regard to the
Reintegration of Essence and Matter: “Give it up. It’s never going to happen. ~ J K Rowling,#NFDB
1495:A man who swears
before the world to love a woman till death part him and her is sane
neither in the opinion of the philosopher who understands what
mutability is nor in the opinion of the man of the world who
understands that it is safer to be a witness than an actor in such
affairs. A man who swears to do something which it is not in his power
to do is not accounted a sane man. ~ James Joyce,#NFDB
1496:If it can be true (and it most certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite pleasure from skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
1497:…often women aren’t allowed to be characters in history, they have to be stereotypes. Cleopatra was a poet and a philosopher, she was incredibly good at maths; she wasn’t that much of a looker. But when we think of her, we think: big breasted seductress bathing in milk. Often, even when women have made their mark and they are remembered by history, we are offered a fantasy version of their lives. ~ Bettany Hughes, #NFDB
1498:to be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independences, magnanimity, and trust. it is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically but practically. the success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1499:People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher—a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
1500:Strictly by accident, Scott stumbled upon the most advanced weapon in the ultrarunner's arsenal: instead of cringing from fatigue, you embrace it. You refuse to let it go. You get know it so well, you're not afraid of it anymore[...]You can't hate the Beast and expect to beat it; the only way to truly conquer something, as every great philosopher and geneticist will tell you, is to love it. ~ Christopher McDougall, #NFDB
113 Integral Yoga
69 Philosophy
58 Occultism
54 Christianity
47 Psychology
33 Yoga
30 Poetry
11 Fiction
6 Hinduism
5 Sufism
4 Science
3 Philsophy
2 Mysticism
2 Integral Theory
2 Cybernetics
2 Baha i Faith
1 Theosophy
1 Thelema
1 Education
1 Alchemy
61 Sri Aurobindo
47 Nolini Kanta Gupta
45 Carl Jung
28 The Mother
25 Plotinus
22 Saint Augustine of Hippo
20 Satprem
18 Sri Ramakrishna
15 Aldous Huxley
13 Aleister Crowley
12 Swami Vivekananda
12 Friedrich Nietzsche
10 Plato
10 James George Frazer
10 H P Lovecraft
7 Jorge Luis Borges
6 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
6 Jordan Peterson
5 William Wordsworth
5 George Van Vrekhem
5 Al-Ghazali
5 A B Purani
4 Patanjali
4 Henry David Thoreau
4 Franz Bardon
3 Swami Krishnananda
3 Robert Browning
3 Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 Nirodbaran
2 Sri Ramana Maharshi
2 Saint John of Climacus
2 Norbert Wiener
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 John Keats
2 Edgar Allan Poe
2 Baha u llah
26 Mysterium Coniunctionis
18 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
18 City of God
17 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
15 The Perennial Philosophy
12 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
11 The Synthesis Of Yoga
10 The Golden Bough
10 Lovecraft - Poems
9 The Practice of Psycho therapy
8 Twilight of the Idols
7 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
7 Liber ABA
7 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
7 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
7 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 The Problems of Philosophy
6 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
6 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
6 Raja-Yoga
6 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
6 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
6 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
6 Maps of Meaning
6 Magick Without Tears
6 Essays On The Gita
6 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
5 Wordsworth - Poems
5 The Human Cycle
5 The Alchemy of Happiness
5 Talks
5 Preparing for the Miraculous
5 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
4 Walden
4 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
4 The Future of Man
4 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
4 Questions And Answers 1954
4 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
4 Letters On Yoga IV
4 Letters On Poetry And Art
4 Labyrinths
4 Essays Divine And Human
4 Aion
3 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
3 The Study and Practice of Yoga
3 The Life Divine
3 Initiation Into Hermetics
3 Emerson - Poems
3 Browning - Poems
3 Agenda Vol 08
3 Agenda Vol 03
3 Agenda Vol 02
2 Words Of Long Ago
2 Vedic and Philological Studies
2 The Phenomenon of Man
2 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
2 Symposium
2 Questions And Answers 1953
2 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
2 Poe - Poems
2 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
2 Letters On Yoga II
2 Keats - Poems
2 Dark Night of the Soul
2 Cybernetics
2 Borges - Poems
2 Bhakti-Yoga
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
This contact with the educated and progressive Bengalis opened Sri Ramakrishna's eyes to a new realm of thought. Born and brought up in a simple village, without any formal education, and taught by the orthodox holy men of India in religious life, he had had no opportunity to study the influence of modernism on the thoughts and lives of the Hindus. He could not properly estimate the result of the impact of Western education on Indian culture. He was a Hindu of the Hindus, renunciation being to him the only means to the realization of God in life. From the Brahmos he learnt that the new generation of India made a compromise between God and the world. Educated young men were influenced more by the Western philosophers than by their own prophets. But Sri Ramakrishna was not dismayed, for he saw in this, too, the hand of God. And though he expounded to the Brahmos all his ideas about God and austere religious disciplines, yet he bade them accept from his teachings only as much as suited their tastes and temperaments.
^The term "woman and gold", which has been used throughout in a collective sense, occurs again and again in the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna to designate the chief impediments to spiritual progress. This favourite expression of the Master, "kaminikanchan", has often been misconstrued. By it he meant only "lust and greed", the baneful influence of which retards the aspirant's spiritual growth. He used the word "kamini", or "woman", as a concrete term for the sex instinct when addressing his man devotees. He advised women, on the other hand, to shun "man". "Kanchan", or "gold", symbolizes greed, which is the other obstacle to spiritual life.
--
In the year 1879 occasional writings about Sri Ramakrishna by the Brahmos, in the Brahmo magazines, began to attract his future disciples from the educated middle-class Bengalis, and they continued to come till 1884. But others, too, came, feeling the subtle power of his attraction. They were an ever shifting crowd of people of all castes and creeds: Hindus and Brahmos, Vaishnavas and Saktas, the educated with university degrees and the illiterate, old and young, maharajas and beggars, journalists and artists, pundits and devotees, philosophers and the worldly-minded, jnanis and yogis, men of action and men of faith, virtuous women and prostitutes, office-holders and vagabonds, philanthropists and self-seekers, dramatists and drunkards, builders-up and pullers-down. He gave to them all, without stint, from his illimitable store of realization. No one went away empty-handed. He taught them the lofty .knowledge of the Vedanta and the soul
-melting love of the Purana. Twenty hours out of twenty-four he would speak without out rest or respite. He gave to all his sympathy and enlightenment, and he touched them with that strange power of the soul which could not but melt even the most hardened. And people understood him according to their powers of comprehension.
--
As he read in college the rationalistic Western philosophers of the nineteenth century, his boyhood faith in God and religion was unsettled. He would not accept religion on mere faith; he wanted demonstration of God. But very soon his passionate nature discovered that mere Universal Reason was cold and bloodless. His emotional nature, dissatisfied with a mere abstraction, required a concrete support to help him in the hours of temptation. He wanted an external power, a guru, who by embodying perfection in the flesh would still the commotion of his soul. Attracted by the magnetic personality of Keshab, he joined the Brahmo Samaj and became a singer in its choir. But in the Samaj he did not find the guru who could say that he had seen God.
In a state of mental conflict and torture of soul, Narendra came to Sri Ramakrishna at Dakshineswar. He was then eighteen years of age and had been in college two years. He entered the Master's room accompanied by some light-hearted friends. At Sri Ramakrishna's request he sang a few songs, pouring his whole soul into them, and the Master went into samadhi. A few minutes later Sri Ramakrishna suddenly left his seat, took Narendra by the hand, and led him to the screened verandah north of his room. They were alone. Addressing Narendra most tenderly, as if he were a friend of long acquaintance, the Master said: "Ah! You have come very late. Why have you been so unkind as to make me wait all these days? My ears are tired of hearing the futile words of worldly men. Oh, how I have longed to pour my spirit into the heart of someone fitted to receive my message!" He talked thus, sobbing all the time. Then, standing before Narendra with folded hands, he addressed him as Narayana, born on earth to remove the misery of humanity. Grasping Narendra's hand, he asked him to come again, alone, and very soon. Narendra was startled. "What is this I have come to see?" he said to himself. "He must be stark mad. Why, I am the son of Viswanath Dutta. How dare he speak this way to me?"
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
(It is to be observed that the philosopher having first
committed the syllogistic error quaternis terminorum,
0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
IN THE HISTORY of the arts, genius is a thing of very rare occurrence. Rarer still, however, are the competent reporters and recorders of that genius. The world has had many hundreds of admirable poets and philosophers; but of these hundreds only a very few have had the fortune to attract a Boswell or an Eckermann.
When we leave the field of art for that of spiritual religion, the scarcity of competent reporters becomes even more strongly marked. Of the day-to-day life of the great theocentric saints and contemplatives we know, in the great majority of cases, nothing whatever. Many, it is true, have recorded their doctrines in writing, and a few, such as St. Augustine, Suso and St. Teresa, have left us autobiographies of the greatest value.
--
"M", as the author modestly styles himself, was peculiarly qualified for his task. To a reverent love for his master, to a deep and experiential knowledge of that master's teaching, he added a prodigious memory for the small happenings of each day and a happy gift for recording them in an interesting and realistic way. Making good use of his natural gifts and of the circumstances in which he found himself, "M" produced a book unique, so far as my knowledge goes, in the literature of hagiography. No other saint has had so able and indefatigable a Boswell. Never have the small events of a contemplative's daily life been described with such a wealth of intimate detail. Never have the casual and unstudied utterances of a great religious teacher been set down with so minute a fidelity. To Western readers, it is true, this fidelity and this wealth of detail are sometimes a trifle disconcerting; for the social, religious and intellectual frames of reference within which Sri Ramakrishna did his thinking and expressed his feelings were entirely Indian. But after the first few surprises and bewilderments, we begin to find something peculiarly stimulating and instructive about the very strangeness and, to our eyes, the eccentricity of the man revealed to us in "M's" narrative. What a scholastic philosopher would call the "accidents" of Ramakrishna's life were intensely Hindu and therefore, so far as we in the West are concerned, unfamiliar and hard to understand; its "essence", however, was intensely mystical and therefore universal. To read through these conversations in which mystical doctrine alternates with an unfamiliar kind of humour, and where discussions of the oddest aspects of Hindu mythology give place to the most profound and subtle utterances about the nature of Ultimate Reality, is in itself a liberal, education in humility, tolerance and suspense of judgment. We must be grateful to the translator for his excellent version of a book so curious and delightful as a biographical document, so precious, at the same time, for what it teaches us of the life of the spirit.
--------------------
0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
When the gulf between actual life and the temperament of the thinker is too great, we see as the result a sort of withdrawing of the Mind from life in order to act with a greater freedom in its own sphere. The poet living among his brilliant visions, the artist absorbed in his art, the philosopher thinking out the problems of the intellect in his solitary chamber, the scientist, the scholar caring only for their studies and their experiments, were often in former days, are even now not unoften the Sannyasins of the intellect. To the work they have done for humanity, all its past bears record.
But such seclusion is justified only by some special activity.
Mind finds fully its force and action only when it casts itself upon life and accepts equally its possibilities and its resistances as the means of a greater self-perfection. In the struggle with the difficulties of the material world the ethical development of the individual is firmly shaped and the great schools of conduct are formed; by contact with the facts of life Art attains to vitality, Thought assures its abstractions, the generalisations of the philosopher base themselves on a stable foundation of science and experience.
This mixing with life may, however, be pursued for the sake of the individual mind and with an entire indifference to the forms of the material existence or the uplifting of the race. This indifference is seen at its highest in the Epicurean discipline and is not entirely absent from the Stoic; and even altruism does the works of compassion more often for its own sake than for the sake of the world it helps. But this too is a limited fulfilment. The progressive mind is seen at its noblest when it strives to elevate the whole race to its own level whether by sowing broadcast the image of its own thought and fulfilment or by changing the material life of the race into fresh forms, religious, intellectual, social or political, intended to represent more nearly that ideal of truth, beauty, justice, righteousness with which the man's own soul is illumined. Failure in such a field matters little; for the mere attempt is dynamic and creative. The struggle of Mind to elevate life is the promise and condition of the conquest of life by that which is higher even than Mind.
0.06 - INTRODUCTION, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
all but lost in the resonance of the philosopher's voice and the eloquent tones of the
preacher. Nor have the other treatises the learning and the authority of these.
01.02 - Sri Aurobindo - Ahana and Other Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What is the world that Sri Aurobindo sees and creates? Poetry is after all passion. By passion I do not mean the fury of emotion nor the fume of sentimentalism, but what lies behind at their source, what lends them the force they have the sense of the "grandly real," the vivid and pulsating truth. What then is the thing that Sri Aurobindo has visualised, has endowed with a throbbing life and made a poignant reality? Victor Hugo said: Attachez Dieu au gibet, vous avez la croixTie God to the gibbet, you have the cross. Even so, infuse passion into a thing most prosaic, you create sublime poetry out of it. What is the dead matter that has found life and glows and vibrates in Sri Aurobindo's passion? It is something which appears to many poetically intractable, not amenable to aesthetic treatment, not usually, that is to say, nor in the supreme manner. Sri Aurobindo has thrown such a material into his poetic fervour and created a sheer beauty, a stupendous reality out of it. Herein lies the greatness of his achievement. Philosophy, however divine, and in spite of Milton, has been regarded by poets as "harsh and crabbed" and as such unfit for poetic delineation. Not a few poets indeed foundered upon this rock. A poet in his own way is a philosopher, but a philosopher chanting out his philosophy in sheer poetry has been one of the rarest spectacles.1 I can think of only one instance just now where a philosopher has almost succeeded being a great poet I am referring to Lucretius and his De Rerum Natura. Neither Shakespeare nor Homer had anything like philosophy in their poetic creation. And in spite of some inclination to philosophy and philosophical ideas Virgil and Milton were not philosophers either. Dante sought perhaps consciously and deliberately to philosophise in his Paradiso I Did he? The less Dante then is he. For it is his Inferno, where he is a passionate visionary, and not his Paradiso (where he has put in more thought-power) that marks the nee plus ultra of his poetic achievement.
And yet what can be more poetic in essence than philosophy, if by philosophy we mean, as it should mean, spiritual truth and spiritual realisation? What else can give the full breath, the integral force to poetic inspiration if it is not the problem of existence itself, of God, Soul and Immortality, things that touch, that are at the very root of life and reality? What can most concern man, what can strike the deepest fount in him, unless it is the mystery of his own being, the why and the whither of it all? But mankind has been taught and trained to live merely or mostly on earth, and poetry has been treated as the expression of human joys and sorrows the tears in mortal things of which Virgil spoke. The savour of earth, the thrill of the flesh has been too sweet for us and we have forgotten other sweetnesses. It is always the human element that we seek in poetry, but we fail to recognise that what we obtain in this way is humanity in its lower degrees, its surface formulations, at its minimum magnitude.
We do not say that poets have never sung of God and Soul and things transcendent. Poets have always done that. But what I say is this that presentation of spiritual truths, as they are in their own home, in other words, treated philosophically and yet in a supreme poetic manner, has always been a rarity. We have, indeed, in India the Gita and the Upanishads, great philosophical poems, if there were any. But for one thing they are on dizzy heights out of the reach of common man and for another they are idolised more as philosophy than as poetry. Doubtless, our Vaishnava poets sang of God and Love Divine; and Rabindranath, in one sense, a typical modern Vaishnava, did the same. And their songs are masterpieces. But are they not all human, too human, as the mad prophet would say? In them it is the human significance, the human manner that touches and moves us the spiritual significance remains esoteric, is suggested, is a matter of deduction. Sri Aurobindo has dealt with spiritual experiences in a different way. He has not clothed them in human symbols and allegories, in images and figures of the mere earthly and secular life: he presents them in their nakedness, just as they are seen and realised. He has not sought to tone down the rigour of truth with contrivances that easily charm and captivate the common human mind and heart. Nor has he indulged like so many poet philosophers in vague generalisations and colourless or too colourful truisms that do not embody a clear thought or rounded idea, a radiant judgment. Sri Aurobindo has given us in his poetry thoughts that are clear-cut, ideas beautifully chiselledhe is always luminously forceful.
Take these Vedantic lines that in their limpidity and harmonious flow beat anything found in the fine French poet Lamartine:
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James H. Cousins in his New Ways in English Literature describes Sri Aurobindo as "the philosopher as poet."
Sri Aurobindo: "Who".
01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There have been other philosophical poets, a good number of them since thennot merely rationally philosophical, as was the vogue in the eighteenth century, but metaphysically philosophical, that is to say, inquiring not merely into the phenomenal but also into the labyrinths of the noumenal, investigating not only what meets the senses, but also things that are behind or beyond. Amidst the earlier efflorescence of this movement the most outstanding philosopher poet is of course Dante, the Dante of Paradiso, a philosopher in the mediaeval manner and to the extent a lesser poet, according to some. Goe the is another, almost in the grand modern manner. Wordsworth is full of metaphysics from the crown of his head to the tip of his toe although his poetry, perhaps the major portion of it, had to undergo some kind of martyrdom because of it. And Shelley, the supremely lyric singer, has had a very rich undertone of thought-content genuinely metaphysical. And Browning and Arnold and Hardyindeed, if we come to the more moderns, we have to cite the whole host of them, none can be excepted.
We left out the Metaphysicals, for they can be grouped as a set apart. They are not so much metaphysical as theological, religious. They have a brain-content stirring with theological problems and speculations, replete with scintillating conceits and intricate fancies. Perhaps it is because of this philosophical burden, this intellectual bias that the Metaphysicals went into obscurity for about two centuries and it is precisely because of that that they are slowly coming out to the forefront and assuming a special value with the moderns. For the modern mind is characteristically thoughtful, introspective"introvert"and philosophical; even the exact physical sciences of today are rounded off in the end with metaphysics.
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The philosophical trend in poetry has an interesting history with a significant role: it has acted as a force of purification, of sublimation, of katharsis. As man has risen from his exclusively or predominantly vital nature into an increasing mental poise, in the same way his creative activities too have taken this new turn and status. In the earlier stages of evolution the mental life is secondary, subordinate to the physico-vital life; it is only subsequently that the mental finds an independent and self-sufficient reality. A similar movement is reflected in poetic and artistic creation too: the thinker, the philosopher remains in the background at the outset, he looks out; peers through chinks and holes from time to time; later he comes to the forefront, assumes a major role in man's creative activity.
Man's consciousness is further to rise from the mental to over-mental regions. Accordingly, his life and activities and along with that his artistic creations too will take on a new tone and rhythm, a new mould and constitution even. For this transition, the higher mentalwhich is normally the field of philosophical and idealistic activitiesserves as the Paraclete, the Intercessor; it takes up the lower functionings of the consciousness, which are intense in their own way, but narrow and turbid, and gives, by purifying and enlarging, a wider frame, a more luminous pattern, a more subtly articulated , form for the higher, vaster and deeper realities, truths and harmonies to express and manifest. In the old-world spiritual and mystic poets, this intervening medium was overlooked for evident reasons, for human reason or even intelligence is a double-edged instrument, it can make as well as mar, it has a light that most often and naturally shuts off other higher lights beyond it. So it was bypassed, some kind of direct and immediate contact was sought to be established between the normal and the transcendental. The result was, as I have pointed out, a pure spiritual poetry, on the one hand, as in the Upanishads, or, on the other, religious poetry of various grades and denominations that spoke of the spiritual but in the terms and in the manner of the mundane, at least very much coloured and dominated by the latter. Vyasa was the great legendary figure in India who, as is shown in his Mahabharata, seems to have been one of the pioneers, if not the pioneer, to forge and build the missing link of Thought Power. The exemplar of the manner is the Gita. Valmiki's represented a more ancient and primary inspiration, of a vast vital sensibility, something of the kind that was at the basis of Homer's genius. In Greece it was Socrates who initiated the movement of speculative philosophy and the emphasis of intellectual power slowly began to find expression in the later poets, Sophocles and Euripides. But all these were very simple beginnings. The moderns go in for something more radical and totalitarian. The rationalising element instead of being an additional or subordinate or contri buting factor, must itself give its norm and form, its own substance and manner to the creative activity. Such is the present-day demand.
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Poetry, actually however, has been, by and large, a profane and mundane affair: for it expresses the normal man's perceptions and feelings and experiences, human loves and hates and desires and ambitions. True. And yet there has also always been an attempt, a tendency to deal with them in such a way as can bring calm and puritykatharsisnot trouble and confusion. That has been the purpose of all Art from the ancient days. Besides, there has been a growth and development in the historic process of this katharsis. As by the sublimation of his bodily and vital instincts and impulses., man is gradually growing into the mental, moral and finally spiritual consciousness, even so the artistic expression of his creative activity has followed a similar line of transformation. The first and original transformation happened with religious poetry. The religious, one may say, is the profane inside out; that is to say, the religious man has almost the same tone and temper, the same urges and passions, only turned Godward. Religious poetry too marks a new turn and development of human speech, in taking the name of God human tongue acquires a new plasticity and flavour that transform or give a new modulation even to things profane and mundane it speaks of. Religious means at bottom the colouring of mental and moral idealism. A parallel process of katharsis is found in another class of poetic creation, viz., the allegory. Allegory or parable is the stage when the higher and inner realities are expressed wholly in the modes and manner, in the form and character of the normal and external, when moral, religious or spiritual truths are expressed in the terms and figures of the profane life. The higher or the inner ideal is like a loose clothing upon the ordinary consciousness, it does not fit closely or fuse. In the religious, however, the first step is taken for a mingling and fusion. The mystic is the beginning of a real fusion and a considerable ascension of the lower into the higher. The philosopher poet follows another line for the same katharsisinstead of uplifting emotions and sensibility, he proceeds by thought-power, by the ideas and principles that lie behind all movements and give a pattern to all things existing. The mystic can be of either type, the religious mystic or the philosopher mystic, although often the two are welded together and cannot be very well separated. Let us illustrate a little:
The spacious firmament on high,
01.03 - Rationalism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It might be said, however, that the guarantee or sanction of Reason does not lie in the extent of its application, nor can its subjective nature (or ego-centric predication, as philosophers would term it) vitiate the validity of its conclusions. There is, in fact, an inherent unity and harmony between Reason and Reality. If we know a little of Reality, we know the whole; if we know the subjective, we know also the objective. As in the part, so in the whole; as it is within, so it is without. If you say that I will die, you need not wait for my actual death to have the proof of your statement. The generalising power inherent in Reason is the guarantee of the certitude to which it leads. Reason is valid, as it does not betray us. If it were such as anti-intellectuals make it out to be, we would be making nothing but false steps, would always remain entangled in contradictions. The very success of Reason is proof of its being a reliable and perfect instrument for the knowledge of Truth and Reality. It is beside the mark to prove otherwise, simply by analysing the nature of Reason and showing the fundamental deficiencies of that nature. It is rather to the credit of Reason that being as it is, it is none the less a successful and trustworthy agent.
Now the question is, does Reason never fail? Is it such a perfect instrument as intellectualists think it to be? There is ground for serious misgivings. Reason says, for example, that the earth revolves round the sun: and reason, it is argued, is right, for we see that all the facts are conformableto it, even facts that were hitherto unknown and are now coming into our ken. But the difficulty is that Reason did not say that always in the past and may not say that always in the future. The old astronomers could explain the universe by holding quite a contrary theory and could fit into it all their astronomical data. A future scientist may come and explain the matter in quite a different way from either. It is only a choice of workable theories that Reason seems to offer; we do not know the fact itself, apart perhaps from exactly the amount that immediate sense-perception gives to each of us. Or again, if we take an example of another category, we may ask, does God exist? A candid Rationalist would say that he does not know although he has his own opinion about the matter. Evidently, Reason cannot solve all the problems that it meets; it can judge only truths that are of a certain type.
01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Like the modern scientist the artist or craftsman too of today has become a philosopher, even a mystic philosopher. The subtler and higher ranges of consciousness are now the object of inquiry and investigation and expression and revelation for the scientist as well as for the artist. The external sense-objects, the phenomenal movements are symbols and signposts, graphs and pointer-readings of facts and realities that lie hidden, behind or beyond. The artist and the scientist are occult alchemists. What to make of this, for example:
Beyond the shapes of empire, the capes of Carbonek, over
01.05 - Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, a Great Man, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Tagore is in direct line with those bards who have sung of the Spirit, who always soared high above the falsehoods and uglinesses of a merely mundane life and lived in the undecaying delights and beauties of a diviner consciousness. Spiritual reality was the central theme of his poetic creation: only and naturally he viewed it in a special way and endowed it with a special grace. We know of another God-intoxicated man, the Jewish philosopher Spinoza, who saw things sub specie aeternitatis, under the figure or mode of eternity. Well, Tagore can be said to see things, in their essential spiritual reality, under the figure or mode of beauty. Keats indeed spoke of truth being beauty and beauty truth. But there is a great difference in the outlook and inner experience. A worshipper of beauty, unless he rises to the Upanishadic norm, is prone to become sensuous and pagan. Keats was that, Kalidasa was that, even Shelley was not far different. The spiritual vein in all these poets remains secondary. In the old Indian master, it is part of his intellectual equipment, no doubt, but nothing much more than that. In the other two it comes in as strange flashes from an unknown country, as a sort of irruption or on the peak of the poetic afflatus or enthousiasmos.
The world being nothing but Spirit made visible is, according to Tagore, fundamentally a thing of beauty. The scars and spots that are on the surface have to be removed and mankind has to repossess and clo the itself with that mantle of beauty. The world is beautiful, because it is the image of the Beautiful, because it harbours, expresses and embodies the Divine who is Beauty supreme. Now by a strange alchemy, a wonderful effect of polarisation, the very spiritual element in Tagore has made him almost a pagan and even a profane. For what are these glories of Nature and the still more exquisite glories that the human body has captured? They are but vibrations and modulations of beauty the delightful names and forms of the supreme Lover and Beloved.
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Both the poets were worshippers, idolaters, of beauty, especially of natural physical beauty, of beauty heaped on beauty, of beauty gathered, like honey from all places and stored and ranged and stalled with the utmost decorative skill. Yet the difference between the two is not less pronounced. A philosopher is reminded of Bergson, the great exponent of movement as reality, in connection with certain aspects of Tagore. Indeed, Beauty in Tagore is something moving, flowing, dancing, rippling; it is especially the beauty which music embodies and expresses. A Kalidasian beauty, on the contrary, is statuesque and plastic, it is to be appreciated in situ. This is, however, by the way.
Sri Aurobindo: "Ahana", Collected Poems & Plays, Vol. 2
01.07 - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
"They can no longer tell us that it is only small minds that have piety. They are shown how it has grown best in one of the the greatest geometricians, one of the subtlest metaphysicians, one of the most penetrating minds that ever existed on earth. The piety of such a philosopher should make the unbeliever and the libertine declare what a certain Diocles said one day on seeing Epicurus in a temple: 'What a feast, what a spectacle for me to see Epicurus in a temple! All my doubts vainsh, piety takes its place again. I never saw Jupiter's greatness so well as now when I behold Epicurus kneeling down!"1
What characterises Pascal is the way in which he has bent his brainnot rejected it but truly bent and forced even the dry "geometrical brain" to the service of Faith.
01.10 - Principle and Personality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We do not speak like politicians or banias; but the very truth of the matter demands such a policy or line of action. It is very well to talk of principles and principles alone, but what are principles unless they take life and form in a particular individual? They are airy nothings, notions in the brain of logicians and metaphysicians, fit subjects for discussion in the academy, but they are devoid of that vital urge which makes them creative agencies. We have long lines of philosophers, especially European, who most scrupulously avoided all touch of personalities, whose utmost care was to keep principles pure and unsullied; and the upshot was that those principles remained principles only, barren and infructuous, some thing like, in the strong and puissant phrase of BaudelaireLa froide majest de la femme strile. And on the contrary, we have had other peoples, much addicted to personalitiesespecially in Asiawho did not care so much for abstract principles as for concrete embodiments; and what has been the result here? None can say that they did not produce anything or produced only still-born things. They produced living creaturesephemeral, some might say, but creatures that lived and moved and had their days.
But, it may be asked, what is the necessity, what is the purpose in making it all a one man show? Granting that principles require personalities for their fructuation and vital functioning, what remains to be envisaged is not one personality but a plural personality, the people at large, as many individuals of the human race as can be consciously imbued with those principles. When principles are made part and parcel of, are concentrated in a single solitary personality, they get "cribbed and cabined," they are vitiated by the idiosyncrasies of the man, they come to have a narrower field of application; they are emptied of the general verities they contain and finally cease to have any effect.
01.11 - Aldous Huxley: The Perennial Philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This latest work of Aldous Huxley is a collection of sayings of sages and saints and philosophers from all over the world and of all times. The sayings are arranged under several heads such as "That art Thou", "The Nature of the Ground", "Divine Incarnation", "Self-Knowledge", "Silence", "Faith" etc., which clearly give an idea of the contents and also of the "Neo-Brahmin's" own personal preoccupation. There is also a running commentary, rather a note on each saying, meant to elucidate and explain, naturally from the compiler's standpoint, what is obviously addressed to the initiate.
A similar compilation was published in the Arya, called The Eternal Wisdom (Les Paroles ternelles, in French) a portion of which appeared later on in book-form: that was more elaborate, the contents were arranged in such a way that no comments were needed, they were self-explanatory, divided as they were in chapters and sections and subsections with proper headings, the whole thing put in a logical and organised sequence. Huxley's compilation begins under the title of the Upanishadic text "That art Thou" with this saying of Eckhart: "The more God is in all things, the more He is outside them. The more He is within, the more without". It will be interesting to note that the Arya compilation too starts with the same idea under the title "The God of All; the God who is in All", the first quotation being from Philolaus, "The Universe is a Unity".The Eternal Wisdom has an introduction called "The Song of Wisdom" which begins with this saying from the Book of Wisdom: "We fight to win sublime Wisdom; therefore men call us warriors".
01.12 - Three Degrees of Social Organisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Here is the crux of the question. The dictum of utilitarian philosophers is a golden rule which is easy to formulate but not so to execute. For the line of demarcation between one's own rights and the equal rights of others is so undefinable and variable that a title suit is inevitable in each case. In asserting and establishing and even maintaining one's rights there is always the possibilityalmost the certaintyof encroaching upon others' rights.
What is required is not therefore an external delimitation of frontiers between unit and unit, but an inner outlook of nature and a poise of character. And this can be cultivated and brought into action by learning to live by the sense of duty. Even then, even the sense of duty, we have to admit, is not enough. For if it leads or is capable of leading into an aberration, we must have something else to check and control it, some other higher and more potent principle. Indeed, both the conceptions of Duty and Right belong to the domain of mental ideal, although one is usually more aggressive and militant (Rajasic) and the other tends to be more tolerant and considerate (sattwic): neither can give an absolute certainty of poise, a clear guarantee of perfect harmony.
Indian wisdom has found this other, a fairer terma tertium quid,the mystic factor, sought for by so many philosophers on so many counts. That is the very well- known, the very familiar termDharma. What is Dharma then? How does it accomplish the miracle which to others seems to have proved an impossibility? Dharma is self-law, that is to say, the law of the Self; it is the rhythm and movement of our inner or inmost being, the spontaneous working out of our truth-conscious nature.
We may perhaps view the three terms Right, Duty and Dharma as degrees of an ascending consciousness. Consciousness at Its origin and in its primitive formulation is dominated by the principle of inertia (tamas); in that state things have mostly an undifferentiated collective existence, they helplessly move about acted upon by forces outside them. A rise in growth and evolution brings about differentiation, specialisation, organisation. And this means consciousness of oneself of the distinct and separate existence of each and everyone, in other words, self-assertion, the claim, the right of each individual unit to be itself, to become itself first and foremost. It is a necessary development; for it signifies the growth of self consciousness in the units out of a mass unconsciousness or semi-consciousness. It is the expression of rajas, the mode of dynamism, of strife and struggle, it is the corrective of tamas.
01.13 - T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The modern temper is especially partial to harmony: it cannot assert and reject unilaterally and categorically, it wishes to go round an object and view all its sides; it asks for a synthesis and reconciliation of differences and contraries. Two major chords of life-experience that demand accord are Life and Death, Time and Eternity. Indeed, the problem of Time hangs heavy on the human consciousness. It has touched to the quick philosophers and sages in all ages and climes; it is the great question that confronts the spiritual seeker, the riddle that the Sphinx of life puts to the journeying soul for solution.
A modern Neo-Brahmin, Aldous Huxley, has given a solution of the problem in his now famous Shakespearean apothegm, "Time must have a stop". That is an old-world solution rediscovered by the modern mind in and through the ravages of Time's storm and stress. It means, salvation lies, after all, beyond the flow of Time, one must free oneself from the vicious and unending circle of mortal and mundane life. As the Rajayogi controls and holds his breath, stills all life-movement and realises a dead-stop of consciousness (Samadhi), even so one must control and stop all secular movements in oneself and attain a timeless stillness and vacancy in which alone the true spiritual light and life can descend and manifest. That is the age-long and ancient solution to which the Neo-Brahmin as well the Neo-Christian adheres.
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Our poet is too self-conscious, he himself feels that he has not the perfect voice. A Homer, even a Milton possesses a unity of tone and a wholeness of perception which are denied to the modern. To the modern, however, the old masters are not subtle enough, broad enough, psychological enough, let us say the word, spiritual enough. And yet the poetic inspiration, more than the religious urge, needs the injunction not to be busy with too many things, but to be centred upon the one thing needful, viz., to create poetically and not to discourse philosophically or preach prophetically. Not that it is impossible for the poet to swallow the philosopher and the prophet, metabolising them into the substance of his bone and marrow, of "the trilling wire in his blood", as Eliot graphically expresses. That perhaps is the consummation towards which poetry is tending. But at present, in Eliot, at least, the strands remain distinct, each with its own temper and rhythm, not fused and moulded into a single streamlined form of beauty. Our poet flies high, very high indeed at times, often or often he flies low, not disdaining the perilous limit of bathos. Perhaps it is all wilful, it is a mannerism which he cherishes. The mannerism may explain his psychology and enshrine his philosophy. But the poet, the magician is to be looked for elsewhere. In the present collection of poems it is the philosophical, exegetical, discursive Eliot who dominates: although the high lights of the subject-matter may be its justification. Still even if we have here doldrums like
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence
0 1960-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I had seen this earlier from another angle. In the beginning, when I started having the consciousness of immortality and when I brought together this true consciousness of immortality and the human conception of it (which is entirely different), I saw so clearly that when a human (even quite an ordinary human, one who is not a collectivity in himselfas is a writer, for example, or a philosopher or statesman) projects himself through his imagination into what he calls immortality (meaning an indefinite duration of time) he doesnt project himself alone but rather, inevitably and always, what is projected along with himself is a whole agglomeration, a collectivity or totality of things which represent the life and the consciousness of his present existence. And then I made the following experiment on a number of people; I said to them, Excuse me, but lets say that through a special discipline or a special grace your life were to continue indefinitely. What you would most likely extend into this indefinite future are the circumstances of your life, this formation you have built around yourself that is made up of people, relationships, activities, a whole collection of more or less living or inert things.
But that CANNOT be extended as it is, for everything is constantly changing! And to be immortal, you have to follow this perpetual change; otherwise, what will naturally happen is what now happensone day you will die because you can no longer follow the change. But if you can follow it, then all this will fall from you! Understand that what will survive in you is something you dont know very well, but its the only thing that can survive and all the rest will keep falling off all the time Do you still want to be immortal?Not one in ten said yes! Once you are able to make them feel the thing concretely, they tell you, Oh no! Oh no! Since everything else is changing, the body might as well change too! What difference would it make! But what remains is THAT; THAT is what you must truly hold on to but then you must BE THAT, not this whole agglomeration. What you now call you is not THAT, its a whole collection of things..
0 1961-07-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The way Theon told it, there was first the universal Mother (he didnt call her the universal Mother, but Sri Aurobindo used that name), the universal Mother in charge of creation. For creating she made four emanations: Consciousness or Light; Life; Love or Beatitude and (Mother tries in vain to remember the fourth) I must have cerebral anemia today! In India they speak only of three: Sat-Chit-Ananda (Sat is Existence, expressed by Life; Chit is Consciousness, expressed by Power; Ananda is Bliss, synonymous with Love). But according to Theon, there were four (I knew them by heart). Well, these emanations (Theon narrated it in such a way that someone not a philosopher, someone with a childlike mind, could understand), these emanations, conscious of their own power, separated themselves from their Origin; that is, instead of being entirely surrendered to the supreme Will and expressing only. Ah, the fourth emanation is Truth! Instead of carrying out only the supreme Will, they seem to have acquired a sense of personal power. (They were personalities of sorts, universal personalities, each representing a mode of being.) Instead of remaining connected, they cut the linkeach acted on his own, to put it simply. Then, naturally, Light became darkness, Life became death, Bliss became suffering and Truth became falsehood. And these are the four great Asuras: the Asura of Inconscience, the Asura of Falsehood, the Asura of Suffering and the Asura of Death.
Once this had occurred, the divine Consciousness turned towards the Supreme and said (Mother laughs): Well, heres what has happened. Whats to be done? Then from the Divine came an emanation of Love (in the first emanation it wasnt Love, it was Ananda, Bliss, the Delight of being which became Suffering), and from the Supreme came Love; and Love descended into this domain of Inconscience, the result of the creation of the first emanation, Consciousness Consciousness and Light had become Inconscience and Darkness. Love descended straight from the Supreme into this Inconscience; the Supreme, that is, created a new emanation, which didnt pass through the intermediate worlds (because, according to the story, the universal Mother first created all the gods who, when they descended, remained in contact with the Supreme and created all the intermediate worlds to counterbalance this fallits the old story of the Fall, this fall into the Inconscient. But that wasnt enough). Simultaneously with the creation of the gods, then, came this direct Descent of Love into Matter, without passing through all the intermediate worlds. Thats the story of the first Descent. But youre speaking of the descent heralded by Sri Aurobindo, the Supramental Descent, arent you?
0 1961-10-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is not surprising, therefore, that exegetes have seen the Vedas primarily as a collection of propitiatory rites centered around sacrificial fires and obscure incantations to Nature divinities (water, fire, dawn, the moon, the sun, etc.), for bringing rain and rich harvests to the tribes, male progeny, blessings upon their journeys or protection against the thieves of the sunas though these shepherds were barbarous enough to fear that one inauspicious day their sun might no longer rise, stolen away once and for all. Only here and there, in a few of the more modern hymns, was there the apparently inadvertent intrusion of a few luminous passages that might have justifiedjust barely the respect which the Upanishads, at the beginning of recorded history, accorded to the Veda. In Indian tradition, the Upanishads had become the real Veda, the Book of Knowledge, while the Veda, product of a still stammering humanity, was a Book of Worksacclaimed by everyone, to be sure, as the venerable Authority, but no longer listened to. With Sri Aurobindo we might ask why the Upanishads, whose depth of wisdom the whole world has acknowledged, could claim to take inspiration from the Veda if the latter contained no more than a tapestry of primitive rites; or how it happened that humanity could pass so abruptly from these so-called stammerings to the manifold richness of the Upanishadic Age; or how we in the West were able to evolve from the simplicity of Arcadian shepherds to the wisdom of Greek philosophers. We cannot assume that there was nothing between the early savage and Plato or the Upanishads.5
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0 1961-12-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I am the first among them! Nothing tires me more than philosophers.
Satprem did not choose these pictures.
0 1962-01-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Well, if you speak this way to philosophers and metaphysicians, theyll look at you as if to say, You must be a real simpleton to believe all that claptrap! But these things are not to be taken as concrete truths they are simply splendid images. Through them I really did come in contact, very concretely, with the truth of what caused the worlds distortion, much better than with all the Hindu stories, far more easily.
Buddhism and all similar lines of thought took the shortest path: The desire to exist is what has caused all the trouble. If the Lord had refrained from having this desire, there would have been no world! Its childish, very childish, really a much too human way of looking at the problem.
0 1962-02-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Did you ever hear the story of the philosopher who lived in the South of France? I dont recall his name, a very well-known man.
He was a professor at Montpellier University and lived nearby. And there were several roads leading to his house. This man would leave the university and come to the crossing where all those roads branched out, all eventually leading to his house, one this way, one that way, one from this side. So he himself used to explain how every day he would stop there at the crossroads and deliberate, Which one shall I take? Each had its advantages and disadvantages. So all this would go through his head, the advantages and disadvantages and this and that, and he would waste half an hour choosing which road to take home!
0 1962-11-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As soon as I saw that I understood. Well, I told myself, if I were a philosopher I could write a thick book about this! It made me laugh. Because its not just ONE thing: there are heaps of them, all the time, all the time. Things like this are happening all the time.
The Lord is enjoying himself!
0 1964-08-11, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Of course, very philosophical or learned people will pity you, but personally I dont care! I dont care. I am not a philosopher, I am not a scholar, I am not a savant, and I declare it very loudly: neither a philosopher nor a scholar nor a savant. And no pretension. Nor a littrateur, nor an artist I am nothing at all. I am truly convinced of this. And its absolutely unimportant thats perfection for human beings.
There is no greater joy than to know that you can do nothing and are absolutely helpless, that youre not the one who does, and that what little is donelittle or big, it doesnt matteris done by the Lord; and the responsibility is fully His. That makes you happy. With that, you are happy.
0 1967-09-20, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Only an observation, which is really very interesting: its that everyone has said the same thing, all those who have had the Experience have said the same thing but each one in his own way, so it looks like something different. Yesterday it was so clear, and again the whole morning, from early morning: this way, that way, this one here, that one there (Mother shows different facets), the philosophers, founders of religions, sages of all countries they have always said the same thing. For instance, the Buddhas teaching and, say, the Christian teaching, seem to be so different, but its always the same thing. That is to say, there is ONE state (if you catch hold of it), ONE state in which you are conscious of the divine Consciousness (not conscious of: conscious through or conscious with, I dont know how to explain its the divine Consciousness which is conscious, that is, the Consciousness in its essence), and there are no more problems there, no more complications, no more explanations, nothing anymoreeverything is as clear as can be. So then, each one has tried to explain that, and naturally it has become confused, incomplete, incorrect, with one explanation clashing with anotherwhile everyone is talking about the same thing!
It came yesterday in relation to a boy who sent me the letter from one of his friends, in which he said the usual nonsense: I dont believe in God because I cant see him. The usual little stupidity. And in that connection, I saw (I looked, like that, looked for a long time), I saw that the one who rejects, the one who asserts, the one all that, all of it is (how could I put it?) variations on the same theme, even when it appears to be saying the contrary.
0 1967-09-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Osservatore Romano published in an article excerpts from a forthcoming book of conversations with the Pope by a lifelong friend, the French philosopher and academician, Jean Guitton.
I saw, as is said in the Apocalypse, a limitless crowd, a multitude, an enormous welcome. In those thousands of faces I read, stronger than curiosity, a kind of indescribable sympathy, the Pope said.
0 1967-10-04, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And this man (I saw his photo, he has a magnificent head) says, I live in Gods presence. Thats what he says, and I dont think he makes any fussbesides he doesnt have the time because he goes to bed after midnight and gets up at five every day, starts work at five-thirty and spends the whole day working, that is, seeing people and people and more people (when that was read out to me, I thought, And I complain!). Its admirable. He did some studies, but he isnt a philosopher, he doesnt have any theories: he seems to have been born like that, with healing hands. He probably gets rid of infections by dehydrating them, so he cures all the diseases of that nature. And they did (poor man, they must have made his life impossible!), they did encephalograms, cardiograms and so on, and they noticed that just when he lays his hands (for a few seconds, two or three minutes at the most), at that moment his heartbeats suddenly go up from sixty to eighty, then fall back to normal. And he doesnt seem to be making any fuss, unlike that German I told you aboutnothing at all, very simple, very nice.
I liked that story.
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Thats simply from the intellectual standpoint. Because if he isnt a philosopher, if he doesnt live in ideas, it doesnt matter at all: its rather a question of EXPERIENCE. It seems that the experience he had3 was a descent of Ananda, something he had never felt before, which came to him all of a sudden. Then he told his Superior, Id like to go all alone into solitude, to the countryside, because he didnt like rites, ceremonies and all that. So that was the starting point, and then he felt the need to come to India. And in India he travelled all around, until he came here. He has been in Orders for only two or three years, its a recent conversion (not conversion from a religious standpoint but from the standpoint of life, because he must have been Catholic since his childhood, but he desired to leave life and become a monk), thats recent.
But its a strange monastery, because Pavitra has had quite a sustained correspondence with an abbot who was in that monastery (he has a file this thick!), then it stopped abruptly, I dont know why.
0 1969-08-16, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres a Chinese in Shantiniketan (I forget his name8) who once came to see Sri Aurobindo; I know him, he spoke to me. He is a philosopher. He had properties in China (he lives in India) and gave everything to the Communists, saying, I give it to you so you dont have to take it! He told me personally (I was downstairs, long ago, Sri Aurobindo was there9), he said to me, China is a very intelligent country; they would be able to understand Sri Aurobindos writings, and I see NOTHING ELSE that could save the world from confusion. Only, naturally, it would have to be in Chinese thats what S.H.10 did, he put it into Chinese, but now its not even printed and cant enter China.
And theyre cutting off the heads of all the intellectuals there,11 theyre demolishing a whole generationstupefying a whole generation.
0 1970-10-10, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, tell him that I ask him to do it, if he wants to. If we could send it to China Theres a Chinese in Santiniketan, but I am no longer in touch with him (he gave all his goods to Communist China, and hes staying there). Hes a philosopher, a very intelligent man. But anyway, for the translation it should be Shu-Hu.
For the German, I dont know. We have many Germans, but I dont know.
0 1971-12-11, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This year, we are celebrating Sri Aurobindos Birth Centenary. He is known to barely a handful of men and yet his name will resound when the great men of today or yesterday are buried under their own debris. His work is discussed by philosophers, praised by poets, people acclaim his sociological vision and his yoga but Sri Aurobindo is a living ACTION, a Word becoming real, and every day in the thousand circumstances that seem to want to rend the earth and topple its structures we can witness the first reflux of the Force he has set in motion. At the beginning of this century, when India was still struggling against British domination, Sri Aurobindo asserted: It is not a revolt against the British Government [that is needed]. It is, in fact, a revolt against the whole universal Nature.2
For the problem is fundamental. It is not a question of bringing a new philosophy to the world or new ideas or illuminations, as they are called. The question is not of making the Prison of our lives more habitable, or of endowing man with ever more fantastic powers. Armed with his microscopes and telescopes, the human gnome remains a gnome, pain-ridden and helpless. We send rockets to the moon, but we know nothing of our own hearts. It is a question, says Sri Aurobindo, of creating a new physical nature which is to be the habitation of the Supramental being in a new evolution.3 For, in actuality, he says, the imperfection of Man is not the last word of Nature, but his perfection too is not the last peak of the Spirit.4 Beyond the mental man we are, there exists the possibility of another being who will be the spearhead of evolution as man was once the spearhead of evolution among the great apes. If, says Sri Aurobindo, the animal is a living laboratory in which Nature has, it is said, worked out man, man himself may well be a thinking and living laboratory in whom and with whose conscious co-operation she wills to work out the superman, the god.5 Sri Aurobindo has come to tell us how to create this other being, this supramental being, and not only to tell us but actually to create this other being and open the path of the future, to hasten upon earth the rhythm of evolution, the new vibration that will replace the mental vibrationexactly as a thought one day disturbed the slow routine of the beastsand will give us the power to shatter the walls of our human prison.
02.03 - An Aspect of Emergent Evolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Does this point to the emergence of a new type of superhuman beings forming a class or a species by themselves? The possibility has been envisaged by some of the protagonists of emergent evolution, but has not been sufficiently examinedor considered. philosophers seem to walk in this region with caution and incertitude, as if on quicksand and quagmire. But in this connection we are faced with a problem which Morgan had the happy intuition to seize and to bring forward. It is our purpose to draw attention to this matter.
Professor Alexander spoke of the emergence of deities who would embody emergent properties other than those manifest in the Mind of man. Morgan asks whether there is not also a Deityor the Deityin the making. He establishes the logical necessity of such a consummation in this way: the evolutionary urge (or nisus, as it has been called) in its upward drive creates and throws up on all sides, at each stage, forms of the new property or principle of existence that has come into evidence. These multiple forms may appear anywhere and everywhere; they are strewn about on the entire surface of Nature. These are, however, the branchings of the evolutionary nisus which has a central line of advance running through the entire gradation of emergents; it is, as it were, the central pillar round which is erected a many-storeyed edifice. The interesting point is this, that at the present stage of emergence, what the central line touches and arrives at is the Deity. Or, again, the thing can be viewed in another way. At the bottom the evolutionary movement is broad-based on Matter but as it proceeds upward its extent is gradually narrowed down;
02.06 - Vansittartism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This is the very core of the matter. Germany stands for a philosophy of life, for a definite mode of human values. That philosophy was slowly developed, elaborated by the German mind, in various degrees and in various ways through various thinkers and theorists and moralists and statesmen, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. The conception of the State as propounded even by her great philosophers as something self-existent, sacrosanct and almost divineaugust and grim, one has to addis profoundly significant of the type of the subconscient dynamic in the nation: it strangely reminds one of the state organised by the bee, the ant or the termite. Hitler has only precipitated the idea, given it a concrete, physical and dynamic form. That philosophy in its outlook has been culturally anti-Latin, religiously anti-Christian. Germany cherishes always in her heart the memory of the day when her hero Arminius routed the Roman legions of Varus. Germany stands for a mode of human consciousness that is not in line with the major current of its evolutionary growth: she harks back to something primeval, infra-rational, infra-human.
Such is the position taken up by Lord Vansittart who has given his name to the new ideology of anti-Germanism. Vansittartism (at least in its extreme variety) has very little hope for the mending of Germany, it practically asks for its ending.
02.13 - On Social Reconstruction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In ancient times too there were conscious attempts to build and remould human society. The Rishis were not merely spiritual seers, but creators of the social order also. They saw by their vision the inner truths of things, they found principles and laws, right principles and correct laws which establish peace and stability, on the one hand, no doubt, but on the other hand serve also as the frame for the growth and fulfilment of the individual being. The king with his executive body was there to see that the laws were observed and honoured. The later law-givers (the makers of codes, smritis) had not the direct and large vision of the Rishis, but they tried their best to maintain the laws as they understood them, elaborate them, change or modify wherever possible or needed under given circumstances. In ancient Europe too, it was Plato who envisaged the ideal Republic, a government of philosophers the wise who are not actively engaged in the turmoil of life, but stand aloof and detached and can see more of the game and accordingly legislate all the better. In modern times also the rise of a Feuhrer or a Dictator seems to have been a psychological necessity: the mass consciousness is in sore need of a guide, and as the right guide is not easily available, the way of the false prophet is smooth and wide open. As a protection and antidote against such a calamity, we tried here and there to found and organise a government of all talents.
But again, who are the talents and where are they? For a modern society produces at best clever politicians, but very few great souls if at all, who can inspire, guide and create. Not a system or organization, but such centres of forces, with creative vision and power, it is that that mankind sorely needs at this hour. System and organization come after, they can only be the embodiment of a creative vision.
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What is the thing in human society which makes it valuable, worthy of humanity, gives it a place of honour and the right to live and continue to live? It is its culture and civilisation, as everyone knows. Greece or Rome, China or India did not attain, at least according to modern conceptions, a high stage in economic evolution: the production and distribution of wealth, the classification and organization of producers and consumers, their relation and functions were, in many respects, what is called primitive. An American of today would laugh at their uncouth simplicity. And yet America has to bow down to those creators of other values that are truly valuable. And the values are the creations of the great poets, artists, philosophers, law-givers; sages and seers. It is they who made the glory that was Greece or Rome or China or India or Egypt. Indeed they are the builders of Culture, culture which is the inner life of a civilisation. The decline of culture and civilisation means precisely the displacement of the "cultured" man by the economic man. In the present age when economic values have been grossly exaggerated holding the entire social fabric in its stifling grip, the culture spirit has been pushed into the background and made subservient to economic and other cruder forces. That was what Julien Benda, the famous French critic and moralist, once stigmatised as "La Trahison des Clercs"; only, the "clercs" did not voluntarily betray, but circumstanced as they were they could do no better. The process reached its climaxperhaps one should say the very nadirin the Nazi experiment and something of it still continues in the Russian dispensation. There the intellectuals or the intelligentsia are totally harnessed to the political machine, their capacities are prostituted in the service of a socio-economic plan. Poets and artists and thinkers are made to be protagonists and propagandists of the new order. It is a significant sign of the times how almost the whole body of scientists the entire Brain Trust of mankind today, one might sayhave been mobilised for the fabrication of the Atom Bomb. Otherwise they cannot subsist, they lose all economic status.
In the older order, however, a kindlier treatment was meted out to this class, this class of the creators of values. They had patrons who looked after their physical well-being. They had the necessary freedom and leisure to follow their own bent and urge of creativity. Kings and princes, the court and the nobility, in spite of all the evils ascribed to them, and often very justly, have nevertheless been the nursery of art and culture, of all the art and culture of the ancient times. One remembers Shakespeare reading or enacting his drama before the Great Queen, or the poignant scene of Leonardo dying in the arms of Francis the First. Those were the truly great classical ages, and art or man's creative genius hardly ever rose to that height ever since. The downward curve started with the advent and growth of the bourgeoisie when the artist or the creative genius lost their supporters and had to earn their own living by the sweat of their brow. Indeed the greatest tragedies of frustration because of want and privation, occur, not as much among the "lowest" classes who are usually considered as the poorest and the most miserable in society, but in that section from where come the intellectuals, "men of light and leading," to use the epithet they are honoured with. For very few of this group are free to follow their inner trend and urge, but have either to coerce and suppress them or stultify them in the service of lesser alien duties, which mean "forced labour." The punishment for refusing to be drawn away and to falsify oneself is not unoften the withdrawal of the bare necessities of life, in certain cases sheer destitution. A Keats wasting his energies in a work that has no relation to his inner life and light, or a Madhusudan dying in a hospital as a pauper, are examples significant of the nature of the social structure man lives in.
02.14 - Appendix, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Let me in this connection tell you a story. We were then in college. The Swadeshi movement was in full flood, carrying everything before it. We the young generation of students had been swept off our feet. One day, an elder among us whom I used to consider personally as my friend, philosopher and guide, happened to pass a remark which rather made me lose my bearings a little. He was listing the misdeeds of the British in India. "This nation of shopkeepers!" he was saying, "There is no end to their trickeries to cheat us. Take, for instance, this question of education. The system they have set up with the high-sounding title of 'University' and 'the advancement of learning' is nothing more than a machine for creating a band of inexpensive clerks and slaves to serve them. They have been throwing dust into our eyes by easily passing off useless Brummagem ware with the label of the real thing. One such eminently useless stuff is their poet Wordsworth, whom they have tried to foist on our young boys to their immense detriment." This remark was no doubt a testimony to his inordinate love of country. But it remains to be seen how far it would bear scrutiny as being based on truth.
For us in India, especially to Bengalis, the first and foremost obstacle to accepting Wordsworth as a poet would be his simple, artless and homely manner:
03.01 - Humanism and Humanism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Appendix The philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Man, Human and DivineHumanism and Humanism
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A good many European scholars and philosophers have found Indian spirituality and Indian culture, at bottom, lacking in what is called "humanism."1 So our scholars and philosophers on their side have been at pains to re but the charge and demonstrate the humanistic element in our tradition. It may be asked however, if such a vindication is at all necessary, or if it is proper to apply a European standard of excellence to things Indian. India may have other measures, other terms of valuation. Even if it is proved that humanism as defined and understood in the West is an unknown thing in India, yet that need not necessarily be taken as a sign of inferiority or deficiency.
But first of all we must know what exactly is meant by humanism. It is, of course, not a doctrine or dogma; it is an attitude, an outlook the attitude, the outlook that views and weighs the worth of man as man. The essential formula was succinctly given by the Latin poet when he said that nothing human he considered foreign to him.2 It is the characteristic of humanism to be interested in man as man and in all things that interest man as man. To this however an important corollary is to be added, that it does not concern itself with things that do not concern man's humanity. The original father of humanism was perhaps Socrates whose mission it was, as he said, to bring down philosophy from heaven to live among men. More precisely, the genesis should be ascribed rather to the Aristotelian tradition of Socratic teaching.
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Appendix The philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art
03.02 - The Philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
object:03.02 - The philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
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Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Man, Human and Divine The philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art
The philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art
I wonder why Philosophy has never been considered as a variety of Art. Philosophy is admired for the depth and height of its substance, for its endeavour to discover the ultimate Truth, for its one-pointed adherence to the supremely Real; but precisely because it does so it is set in opposition to Art which is reputed as the domain of the ideal, the imaginative or the fictitious. Indeed it is the antagonism between the two that has always been emphasised and upheld as an axiomatic truth and an indisputable fact. Of course, old Milton (he was young, however, when he wrote these lines) says that philosophy is divine and charming:
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In the face of established opinion and tradition (and in the wake of the prophetic poet) I propose to demonstrate that Philosophy has as much claim to be called an art, as any other orthodox art, painting or sculpture or music or architecture. I do not refer to the element of philosophyperhaps the very large element of philosophy that is imbedded and ingrained in every Art; I speak of Philosophy by itself as a distinct type of au thentic art. I mean that Philosophy is composed or created in the same way as any other art and the philosopher is moved and driven by the inspiration and impulsion of a genuine artist. Now, what is Art? Please do not be perturbed by the question. I am not trying to enter into the philosophy the metaphysicsof it, but only into the science the physicsof it. Whatever else it may be, the sine qua non, the minimum requisite of art is that it must be a thing of beauty, that is to say, it must possess a beautiful form. Even the Vedic Rishi says that the poet by his poetic power created a heavenly formkavi kavitva divi rpam asajat. As a matter of fact, a supreme beauty of form has often marked the very apex of artistic creation. Now, what does the philosopher do? The sculptor hews beautiful forms out of marble, the poet fashions beautiful forms out of words, the musician shapes beautiful forms out of sounds. And the philosopher? The philosopher, I submit, builds beautiful forms out of thoughts and concepts. Thoughts and concepts are the raw materials out of which the artist philosopher creates mosaics and patterns and designs architectonic edifices. For what else are philosophic systems? A system means, above all, a form of beauty, symmetrical and harmonious, a unified whole, rounded and polished and firmly holding together. Even as in Art, truth, bare sheer truth is not the object of philosophical inquiry either. Has it not been considered sufficient for a truth to be philosophically true, if it is consistent, if it does not involve self-contradiction? The equation runs: Truth=Self-consistency; Error=Self-contradiction. To discover the absolute truth is not the philosopher's taskit is an ambitious enterprise as futile and as much of a my as the pursuit of absolute space, absolute time or absolute motion in Science. Philosophy has nothing more to doand nothing lessthan to evolve or build up a system, in other words, a self-consistent whole (of concepts, in this case). Art also does exactly the same thing. Self-contradiction means at bottom, want of harmony, balance, symmetry, unity, and self-consistency means the contrary of these things the two terms used by philosophy are only the logical formulation of an essentially aesthetic value.
Take, for example, the philosophical system of Kant or of Hegel or of our own Shankara. What a beautiful edifice of thought each one has reared! How cogent and compact, organised and poised and finely modelled! Shankara's reminds me of a tower, strong and slender, mounting straight and tapering into a vanishing point among the clouds; it has the characteristic linear movement of Indian melody. On the otherhand, the march of the Kantian Critiques or of the Hegelian Dialectic has a broader base and involves a composite strain, a balancing of contraries, a blending of diverse notes: thereis something here of the amplitude and comprehensiveness of harmonic architecture (without perhaps a corresponding degree of altitude).
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But the philosopher's stone is not, after all, a myth, as is being proved by modern science. Even so, the philosopher's truth the truth, that is to say, in the noumenal sense, to which he aspires in his heart of heartsis also existent. There is a reality apart from and beyond all relativities and contingencies: truth is not mere self-consistence, it is self-existence. Art and philosophy as an art may not comprehend it, but they circuit round it and even have glimpses of it and touch it, though the vision they have more often aberrates, distorting a rope into a snake.
It is a grain of this truth that is the substance and the core of all true art and philosophy. Philosophy works upon this secret strand by its logic, art by imaginationalthough logic and imagination may not be so incommensurable as they are commonly thought to be; even so, both art and philosophy arrive at the same result, viz., the building of a beautiful superstructure.
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Plato would not tolerate the poets in his ideal society since they care too much for beauty and very little for the true and good. He wanted it all to be a kingdom of philosophers. I am afraid Plato's philosopher is not true to type, the type set up by his great disciple. Plato's philosopher is no longeran artist, he has become a mystica Rishi in our language.
For we must remember that Plato himself was really more of a poet than a philosopher. Very few among the great representative souls of humanity surpassed him in the true poetic afflatus. The poet and the mysticKavi and Rishiare the same in our ancient lore. However these two, Plato and Aristotle, the mystic and the philosopher, the master and the disciple, combine to form one of these dual personalities which Nature seems to like and throws up from time to time in her evolutionary marchnot as a mere study in contrast, a token of her dialectical process, but rather as a movement of polarity making for a greater comprehensiveness and richer values. They may be taken as the symbol of a great synthesis that humanity needs and is preparing. The role of the mystic is to envisage and unveil the truth, the supernal reality which the mind cannot grasp nor all the critical apparatus of human reason demonstrate and to bring it down and present it to the understanding and apprehending consciousness. The philosopher comes at this stage: he receives and gathers all that is given to him, arranges and systematises, puts the whole thing in a frame as it were.
The poet- philosopher or the philosopher-poet, whichever way we may put it, is a new formation of the human consciousness that is coming upon us. A wide and rationalising (not rationalistic) intelligence deploying and marshalling out a deep intuitive and direct Knowledge that is the pattern of human mind developing in the new age. Bergson's was a harbinger, a definite landmark on the way. Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine arrives and opens the very portals of the marvellous temple city of a dynamic integral knowledge.
Comus, I, 477-8.
03.03 - A Stainless Steel Frame, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art Towardsa New Ideology
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Man, Human and DivineA Stainless Steel Frame
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The philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art Towardsa New Ideology
03.04 - Towardsa New Ideology, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Still some kind of hierarchy seems tobe the natural and inevitable form of collective life. A dead level, however high that may possibly be, appears to be rather a condition of malaise and not that of a stable equilibrium. The individual man cannot with impunity be brains alonehe becomes then what is called "a barren intellectualist", "an ineffectual angel" ; nor can he rest satisfied with being a mere hewer of wood and drawer of waterhe is no more than a bushman then. Like-wise a society cannot be made of philosophers alone, nor can it be a monolithic construction of the proletariat and nothing but the proletariat-if the proletariat choose to remain literally proletarian. As the body individual is composed of limbs that rise one upon another from the inferior to the superior, even so a healthy body social also should consist of similar hierarchical ranges. Only this distinction should not mean and it does not necessarily meana difference in moral values, as it was pointed out long ago by Aesop in his famous fable. The distinction is functional and spiritual. In the spirit, all differences and distinctions are based upon and are instinct with an inviolable and inalienable unity, even identity. Differences here do not mean invidious distinction, they are not the sources of inequality, conflict, strife, but make for a richer harmony, a greater organisation.
However the crucial point arises herehow is the collective life, the group existence to be made soul-conscious? One can understand the injunction upon individuals to seek and find their souls; but how can a society be expected to act from its soul and according to the impulsions of its soul? And then, has a collectivity at all a soul? What is usually spoken of as the group-soul does not seem to be anything spiritual; it is an euphemism for herd instinct, the flair of the pack.
03.05 - The Spiritual Genius of India, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There was no department of life or culture in which it could be said of India that she was not great, or even, in a way, supreme. From hard practical politics touching our earth, to the nebulous regions of abstract metaphysics, everywhere India expressed the power of her genius equally well. And yet none of these, neither severally nor collectively, constituted her specific genius; none showed the full height to which she could raise herself, none compassed the veritable amplitude of her innermost reality. It is when we come to the domain of the Spirit, of God-realisation that we find the real nature and stature and genius of the Indian people; it is here that India lives and moves as in her own home of Truth. The greatest and the most popular names in Indian history are not names of warriors or statesmen, nor of poets who were only poets, nor of mere intellectual philosophers, however great they might be, but of Rishis, who saw and lived the Truth and communed with the gods, of Avataras who brought down and incarnated here below something of the supreme realities beyond.
The most significant fact in the history of India is the unbroken continuity of the line of her spiritual masters who never ceased to appear even in the midst of her most dark and distressing ages. Even in a decadent and fast disintegrating India, when the whole of her external life was a mass of ruins, when her political and economical and even her cultural life was brought to stagnation and very near to decomposition, this undying Fire in her secret heart was ever alight and called in the inevitable rebirth and rejuvenation. Ramakrishna, with Vivekananda as his emanation in life dynamic and material, symbolises this great secret of India's evolution. The promise that the Divine held out in the Gita to Bharata's descendant finds a ready fulfilment in India, in Bharata's land, more perhaps than anywhere else in the world; for in India has the. Divine taken birth over and over again to save the pure in heart, to destroy the evil-doer and to establish the Right Law of life.
03.06 - Divine Humanism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A good many European scholars and philosophers have found Indian spirituality and Indian culture, at bottom, lacking in what is called 'humanism'. 1 So our scholars and philosophers on their side have been at pains to re but the charge and demonstrate the humanistic element in our tradition. It may be asked, however, if such a vindication is at all necessary, or if it is proper to apply a European standard of excellence to things Indian. India may have other measures, other terms of valuation. Even if it is proved that humanism as defined and understood in the West is an unknown thing in India, yet that need not necessarily be taken as a sign of inferiority or deficiency.
But first of all we must know what exactly is meant by humanism. It is, of course, not a doctrine or dogma; it is an attitude, an outlook the attitude, the outlook that views and weighs the worth of man as man. The essential formula was succinctly given by the Latin poet when he said that nothing human he considered foreign to him. It is the characteristic of humanism to be interested in man as man and in all things that interest man as man. To this, however, an important corollary is to be added, that it does not concern itself with things that do not concern man's humanity. The original father of humanism was perhaps the father of European culture itself, Socrates, whose mission it was, as he said, to bring down philosophy from heaven to live among men. More precisely the genesis should be ascribed to the Aristotelian tradition of Socratic teaching.
03.10 - Hamlet: A Crisis of the Evolving Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In these latter the human consciousness has reached its high water-mark of normal development. They are the finest expression of mans capacities and powers in the ordinary nature. Here we have the play of the higher, even perhaps the highest ranges of the Mind the mind, that is to say, of the poet and the philosopher. But here also stands revealed the counterfoil, the obverse of that high achievement the feet of clay on which is reared the head of gold, the flesh that is tied irrevocably to the spirit.
The human soul, as represented in Hamlet, has evolved so far as to stand on a summit from where it can contemplate the entire creation. It has attained a kind of universal consciousness and has the vision of a global movement of natureeven as Arjuna had of the Lord's universal body, and like him is awed and overwhelmeda harsh world, in which one draws one's breath in pain. But this is a mental summit, and the contradiction that is revealed here can be resolved only by passing beyond into a higher domain of consciousness.
04.01 - The March of Civilisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
If we look at Europe once again and cast a glance at its origins, we find at the source the Grco-Roman culture. It was pre-eminently a culture based upon the powers of mind and reason: it included a strong and balanced body (both body natural and body politic) under the aegis of mens sana (a sound mind). The light that was Greece was at its zenith a power of the higher mind and intelligence, intuitively dynamic in one the earlierphase through Plato, Pythagoras, Heraclitus and the mystic philosophers, and discursively and scientifically rational through the Aristotelian tradition. The practical and robust Roman did not indulge in the loftier and subtler activities of the higher or intuitive mind; his was applied intelligence and its characteristic turn found expression in law and order and governance. Virgil was a representative poet of the race; finely sensitive and yet very self-consciousearth-bound and mind-boundas a creative artist: a clear and careful intelligence with an idealistic imagination that is yet sober and fancy-free is the very hall mark of his poetic genius. In the post-Roman age this bias for mental consciousness or the play of reason and intellectual understanding moved towards the superficial and more formal faculties of the brain ending in what is called scholasticism: it meant stagnation and decadence. It is out of this slough that the Renaissance raised the mind of Europe and bathed it with a new light. That movement gave to the mind a wider scope, an alert curiosity, a keener understanding; it is, as I have said, the beginning of that modern mentality which is known as the scientific outlook, that is to say, study of facts and induction from given data, observation and experience and experiment instead of the other scholastic standpoint which goes by a priori theorising and abstraction and deduction and dogmatism.
We may follow a little more closely the march of the centuries in their undulating movement. The creative intelligence of the Renaissance too belonged to a region of the higher mind, a kind of inspirational mind. It had not the altitude or even the depth of the Greek mind nor its subtler resonances: but it regained and re-established and carried to a new degree the spirit of inquiry and curiosity, an appreciation of human motives and preoccupations, a rational understanding of man and the mechanism of the world. The original intuitive fiat, the imaginative brilliance, the spirit of adventure (in the mental as well as the physical world) that inspired the epoch gradually dwindled: it gave place to an age of consolidation, organisation, stabilisation the classical age. The seventeenth century Europe marked another peak of Europe's civilisation. That is the Augustan Age to which we have referred. The following century marked a further decline of the Intuition and higher imagination and we come to the eighteenth century terre terre rationalism. Great figures still adorned that agestalwarts that either stuck to the prevailing norm and gave it a kind of stagnant nobility or already leaned towards the new light that was dawning once more. Pope and Johnson, Montesquieu and Voltaire are its high-lights. The nineteenth century brought in another crest wave with a special gift to mankind; apparently it was a reaction to the rigid classicism and dry rationalism of the preceding age, but it came burdened with a more positive mission. Its magic name was Romanticism. Man opened his heart, his higher feeling and nobler emotional surge, his subtler sensibility and a general sweep of his vital being to the truths and realities of his own nature and of the cosmic nature. Not the clear white and transparent almost glaring light of reason and logic, of the brain mind, but the rosy or rainbow tint of the emotive and aspiring personality that seeks in and through the cosmic panorama and dreams of
04.02 - A Chapter of Human Evolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In India we meet a characteristic movement. As I said the Vedas represented the Mythic Age, the age when knowledge was gained or life moulded and developed through Vision and Revelation (Sruti, direct Hearing). The Upanishadic Age followed next. Here we may say the descending light touched the higher reaches of the Mind, the mind of pure, fundamental, typical ideas. The consciousness divested itself of much of the mythic and parabolic apparel and, although supremely immediate and intuitive, yet was bathed with the light of the day, the clear sunshine of the normal wakeful state. The first burgeoning of the Rational Mind proper, the stress of intellect and intellectuality started towards the end of the Upanishadic Age with the Mahabharata, for example and the Brahmanas. It flowered in full vigour, however, in the earlier philosophical schools, the Sankhyas perhaps, and in the great Buddhist illuminationBuddha being, we note with interest, almost a contemporary of Socrates and also of the Chinese philosopher or moralist Confuciusa triumvirate almost of mighty mental intelligence ruling over the whole globe and moulding for an entire cycle human culture and destiny. The very name Buddha is significant. It means, no doubt, the Awakened, but awakened in and through the intelligence, the mental Reason, buddhi. The Buddhist tradition is that the Buddhist cycle, the cycle over which Buddha reigns is for two thousand and five hundred years since his withdrawal which takes us, it seems, to about 1956 A.D.
The Veda speaks of Indra who became later on the king of the gods. And Zeus too occupies the same place in Greek Pantheon. Indra is, as has been pointed out by Sri Aurobindo, the Divine Mind, the leader of thought-gods (Maruts), the creator of perfect forms, in which to clo the our truth-realisations in life. The later traditional Indra in India and the Greek Zeus seem to be formulations on a lower level of the original archetypal Indra, where the consciousness was more mentalised, intellectualised, made more rational, sense-bound, external, pragmatic. The legend of Athena being born straight out of the head of Zeus is a pointer as to the nature and character of the gods. The Roman name for Athena, Minerva, is significantly derived by scholars from Latin mens, which means, as we all know, mind.
04.02 - Human Progress, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The old intellectualism generally and on the whole, was truly formal and even to a great extent verbal. In other words, it sought to find norms and categories in the mind itself and impose them upon, objects, objects of experience, external or internal. The first discovery of the pure mind, the joy of indulging in its own free formations led to an abstraction that brought about a cleavage between mind and nature, and when a harmony was again attempted between the two, it meant an imposition of one (the Mind) upon another (Matter), a subsumption of the latter under the former. Such scholastic formalism, although it has the appearance of a movement of pure intellect, free from the influence of instinctive or emotive reactions, cannot but be, at bottom, a mythopoeic operation, in the Jungian phraseology; it is not truly objective in the scientific sense. The scientific procedure is to find Nature's own categories the constants, as they are called and link up mind and intellect with that reality. This is the Copernican revolution that Science brought about in the modern outlook. philosophers like Kant or Berkeley may say another thing and even science itself just nowadays may appear hesitant in its bearings. But that is another story which it is not our purpose to consider here and which does not change the fundamental position. We say then that the objectivity of the scientific outlook, as distinguished from the abstract formalism of old-world intellectualism, has given a new degree of mental growth and is the basis of themechanistic methodology of which we have been speaking. '
Indeed, what we lay stress upon is the methodology of modern scientific knowledge the apparatus of criticism and experimentation.
04.03 - Consciousness as Energy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What is this spiritual or Yogic Energy? Ordinary people, people with a modern mind, would concede at the most that there are two kinds of activity: (1) real activityphysical action, work, labour with muscle and nerve, and (2) passive activityactivity of mind and thought. According to the pragmatic standard especial, if not entire, importance is given the first category; the other category, sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, is held at a discount. The thoughtful people are philosophers at the most, they are ineffectual angels in this workaday world of ours. We need upon earth people of sterner stuff, dynamic people who are not thought-bound, but know how to apply and execute their ideas, whatever they may be. Lenin was great, not because he had revolutionary ideas, but because he gave a muscular frame to them. Such people alone are the pragmatic, dynamic, useful category of humanity. The others are, according to the more radical leftist view, merely parasitic, and according to a more generous liberal view, chiefly decorative elements in human society. Mind-energy can draw dream pictures, beautiful perhaps, but inane; it is only muscular energy that gives a living and material bodya local habitation and a nameto what otherwise would be airy nothing.
Energy, however, is not merely either muscular (physical) or cerebral. There are energies subtler than thought and yet more dynamic than the muscle (or the electric pile). One such, for example, is vital energy, although orthodox bio-chemists do not believe in any kind of vitalism that is something more than mere physico-chemical reaction. Indeed, this is the energy that counts in life; for it is this that brings about what we call success in the world. A man with push and go, as it is termed, is nothing but a person with abundant vital energy. But even of this energy there are gradations. It can be deep, controlled, organised or it can be hectic, effusive, confused: the latter kind expresses and spends itself often in mere external, nervous and muscular movements. Those, however, who are known as great men of action are precisely they who are endowed with life energy of the first kind.
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We have spoken of the Inner Consciousness. But there is also, we must now point out, an Inmost Consciousness. As the Superconsciousness is a consciousness-energy in height, the Inmost Consciousness is a consciousness-energy in depth, the deepest depth, beyond or behind the Inner Consciousness. If we wish to put it geometrically, we can say, the vertical section of consciousness represents the line from the superconsciousness to the subconscious or vice versa; the horizontal section represents the normal waking state of consciousness; and there is a transverse section leading from the surface first to the Inner and finally to the Inmost. This inmost consciousness the consciousness most profound and secreted in the cave of the heart, guhhitam gahvaretham,is the consciousness of the soul, the Psychic Being, as Sri Aurobindo calls it: it is the immortal in the mortal. It is, as has often been described, the nucleus round which is crystallised and organised the triple nature of man consisting of his mind and life and body, the centre of dynamic energy that secretly vivifies them, gradually purifies and transforms them into higher functions and embodiments of consciousness. As a matter of fact, it is this inmost consciousness that serves as the link, at least as the most powerful link, between the higher and lower forms of consciousness, between the Superconscient and the Subsconscient or Inconscient. It takes up within itself all the elements of consciousness that the past in its evolutionary career from the very lowest and basic levels has acquired and elaborated, and by its inherent pressure and secret gestation delivers what was crude and base and unformed as the purest luminous noble substance of the perfectly organised superconscient reality. Indeed, that is the mystic alchemy which the philosophers experimented in the Middle Ages. In this context, the Inner Consciousness, we may note, serves as a medium through which the action of the Inmost (as well as that of the Uppermost) takes place.
We can picture the whole phenomenon in another way and say in the devotional language of the Mystics that the Inmost Consciousness is the Divine Child, the Superconscient is the Divine Father and the Inferior Consciousness is the Great Mother (Magna Mater): the Inner and the Outer Consciousness are the field of play and the instrument of action as well of this Divine Trinity.
05.05 - Man the Prototype, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The essential appearance of Man is, as we have said, the prototype of the actual man. That is to say, the actual man is a projection, even though a somewhat disfigured projection, of the original form; yet there is an essential similarity of pattern, a commensurability between the two. The winged angels, the cherubs and seraphs are reputed to be ideal figures of beauty, but they are nothing akin to the Prototype, they belong to a different line of emanation, other than that of the human being. We may have some idea of what it is like by taking recourse to the distinction that Greek philosophers used to make between the formal and the material cause of things. The prototype is the formal reality hidden and imbedded in the material reality of an object. The essential form is made of the original configuration of primary vibrations that later on consolidate and become a compact mass, arriving finally at its end physico-chemical composition. A subtle yet perfect harmony of vibrations forming a living whole is what the prototype essentially is. An artist perhaps is in a better position to understand what we have been labouring to describe. The artist's eye is not confined to the gross physical form of an object, even the most realistic artist does not hold up the mirror to Nature in that sense: he goes behind and sees the inner contour, the subtle figuration that underlies the external volume and mass. It is that that is beautiful and harmonious and significant, and it is that which the artist endeavours to bring out and fix in a system or body of lines and colours. That inner form is not the outer visible form and still it is that form fundamentally, essentially. It is that and it is not that. We may add another analogy to illustrate the point. Pythagoras, for example, spoke of numbers being realities, the real realities of all sensible objects. He was evidently referring to the basic truth in each individual and this truth appeared to him as a number, the substance and relation that remain of an object when everything concrete and superficial is extractedor abstractedout of it. A number to him is a quality, a vibration, a quantum of wave-particles, in the modern scientific terminology, a norm. The human prototype can be conceived as something of the category of the Pythagorean number.
The conception of the Purusha at the origin of things, as the very source of things, so familiar to the Indian tradition, gives this high primacy to the human figure. We know also of the cosmic godhead cast in man's mouldalthough with multiple heads and feetvisioned and hymned by sages and seers. The gods themselves seem to possess a human frame. The Upanishads say that once upon a time the gods looked about for a proper body to dwell in, they were disappointed with all others; it is only when the human form was presented that they exclaimed, This is indeed a perfect form, a perfect form indeed. All that indicates the feeling and perception that there is something eternal and transcendent in the human body-frame.
05.06 - Physics or philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What is the world that we see really like? Is it mental, is it material? This is a question, we know, philosophers are familiar with, and they have answered and are still answering, each in his own way, taking up one side or other of the antinomy. There is nothing new or uncommon in that. The extraordinary novelty comes in when we see today even scientists forced to tackle the problem, give an answer to it,scientists who used to smile at philosophers, because they seemed to assault seriously the windmills of abstract notions and airy concepts, instead of reposing on the terra firmaof reality. The tables are turned now. The scientists have had to start the same business the terra firmaon which they stood as on the securest rock of ages is slipping away under their feet and fast vanishing into smoke and thin air. Not only that, it is discovered today that the scientist has always been a philosopher,' without his knowledgea crypto- philosopher,only he has become conscious of it at last. And furthermirabile dictum!many a scientist is busy demonstrating that the scientist is, in his essence, a philosopher of the Idealist school!
Physical Science in the nineteenth century did indeed develop or presuppose a philosophy of its own; it had, that is to say, a definite outlook on the fundamental quality of things and the nature of the universe. Those were days of its youthful self-confidence and unbending assurance. The view was, as is well-known, materialistic and deterministic. That is to say, all observation and experiment, according to it, demonstrated and posited:
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But Jeans' position is remarkable and very significant in one respect. When cornered in the process of argument, feeling that the world is inexorably dematerialised and mentalised, he suggests an issue which is natural to a philosopher, a mystic philosopher alone. Well, let him state his position in his own words, the passage, I repeat, is so remarkable and significant:
"When we view ourselves in space and time, our consciousnesses are obviously the separate individuals of a particle-picture, but when we pass beyond space and time, they may perhaps form ingredients of a single continuous stream of life. As it is with light and electricity, so it may be with life; the phenomena may be individuals carrying on separate existence in space and time, while in the deeper reality beyond space and time we may all be members of one body. In brief, modern physics is not altogether antagonistic to an objective idealism like that of Hegel." (p. 204)3
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The difficulty that modern Science encounters is not, how-ever, at all a difficulty: it may be so to the philosopher, but not to the mystic, the difficulty, that is to say, of positing a real objective world when all that we know or seize of it seems to be our own mental constructions that we impose upon it. Science has come to such a pass that it can do no more than take an objective world on trust.
Things need not, however, be so dismal looking. The difficulty arises because of a fundamental attitude the attitude of a purely reasoning being. But Reason or Mind is only one layer or vein of the reality, and to see and understand and explain that reality through one single track of approach will naturally bias the view, it will present only what is real or immediate to it, and all the rest will appear as secondary or a formation of it. That is, of course, a truth that has been clearly brought out by the anti-intellectualist. But the vitalist's view is also likewise vitiated by a similar bias, as he contacts reality only through this prism of vital force. It is the old story of the Upanishad in which the seeker takes the Body, the Life and the Mind one after another and declares each in its turn to be the only and ultimate reality, the Brahman.
05.07 - The Observer and the Observed, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Science means objectivity, that is to say, elimination of the personal elementtruth as pure fact without being distorted or coloured by the feelings and impressions and notions of the observer. It is the very opposite of the philosopher's standpoint who says that a thing exists because (and so long as) it is perceived. The scientist swears that a thing exists whether you perceive it or not, perception is possible because it exists, not the other way. And yet Descartes is considered not only as the father of modern philosophy, but also as the founder o( modern mathematical science. But more of that anon. The scientific observer observes as a witness impartial and aloof: he is nothing more than a recording machine, a sort of passive mirror reflecting accurately and faithfully what is presented to it. This is indeed the great revolution brought about by Science in the world of human inquiry and in human consciousness, viz.,the isolation of the observer from the observed.
In the old world, before Science was born, sufficient distinction or discrimination was not made between the observer and the observed. The observer mixed himself up or identified himself with what he observed and the result was not a scientific statement but a poetic description. Personal feelings, ideas, judgments entered into the presentation of facts and the whole mass passed as truth, the process often being given the high-sounding name of Intuition, Vision or Revelation but whose real name is fancy. And if there happened to be truth off act somewhere, it was almost by chance. Once we thought of the eclipse being due to the greed of a demon, and pestilence due to the evil eye of a wicked goddess. The universe was born out of an egg, the cosmos consisted of concentric circles of worlds that were meant to reward the virtuous and punish the sinner in graded degrees. These are some of the very well-known instances of pathetic fallacy, that is to say, introducing the element of personal sentiment in our appreciation of events and objects. Even today Nazi race history and Soviet Genetics carry that unscientific prescientific tradition.
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In the other case the world exists here below in its own reality, outside all apprehending subject; even the universal subject is in a sense part of it, immanent in itit embraces the subject in its comprehending consciousness and posits it as part of itself or a function of its apprehension. The many Purushas (conscious beings or subjects) are imbedded in the universal Nature, say the Sankhyas. Kali, Divine Nature, is the manifest Omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent reality holding within her the transcendent divine Purusha who supports, sanctions and inspires secretly, yet is dependent on the Mahashakti and without her is nothing, unyam. That is how the Tantriks put it. We may mention here, among European philosophers, the rather interesting conclusion of Leibnitz (to which Russell draws our attention): space is subjective to the view of each monad (subject unit) separately, it is objective when it consists of the assemblage of the view-points of all the monads.
The scientific outlook was a protest against the extreme subjective view: it started with the extreme objective standpoint and that remained the fundamental note till the other day, till the fissure of the nucleus opened new horizons to our somewhat bewildered mentality. We seem to have entered into a region where we still hold to the objective, no doubt, but not absolutely free from an insistent presence of the subjective. It is the second of the intermediate positions we have tried to describe. Science has yet to decide the implications of that position; whether it will try to entrench itself as much as possible on this side of the subjective or whether it can yield further and go over to or link itself with the deeper subjective position.
05.11 - The Place of Reason, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Another point in Sri Aurobindo's view of consciousness which troubles Prof. Das is about the exact nature and function of Reason. For while on one side Sri Aurobindo never seems to be tired of pointing out the inherent incapacity of Reasonin the good company of the ancient Rishisas an instrument for the discovery or realisation of the Absolute or the integral Reality, he asserts, on the other hand, almost in the same breath as it were, that mind can have some idea or conception of what is beyond it, which it so often vainly strives to seize or represent. Evidently, the rationalist logic fails to hold together the two ends, as it is further seen in Prof. Das's failure to perceive any distinction between types or gradations of "thinking".1 He thinks that just as a philosopher thinks, or a cabman thinks or an animal thinks, all must think in the same way and through the same function of the same organ: either there is thinking (thinking proper, of one particular kind) or there is no thinking. That Nature consists of a graduated scale in every line of its movements, and that the gradations shade off into each othernot only so but that each scale or principle may contain within itself all the others2is a phenomenon which runs contrary to the "either this or that" or "no-overlapping" principle, like the colour-blind for whom things are either black or white. In the global outlook, however, we do not stand in the relation of division, separation, mutual exclusiveness. There is a consciousness in which all contraries find a harmonising truth and rhythm.
In Sri Aurobindo, Reason and Intuition possess a dual relation of mutual negation and mutual affirmation, of exclusiveness and inclusiveness, as indeed is the relation of Brahman and the World. One negates the other in the sphere of ignorance but in knowledge one affirms the other. That is to say, Reason or mental logic, so long as it is dominated by the senses, by the external impressions from things and by its analytic or exclusively separative method of procedure, is a denial of Intuition and a bar to spiritual experience. But Reason can be purified, relieved of its dross, illumined (sam-buddha)sublimated and uplifted then it comes to its own, becomes what it really is and should bea frame to give body to what is beyond and unembodied, a mirror in conceptual terms to what is supra-conceptual. It loses its hard rigidity and becomes supple, loses its obscurity, density and becomes transparent: it attains a new rhythm and gait and capacity. Many of the Upanishadic mantras, a good part of the Gita, do that. And Sri Aurobindo's own exposition is a miracle in that style. "Reason was a helper, Reason is the bar"and, we can add, Reason will again be an aid. The world, as it is, is anything but Divine; and yet it is nothing but the Divine essentially and fundamentally; it can and will attain the divine figure apparently and externally too. Even so with regard to man's mind and reason and all his other limbs.
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Thus, take the principles of matter, life and mind. They are separate and distinct from one point of view the logical and practical. But life came out of matter, and then mind out of life that is the evolutionary conception. In other words, matter shades off into life, there is a point where it is difficult to say whether it is matter or life; similarly there is a point where life shades off into mind, where mind and life are fused together. We can further say that in matter there is a life and there is a mind, and in life there is a matter and a mind and in mind too there is a matter and a life. But these facts of Nature are disconcerting to the one-track mind of the logical philosopher and make the confusion worse confounded for him.
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05.13 - Darshana and Philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The procedure of European philosophy is different. There the reason or the mental light is the starting-point. That light is cast about: one collects facts, one observes things and happenings and then proceeds to find out a general trutha law, a hypothesisjustified by such observations. But as a matter of fact this is the ostensible method: it is only a make-believe. For mind and reason are not normally so neutral and impersonal, a tabula rasa. The observer already comes into the field with a definite observational angle and a settled viewpoint. The precise sciences of today have almost foundered on this question of the observer entering inextricably into his observations and vitiating them. So in philosophy too as it is practised in Europe, on a closer observation, if the observer is carefully observed, one finds not unoften a core of suppositions, major premises taken for granted hidden behind the logical apparatus. In other words, even a hardened philosopher cherishes at the back of his mind a priorijudgments and his whole philosophy is only a rationalisation of an inner prejudgment, almost a window-dressing of a perception that came to him direct and in other secret ways. That was what Kant meant when he made the famous distinction between the Pure and the Practical Reason and their categories. Only the direct perceptions, the spiritual realisations are so much imbedded behind, covered so much with the mist of mind's struggle and tension and imaginative construction that it is not always easy to disengage the pure metal from the ore.
We shall take the case of one such philosopher and try to illustrate our point. We are thinking of Whitehead. The character of European philosophical mind is well exemplified in this remarkable modern philosopher. The anxiety to put the inferences into a strict logical frame makes a naturally abstruse and abstract procedure more abstruse and abstract. The effort to present suprarational truths in terms of reason and syllogism clouds the issues more than it clarifies them. The fundamental perception, the living intuition that is behind his entire philosophy and world outlook is that of an Immanent God, a dynamic evolving Power working out the growth and redemption of mankind and the world {the apotheosis of the World, as he puts it). It is the theme which comes last in the development of his system, as the culminating conclusion of his philosophy, but it is the basic presupposition, the first principle that inspires his whole outlook, all the rest is woven and extended around this central nucleus. The other perception intimate to this basic -original perception and inseparable from it is a synthetic view in which things that are usually supposed to be contraries find their harmony and union, viz.,God and the World, Permanence and Flux, Unity and Multiplicity, the Universal and the Individual. The equal reality of the two poles of an integral truth is characteristic of many of the modern philosophical systems. In this respect Whitehead echoes a fundamental conclusion of Sri Aurobindo.
There is another concept in Whitehead which seems to be moulded after a parallel concept in Sri Aurobindo: it is with regard to the working out of the process of creation, the mechanism of its dynamism. It is almost a glimpse into the occult functioning of the world forces. Whitehead speaks of two principles that guide the world process, first, the principle of limitation, and second, the principle of ingress. The first one Sri Aurobindo calls the principle of concentration (and of exclusive concentration) by which the infinite and the eternal limits himself, makes himself finite and temporal and infinitesimal, the universal transforms itself into the individual and the particular. The second is the principle of descent, which is almost the corner-stone in Sri Aurobindo's system. There are layers of reality: the higher forces and formulations enter into the lower, work upon it and bring about a change and transformation, purification and redemption. All progress and evolution is due to this influx of the higher, the deeper into , the lower and superficial plane of existence.
05.14 - The Sanctity of the Individual, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The sanctity of the individual, the value of the human person is one of the cardinal articles of faith of the modern consciousness. Only it has very many avatars. One such has been the characteristic mark of the group of philosophers (and mystics) who are nowadays making a great noise under the name of Existentialists. The individual personality exists, they say, and its nature is freedom. In other words, it chooses, as it likes, its course of life, at every step, and Creates its destiny. This freedom, however, may lead man and will inevitably lead him, according to one section of the group, to the perception and realisation of God, an infinite in which the individual finite lives and moves and has his being; according to others, the same may lead to a very different consummation, to Nothingness, the Great Void, Nihil. All existence is bounded by something unknown and intangible which differs according to your luck or taste,one would almost say to your line of approach, put philosophically, according either to the positive pole or the negative, God or Non-existence. The second alternative seems to be an inevitable corollary of the particular conception of the individual that is entertained by some, viz.,the individual existing only in relation to individuals. Indeed the leader of the French school, Jean-Paul Sartrenot a negligible playwright and novelistseems to conceive the individual as nothing more than the image formed in other individuals with whom he comes in contact. Existence literally means standing out or outside (ex+sistet), coming out of one-self and living in other's consciousnessas one sees one's exact image in another's eye. It is not however the old-world mystic experience of finding one's self in other selves. For here we have an exclusively level or horizontal view of the human personality. The personality is not seen in depth or height, but in line with the normal phenomenal formation. It looks as though, to save personality from the impersonal dissolution to which all monistic idealism leads, the present conception seeks to hinge all personalities upon each other so that they may stand by and confirm each other. But the actual result seems to have been not less calamitous. When we form and fashion each other, we are not building with anything more substantial than sand. Personalities are thus mere eddies in the swirl of cosmic life, they rise up and die down, separate and melt into each other and have no consistency and no reality in the end. The freedom too which is ascribed to such individuals, even when they feel it so, is only a sham and a make-believe. Within Nature nothing is free, all is mechanical lawKarma is supreme. The Sankhya posits indeed many Purushas, free, lodged in the midst of Prakriti, but there the Purusha is hardly an active agent, it is only an inactive, passive, almost impotent, witness. The Existentialist, on the contrary, seeks to make of the individual an active agent; he is not merely being, imbedded or merged in the original Dasein, mere existence, but becoming, the entity that has come out, stood out in its will and consciousness, articulated itself in name and form and act. But the person that stands out as part and parcel of Prakriti, the cosmic movement, is, as we have said, only an instrument, a mode of that universal Nature. The true person that informs that apparent formulation is something else. .
To be a person, it is said, one must be apart from the crowd. A person is the "single one", one who has attained his singularity, his individual wholeness. And the life's work for each individual person is to make the crowd no longer a crowd, but an association of single ones. But how can this be done? It is not simply by separating oneself from the crowd, by dwelling upon oneself that one can develop into one's true person. The individuals, even when perfect single ones, do not exist by themselves or in and through one another. The mystic or spiritual perception posits the Spirit or God, the All-self as the background and substance of all the selves. Indeed, it is only when one finds and is identified with the Divine in oneself that one is in a position to attain one's true selfhood and find oneself in other selves. And the re-creation of a crowd into such divine individuals is a cosmic work in which the individual is at best a collaborator, not the master and dispenser. Anyway, one has to come out of the human relationship, rise above the give-and-take of human individualshowever completely individual each one may beand establish oneself in the Divine's consciousness which is the golden thread upon which is strung all the assembly of individuals. It is only in and through the Divine, the Spiritual Reality and Person, that one enters into true relation and dynamic harmony with others.
05.19 - Lone to the Lone, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The quintessence of spirituality is said to consist in, as has been described in the famous phrase of the Alexandrine mystic philosopher Plotinus, the flight of the lone to the lone. God is a solitary and the other solitary is the soul: so when one solitary mingles with the supreme solitary, the result is utter solitariness, which is spirituality at its apex, its highest height. The world, in this view, is an excrescence, an epiphenomenon Illusion, Maya. God is the transcendent Reality, above and beyond all manifestation, negating all multiplicities and relativities of creation: He is indivisible, single, absolute unityekamevdvityam, kevalamneha nnsti kincana. The human being too is not in reality the individual person bounded within a body, life and mind formation, standing in reciprocal relations with such other formations; his inner core of truth and substance is a unitary centre of consciousness anguthamitra purua,which is aloof and apart from his apparent and assumed personality and has no dealings with such personalities. God has no updhi, phenomenal qualification, neither has the soul of man. Therefore in his spiritual aspiration, man has to divest himself of all the outer growths that cover and bury his soul: with the clear unmixed vision of his pure soul he has to look straight into the face of the Divine Transcendent, shredded too of its cosmic vesture, and rise from the station of ignorance, this level ground of clay to which it is pinned, and soar and fly and merge into the pure reality of the pure Spirit. Therefore it is said, naked we come into the vale of tears and naked we have to go back to our home. Or in terms of another imagery, it is the pure pouring into the pure, the full mixing into the full.
Some mystics and philosophers recently come into vogue (inspired or encouraged by the Christian or the Buddhist way of Realisation) have emphasised this outlook. But it has also been counterbalanced by another way of spiritual growth and fulfilment: we may call it the modern way, for it has been a pronounced characteristic of the modern consciousness. We referred in our previous essay to the Existentialist who has attracted so much attention in these days, the linchpin of whose philosophy is the value of the individual person, especially the individual personal in relation to each other. Kierkegaard, the Danish mystic, from whom this school is supposed to originate, speaks of the Absolute as the Single One that excludes and annuls all "others", the crowd. He lays especial emphasis upon complete solitariness and total renunciation as the very condition, sine qua non, of the soul's spiritual journey and yet characterises the singlenessof the one in terms that make of it an essential whole, an integer. Man must isolate himself from his phenomenal being, certainlyas the neti netiformula enjoins but also he must first find or become his real self, realise his true individuality before he can reach God, the Divine Self, identify himself with the Transcendent. It is only a freely and truly formed individual being that can give itself to the Divine or become one with it. This true individuality is indeed a solitary being away and apart from the crowd of personalities that surround itit has been called by the Indian mystics, the Purusha in the heart, no bigger than the thumb, the Dwarf Godhead (Vmana).
When one is a member of the crowd, he has no personality or individuality, he is an amorphous mass, moving helplessly in the current of life, driven by Nature-force as it pleases her: spiritual life begins by withdrawing oneself from this flow of Ignorance and building up or taking cognisance of one's true person and being. When one possesses oneself integrally, is settled in the armature of one's spirit self, he has most naturally turned away from the inferior personalities of his own being and the comradeship also of people in bondage and ignorance. But then one need not stop at this purely negative poise: one can move up and arrive at a positive status, a new revaluation and reaffirmation. For when the divine selfhood is attained, one is no longer sole or solitary. Indeed, the solitariness or loneliness that is attri buted to the spiritual status is a human way of viewing the experience: that is the impression left on the normal mind consciousness when the Purusha soars out of it, upwards from the life of the world to the life of the Spirit. But the soul, the true spiritual being in the individual, is not and cannot be an isolated entity; the nature of the spiritual consciousness is first transcendence, no doubt, transcendence of the merely temporal and ephemeral, but it is also universalisation, that is to say, the cosmic realisation that has its classic expression in the famous mantra of the Gita, he who sees himself in other selves and other selves in his own self. In that status "own" and "other" are not distinct or contrary things, but aspects of the one and the same reality, different stresses in one rhythm.
05.21 - Being or Becoming and Having, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Again, in this ceaseless continuity of progression it is indeed not necessary at all to stop a while or somewhere and become something for one's perfection or fulfilment. The normal ideal that is placed before man or which he himself seeks is that he should become something, a definite pattern of some particular achievement, and possess something in the sense of an acquisition. An ordinary man must have an occupation and even an extraordinary man, the saint or the sage, must embody, that is to say, enchain himself in the name and form of a particular realisationa siddhnta or a siddhi. A man has to be -a soldier, a merchant, a politician or a poet, a philosopher: even so he has to be a bhaktaor a jni, a maunior a vksiddha. Each human being should have a ticket and a roll number, an identity card. Now, for the soul of man none of these or other adjuncts are necessary: its progress and its growth are independent of such auxiliaries or correlates. A soul can be and even express itself perfectly at the highest point of its being without formulating itself, binding itself in a scheme of some external achievement or functioning. The soul need not possess any of the gloriesaiwaryasto realise itself, in order to be the abode of the Divine. Its very existence is full to the brim of the substance of the truth and its simple living marks the law or rhythm of that Truth.
A soulful man, whatever he says, thinks, feels or acts, always embodies wholly the Divine. Not that because he says, acts, thinks or feels in a certain manner that he has attained perfection or is in dynamic union with the summit a d integral consciousness. As the Mother brings out the distinction, although in a somewhat different context, the perfect soul-existence .cannot be judged by the forms it takes, the forms themselves have to be judged by the soul-existence.
05.26 - The Soul in Anguish, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is very interesting to observe how in the modern epoch depths of consciousness are being dug up and laid bare to the common gaze, even like the archaeological finds of great antiquity and of immense value that are springing surprise after surprise upon our present-day civilisation. In our inner explorations too we have often come to strike psychological veins of unusual importance and significance. It is natural to the Yogin to do so; for it is the business of his life. But even thinkers and philosophers who do not ostensibly lead the mystic life are arriving at judgments and conclusions that are not normally warranted or covered by the unaided activities of the human reason. That proves once more that man is not reason alone, that he has other faculties to go by even in the field of ordinary knowledge.
A range of mystics and philosophers or philosopher-mystics from Kierkegaard to Sartre have made much of the sentiment of "anguish". Naturally, it is not the usual feeling of grief or sorrow due to disappointment or frustration that they refer to, nor is it the "repentance" which is a cardinal virtue in the Christian spiritual discipline. Repentance or grief is for something amiss, for some wrong done, for some good not done. It has a definite cause that gives rise to it and determinate conditions that maintain and foster it: and therefore it has also an end, at least the possibility of an ending. It is not eternal and can be mastered and got over: it is of the category of the Sankhyan or Buddhistic dukhatrayabhighata for that matter even the lacrimae rerum(tears inherent in things) of Virgil1 are not eternal.
But the new Anguish spoken of is a strange phenomenon: it is causeless and it is eternal. It has sprung unbidden with no antecedent cause or condition: it is woven into the stuff of the being, part and parcel of the consciousness itself. Indeed it seems to be the veritable original sin, pertaining to the very nature. Kierkegaard makes of it an absolute necessity in the spiritual constituent and growth of the human soul something akin to, but deeper, because ineradicable, than the Socratic "divine discontent". Sartre puts it in more philosophical and rational terms, in a secular atmosphere as a kind of inevitable accompaniment to the sense of freedom and responsibility and loneliness that besets the individual being and consciousness at its inmost core, its deepest depth.
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In his quest for Brahman, Bhrigu came in contact first of all with the material existence and so took Matter to be the ultimate Reality. He was asked to move on and at the next step he met Life and considered that as Brahman. He was asked to move farther on and at the third stage he found Mind which then appeared to him as the Reality. He had to proceed farther and enter and pass through other higher formulations till finally he entered the highest expanse (parame vyoman). Now applying the parable to the situation today and the modern quest we can say that Science like Bhrigu is at the first stepand, for some, stuck there contented like the Asura Virochana of another Upanishadic parable, although it has become fidgety and somewhat uncertain in recent times: some others the "vitalist" scientists and philosophersare in the second stage. And yet there is a third category, the idealist philosophers generally, who are emerging from the second into the third.
It seems that the School of Anguish is on the borderl and between the second and the third stage, that is to say, the vital rising into the mental or the mental still carrying an impress of the vital consciousness. It is the emergence of the Purusha consciousness, the individual being in its heart of hearts, in its pure status: for it is that that truly evolves, progresses from level to level, deploying and marshalling according to its stress and scheme the play of its outward nature. Now the Purusha consciousness, as separate from the outward nature, has certain marked characteristics which have been fairly observed and comprehended by the exponents of the school we are dealing with. Sartre, for example, characterises this beingtre en soi, as distinguished from tre pour soi which is something like dynamic purusha or purusha identified or associated with prakrtias composed of the sense of absolute freedom, of full responsibility, of unhindered choice and initiation. Indeed, Purusha is freedom, for in its own status it means liberation from all obligations to Prakriti. But such freedom brings in its train, not necessarily always but under certain conditions, a terrible sense of being all alone, of infinite loneliness. One is oneself, naked and face to face with one's singleness and unbreakable, unsharable individual unity. The others come as a product or corollary to this original sui generisentity. Along with the sense of freedom and choice or responsibility and loneness, there is added and gets ingrained into it the sense of fear and anxiety the anguish (Angst). The burden that freedom and loneliness brings seems to be too great. The Purusha that has risen completely into the mental zone becomes wholly a witness, as the Sankhyans discovered, and all the movements of his nature appear outside, as if foreign: an absolute calm and unperturbed tranquillity or indifference is his character. But it is not so with regard to the being that has still one foot imbedded in the lower region of the vital consciousness; for that indeed is the proper region of anguish, of fear and apprehension, and it is there that the soul becoming conscious of itself and separate from others feels lone, lonely, companionless, without support, as it were. The mentalised vital Purusha suffers from this peculiar night of the soul. Sartre's outlook is shot through with very many experiences of this intermediary zone of consciousness.
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The solution, the issue out is, of course, to go ahead. Instead of making the intermediary poise, however necessary it may be, a permanent character of the being and its destiny, as these philosophers tend to do, one should take another bold step, a jump upward. For the next stage, the stage when the true equilibrium, the inherent reconciliation is realised between oneself and others, between the inner soul and its outer nature is what the Upanishad describes as Vijnana, the Vast Knowledge.
Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt [Aeneid, 1. 462]
07.03 - This Expanding Universe, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
On the contrary, the sphere of manifestation is precisely the field of the sudden and the incalculable, that is to say, of free will. Things appear here that were not before, forces come into play that were not expected or even imagined. They all move along lines that shift and change continually. This is the status of becomingsambhuti, as designated by the Upanishad and described by the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, in the words, panta reei, everything flows on. Here, often a certain disposition that seems quite stable or predictable is upset all of a sudden by the irruption of a new and novel factor from somewhere else.
But in between the two, on the borderland, as it were, there is a poise of consciousness which combines both in an integral perception, it is a single movement of both being and becoming. It is the Supermind. It is the point where what is or exists in the unmanifest just becomes in the manifest, the pure truth or reality above at standstill stirs and begins to come out or disengage itself through a play of possibles. It is like a cinema film that is rolled up and kept in a spool till it is put on the projector and rolled out gradually upon the screen of life and in life-size' presentation.
07.19 - Bad Thought-Formation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
You go into the very origin of things. Why are there inconscience, ignorance and obscurity? You ask for the why and wherefore of the universe. Why is creation like this and not otherwise? Everyone has explained in his own way. The philosophers have done so, the scientists have done so on different lines. But, none has found the way out. You ask why there is bad will, but the truly interesting and important thing is to find a means whereby there would be no bad will. What is the use of asking why there is pain and suffering and misery, unless it is to find out the remedy? If you look for the why, you may find as many explanations as you like, each may be useful in a way, but none leads you anywhere, except into a blind alley.
There are many things in the world you do not approve of. Some people who, as they put it, wish to have the knowledge, want to find out why it is so. It is a line of knowledge. But I say it is much more important to find out how to make things otherwise than they are at present. That is exactly the problem Buddha set before himself. He sat under a tree and continued till he found the solution. The solution, however, is not very satisfactory: You say, the world is bad, let us then do away with the world; but to whose profit, as Sri Aurobindo asks very pertinently? The world will no longer be bad, since it will exist no more. The world will have to be rolled back into its origin, the original pure existence or non-existence. Then man will be, in Sri Aurobindo's words, the all-powerful master of something that does not exist, an emperor without an empire, a king without a kingdom. It is a solution. But there are others, which are better. We consider ours to be the best. There are some who say, like the Buddha, evil comes from ignorance, remove the ignorance and evil will disappear. Others say that evil comes from division, from separation; if the universe were not separated from its origin, there would be no evil. Others again declare that it is an evil will that is the cause of all, of separation and ignorance. Then the question is, where does this bad will come from? If it were at the origin of things, it must have been in the origin itself. And then some question the bad will itself,there is no such thing, essentially, fundamentally, it is pure illusion.
07.45 - Specialisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
You have, for example, several subjects to learn at school. Well, learn as many as possible. If you study at home, read as many varieties as possible. I know you are usually asked and advised to follow a different way. You are to take as few subjects as possible and specialise. Yes, that is the general ideal: specialisation, to be an expert in one thing. If you wish to be a good philosopher, read philosophy only; if you wish to be a good chemist, do only chemistry; and even you should concentrate upon only one problem or thesis in philosophy or chemistry. In sports you are asked to do the same. Choose one item and fix your attention upon that alone. If you want to be a good tennis player, think of tennis alone. However, I am not of that opinion. My experience is different. I believe, there are general faculties in man which he should acquire and cultivate more than specialise himself. Of course, if it is your ambition to be a Monsieur or Madame Curie who wanted to discover one particular thing, to find out a new mystery of a definite kind, then you have to concentrate upon the one thing in view. But even then, once the object is gained, you can turn very well to other things. Besides, it is not an impossibility in the midst of the one-pointed pursuit to find occasions and opportunities to be interested in other pursuits.
From my childhood I have been hearing of the same lesson; I am afraid it was taught also in the days of our fathers and grandfa thers and great grandfa thers, namely, that if you wish to be successful in something you must do that only and nothing else. I was rebuked very much because I was busy with many different things at the same time. I was told I would be in the end good for nothing. I was studying, I was painting, I was doing music and many other things. I was repeatedly warned that my painting would be worthless, my music would be worthless, my studies would be incomplete and defective if I had my way. Perhaps it was true; but I found that my way, too, had its advantagesprecisely the advantages I was speaking of at the outset, namely, it widens and enriches the mind and consciousness, makes it supple and flexible, gives it a spontaneous power to understand and handle anything new presented to it. If, however, I had wanted to become an executant of the first order and play in concerts, then of course I would have had to restrict myself. Or in painting if my aim had been to be one of the great artists of the age, I could have done only that and nothing else. One understands the position very well, but it is only a point of view. I do not see why I should become the greatest musician or the greatest painter. It seems to me to be nothing but vanity.
1.00b - INTRODUCTION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
In regard to few professional philosophers and men of letters is there any evidence
that they did very much in the way of fulfilling the necessary conditions of direct
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talking about, and not to the professional philosophers or men of letters, that I have
gone for my selections.
1.00b - Introduction, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Above the magicians head, with an invisible ribbon for a crown, there is a goldedged silvery white lotus flower as a sign of the divinity. In the inside there is the ruby red philosophers stone symbolizing the quintessence of the whole hermetic science. On the right side in the background there is the sun, yellow like gold and on the left side we see the moon, silvery-white, expressing plus and minus in the macro and microcosm, the electrical and magnetical fluids.
Above the lotus flower, Creation has been symbolized by a ball, in the interior of which are represented the procreative positive and negative forces which stand for the creating act of the universe.
1.00c - INTRODUCTION, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
or is it not? The philosophers of the Yoga school answer
emphatically that it is. They say that mans present state is a
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does not. Such is the difference. These philosophers think it is
awful if we go beyond thought; they find nothing beyond
1.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
There is Sri Aurobindo the philosopher, and Sri Aurobindo the poet, which he was essentially, a visionary of evolution; but not everyone is a philosopher or a poet, much less a seer. But would we not be content if he gave us a way to believe in our own possibilities,
not only our human but our superhuman and divine possibilities, and not only to believe in them but to discover them ourselves, step by step, to see for ourselves and to become vast, as vast as the earth we love and all the lands and all the seas we hold within us? For there is Sri Aurobindo the explorer, who was also a yogi; did he not say that Yoga is the art of conscious self-finding? 3 It is this exploration of consciousness that we would like to undertake with him. If we proceed calmly, patiently, and with sincerity, bravely facing the difficulties of the road and God knows it is rugged enough there is no reason that the window should not open at some point and let the sun shine on us forever. Actually, it is not one but several windows that open one after another, each time on a wider perspective, a new dimension of our own kingdom; and each time it means a change of consciousness as radical as going from sleep to the waking state. We are going to outline the main stages of these changes of consciousness,
1.00 - Introduction to Alchemy of Happiness, #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
The remarkable treatise, which I introduce to your notice, is a translation from one of the numerous works of the Arabian philosopher, Abou Hamid Mohammed ben Mohammed al Ghazzali, who flourished in the eleventh century. He was born about the year A. D. 1056, or 450 of the Mohammedan era, at Tous in Khorasan, and he died in the prime of life in his native country about the year 1011, or 505 A. H. Although educated by Mohammedan parents, he avows that during a considerable period of his life he was a prey to doubts about the truth, and that at times he was an absolute sceptic. While yet comparatively young, his learning and genius recommended him to the renowned sovereign Nizam ul Mulk, who gave him a professorship in the college which he had founded at Bagdad. His speculative mind still harassing him with doubts, in his enthusiasm to arrive at a solid foundation for knowledge, he resigned his position, visited Mecca and Jerusalem, and finally returned to Khorasan, where he led a life of both monastic study and devotion, and consecrated his pen to writing the results of his meditations.
Mohammedan scholars of the present day still hold him in such high respect, that his name is never mentioned by them without some such distinctive epithet, as the "Scientific [6] Imaum," or "Chief witness for Islamism." His rank in the eastern world, as a philosopher and a theologian, had naturally given his name some distinction in our histories of philosophy, and it is enumerated in connection with those of Averroes (Abu Roshd) and Avicenna (Abu Sina) as illustrating the intellectual life and the philosophical schools of the Mohammedans. Still his writings were less known than either of the two others. His principal work, The Destruction of the philosophers, called forth in reply one of the two most important works of Averroes entitled The Destruction of the Destruction. Averroes, in his commentary upon Aristotle, extracts from Ghazzali copiously for the purpose of refuting bis views. A short treatise of his had been published at Cologne, in 1506, and Pocock had given in Latin his interpretation of the two fundamental articles of the Mohammedan creed. Von Hammer printed in 1838, at Vienna, a translation of a moral essay, Eyuha el Weled, as a new year's token for youth.
It has been reserved to our own times to obtain a more intimate acquaintance with Ghazzali, and this chiefly by means of a translation by M. Pallia, into French, of his Confessions, wherein he announces very clearly his philosophical views; and from an essay on his writings by M. Smolders. In consequence, Mr. Lewes, who in his first edition of the Biographical History of Philosophy, found no place for Ghazzali, is induced in his last edition, from the evidenee which that treatise contains that he was one of the controlling minds of his age, to devote an entire section to an exhibition of his opinions in the same series with Abclard and Bruno, and to make him the typical figure to represent Arabian philosophy. For a full account of Ghazzali's [7] school of philosophy, we refer to his history and to the two essays, just mentioned. We would observe, very briefly however, that like most of the learned Mohammedans of his age, he was a student of Aristotle. While they regarded all the Greek philosophers as infidels, they availed themselves of their logic and their principles of philosophy to maintain, as far possible, the dogmas of the Koran. Ghazzali's mind possessed however Platonizing tendencies, and he affiliated himself to the Soofies or Mystics in his later years. He was in antagonism with men who to him appeared, like Avicenna, to exalt reason above the Koran, yet he himself went to the extreme limits of reasoning in his endeavors to find an intelligible basis for the doctrines of the Koran, and a philosophical basis for a holy rule of life. His character, and moral and intellectual rank are vividly depicted in the following extract from the writings of Tholuck, a prominent leader of the modern Evangelical school of Germany.
"Ghazzali," says Tholuck, "if ever any man have deserved the name, was truly a divine, and he may justly he placed on a level with Origen, so remarkable was he for learning and ingenuity, and gifted with such a rare faculty for the skillful and worthy exposition of doctrine. All that is good, noble and sublime, which his great soul had compassed, he bestowed upon Mohammedanism; and he adorned the doctrines of the Koran with so much piety and learning, that, in the form given them by him, they seem in my opinion worthy the assent of Christians. Whatsoever was most excellent in the philosophy of Aristotle or in the Soofi mysticism, he discreetly adapted to the Mohammedan theology. From every school, he sought the [8] means of shedding light and honor upon religion; while his sincere piety and lofty conscientiousness imparted to all his writings a sacred majesty. He was the first of Mohammedan divines." (Bibliotheca Sacra, vi, 233).
1.00 - Preface, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
BASED on the versicle in the Song of Songs, " Thy plants are an orchard of Pomegranates ", a book entitled Pardis Rimonim came to be written by Rabbi Moses Cordovero in the sixteenth century. By some authorities this philosopher is considered as the greatest lamp in post-Zoharic days of that spiritual Menorah, the Qabalah, which, with so rare a grace and so profuse an irradiation of the Supernal Light, illuminated the literature and religious philosophy of the Jewish people as well as their immediate and subsequent neighbours in the Dias- pora. The English equivalent of Pardis Rimonim - A Garden of Pomegranates - I have adopted as the title of my own modest work, although I am forced to confess that this latter has but little connection either in actual fact or in historicity with that of Cordovero. In the golden harvest of purely spiritual intimations which the Holy Qabalah brings, I truly feel that a veritable garden of the soul may be builded ; a garden of immense magnitude and lofty significance, wherein may be discovered by each one of us all manner and kind of exotic fruit and gracious flower of exquisite colour. The pomegranate, may I add, has always been for mystics everywhere a favourable object for recon- dite symbolism. The garden or orchard has likewise pro- duced in that book named The Book of Splendour an almost inexhaustible treasury of spiritual imagery of superb and magnificent taste.
This book goes forth then in the hope that, as a modern writer has put it:
1.01 - An Accomplished Westerner, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
replete. He even had a way of jesting with a straight face, which never left him: Sense of humour? It is the salt of existence. Without it the world would have got utterly out of balance it is unbalanced enough already and rushed to a blaze long ago. 9 For there is also Sri Aurobindo the humorist, and that Sri Aurobindo is perhaps more important than the philosopher whom Western universities speak of so solemnly. Philosophy, for Sri Aurobindo, was only a way of reaching those who could not understand anything without explanations; it was only a language, just as poetry was another, clearer and truer language. But the essence of his being was humor, not the sarcastic humor of the so-called spiritual man, but a kind of joy that cannot help dancing wherever is passes. Now and then, in a flash that leaves us somewhat mystified, we sense behind the most tragic, the most distressing human situations an almost facetious laughter, as if a child were playing a tragedy and suddenly made a face at himself because it is his nature to laugh, and ultimately because nothing in the world and no one can affect that place inside ourselves where we are ever a king.
Indeed, perhaps this is the true meaning of Sri Aurobindo's humor: a refusal to see things tragically, and, even more so, a sense of inalienable royalty.
1.01 - A NOTE ON PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
There are philosophers who, accepting this progressive anima-
tion of the concrete by the power of thought, of Matter by Spirit,
1.01 - Appearance and Reality, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
'appearance' and 'reality', between what things seem to be and what they are. The painter wants to know what things seem to be, the practical man and the philosopher want to know what they are; but the philosopher's wish to know this is stronger than the practical man's, and is more troubled by knowledge as to the difficulties of answering the question.
To return to the table. It is evident from what we have found, that there is no colour which pre-eminently appears to be _the_ colour of the table, or even of any one particular part of the table--it appears to be of different colours from different points of view, and there is no reason for regarding some of these as more really its colour than others. And we know that even from a given point of view the colour will seem different by artificial light, or to a colour-blind man, or to a man wearing blue spectacles, while in the dark there will be no colour at all, though to touch and hearing the table will be unchanged. This colour is not something which is inherent in the table, but something depending upon the table and the spectator and the way the light falls on the table. When, in ordinary life, we speak of _the_ colour of the table, we only mean the sort of colour which it will seem to have to a normal spectator from an ordinary point of view under usual conditions of light. But the other colours which appear under other conditions have just as good a right to be considered real; and therefore, to avoid favouritism, we are compelled to deny that, in itself, the table has any one particular colour.
--
The philosopher who first brought prominently forward the reasons for regarding the immediate objects of our senses as not existing independently of us was Bishop Berkeley (1685-1753). His _Three
Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, in Opposition to Sceptics and
--
Other philosophers since Berkeley have also held that, although the table does not depend for its existence upon being seen by me, it does depend upon being seen (or otherwise apprehended in sensation) by
_some_ mind--not necessarily the mind of God, but more often the whole collective mind of the universe. This they hold, as Berkeley does, chiefly because they think there can be nothing real--or at any rate nothing known to be real except minds and their thoughts and feelings.
--
Such an argument, in my opinion, is fallacious; and of course those who advance it do not put it so shortly or so crudely. But whether valid or not, the argument has been very widely advanced in one form or another; and very many philosophers, perhaps a majority, have held that there is nothing real except minds and their ideas. Such philosophers are called
'idealists'. When they come to explaining matter, they either say, like
--
But these philosophers, though they deny matter as opposed to mind, nevertheless, in another sense, admit matter. It will be remembered that we asked two questions; namely, (1) Is there a real table at all? (2) If so, what sort of object can it be? Now both Berkeley and Leibniz admit that there is a real table, but Berkeley says it is certain ideas in the mind of God, and Leibniz says it is a colony of souls. Thus both of them answer our first question in the affirmative, and only diverge from the views of ordinary mortals in their answer to our second question. In fact, almost all philosophers seem to be agreed that there is a real table: they almost all agree that, however much our sense-data--colour, shape, smoothness, etc.--may depend upon us, yet their occurrence is a sign of something existing independently of us, something differing, perhaps, completely from our sense-data, and yet to be regarded as causing those sense-data whenever we are in a suitable relation to the real table.
Now obviously this point in which the philosophers are agreed--the view that there _is_ a real table, whatever its nature may be--is vitally important, and it will be worth while to consider what reasons there are for accepting this view before we go on to the further question as to the nature of the real table. Our next chapter, therefore, will be concerned with the reasons for supposing that there is a real table at all.
Before we go farther it will be well to consider for a moment what it is that we have discovered so far. It has appeared that, if we take any common object of the sort that is supposed to be known by the senses, what the senses _immediately_ tell us is not the truth about the object as it is apart from us, but only the truth about certain sense-data which, so far as we can see, depend upon the relations between us and the object. Thus what we directly see and feel is merely 'appearance', which we believe to be a sign of some 'reality' behind. But if the reality is not what appears, have we any means of knowing whether there is any reality at all? And if so, have we any means of finding out what it is like?
1.01 - Economy, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward.
We know not much about them. It is remarkable that _we_ know so much of them as we do. The same is true of the more modern reformers and benefactors of their race. None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty. Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art. There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a nobler race of men. But why do men degenerate ever?
What makes families run out? What is the nature of the luxury which enervates and destroys nations? Are we sure that there is none of it in our own lives? The philosopher is in advance of his age even in the outward form of his life. He is not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like his contemporaries. How can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men?
When a man is warmed by the several modes which I have described, what does he want next? Surely not more warmth of the same kind, as more and richer food, larger and more splendid houses, finer and more abundant clothing, more numerous incessant and hotter fires, and the like. When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now, his vacation from humbler toil having commenced.
--
We don garment after garment, as if we grew like exogenous plants by addition without. Our outside and often thin and fanciful clothes are our epidermis, or false skin, which partakes not of our life, and may be stripped off here and there without fatal injury; our thicker garments, constantly worn, are our cellular integument, or cortex; but our shirts are our liber or true bark, which cannot be removed without girdling and so destroying the man. I believe that all races at some seasons wear something equivalent to the shirt. It is desirable that a man be clad so simply that he can lay his hands on himself in the dark, and that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly, that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety. While one thick garment is, for most purposes, as good as three thin ones, and cheap clothing can be obtained at prices really to suit customers; while a thick coat can be bought for five dollars, which will last as many years, thick pantaloons for two dollars, cowhide boots for a dollar and a half a pair, a summer hat for a quarter of a dollar, and a winter cap for sixty-two and a half cents, or a better be made at home at a nominal cost, where is he so poor that, clad in such a suit, of _his own earning_, there will not be found wise men to do him reverence?
When I ask for a garment of a particular form, my tailoress tells me gravely, They do not make them so now, not emphasizing the They at all, as if she quoted an authority as impersonal as the Fates, and I find it difficult to get made what I want, simply because she cannot believe that I mean what I say, that I am so rash. When I hear this oracular sentence, I am for a moment absorbed in thought, emphasizing to myself each word separately that I may come at the meaning of it, that I may find out by what degree of consanguinity _They_ are related to _me_, and what authority they may have in an affair which affects me so nearly; and, finally, I am inclined to answer her with equal mystery, and without any more emphasis of the they,It is true, they did not make them so recently, but they do now. Of what use this measuring of me if she does not measure my character, but only the breadth of my shoulders, as it were a peg to hang the coat on? We worship not the Graces, nor the Parc, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a travellers cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same. I sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again, and then there would be some one in the company with a maggot in his head, hatched from an egg deposited there nobody knows when, for not even fire kills these things, and you would have lost your labor. Nevertheless, we will not forget that some Egyptian wheat was handed down to us by a mummy.
--
I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men, the former are so much the freer. Men and oxen exchange work; but if we consider necessary work only, the oxen will be seen to have greatly the advantage, their farm is so much the larger. Man does some of his part of the exchange work in his six weeks of haying, and it is no boys play. Certainly no nation that lived simply in all respects, that is, no nation of philosophers, would commit so great a blunder as to use the labor of animals. True, there never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am
I certain it is desirable that there should be. However, _I_ should never have broken a horse or bull and taken him to board for any work he might do for me, for fear I should become a horse-man or a herds-man merely; and if society seems to be the gainer by so doing, are we certain that what is one mans gain is not anothers loss, and that the stable-boy has equal cause with his master to be satisfied? Granted that some public works would not have been constructed without this aid, and let man share the glory of such with the ox and horse; does it follow that he could not have accomplished works yet more worthy of himself in that case? When men begin to do, not merely unnecessary or artistic, but luxurious and idle work, with their assistance, it is inevitable that a few do all the exchange work with the oxen, or, in other words, become the slaves of the strongest. Man thus not only works for the animal within him, but, for a symbol of this, he works for the animal without him. Though we have many substantial houses of brick or stone, the prosperity of the farmer is still measured by the degree to which the barn overshadows the house. This town is said to have the largest houses for oxen, cows, and horses hereabouts, and it is not behindh and in its public buildings; but there are very few halls for free worship or free speech in this county. It should not be by their architecture, but why not even by their power of abstract thought, that nations should seek to commemorate themselves? How much more admirable the Bhagvat-Geeta than all the ruins of the East! Towers and temples are the luxury of princes. A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince. Genius is not a retainer to any emperor, nor is its material silver, or gold, or marble, except to a trifling extent. To what end, pray, is so much stone hammered? In
--
My furniture, part of which I made myself, and the rest cost me nothing of which I have not rendered an account, consisted of a bed, a table, a desk, three chairs, a looking-glass three inches in diameter, a pair of tongs and andirons, a kettle, a skillet, and a frying-pan, a dipper, a wash-bowl, two knives and forks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a japanned lamp. None is so poor that he need sit on a pumpkin. That is shiftlessness. There is a plenty of such chairs as I like best in the village garrets to be had for taking them away. Furniture! Thank God, I can sit and I can stand without the aid of a furniture warehouse. What man but a philosopher would not be ashamed to see his furniture packed in a cart and going up country exposed to the light of heaven and the eyes of men, a beggarly account of empty boxes? That is Spauldings furniture. I could never tell from inspecting such a load whether it belonged to a so called rich man or a poor one; the owner always seemed poverty-stricken.
Indeed, the more you have of such things the poorer you are. Each load looks as if it contained the contents of a dozen shanties; and if one shanty is poor, this is a dozen times as poor. Pray, for what do we
1.01 - Foreward, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
scientists and philosophers or men of high intellectual reason
but mystics and even mystery-men, occultists, religious seekers;
--
an outward knowledge. The scientists and philosophers came
afterwards; they were preceded by the mystics and often like
1.01 - Historical Survey, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
theological and philosophical thinkers, particularly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Among those devoted to the study of its theorems were Raymond Lully, the scholastic metaphysician and alchemist ; John Reuchlin, who revived Oriental Philosophy in Europe ; John Baptist von Helmont, the physician and chemist who discovered hydrogen ; Baruch Spinoza, the excommunicated " God- intoxicated " Jewish philosopher ; and Dr. Henry More, the famous Cambridge Platonist. These men, to name but a few among many who have been attracted to the
Qabalistic ideology, after restlessly searching for a world- view which should disclose to them the true explanations of life, and show the real inner bond uniting all things, found the cravings of their minds at least partially satisfied by its psychological and philosophical system.
1.01 - MAPS OF EXPERIENCE - OBJECT AND MEANING, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
Just because our moral philosophers knew the facts of morality only very approximately in arbitrary
extracts or in accidental epitomes for example, as the morality of their environment, their class, their
1.01 - MAXIMS AND MISSILES, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
bear nor throw off? This is the case of the philosopher.
12
1.01 - Newtonian and Bergsonian Time, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
This little song is an interesting theme for the philosopher
and the historian of science, in that it puts side by side two sci-
1.01 - On knowledge of the soul, and how knowledge of the soul is the key to the knowledge of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
There are, however, in our times certain weak persons and indifferent to religious truth for the most part, who in the guise of soofees,1 after learning a few of their obscure phrases and ornamenting themselves with their cap and robes, treat knowledge and the doctors of the law2 as inimical to themselves, and continually find fault with them. They are devils and deserve judicial death. They are enemies of God, and of the apostle of God. For God has extolled knowledge and the doctors of the law; and the [33] established way of salvation, with which God has inspired the prophets, has its basis in external knowledge. These miserable and weak men, since they have no acquaintance with science, and no education, and knowledge of external things, why should they indulge in such corrupt fancies, and unfounded language? They resemble, beloved, a person who having heard it said that alchemy was of more value than gold, because that whatsoever thing should be touched with the philosophers' stone would turn to gold, should be proud of the idea and should be carried away with a passion for alchemy. And when gold in full bags is offered him, he replies : "Shall I turn my attention to gold, when I am dissolving the philosophers' stone?" And he finishes with being deprived of the gold, and with only hearing the name of the philosophers' stone. He becomes forever a miserable, destitute, and naked vagabond, who wastes his life upon alchemy.
The science then of revelation, or of infused spiritual knowledge, resembles alchemy, and the science of the doctors of the law resembles gold; but it is folly and pure loss not to accept and be satisfied with solid gold, on account of one's ardor to discover the philosophers' stone, which latter knowledge is not acquired by one in a thousand.
There is still one farther observation that deserves to be made. If a person by the payment of a thousand pieces of gold, could become master of alchemy, yet the condition of the man who is absolutely master of ten thousand pieces of gold would be better and preferable. And this illustrates the position of the soofees. If a person follow their method and attain to the knowledge of some things, he still does not equal in excellence, the doctors of the law. Just as we see, that books on alchemy, and students of alchemy are very numerous, while those who are successful are the least of few, so the path of mysticism is sought for by all men, and longed for by all classes of society, yet those who [34] attain to the end are exceedingly rare. Perhaps, as in the case of alchemy, it only exists now in name and form. The greater part of the notions and fancies of most of the mystics, which they esteem as revelations and mysteries, are nothing but vain triflings and pure self complacency; just as that while visions are a reality, still mere confused dreams are very abundant. The mystic, however, who by spiritual revelation has learned all that a doctor of the law has been able to learn after many years of study, and who has no remaining doubts in matters of internal or external knowledge, is certainly more excellent than the doctor of the law who is learned only in external knowledge, and this should not be denied. And it follows that the way of the mystics must be acknowledged to be a true one, and that you must not destroy the belief of those weak minded and vain persons who follow them; for, the reason why they cast reproaches upon knowledge and calumniate the doctors of law is that they have no acquirements or knowledge themselves.
--
The Alchemy of Happiness, by Mohammed Al-Ghazzali, the Mohammedan philosopher, trans. Henry A. Homes (Albany, N.Y.: Munsell, 1873). Transactions of the Albany Institute, vol. VIII.
The text is in the public domain.
1.01 - SAMADHI PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
is true as the modern philosophers say, that there is something
in man which evolves out of him; all knowledge is in man, but
1.01 - THAT ARE THOU, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The lower gate is that preferred by strictly practical teachersmen who, like Gautama Buddha, have no use for speculation and whose primary concern is to put out in mens hearts the hideous fires of greed, resentment and infatuation. Through the upper gate go those whose vocation it is to think and speculate the born philosophers and theologians. The middle gate gives entrance to the exponents of what has been called spiritual religion the devout contemplatives of India, the Sufis of Islam, the Catholic mystics of the later Middle Ages, and, in the Protestant tradition, such men as Denk and Franck and Castellio, as Everard and John Smith and the first Quakers and William Law.
It is through this central door, and just because it is central, that we shall make our entry into the subject matter of this book. The psychology of the Perennial Philosophy has its source in metaphysics and issues logically in a characteristic way of life and system of ethics. Starting from this midpoint of doctrine, it is easy for the mind to move in either direction.
--
Such, then, very briefly are the reasons for supposing that the historical traditions of oriental and our own classical antiquity may be true. It is interesting to find that at least one distinguished contemporary ethnologist is in agreement with Aristotle and the Vedantists. Orthodox ethnology, writes Dr. Paul Radin in his Primitive Man as philosopher, has been nothing but an enthusiastic and quite uncritical attempt to apply the Darwinian theory of evolution to the facts of social experience. And he adds that no progress in ethnology will be achieved until scholars rid themselves once and for all of the curious notion that everything possesses a history; until they realize that certain ideas and certain concepts are as ultimate for man, as a social being, as specific physiological reactions are ultimate for him, as a biological being. Among these ultimate concepts, in Dr. Radins view, is that of monotheism. Such monotheism is often no more than the recognition of a single dark and numinous Power ruling the world. But it may sometimes be genuinely ethical and spiritual.
The nineteenth centurys mania for history and prophetic Utopianism tended to blind the eyes of even its acutest thinkers to the timeless facts of eternity. Thus we find T. H. Green writing of mystical union as though it were an evolutionary process and not, as all the evidence seems to show, a state which man, as man, has always had it in his power to realize. An animal organism, which has its history in time, gradually becomes the vehicle of an eternally complete consciousness, which in itself can have no history, but a history of the process by which the animal organism becomes its vehicle. But in actual fact it is only in regard to peripheral knowledge that there has been a genuine historical development. Without much lapse of time and much accumulation of skills and information, there can be but an imperfect knowledge of the material world. But direct awareness of the eternally complete consciousness, which is the ground of the material world, is a possibility occasionally actualized by some human beings at almost any stage of their own personal development, from childhood to old age, and at any period of the races history.
1.025 - Sadhana - Intensifying a Lighted Flame, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
This is a very interesting subject in political science, where political thinkers differ in their opinions as to whether there is a total absence of improvement in quality when there is social order, and there is only a quantitative increase, or whether there is also an element of an increase of quality in thinking. This has led to divergent opinions among statesmen and political philosophers right from Plato and Aristotle onwards, through to Chanakya and other thinkers in India - where the opinion swung like a pendulum. One side held that there is absolutely no improvement in quality, though there is a large improvement in quantity, and the other side thought that there is an element of qualitative superiority. We are not going to discuss this subject at present, as it is outside the jurisdiction of our current topic.
However, the point on hand is that a larger reality should also be qualitatively superior to the discrete particulars from which the mind is supposed to be withdrawn for the purpose of the practice of yoga. Though it is somewhat easy to bring about a quantitative increase in the concept of reality by methods such as the ones I just mentioned, it is a little more difficult to introduce a qualitative increase into the concept of reality. This is the main difficulty for everyone. However much we may concentrate on God, we will not be able to improve upon the human concept, even when there is a concept of God. So we feel unhappy even when we are meditating on God, because we have not improved the quality but have only increased the quantity, so that we may think of God as a large human individual a massive individual, as expansive as the universe itself, for example. That is quite wonderful, but still this human thought does not leave us.
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
the fauna of a continent is betrayed in the end also by the fact that the most diverse philosophers keep
filling in a definite fundamental scheme of possible philosophies. Under an invisible spell, they always
--
Western consciousness not least through the actions of the ancient Hebrew prophets. The philosopher of
religion Huston Smith draws two examples from the Bible, to illustrate this point:
1.02 - On the Knowledge of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
The Alchemy of Happiness, by Mohammed Al-Ghazzali, the Mohammedan philosopher, trans. Henry A. Homes (Albany, N.Y.: Munsell, 1873). Transactions of the Albany Institute, vol. VIII.
The text is in the public domain.
1.02 - Prana, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Prnyma is not, as many think, something about breath; breath indeed has very little to do with it, if anything. Breathing is only one of the many exercises through which we get to the real Pranayama. Pranayama means the control of Prna. According to the philosophers of India, the whole universe is composed of two materials, one of which they call ksha. It is the omnipresent, all-penetrating existence. Everything that has form, everything that is the result of combination, is evolved out of this Akasha. It is the Akasha that becomes the air, that becomes the liquids, that becomes the solids; it is the Akasha that becomes the sun, the earth, the moon, the stars, the comets; it is the Akasha that becomes the human body, the animal body, the plants, every form that we see, everything that can be sensed, everything that exists. It cannot be perceived; it is so subtle that it is beyond all ordinary perception; it can only be seen when it has become gross, has taken form. At the beginning of creation there is only this Akasha. At the end of the cycle the solids, the liquids, and the gases all melt into the Akasha again, and the next creation similarly proceeds out of this Akasha.
By what power is this Akasha manufactured into this universe? By the power of Prana. Just as Akasha is the infinite, omnipresent material of this universe, so is this Prana the infinite, omnipresent manifesting power of this universe. At the beginning and at the end of a cycle everything becomes Akasha, and all the forces that are in the universe resolve back into the Prana; in the next cycle, out of this Prana is evolved everything that we call energy, everything that we call force. It is the Prana that is manifesting as motion; it is the Prana that is manifesting as gravitation, as magnetism. It is the Prana that is manifesting as the actions of the body, as the nerve currents, as thought force. From thought down to the lowest force, everything is but the manifestation of Prana. The sum total of all forces in the universe, mental or physical, when resolved back to their original state, is called Prana. "When there was neither aught nor naught, when darkness was covering darkness, what existed then? That Akasha existed without motion." The physical motion of the Prana was stopped, but it existed all the same.
1.02 - SADHANA PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
we call gross matter. Modern philosophers say that
intelligence is the last to come. They say that unintelligent
1.02 - The Development of Sri Aurobindos Thought, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
mensch (literally overman) was the philosopher en vogue,
together with Henri Bergson and his vitalism, and Sigmund
1.02 - The Eternal Law, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
as if Indians were a mixture of arcane philosophers and unrepentant idolaters. But if we look at India simply, from within, without trying to divide her into paragraphs of Hinduism (which are necessarily 11
12
1.02 - The Philosophy of Ishvara, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
Who is Ishvara? Janmdyasya yatah "From whom is the birth, continuation, and dissolution of the universe," He is Ishvara "the Eternal, the Pure, the Ever-Free, the Almighty, the AllKnowing, the All-Merciful, the Teacher of all teachers"; and above all, Sa Ishvarah anirvachaniyapremasvarupah "He the Lord is, of His own nature, inexpressible Love." These certainly are the definitions of a Personal God. Are there then two Gods the "Not this, not this," the Sat-chit-nanda, the Existence-Knowledge-Bliss of the philosopher, and this God of Love of the Bhakta? No, it is the same Sat-chit-ananda who is also the God of Love, the impersonal and personal in one. It has always to be understood that the Personal God worshipped by the Bhakta is not separate or different from the Brahman. All is Brahman, the One without a second; only the Brahman, as unity or absolute, is too much of an abstraction to be loved and worshipped; so the Bhakta chooses the relative aspect of Brahman, that is, Ishvara, the Supreme Ruler. To use a simile: Brahman is as the clay or substance out of which an infinite variety of articles are fashioned. As clay, they are all one; but form or manifestation differentiates them. Before every one of them was made, they all existed potentially in the clay, and, of course, they are identical substantially; but when formed, and so long as the form remains, they are separate and different; the clay-mouse can never become a clay-elephant, because, as manifestations, form alone makes them what they are, though as unformed clay they are all one.
Ishvara is the highest manifestation of the Absolute Reality, or in other words, the highest possible reading of the Absolute by the human mind. Creation is eternal, and so also is Ishvara.
1.02 - The Pit, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Truth. Numerous academic philosophers have likewise arrived at a similar conclusion. Some of the greater of these have despaired of ever devising a suitable method of transcending this limitation, and became sceptics. Others, seeing simply the solution, have seized upon intuition, or to be more accurate, the intellectual concept of intuition, leaving us, however, with no methods of checking and verifying that intuition, which in consequence is so liable to degenerate into mere guesswork, coloured by personal inclination and abetted by gross wish-phantasm.
The two main methods of the traditional and esoteric
--
Incidentally, one of the greatest difficulties experienced by the philosopher-s-a difficulty almost insurmountable by the student; one which continually tends to increase rather than diminish with the advance in knowledge-is this: it is practically impossible to gain any clear intellectual comprehension of the meaning of philosophical terms employed. Every thinker has his own private conception of, and meaning for, even such common and universally used terms as " soul" and " mind"; and in the vast majority of cases he does not so much as suspect that other writers may employ the same term under a different connotation. Even technical writers, those who sometimes take the trouble of defining their terms before using them, are too often at variance with each other. The diversity is very great, as stated above, in the case of the word
" soul". We find one writer predicating of the soul that it is a, b, and c, while his fellow-students protest vehemently that it is nothing of the sort, but d, e, andf. However, let us suppose for a moment that by some miracle we obtain a clear idea of the meaning of the word. The trouble has merely begun. For there immediately arises the question of the relation of one term to the others.
1.02 - THE PROBLEM OF SOCRATES, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
it--for other reasons. For a philosopher to see a problem in the value
of life, is almost an objection against him, a note of interrogation
--
on the part of philosophers and moralists to suppose that they can
extricate themselves from degeneration by merely waging war upon it.
1.02 - The Three European Worlds, #The Ever-Present Origin, #Jean Gebser, #Integral
Although already shaped in the Mediterranean world of late antiquity, the perspectival world began to find expression about 1250 A.D. in Christian Europe. In contrast to the impersonal, pre-human, hieratic, and standardized sense of the human Body in our sense virtually nonexistent held by the Egyptians, the Greek sensitivity to the body had already evidenced a certain individuation of man. But only toward the close of the Middle Ages did man gradually become aware of his body as a support for his ego. And, having gained this awareness, he is henceforth not just a human being reflected in an idealized bust or miniature of an emperor, a philosopher, or a poet, but a specific individual such as those who gaze at us from a portrait by Jan van Eyck.
The conception of man as subject is based an a conception of the world and the environment as an object. It is in the paintings of Giotto that we See first expressed, however tentatively, the objectified, external world. Early Sienese art, particularly miniature painting, reveals a yet spaceless, self-contained, and depthless world significant for its symbolic content and not for what we would today call its realism. These "pictures" of an unperspectival era are, as it were, painted at night when objects are without shadow and depth. Here darkness has swallowed space to the extent that only the immaterial, psychic component could be expressed. But in the work of Giotto, the latent space hitherto dormant in the night of collective man's unconscious is visualized; the first renderings of space begin to appear in painting signalling an incipient perspectivity. A new psychic awareness of space, objectified or externalized from the psyche out into the world, begins a consciousness of space whose element of depth becomes visible in perspective.
--
Once more, he is terrified, only this time less by his encounter with space than by the encounter with his soul of which he is reminded by the chance discovery of Augustine's words. "I admit I was overcome with wonderment," he continues; "I begged my Brother who also desired to read the Passage not to disturb me, and closed the book. I was irritated for having turned my thoughts to mundane matters at such a moment, for even the Pagan philosophers should have long since taught me that there is nothing more wondrous than the soul [nihilpraeteranimumessemirabile], and that compared to its greatness nothing is great."
Pausing for a new Paragraph, he continues with these surprising words: "My gaze, fully satisfied by contemplating the mountain [i.e., only after a conscious and exhaustive survey of the Panorama], my eyes turned inward [in me ipsuminterioresoculosreflexi]; and then we fell silent . . " Although obscured by psychological reservations and the memory of his physical exertion, the concluding lines of his letter suggest an ultimate affirmation of his ascent and the attendant experience: "So much perspiration and effort just to bring the body a little closer to heaven; the soul, when approaching God. must be similarly terrified.
1.02 - Where I Lived, and What I Lived For, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter,we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all _news_, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. Yet not a few are greedy after this gossip. There was such a rush, as I hear, the other day at one of the offices to learn the foreign news by the last arrival, that several large squares of plate glass belonging to the establishment were broken by the pressure,news which I seriously think a ready wit might write a twelve-month, or twelve years, beforeh and with sufficient accuracy. As for Spain, for instance, if you know how to throw in Don Carlos and the Infanta, and
Don Pedro and Seville and Granada, from time to time in the right proportions,they may have changed the names a little since I saw the papers, and serve up a bull-fight when other entertainments fail, it will be true to the letter, and give us as good an idea of the exact state or ruin of things in Spain as the most succinct and lucid reports under this head in the newspapers: and as for England, almost the last significant scrap of news from that quarter was the revolution of 1649; and if you have learned the history of her crops for an average year, you never need attend to that thing again, unless your speculations are of a merely pecuniary character. If one may judge who rarely looks into the newspapers, nothing new does ever happen in foreign parts, a French revolution not excepted.
--
Khoung-tseu to know his news. Khoung-tseu caused the messenger to be seated near him, and questioned him in these terms: What is your master doing? The messenger answered with respect: My master desires to diminish the number of his faults, but he cannot come to the end of them. The messenger being gone, the philosopher remarked: What a worthy messenger! What a worthy messenger! The preacher, instead of vexing the ears of drowsy farmers on their day of rest at the end of the week,for Sunday is the fit conclusion of an ill-spent week, and not the fresh and brave beginning of a new one,with this one other draggle-tail of a sermon, should shout with thundering voice, Pause!
Avast! Why so seeming fast, but deadly slow?
--
Entertainments. If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence,that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. This is always exhilarating and sublime. By closing the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundations. Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure. I have read in a Hindoo book, that there was a kings son, who, being expelled in infancy from his native city, was brought up by a forester, and, growing up to maturity in that state, imagined himself to belong to the barbarous race with which he lived. One of his fathers ministers having discovered him, revealed to him what he was, and the misconception of his character was removed, and he knew himself to be a prince. So soul, continues the Hindoo philosopher, from the circumstances in which it is placed, mistakes its own character, until the truth is revealed to it by some holy teacher, and then it knows itself to be _Brahme_. I perceive that we inhabitants of New England live this mean life that we do because our vision does not penetrate the surface of things. We think that that _is_ which _appears_ to be.
If a man should walk through this town and see only the reality, where, think you, would the Mill-dam go to? If he should give us an account of the realities he beheld there, we should not recognize the place in his description. Look at a meeting-house, or a court-house, or a jail, or a shop, or a dwelling-house, and say what that thing really is before a true gaze, and they would all go to pieces in your account of them. Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us.
1.03 - APPRENTICESHIP AND ENCULTURATION - ADOPTION OF A SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
the fauna of a continent is betrayed in the end also by the fact that the most diverse philosophers keep
filling in a definite fundamental scheme of possible philosophies. Under an invisible spell, they always
1.03 - A Sapphire Tale, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Among them, as friends and guides, were four philosophers, whose entire life was spent in profound study and luminous contemplations, to widen constantly the field of human knowledge and one by one to lift the veils from what is still a mystery.
All were content, for they knew no bitter rivalries and could each devote themselves to the occupation or the study that pleased him. Since they were happy they had no need for many laws, and their Code was only this: a very simple counsel to all, "Be yourself", and for all a single law to be strictly observed, the law of Charity, whose highest part is Justice, the charity which will permit no wastage and which will hinder no one in his free evolution. In this way, very naturally, everyone works at once for himself and for the collectivity.
This orderly and harmonious country was ruled by a king who was king simply because he was the most intelligent and wise, because he alone was capable of fulfilling the needs of all, he alone was both enlightened enough to follow and even to guide the philosophers in their loftiest speculations, and practical enough to watch over the organisation and well-being of his people, whose needs were well known to him.
At the time when our narrative begins, this remarkable ruler had reached a great age - he was more than two hundred years old - and although he still retained all his lucidity and was still full of energy and vigour, he was beginning to think of retirement, a little weary of the heavy responsibilities which he had borne for so many years. He called his young son Meotha to him. The prince was a young man of many and varied accomplishments. He was more handsome than men usually are, his charity was of such perfect equity that it achieved justice, his intelligence shone like a sun and his wisdom was beyond compare; for he had spent part of his youth among workmen and craftsmen to learn by personal experience the needs and requirements of their life, and he had spent the rest of his time alone, or with one of the philosophers as his tutor, in seclusion in the square tower of the palace, in study or contemplative repose.
Meotha bowed respectfully before his father, who seated him at his side and spoke to him in these words:
"My son, I have ruled this country for more than a hundred and seventy years and although, to this day, all men of goodwill have seemed content with my guidance, I fear that my great age will soon no longer allow me to bear so lightly the heavy responsibility of maintaining order and watching over the well-being of all. My son, you are my hope and my joy. Nature has been very generous to you; she has showered you with her gifts and by a wise and model education you have developed them most satisfactorily. The whole nation, from the humblest peasant to our great philosophers, has a complete and affectionate trust in you; you have been able to win their affection by your kindness and their respect by your justice. It is therefore quite natural that their choice should fall on you when I ask for leave to enjoy a well-earned repose. But as you know, according to age-old custom, no one may ascend the throne who is not biune, that is, unless he is united by the bonds of integral affinity with the one who can bring him the peace of equilibrium by a perfect match of tastes and abilities. It was to remind you of this custom that I called you here, and to ask you whether you have met the young woman who is both worthy and willing to unite her life with yours, according to our wish."
"It would be a joy to me, my father, to be able to tell you, `I have found the one whom my whole being awaits', but, alas, this is yet to be. The most refined maidens in the kingdom are all known to me, and for several of them I feel a sincere liking and a genuine admiration, but not one of them has awakened in me the love which can be the only rightful bond, and I think I can say without being mistaken that in return none of them has conceived a love for me. Since you are so kind as to value my judgment, I will tell you what is in my mind. It seems to me that I should be better fitted to rule our little nation if I were acquainted with the laws and customs of other countries; I wish therefore to travel the world for a year, to observe and to learn. I ask you, my father, to allow me to make this journey, and who knows? - I may return with my life's companion, the one for whom I can be all happiness and all protection."
1.03 - Concerning the Archetypes, with Special Reference to the Anima Concept, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
sented chiefly by the work of the philosopher Theodore Flour-
noy, of Geneva, in his account of the psychology of an unusual
1.03 - On Knowledge of the World., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
The Alchemy of Happiness, by Mohammed Al-Ghazzali, the Mohammedan philosopher, trans. Henry A. Homes (Albany, N.Y.: Munsell, 1873). Transactions of the Albany Institute, vol. VIII.
The text is in the public domain.
1.03 - PERSONALITY, SANCTITY, DIVINE INCARNATION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The word personality is derived from the Latin, and its upper partials are in the highest degree respectable. For some odd philological reason, the Saxon equivalent of personality is hardly ever used. Which is a pity. For if it were usedused as currently as belch is used for eructationwould people make such a reverential fuss about the thing connoted as certain English-speaking philosophers, moralists and theologians have recently done? Personality, we are constantly being assured, is the highest form of reality, with which we are acquainted. But surely people would think twice about making or accepting this affirmation if, instead of personality, the word employed had been its Teutonic synonym, selfness. For selfness, though it means precisely the same, carries none of the high-class overtones that go with personality. On the contrary, its primary meaning comes to us embedded, as it were, in discords, like the note of a cracked bell. For, as all exponents of the Perennial Philosophy have constantly insisted, mans obsessive consciousness of, and insistence on being, a separate self is the final and most formidable obstacle to the unitive knowledge of God. To be a self is, for them, the original sin, and to the to self, in feeling, will and intellect, is the final and all-inclusive virtue. It is the memory of these utterances that calls up the unfavourable overtones with which the word selfness is associated. The all too favourable overtones of personality are evoked in part by its intrinsically solemn Latinity, but also by reminiscences of what has been said about the persons of the Trinity. But the persons of the Trinity have nothing in common with the flesh-and-blood persons of our everyday acquaintancenothing, that is to say, except that indwelling Spirit, with which we ought and are intended to identify ourselves, but which most of us prefer to ignore in favour of our separate selfness. That this God-eclipsing and anti-spiritual selfness, should have been given the same name as is applied to the God who is a Spirit, is, to say the least of it, unfortunate. Like all such mistakes it is probably, in some obscure and subconscious way, voluntary and purposeful. We love our selfness; we want to be justified in our love; therefore we christen it with the same name as is applied by theologians to Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
But now thou askest me how thou mayest destroy this naked knowing and feeling of thine own being. For per-adventure thou thinkest that if it were destroyed, all other hindrances were destroyed; and if thou thinkest thus, thou thinkest right truly. But to this I answer thee and I say, that without a full special grace full freely given by God, and also a full according ableness on thy part to receive this grace, this naked knowing and feeling of thy being may in nowise be destroyed. And this ableness is nought else but a strong and a deep ghostly sorrow. All men have matter of sorrow; but most specially he feeleth matter of sorrow that knoweth and feeleth that he is. All other sorrows in comparison to this be but as it were game to earnest. For he may make sorrow earnestly that knoweth and feeleth not only what he is, but that he is. And whoso felt never this sorrow, let him make sorrow; for he hath never yet felt perfect sorrow. This sorrow, when it is had, cleanseth the soul, not only of sin, but also of pain that it hath deserved for sin; and also it maketh a soul able to receive that joy, the which reaveth from a man all knowing and feeling of his being.
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Can the many fantastic and mutually incompatible theories of expiation and atonement, which have been grafted onto the Christian doctrine of divine incarnation, be regarded as indispensable elements in a sane theology? I find it difficult to imagine how anyone who has looked into a history of these notions, as expounded, for example, by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, by Athanasius and Augustine, by Anselm and Luther, by Calvin and Grotius, can plausibly answer this question in the affirmative. In the present context, it will be enough to call attention to one of the bitterest of all the bitter ironies of history. For the Christ of the Gospels, lawyers seemed further from the Kingdom of Heaven, more hopelessly impervious to Reality, than almost any other class of human beings except the rich. But Christian theology, especially that of the Western churches, was the product of minds imbued with Jewish and Roman legalism. In all too many instances the immediate insights of the Avatar and the theocentric saint were rationalized into a system, not by philosophers, but by speculative barristers and metaphysical jurists. Why should what Abbot John Chapman calls the problem of reconciling (not merely uniting) Mysticism and Christianity be so extremely difficult? Simply because so much Roman and Protestant thinking was done by those very lawyers whom Christ regarded as being peculiarly incapable of understanding the true Nature of Things. The Abbot (Chapman is apparently referring to Abbot Marmion) says St John of the Cross is like a sponge full of Christianity. You can squeeze it all out, and the full mystical theory (in other words, the pure Perennial Philosophy) remains. Consequently for fifteen years or so I hated St John of the Cross and called him a Buddhist. I loved St Teresa and read her over and over again. She is first a Christian, only secondarily a mystic. Then I found I had wasted fifteen years, so far as prayer was concerned.
Now see the meaning of these two sayings of Christs. The one, No man cometh unto the Father but by me, that is through my life. The other saying, No man cometh unto me except the Father draw him; that is, he does not take my life upon him and follow after me, except he is moved and drawn of my Father, that is, of the Simple and Perfect Good, of which St. Paul saith, When that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.
1.03 - Reading, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
With a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits, all men would perhaps become essentially students and observers, for certainly their nature and destiny are interesting to all alike. In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident. The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was I in him that was then so bold, and it is he in me that now reviews the vision. No dust has settled on that robe; no time has elapsed since that divinity was revealed. That time which we really improve, or which is improvable, is neither past, present, nor future.
My residence was more favorable, not only to thought, but to serious reading, than a university; and though I was beyond the range of the ordinary circulating library, I had more than ever come within the influence of those books which circulate round the world, whose sentences were first written on bark, and are now merely copied from time to time on to linen paper. Says the poet Mr Camar Uddn Mast,
1.03 - .REASON. IN PHILOSOPHY, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
You ask me what all idiosyncrasy is in philosophers? ... For instance
their lack of the historical sense, their hatred even of the idea of
--
make a mummy of it. All the ideas that philosophers have treated for
thousands of years, have been mummied concepts; nothing real has ever
--
all that belongs to the "people." Let us be philosophers, mummies,
monotono-theists, grave-diggers!--And above all, away with the _body,_
--
This human nose, for instance, of which no philosopher has yet spoken
with reverence and gratitude, is, for the present, the most finely
--
The other idiosyncrasy of philosophers is no less dangerous; it
consists in confusing the last and the first things. They place that
--
of the categories of reason came into the minds of philosophers as a
surprise. They concluded that these categories could not be derived
1.03 - Sympathetic Magic, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
ingredients was applied, as the philosopher explains, not to the
wound but to the weapon, and that even though the injured man was at
--
time of that philosopher.
4. The Magician's Progress
1.03 - THE GRAND OPTION, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
a contemporary philosopher (A. Consentino). It is inevitable, as the
collective effort required of men costs more and more, that the
1.03 - THE ORPHAN, THE WIDOW, AND THE MOON, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
Nevertheless the philosophers have put to death the woman who slays her husbands, for the body of that woman is full of weapons and poison. Let a grave be dug for that dragon, and let that woman be buried with him, he being chained fast to that woman; and the more he winds and coils himself about her, the more will he be cut to pieces by the female weapons which are fashioned in the body of the woman. And when he sees that he is mingled with the limbs of the woman, he will be certain of death, and will be changed wholly into blood. But when the philosophers see him changed into blood, they leave him a few days in the sun, until his softness is consumed, and the blood dries, and they find that poison. What then appears, is the hidden wind.103
The coniunctio can therefore take more gruesome forms than the relatively harmless one depicted in the Rosarium.104
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After this151 is completed, you will know that you have the substance which penetrates all substances, and the nature which contains nature, and the nature which rejoices in nature.152 It is named the Tyriac153 of the philosophers, and it is also called the poisonous serpent, because, like this, it bites off the head of the male in the lustful heat of conception, and giving birth it dies and is divided through the midst. So also the moisture of the moon,154 when she receives his light, slays the sun, and at the birth of the child of the philosophers she dies likewise, and at death the two parents yield up their souls to the son, and die and pass away. And the parents are the food of the son . . .
[22] In this psychologem all the implications of the Sol-Luna allegory are carried to their logical conclusion. The daemonic quality which is connected with the dark side of the moon, or with her position midway between heaven and the sublunary world,155 displays its full effect. Sun and moon reveal their antithetical nature, which in the Christian Sol-Luna relationship is so obscured as to be unrecognizable, and the two opposites cancel each other out, their impact resultingin accordance with the laws of energeticsin the birth of a third and new thing, a son who resolves the antagonisms of the parents and is himself a united double nature. The unknown author of the Consilium156 was not conscious of the close connection of his psychologem with the process of transubstantiation, although the last sentence of the text contains clearly enough the motif of teoqualo, the god-eating of the Aztecs.157 This motif is also found in ancient Egypt. The Pyramid text of Unas (Vth dynasty) says: Unas rising as a soul, like a god who liveth upon his fathers and feedeth upon his mothers.158 It should be noted how alchemy put in the place of the Christian sponsus and sponsa an image of totality that on the one hand was material, and on the other was spiritual and corresponded to the Paraclete. In addition, there was a certain trend in the direction of an Ecclesia spiritualis. The alchemical equivalent of the God-Man and the Son of God was Mercurius, who as an hermaphrodite contained in himself both the feminine element, Sapientia and matter, and the masculine, the Holy Ghost and the devil. There are relations in alchemy with the Holy Ghost Movement which flourished in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and was chiefly connected with the name of Joachim of Flora (11451202), who expected the imminent coming of the third kingdom, namely that of the Holy Ghost.159
1.03 - The Psychic Prana, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
Thus the rousing of the Kundalini is the one and only way to attaining Divine Wisdom, superconscious perception, realisation of the spirit. The rousing may come in various ways, through love for God, through the mercy of perfected sages, or through the power of the analytic will of the philosopher. Wherever there was any manifestation of what is ordinarily called supernatural power or wisdom, there a little current of Kundalini must have found its way into the Sushumna. Only, in the vast majority of such cases, people had ignorantly stumbled on some practice which set free a minute portion of the coiled-up Kundalini. All worship, consciously or unconsciously, leads to this end. The man who thinks that he is receiving response to his prayers does not know that the fulfilment comes from his own nature, that he has succeeded by the mental attitude of prayer in waking up a bit of this infinite power which is coiled up within himself. What, thus, men ignorantly worship under various names, through fear and tribulation, the Yogi declares to the world to be the real power coiled up in every being, the mother of eternal happiness, if we but know how to approach her. And Rja-Yoga is the science of religion, the rationale of all worship, all prayers, forms, ceremonies, and miracles.
1.03 - The Sephiros, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Qabalah is the most suitable system for the basis of our magical alphabet, to which we shall be able to refer the sum total of all our knowledge and experience- reli- gious, philosophical, and scientific. The Qabalistic Alpha- bet is, as we shall proceed to explain, an elaborate system of attri butions and correspondences ; a convenient method of classification enabling the philosopher to docket his experiences and ideas as he obtains them. It is comparable to a filing cabinet of thirty-two jackets in which an exten- sive system of information is filed.
It would be fallacious for the student to expect a concrete definition of everything which the cabinet contains. That is a sheer impossibility for quite obvious reasons. Each student must work for himself, once given the method of putting the whole of his mental and moral constitution into these thirty-two filing jackets. The necessity for personal work becomes apparent when one realizes that in normal business procedure, for instance, one would not purchase a filing cabinet with the names of all past, present, and future correspondents already indexed. It becomes quite evident that the Qabalistic cabinet (our thirty-two Paths) has a system of letters and numbers meaningless in them- selves, but as the files are completed, ready to take on a meaning, different for each student. As experience increased, each letter and number would receive fresh accessions of meaning and significance, and by adopting this orderly arrangement we would be enabled to grasp our inner life much more comprehensively than might otherwise be the case. The object of the theoretical (as separate from the Practical) Qabalah, insofar as this thesis is concerned, is to enable the student to do three main things :
1.03 - VISIT TO VIDYASAGAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Vidyasagar was very reticent about giving religious instruction to others. He had studied Hindu philosophy. Once, when M. had asked him his opinion of it, Vidyasagar had said, "I think the philosophers have failed to explain what was in their minds." But in his daily life he followed all the rituals of Hindu religion and wore the sacred thread of a brahmin.
About God he had once declared: "It is indeed impossible to know Him. What, then, should be our duty? It seems to me that we should live in such a way that, if others followed our example, this very earth would be heaven. Everyone should try to do good to the world."
1.040 - Re-Educating the Mind, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
There is nothing personal in us, if we become genuine seekers of Truth. We become like crystal, as the Samkhya philosophers would say, which has no colour of its own and appears to have a colour of everything that comes near it. Everything is okay. There is nothing wrong, erroneous, ugly or unwanted in this world from the point of view of the strange harmony that exists among things at the core. Ultimately, everything is harmonious. That is the meaning of the universe or cosmos. The moment we touch this secret of things by the practice of concentration of mind, we invoke the harmony that is at the back of all things. And harmony is nothing but the attunement of things with one another and the basic relatedness of things, rather than the so-called irreconcilability that is visible outside. The moment the mind concentrates on this fact, bereft of all inward distractions and tensions, there is an automatic summoning of the essential nature of things outside, and they come to us instead of getting repelled.
It is possible to concentrate the mind on an object merely on the surface level, though at the bottom there may be a feeling of irreconcilability. That will not lead to success. We may be praying to God through an image in a temple, and yet have a suspicion in the mind that we are praying only to an idol made of stone. This suspicion will spoil all our devotion. "After all, I am praying to a small wooden image. How will this bring fulfilment of my wish or the satisfaction of my desires? I want to be a king, an emperor, and for that purpose I am praying to an idol which is unconscious, which cannot listen to anything that I say." This suspicion will shake the very foundation of devotion, and religion will become merely a pharisaical ritual.
1.04 - Descent into Future Hell, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Integral Yoga
experience something which is very like madness. They speak incoherently and unnaturally, utter sound without sense, and their faces suddenly change expression...in fact they are truly beside themselves (ibid., pp. 129-33). In 1815, the philosopher F.WJ. Schelling discussed divine madness in a manner that has a certain proximity to Jung's discussion, noting that The ancients did not speak in vain of a divine and holy madness. Schelling related this to the inner selflaceration of nature. He held that nothing great can be accomplished without a constant solicitation of madness, which should always be overcome, but should never be entirely lacking.
On the one hand, there were sober spirits in whom there was no trace of madness, together with men of understanding who produced cold intellectual works. On the other, there is one kind of person that governs madness and precisely in this overwhelming shows the highest force of the intellect. The other kind of person is governed by madness and is someone who is really mad
--
Panapolis, a natural philosopher and alchemist of the third century. Jung noted: "What I sacrifice is my egotistical claim, and by doing this I give up myself Every sacrifice is therefore, to a greater or lesser degree, a self-sacrifice" (CW II, 397). Cf also the Katha Upanishad, ch. 2, verse
19. Jung cited the next two verses of the Katha Upanishad on the nature of the self in 1921 (CW
1.04 - GOD IN THE WORLD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
What then is the Dhyana devoted to the examination of meaning? It is the one practised by those who, having gone beyond the egolessness of things, beyond individuality and generality, beyond the untenability of such ideas as self, other and both, which are held by the philosophers, proceed to examine and follow up the meaning of the various aspects of Bodhisattvahood. This is the Dhyana devoted to the examination of meaning.
What is the Dhyana with Ta thata (or Suchness) as its object? When the Yogin recognizes that the discrimination of the two forms of egolessness is mere imagination and that where he establishes himself in the reality of Suchness there is no rising of discriminationthis I call the Dhyana with Suchness for its object.
--
These phrases about the unmoving first mover remind one of Aristotle. But between Aristotle and the exponents of the Perennial Philosophy within the great religious traditions there is this vast difference: Aristotle is primarily concerned with cosmology, the Perennial philosophers are primarily concerned with liberation and enlightenment: Aristotle is content to know about the unmoving mover, from the outside and theoretically; the aim of the Perennial philosophers is to become directly aware of it, to know it unitively, so that they and others may actually become the unmoving One. This unitive knowledge can be knowledge in the heights, or knowledge in the fulness, or knowledge simultaneously in the heights and the fulness. Spiritual knowledge exclusively in the heights of the soul was rejected by Mahayana Buddhism as inadequate. The similar rejection of quietism within the Christian tradition will be touched upon in the section, Contemplation and Action. Meanwhile it is interesting to find that the problem which aroused such acrimonious debate throughout seventeenth-century Europe had arisen for the Buddhists at a considerably earlier epoch. But whereas in Catholic Europe the outcome of the battle over Molinos, Mme. Guyon and Fnelon was to all intents and purposes the extinction of mysticism for the best part of two centuries, in Asia the two parties were tolerant enough to agree to differ. Hinayana spirituality continued to explore the heights within, while the Mahayanist masters held up the ideal not of the Arhat, but of the Bodhisattva, and pointed the way to spiritual knowledge in its fulness as well as in its heights. What follows is a poetical account, by a Zen saint of the eighteenth century, of the state of those who have realized the Zen ideal.
Abiding with the non-particular which is in particulars,
--
It is in the Indian and Far Eastern formulations of the Perennial Philosophy that this subject is most systematically treated. What is prescribed is a process of conscious discrimination between the personal self and the Self that is identical with Brahman, between the individual ego and the Buddha-womb or Universal Mind. The result of this discrimination is a more or less sudden and complete revulsion of consciousness, and the realization of a state of no-mind, which may be described as the freedom from perceptual and intellectual attachment to the ego-principle. This state of no-mind exists, as it were, on a knife-edge between the carelessness of the average sensual man and the strained over-eagerness of the zealot for salvation. To achieve it, one must walk delicately and, to maintain it, must learn to combine the most intense alertness with a tranquil and self-denying passivity, the most indomitable determination with a perfect submission to the leadings of the spirit. When no-mind is sought after by a mind, says Huang Po, that is making it a particular object of thought. There is only testimony of silence; it goes beyond thinking. In other words, we, as separate individuals, must not try to think it, but rather permit ourselves to be thought by it. Similarly, in the Diamond Sutra we read that if a Bodhisattva, in his attempt to realize Suchness, retains the thought of an ego, a person, a separate being, or a soul, he is no longer a Bodhisattva. Al Ghazzali, the philosopher of Sufism, also stresses the need for intellectual humbleness and docility. If the thought that he is effaced from self occurs to one who is in fana (a term roughly corresponding to Zens no-mind, or mushin), that is a defect. The highest state is to be effaced from effacement. There is an ecstatic effacement-from-effacement in the interior heights of the Atman-Brahman; and there is another, more comprehensive effacement-from-effacement, not only in the inner heights, but also in and through the world, in the waking, everyday knowledge of God in his fulness.
A man must become truly poor and as free from his own creaturely will as he was when he was born. And I tell you, by the eternal truth, that so long as you desire to fulfill the will of God and have any hankering after eternity and God, for just so long you are not truly poor. He alone has true spiritual poverty who wills nothing, knows nothing, desires nothing.
1.04 - KAI VALYA PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
lacking, who, posing as philosophers, want to kill out all
wicked and incompetent persons (they are, of course, the only
1.04 - Magic and Religion, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
himself and his powers rudely shaken, our primitive philosopher must
have been sadly perplexed and agitated till he came to rest, as in a
1.04 - Of other imperfections which these beginners are apt to have with respect to the third sin, which is luxury., #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
2. The first cause from which they often proceed is the pleasure which human nature takes in spiritual things. For when the spirit and the sense are pleased, every part of a man is moved by that pleasure34 to delight according to its proportion and nature. For then the spirit, which is the higher part, is moved to pleasure 35 and delight in God; and the sensual nature, which is the lower part, is moved to pleasure and delight of the senses, because it cannot possess and lay hold upon aught else, and it therefore lays hold upon that which comes nearest to itself, which is the impure and sensual. Thus it comes to pass that the soul is in deep prayer with God according to the spirit, and, on the other hand, according to sense it is passively conscious, not without great displeasure, of rebellions and motions and acts of the senses, which often happens in Communion, for when the soul receives joy and comfort in this act of love, because this Lord bestows it (since it is to that end that He gives Himself), the sensual nature takes that which is its own likewise, as we have said, after its manner. Now as, after all, these two parts are combined in one individual, they ordinarily both participate in that which one of them receives, each after its manner; for, as the philosopher says, everything that is received is in the recipient after the manner of the same recipient. And thus, in these beginnings, and even when the soul has made some progress, its sensual part, being imperfect, oftentimes receives the Spirit of God with the same imperfection. Now when this sensual part is renewed by the purgation of the dark night which we shall describe, it no longer has these weaknesses; for it is no longer this part that receives aught, but rather it is itself received into the Spirit. And thus it then has everything after the manner of the Spirit.
3. The second cause whence these rebellions sometimes proceed is the devil, who, in order to disquiet and disturb the soul, at times when it is at prayer or is striving to pray, contrives to stir up these motions of impurity in its nature; and if the soul gives heed to any of these, they cause it great harm. For through fear of these not only do persons become lax in prayerwhich is the aim of the devil when he begins to strive with them but some give up prayer altogether, because they think that these things attack them more during that exercise than apart from it, which is true, since the devil attacks them then more than at other times, so that they may give up spiritual exercises. And not only so, but he succeeds in portraying to them very vividly things that are most foul and impure, and at times are very closely related to certain spiritual things and persons that are of profit to their souls, in order to terrify them and make them fearful; so that those who are affected by this dare not even look at anything or meditate upon anything, because they immediately encounter this temptation. And upon those who are inclined to melancholy this acts with such effect that they become greatly to be pitied since they are suffering so sadly; for this trial reaches such a point in certain persons, when they have this evil humour, that they believe it to be clear that the devil is ever present with them and that they have no power to prevent this, although some of these persons can prevent his attack by dint of great effort and labour. When these impurities attack such souls through the medium of melancholy, they are not as a rule freed from them until they have been cured of that kind of humour, unless the dark night has entered the soul, and rids them of all impurities, one after another.36
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7. Some of these persons make friendships of a spiritual kind with others, which oftentimes arise from luxury and not from spirituality; this may be known to be the case when the remembrance of that friendship causes not the remembrance and love of God to grow, but occasions remorse of conscience. For, when the friendship is purely spiritual, the love of God grows with it; and the more the soul remembers it, the more it remembers the love of God, and the greater the desire it has for God; so that, as the one grows, the other grows also. For the spirit of God has this property, that it increases good by adding to it more good, inasmuch as there is likeness and conformity between them. But, when this love arises from the vice of sensuality aforementioned, it produces the contrary effects; for the more the one grows, the more the other decreases, and the remembrance of it likewise. If that sensual love grows, it will at once be observed that the soul's love of God is becoming colder, and that it is forgetting Him as it remembers that love; there comes to it, too, a certain remorse of conscience. And, on the other hand, if the love of God grows in the soul, that other love becomes cold and is forgotten; for, as the two are contrary to one another, not only does the one not aid the other, but the one which predominates quenches and confounds the other, and becomes streng thened in itself, as the philosophers say. Wherefore Our Saviour said in the Gospel: 'That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.'38
That is to say, the love which is born of sensuality ends in sensuality, and that which is of the spirit ends in the spirit of God and causes it to grow. This is the difference that exists between these two kinds of love, whereby we may know them.
1.04 - On Knowledge of the Future World., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
The Alchemy of Happiness, by Mohammed Al-Ghazzali, the Mohammedan philosopher, trans. Henry A. Homes (Albany, N.Y.: Munsell, 1873). Transactions of the Albany Institute, vol. VIII.
The text is in the public domain.
1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
Let the people suppose that knowledge means knowing things entirely; the philosopher must say to
himself: When I analyze the process that is expressed in the sentence, I think, I find a whole series of
--
and certain will encounter a smile and two question marks from a philosopher nowadays. Sir, the
philosopher will perhaps give him to understand, it is improbable that you are not mistaken; but why
--
He that speaks here has, conversely, done nothing so far but to reflect: as a philosopher and solitary
by instinct who has found his advantage in standing aside, outside. Why has the advent of nihilism
--
The shaman, the ecstatic in general equally, the revolutionary philosopher or scientist, true to himself
is characterized by stubborn adherence to his own idiosyncratic field of experience, in which occurrences
--
this poor creature, I returned to my philosopher, whom I thus addressed:
Are you not ashamed to be thus miserable when, not fifty yards from you, there is an old automaton
1.04 - The Discovery of the Nation-Soul, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The great determining force has been the example and the aggression of Germany; the example, because no other nation has so self-consciously, so methodically, so intelligently, and from the external point of view so successfully sought to find, to dynamise, to live itself and make the most of its own power of being; its aggression, because the very nature and declared watchwords of the attack have tended to arouse a defensive self-consciousness in the assailed and forced them to perceive what was the source of this tremendous strength and to perceive too that they themselves must seek consciously an answering strength in the same deeper sources. Germany was for the time the most remarkable present instance of a nation preparing for the subjective stage because it had, in the first place, a certain kind of visionunfortunately intellectual rather than illuminated and the courage to follow itunfortunately again a vital and intellectual rather than a spiritual hardihood,and, secondly, being master of its destinies, was able to order its own life so as to express its self-vision. We must not be misled by appearances into thinking that the strength of Germany was created by Bismarck or directed by the Kaiser Wilhelm II. Rather the appearance of Bismarck was in many respects a misfortune for the growing nation because his rude and powerful hand precipitated its subjectivity into form and action at too early a stage; a longer period of incubation might have produced results less disastrous to itself, if less violently stimulative to humanity. The real source of this great subjective force which has been so much disfigured in its objective action, was not in Germanys statesmen and soldiers for the most part poor enough types of men but came from her great philosophers, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Nietzsche, from her great thinker and poet Goethe, from her great musicians, Beethoven and Wagner, and from all in the German soul and temperament which they represented. A nation whose master achievement has lain almost entirely in the two spheres of philosophy and music, is clearly predestined to lead in the turn to subjectivism and to produce a profound result for good or evil on the beginnings of a subjective age.
This was one side of the predestination of Germany; the other is to be found in her scholars, educationists, scientists, organisers. It was the industry, the conscientious diligence, the fidelity to ideas, the honest and painstaking spirit of work for which the nation has been long famous. A people may be highly gifted in the subjective capacities, and yet if it neglects to cultivate this lower side of our complex nature, it will fail to build that bridge between the idea and imagination and the world of facts, between the vision and the force, which makes realisation possible; its higher powers may become a joy and inspiration to the world, but it will never take possession of its own world until it has learned the humbler lesson. In Germany the bridge was there, though it ran mostly through a dark tunnel with a gulf underneath; for there was no pure transmission from the subjective mind of the thinkers and singers to the objective mind of the scholars and organisers. The misapplication by Treitschke of the teaching of Nietzsche to national and international uses which would have profoundly disgusted the philosopher himself, is an example of this obscure transmission. But still a transmission there was. For more than a half-century Germany turned a deep eye of subjective introspection on herself and things and ideas in search of the truth of her own being and of the world, and for another half-century a patient eye of scientific research on the objective means for organising what she had or thought she had gained. And something was done, something indeed powerful and enormous, but also in certain directions, not in all, misshapen and disconcerting. Unfortunately, those directions were precisely the very central lines on which to go wrong is to miss the goal.
It may be said, indeed, that the last result of the something done the war, the collapse, the fierce reaction towards the rigid, armoured, aggressive, formidable Nazi State,is not only discouraging enough, but a clear warning to abandon that path and go back to older and safer ways. But the misuse of great powers is no argument against their right use. To go back is impossible; the attempt is always, indeed, an illusion; we have all to do the same thing which Germany has attempted, but to take care not to do it likewise. Therefore we must look beyond the red mist of blood of the War and the dark fuliginous confusion and chaos which now oppress the world to see why and where was the failure. For her failure which became evident by the turn her action took and was converted for the time being into total collapse, was clear even then to the dispassionate thinker who seeks only the truth. That befell her which sometimes befalls the seeker on the path of Yoga, the art of conscious self-finding,a path exposed to far profounder perils than beset ordinarily the average man,when he follows a false light to his spiritual ruin. She had mistaken her vital ego for herself; she had sought for her soul and found only her force. For she had said, like the Asura, I am my body, my life, my mind, my temperament, and become attached with a Titanic force to these; especially she had said, I am my life and body, and than that there can be no greater mistake for man or nation. The soul of man or nation is something more and diviner than that; it is greater than its instruments and cannot be shut up in a physical, a vital, a mental or a temperamental formula. So to confine it, even though the false formation be embodied in the armour-plated social body of a huge collective human dinosaurus, can only stifle the growth of the inner Reality and end in decay or the extinction that overtakes all that is unplastic and unadaptable.
1.04 - The Divine Mother - This Is She, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
Next in magnitude comes the Press. Today the Ashram Printing Press holds a premier place in India. That is because the Mother set from the very start the ideal of perfection before her and exacted from the workers that ideal. Kinds of business run on a commercial basis there are many outside, but here the ideal is quite different, as I have stated. This is what the Mother recently told the manager of the Press, "If any part of the world makes a demand for perfection in printing, it should be able to say to itself, The Pondicherry Ashram Press fulfils the ideal." Yet this Press began as some big establishments have done, in a very humble way; I don't know how the proposal was mooted that we must have a Press of our own to publish mainly Sri Aurobindo's books. The Mother caught the idea at once. But how to start, was the question. It was not so much the money that was wanting, as men of knowledge and experience in this field. She would not engage workers from outside; it must be run by the Ashram inmates. We had at that time made some connection with the Hyderabad Government through Sir Akbar Hydari who was instrumental in, procuring a donation from the Nizam's Government for Golconde, hence the name[3]. This connection opened the channel for an experienced officer of the Government to come and give a start to our Press. As soon as things began moving, the Mother put all her available force into it and bundled off sadhaks and sadhikas old and young, philosopher, scholar, professor, whoever was at hand, to the Press. Naturally, many difficulties cropped up; quarrels, disharmony, complaints human conflicts instead of natural calamities. The Mother was certainly prepared for them, for she knows our human nature, also that it is through work that it has to be changed, not through the escape-gate of inaction. We heard from time to time the Mother reporting about these troubles to Sri Aurobindo. With his silent Purusha-like support, and her regular visits to the Press, the initial difficulties were gradually overcome and a modicum of harmony established. One after another, Sri Aurobindo's books began to come out. Thus with our raw but energetic young band and a handful of trained paid workers, this institution was built up piecemeal, illustrating the Mother's method of working, the ideal to be achieved, and Sri Aurobindo's dictum that things must grow out of life itself, not according to a set mental pattern. In our case, of course, the process was sustained by a directly acting Divine Force. "All can be done if the God-touch is there." In fact all our institutions, the Ashram itself, have grown up in this way, from scratch, and Auroville is the latest example. We must remember, however, that activity by itself, of whatever kind, is of secondary importance, but "taken as pan of the sadhana offered to the Divine or done with the consciousness or faith that it is done by the Divine Power" that is the important point.
Now we come to a different field of activity altogether, one whose place in Yoga will be strongly challenged, especially when the Mother herself used it as a means of sadhana: her playing tennis. I won't discuss the issue, for the quotation cited above gives the answer. Before she started playing tennis the Mother joined our young group in playing table-tennis. When a young boy asked her if he could install a table in his house for the game, the Mother replied, "Why not at Nanteuil?[4] then I can come and play too." He was much surprised and delighted at the divine proposal! She must have found it a good light exercise as well as an admirable means of contact with the young set which was gradually increasing; it was perhaps also her yogic means of action upon them. After a year or so the Mother decided to have a tennis court. She might have felt that she needed some more brisk exercise in the open air. She often talked of her project to Sri Aurobindo. One day we heard that the entire wasteland along the north-eastern seaside was taken on a long lease from the Government and a part of it would be made into tennis courts and the rest into a playground. One cannot imagine now what this place was like before. It was one of the filthiest spots of Pondicherry, full of thistles and wild undergrowth, an open place for committing nuisance as well as a pasture for pigs! The stink and the loathsome sight made the place a Stygian sore and a black spot on the colonial Government. The Mother changed this savage wasteland into a heavenly playground, almost a supramental transformation of Matter. The sea-front was clothed in a vision of beauty and delight. If for nothing else, for this transformation at least, Pondicherry should be eternally grateful to the Mother. But who remembers the past? Gratitude is a rare human virtue. I was particularly very happy, first, because I was fond of tennis; secondly, I fancied that Yoga would be now made easy. Who could ever think of tennis in Yoga! But woe to me, how it completely upset my balance!
1.04 - The Origin and Development of Poetry., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them lying deep in our nature. First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated. We have evidence of this in the facts of experience. Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies. The cause of this again is, that to learn gives the liveliest pleasure, not only to philosophers but to men in general; whose capacity, however, of learning is more limited. Thus the reason why men enjoy seeing a likeness is, that in contemplating it they find themselves learning or inferring, and saying perhaps, 'Ah, that is he.' For if you happen not to have seen the original, the pleasure will be due not to the imitation as such, but to the execution, the colouring, or some such other cause.
Imitation, then, is one instinct of our nature. Next, there is the instinct for 'harmony' and rhythm, metres being manifestly sections of rhythm. Persons, therefore, starting with this natural gift developed by degrees their special aptitudes, till their rude improvisations gave birth to Poetry.
1.04 - THE STUDY (The Compact), #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
Then, the philosopher steps in
And shows, no otherwise it could have been:
1.05 - 2010 and 1956 - Doomsday?, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
in the universe. The ancient Greek philosophers already
asked the question; Giordano Bruno answered it positively,
1.057 - The Four Manifestations of Ignorance, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Space, time, cause mean one and the same thing they are three aspects of a single phenomenon. It is the principle of externality, if one would like to call it so. The principle of externality is what is called maya in Vedantic language the appearance, as philosophers put it a peculiar thing which nobody can understand. Something is there, and no one can know how it is there, or why it is there. This is the principle of externality which manifests itself as what we call space-time-causal relationship, etc. This feature of externality gets mixed up with the being of Consciousness, and then we have an externalised personality; that is the individuality of ours. This is the I am-ness we are speaking of.
Thus, our very existence is a false existence; this is what is made out by this sutra. If our existence is itself illegal, untenable, unfounded and irrational, how can anything that we do on the basis of this individuality be right? So it is no wonder that we are suffering in this world. Ignorance has produced this peculiar sense of individuality, asmita this feeling of oneself being different from others. The subject is cut off from the object; and each thing in this world has an asmita of its own. There is an affirming principle working in every item of creation. Because of this confirmed feeling of the sense of individual being, there is a further urge arising from this sense of individual being namely, a necessity felt to connect oneself with others. If I am different from you, what is my relationship with you? This question arises.
1.05 - Adam Kadmon, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Ruach has received attention from philosophers, and the
Neschamah seems to have been sadly neglected.
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Rabbi Azariel ben Menaham already mentioned. He dis- tinguished himself as a philosopher, Qabalist and Tal- mudist, and was a pupil of Isaac the Blind, the founder of the Qabalistic School of Gerona. His commentary, men- tioned above, is written in a remarkably lucid and academic manner, and the classification is extremely satisfactory.
His classification made of Man an entity having six
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inaccessible as the nature of external bodies is, and some philosophers observing this fact, and the experience that the mind was but a succession of states of consciousness and an associated setting up of various relations, considered that the existence of the Soul was not proven - confusing the idea of a Soul with the instrument of mind which it uses.
Both Hume and Kant demonstrated its inherent self-con- tradictory nature, but the former did not apprehend a permanent integrating principle running through impres- sions. He therefore argued - with his Ruach, which is in- competent to argue on such a point, since its nature is self- contradictory - that the Soul, not being an impression or a sensation, nor an entity to which one can point holding it there for analysis when introspecting, did not exist, for- getting all the time, or unaware perhaps of the fact, that it is the Soul, or as the Qabalists would say, the Real Man above the Abyss, who is introspecting and examining the contents of its own Ruach.
1.05 - CHARITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The nature of charity, or the love-knowledge of God, is defined by Shankara, the great Vedantist saint and philosopher of the ninth century, in the thirty-second couplet of his Viveka-Chudamani.
Among the instruments of emancipation the supreme is devotion. Contemplation of the true form of the real Self (the Atman which is identical with Brahman) is said to be devotion.
--
The passage from what St. Bernard calls the carnal love of the sacred humanity to the spiritual love of the Godhead, from the emotional love that can only unite lover and beloved in act to the perfect charity which unifies them in spiritual substance, is reflected in religious practice as the passage from meditation, discursive and affective, to infused contemplation. All Christian writers insist that the spiritual love of the Godhead is superior to the carnal love of the humanity, which serves as introduction and means to mans final end in unitive love-knowledge of the divine Ground; but all insist no less strongly that carnal love is a necessary introduction and an indispensable means. Oriental writers would agree that this is true for many persons, but not for all, since there are some born contemplatives who are able to harmonize their starting point with their goal and to embark directly upon the Yoga of Knowledge. It is from the point of view of the born contemplative that the greatest of Taoist philosophers writes in the following passage.
Those men who in a special way regard Heaven as Father and have, as it were, a personal love for it, how much more should they love what is above Heaven as Father! Other men in a special way regard their rulers as better than themselves and they, as it were, personally die for them. How much more should they die for what is truer than a rulerl When the springs dry up, the fish are all together on dry land. They then moisten each other with their dampness and keep each other wet with their slime. But this is not to be compared with forgetting each other in a river or lake.
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
internal transformations in the alchemical psyche, making it ever-more akin to the philosophers stone:
making it something that could turn base matter into spiritual gold making it something that had, in
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5.3.2. The Alchemical Procedure and the philosophers Stone
5.3.2.1. Introductory Note
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phases of the process of transmutation: that is, of the procurement of the philosophers Stone. The first
phase (the nigredo) the regression to the fluid state of matter corresponds to the death of the
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take part in the operation.575 Transform yourself from dead stones into living philosophers stones,
writes Dorn. According to Gichtel, we not only receive a new soul with this regeneration but also a new
--
however, the paradoxical character of the materia prima and of the philosophers Stone. According to
the alchemists, they both are to be found everywhere, and under all forms; and they are designated by
--
Khunrath, a celebrated Hermeticist of the sixteenth century, identified the philosophers Stone with
Jesus Christ, the Son of the Macrocosm; he thought besides that the discovery of the Stone would
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protagonist of the absoluteness of the idea of causality was the French philosopher Descartes, and he
based his belief on the immutability of God. The doctrine of this immutability of God is on of the
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Alchemy can be most simply understood as the attempt to produce the philosophers stone the lapis
philosophorum. The lapis philosophorum had the ability to turn base metals into gold; furthermore, it
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natural philosophers: sometimes he was a ministering and helpful spirit, an [assistant, comrade or
familiar]; and sometimes the servus or cervus fugitivus (the fugitive slave or stag), an elusive, deceptive,
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of the fantasy of the philosophers stone. This idea provided the motive power underlying disciplined
investigation into the secrets of matter a difficult, painstaking, expensive procedure. The idea that matter
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the new king or even as the philosophers stone itself, in one of its many potential forms. This much more
complex process of conceptualization which accounts for the vast symbolic production of alchemy is
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nature. The transformation of this prima materia into gold or into the philosophers stone therefore
signified a moral transformation, which could be brought about through moral means. The alchemists were
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The chemical putrefaction is compared to the study of the philosophers, because as the philosophers are
disposed to knowledge by study, so natural things are disposed by putrefaction to solution. To this is
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in myths of the Fall constituted grounds for the descent of man. The alchemical philosophers meditating
endlessly on the nature of perfection, or the transformative processes necessary for the production of
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immersion in life is the mystical peregrination of the medieval alchemist, in search of the philosophers
stone is the journey of Buddha through the complete sensory, erotic, and philosophical realms, prior to
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in whose kingdom nothing prospers and nothing is begotten. Moreover, there are no philosophers there.
Only like mates with like, consequently there is no procreation. The king must seek the counsel of the
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loses his hair, and is reborn as bald as a babe.... The philosopher makes the journey to hell as a
redeemer.641
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form, the philosophers stone, the lapis, was composed of the most paradoxical elements: it was base,
cheap, immature and volatile; perfect, precious, ancient and solid; visible to all yet mysterious; costly, dark,
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Einstein, A. (1959). Autobiographical note. In P.A. Schilpp Evanston (Ed.), Albert Einstein: philosopher
scientist. New York: Harper.
--
Jaeger, W. (1968). The theology of the early Greek philosophers: The Gifford lectures 1936. London:
Oxford University Press.
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Tymoczko, D. (1996, May). The nitrous oxide philosopher. Atlantic Monthly, 93-101.
Vaihinger, H. (1924). The philosophy of as if: A system of the theoretical, practical, and religious
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leg- in leg-ein to say. ] A term used by Greek (esp. Hellenistic and Neo-Platonist) philosophers in certain metaphysical
384
1.05 - The Magical Control of the Weather, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
have excited the wonder of these early philosophers, and stimulated
them to find solutions of problems that were doubtless often thrust
1.05 - The Universe The 0 = 2 Equation, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
This, briefly, is the "Riddle of the Universe," which has been always the first preoccupation of all serious philosophers since men began to think at all.
G. The orthodox idiot answer, usually wrapped up in obscure terms in the hope of concealing from the enquirer the fact that it is not an answer at all, but an evasion, is: God created it.
1.06 - Being Human and the Copernican Principle, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
less well-known natural philosophers, are still the pillars
supporting positivist or materialistic science today. All can
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of widespread dispute among philosophers, theologians,
and people living the spiritual life.
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learning and teaching. The natural philosopher (as Isaac
Newton still called himself) became an experimenter who
--
Eddington, and others were also profound philosophers
and even, Wilber writes, mystics. The reason was that they
--
questions to philosophers and priests. 23
Two notes in the margin
1.06 - Confutation Of Other Philosophers, #Of The Nature Of Things, #Lucretius, #Poetry
object:1.06 - Confutation Of Other philosophers
And on such grounds it is that those who held
--
Since these philosophers ascribe to things
Soft primal germs, which we behold to be
1.06 - Dhyana, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
40:The ordinary man sees the falsity and disconnectedness and purposelessness of dreams; he ascribes them (rightly) to a disordered mind. The philosopher looks upon waking life with similar contempt; and the person who has experienced Dhyana takes the same view, but not by mere pale intellectual conviction. Reasons, however cogent, never convince utterly; but this man in Dhyana has the same commonplace certainty that a man has on waking from a nightmare. "I wasn't falling down a thousand flights of stairs, it was only a bad dream."
41:Similarly comes the reflection of the man who has had experience of Dhyana: "I am not that wretched insect, that imperceptible parasite of earth; it was only a bad dream." And as you could not convince the normal man that his nightmare was more real than his awakening, so you cannot convince the other that his Dhyana was hallucination, even though he is only too well aware that he has fallen from that state into "normal" life.
1.06 - MORTIFICATION, NON-ATTACHMENT, RIGHT LIVELIHOOD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Rabia, the Sufi woman-saint, speaks, thinks and feels in terms of devotional theism; the Buddhist theologian, in terms of impersonal moral Law; the Chinese philosopher, with characteristic humour, in terms of politics; but all three insist on the need for non-attachment to self-interestinsist on it as strongly as does Christ when he reproaches the Pharisees for their egocentric piety, as does the Krishna of the Bhagavad Gita, when he tells Arjuna to do his divinely ordained duty without personal craving for, or fear of, the fruits of his actions.
St. Ignatius Loyola was once asked what his feelings would be if the Pope were to suppress the Company of Jesus. A quarter of an hour of prayer, he answered, and I should think no more about it.
--
There can be no complete communism except in the goods of the spirit and, to some extent also, of the mind, and only when such goods are possessed by men and women in a state of non-attachment and self-denial. Some degree of mortification, it should be noted, is an indispensable prerequisite for the creation and enjoyment even of merely intellectual and aesthetic goods. Those who choose the profession of artist, philosopher, or man of science, choose, in many cases, a life of poverty and unrewarded hard work. But these are by no means the only mortifications they have to undertake. When he looks at the world, the artist must deny his ordinary human tendency to think of things in utilitarian, self-regarding terms. Similarly, the critical philosopher must mortify his commonsense, while the research worker must steadfastly resist the temptations to over-simplify and think conventionally, and must make himself docile to the leadings of mysterious Fact. And what is true of the creators of aesthetic and intellectual goods is also true of the enjoyers of such goods, when created. That these mortifications are by no means trifling has been shown again and again in the course of history. One thinks, for example, of the intellectually mortified Socrates and the hemlock with which his unmortified compatriots rewarded him. One thinks of the heroic efforts that had to be made by Galileo and his contemporaries to break with the Aristotelian convention of thought, and the no less heroic efforts that have to be made today by any scientist who believes that there is more in the universe than can be discovered by employing the time-hallowed recipes of Descartes. Such mortifications have their reward in a state of consciousness that corresponds, on a lower level, to spiritual beatitude. The artistand the philosopher and the man of science are also artistsknows the bliss of aesthetic contemplation, discovery and non-attached possession.
The goods of the intellect, the emotions and the imagination are real goods; but they are not the final good, and when we treat them as ends in themselves, we fall into idolatry. Mortification of will, desire and action is not enough; there must also be mortification in the fields of knowing, thinking, feeling and fancying.
--
The Christian simplicity, of which Grou and Fnelon write, is the same thing as the virtue so much admired by Lao Tzu and his successors. According to these Chinese sages, personal sins and social maladjustments are all due to the fact that men have separated themselves from their divine source and live according to their own will and notions, not according to Taowhich is the Great Way, the Logos, the Nature of Things, as it manifests itself on every plane from the physical, up through the animal and the mental, to the spiritual. Enlightenment comes when we give up self-will and make ourselves docile to the workings of Tao in the world around us and in our own bodies, minds and spirits. Sometimes the Taoist philosophers write as though they believed in Rousseaus Noble Savage, and (being Chinese and therefore much more concerned with the concrete and the practical than with the merely speculative) they are fond of prescribing methods by which rulers may reduce the complexity of civilization and so preserve their subjects from the corrupting influences of man-made and therefore Tao-eclipsing conventions of thought, feeling and action. But the rulers who are to perform this task for the masses must themselves be sages; and to become a sage, one must get rid of all the rigidities of unregenerate adulthood and become again as a little child. For only that which is soft and docile is truly alive; that which conquers and outlives everything is that which adapts itself to everything, that which always seeks the lowest placenot the hard rock, but the water that wears away the everlasting hills. The simplicity and spontaneity of the perfect sage are the fruits of mortificationmortification of the will and, by recollectedness and meditation, of the mind. Only the most highly disciplined artist can recapture, on a higher level, the spontaneity of the child with its first paint-box. Nothing is more difficult than to be simple.
May I ask, said Yen Hui, in what consists the fasting of the heart?
1.06 - Psycho therapy and a Philosophy of Life, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
really to be philosophers or philosophic doctorsor rather that we already
are so, though we are unwilling to admit it because of the glaring contrast
--
once more with the medical philosophers of a distant past, when body and
soul had not yet been wrenched asunder into different faculties. Although
1.06 - The Greatness of the Individual, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Who could resist the purpose of the Zeitgeist? There were strong men in India then by the hundred, great philosophers and Yogins, subtle statesmen, leaders of men, kings of thought and action, the efflorescence of a mighty intellectual civilisation at its height. A little turning to the right instead of to the left on the part of a few of these would, it might seem, have averted the whole catastrophe. So Arjuna thought when he flung aside his bow. He was the whole hope of the Pandavas and without him their victory must seem a mere dream and to fight an act of madness. Yet it is to him that the Zeitgeist proclaims the utter helplessness of the mightiest and the sure fulfilment of Gods decree. Even without thee all they shall not be, the men of war who stand arrayed in the opposing squadrons. For these men are only alive in the body; in that which stands behind and fulfils itself they are dead men. Whom God protects who shall slay? Whom God has slain who shall protect? The man who slays is only the occasion, the instrument by which the thing done behind the veil becomes the thing done on this side of it. That which was true of the great slaying at Kurukshetra is true of all things that are done in this world, of all the creation, destruction and preservation that make up the ll.
The greatness of this teaching is for the great. Those who are commissioned to bring about mighty changes are full of the force of the Zeitgeist. Kali has entered into them and Kali when she enters into a man cares nothing for rationality and possibility. She is the force of Nature that whirls the stars in their orbits, lightly as a child might swing a ball, and to that force there is nothing impossible. She is aghaana-ghaana-payas, very skilful in bringing about the impossible. She is the devtmaakti svaguair nigh, the Power of the Divine Spirit hidden in the modes of its own workings, and she needs nothing but time to carry out the purpose with which she is commissioned. She moves in Time and the very movement fulfils itself, creates its means, accomplishes its ends. It is not an accident that she works in one man more than in another. He is chosen because he is a likely vessel, and having chosen him she neither rejects him till the purpose is fulfilled nor allows him to reject her. Therefore Sri Krishna tells Arjuna:
1.06 - The Sign of the Fishes, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
Megarian philosopher Diodoros. But the reason for the Saturn-ass analogy prob-
ably lies deeper, that is, in the nature of the ass itself, which was regarded as a
--
doctrine of Almaricus. 55 This last is the theological philosopher
Amalric of Bene (d. 1204), who took part in the widespread
--
pupil Thomas Aquinas, the philosopher of the Church and an
adept in alchemy (as also was Albertus); Roger Bacon (c. 1214-c.
--
66 Mylius, Philosophia reformata (1622), p. 112: "Whence the philosopher brought
forth water from the rock and oil out of the flinty stone."
1.07 - Bridge across the Afterlife, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
added a soul, although the Western philosophers and theo-
logians have generally identified the soul with the mind,
--
constitution, as has been recognized by philosophers like
Plato, Berkeley and Kant.
1.07 - Incarnate Human Gods, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
mortal. In classical antiquity the Sicilian philosopher Empedocles
gave himself out to be not merely a wizard but a god. Addressing his
1.07 - Medicine and Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
original identification of psyche with the conscious mind does not stand the test of empirical criticism. The medical philosopher C. G. Carus had a
clear inkling of this and was the first to set forth an explicit philosophy of
1.07 - On Our Knowledge of General Principles, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
This principle is really involved--at least, concrete instances of it are involved--in all demonstrations. Whenever one thing which we believe is used to prove something else, which we consequently believe, this principle is relevant. If any one asks: 'Why should I accept the results of valid arguments based on true premisses?' we can only answer by appealing to our principle. In fact, the truth of the principle is impossible to doubt, and its obviousness is so great that at first sight it seems almost trivial. Such principles, however, are not trivial to the philosopher, for they show that we may have indubitable knowledge which is in no way derived from objects of sense.
The above principle is merely one of a certain number of self-evident logical principles. Some at least of these principles must be granted before any argument or proof becomes possible. When some of them have been granted, others can be proved, though these others, so long as they are simple, are just as obvious as the principles taken for granted. For no very good reason, three of these principles have been singled out by tradition under the name of 'Laws of Thought'.
--
British philosophers, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume--maintained that all our knowledge is derived from experience; the rationalists--who are represented by the Continental philosophers of the seventeenth century, especially Descartes and Leibniz--maintained that, in addition to what we know by experience, there are certain 'innate ideas' and 'innate principles', which we know independently of experience. It has now become possible to decide with some confidence as to the truth or falsehood of these opposing schools. It must be admitted, for the reasons already stated, that logical principles are known to us, and cannot be themselves proved by experience, since all proof presupposes them. In this, therefore, which was the most important point of the controversy, the rationalists were in the right.
On the other hand, even that part of our knowledge which is _logically_ independent of experience (in the sense that experience cannot prove it) is yet elicited and caused by experience. It is on occasion of particular experiences that we become aware of the general laws which their connexions exemplify. It would certainly be absurd to suppose that there are innate principles in the sense that babies are born with a knowledge of everything which men know and which cannot be deduced from what is experienced. For this reason, the word 'innate' would not now be employed to describe our knowledge of logical principles. The phrase
--
All pure mathematics is _a priori_, like logic. This was strenuously denied by the empirical philosophers, who maintained that experience was as much the source of our knowledge of arithmetic as of our knowledge of geography. They maintained that by the repeated experience of seeing two things and two other things, and finding that altogether they made four things, we were led by induction to the conclusion that two things and two other things would _always_ make four things altogether. If, however, this were the source of our knowledge that two and two are four, we should proceed differently, in persuading ourselves of its truth, from the way in which we do actually proceed. In fact, a certain number of instances are needed to make us think of two abstractly, rather than of two coins or two books or two people, or two of any other specified kind. But as soon as we are able to divest our thoughts of irrelevant particularity, we become able to see the general principle that two and two are four; any one instance is seen to be _typical_, and the examination of other instances becomes unnecessary.(1)
(1) Cf. A. N. Whitehead, _Introduction to Mathematics_ (Home University
--
It is an old debate among philosophers whether deduction ever gives
_new_ knowledge. We can now see that in certain cases, at least, it does do so. If we already know that two and two always make four, and we know that Brown and Jones are two, and so are Robinson and Smith, we can deduce that Brown and Jones and Robinson and Smith are four. This is new knowledge, not contained in our premisses, because the general proposition, 'two and two are four', never told us there were such people as Brown and Jones and Robinson and Smith, and the particular premisses do not tell us that there were four of them, whereas the particular proposition deduced does tell us both these things.
--
These questions, which were first brought prominently forward by the German philosopher Kant (1724-1804), are very difficult, and historically very important.
1.07 - Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
30:The perfect supramental action will not follow any single principle or limited rule. It is not likely to satisfy the standard either of the individual egoist or of any organised group-mind. It will conform to the demand neither of the positive practical man of the world nor of the formal moralist nor of the patriot nor of the sentimental philanthropist nor of the idealising philosopher. It will proceed by a spontaneous outflowing from the summits in the totality of an illumined and uplifted being, will and knowledge and not by the selected, calculated and standardised action which is all that the intellectual reason or ethical will can achieve. Its sole aim will be the expression of the divine in us and the keeping together of the world and its progress towards the Manifestation that is to be. This even will not be so much an aim and purpose as a spontaneous law of the being and an intuitive determination of the action by the Light of the divine Truth and its automatic influence. It will proceed like the action of Nature from a total will and knowledge behind her, but a will and knowledge enlightened in a conscious supreme Nature and no longer obscure in this ignorant Prakriti. It will be an action not bound by the dualities but full and large in the spirit's impartial joy of existence. The happy and inspired movement of a divine Power and Wisdom guiding and impelling us will replace the perplexities and stumblings of the suffering and ignorant ego.
31:If by some miracle of divine intervention all mankind at once could be raised to this level, we should have something on earth like the Golden Age of the traditions, Satya Yuga, the Age of Truth or true existence. For the sign of the Satya Yuga is that the Law is spontaneous and conscious in each creature and does its own works in a perfect harmony and freedom. Unity and universality, not separative division, would be the foundation of the consciousness of the race; love would be absolute; equality would be consistent with hierarchy and perfect in difference; absolute justice would be secured by the spontaneous action of the being in harmony with the truth of things and the truth of himself and others and therefore sure of true and right result; right reason, no longer mental but supramental, would be satisfied not by the observation of artificial standards but by the free automatic perception of right relations and their inevitable execution in the act. The quarrel between the individual and society or disastrous struggle between one community and another could not exist: the cosmic consciousness imbedded in embodied beings would assure a harmonious diversity in oneness.
1.07 - THE GREAT EVENT FORESHADOWED - THE PLANETIZATION OF MANKIND, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
ually attracting the notice of philosophers and scientists.
Before doing anything else we must dismiss from our picture of
1.07 - THE .IMPROVERS. OF MANKIND, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
You are aware of my demand upon philosophers, that they should take
up a stand Beyond Good and Evil,--that they should have the illusion
--
to this problem: the _pia fraus,_ the heirloom of all philosophers and
priests who "improve" mankind. Neither Manu, nor Plato, nor Confucius,
1.07 - THE MASTER AND VIJAY GOSWAMI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "If a man truly feels like that, then he has only the semblance of lust, anger, and the like. If, after attaining God, he looks on himself as the servant or the devotee of God, then he cannot injure anyone. By touching the philosopher's stone a sword is turned into gold. It keeps the appearance of a sword but cannot injure.
"When the dry branch of a coconut palm drops to the ground, it leaves only a mark on the trunk indicating that once there was a branch at that place. In like manner, he who has attained God keeps only an appearance of ego; there remains in him only a semblance of anger and lust. He becomes like a child. A child has no attachment to the three gunas-sattva, rajas, and tamas. He becomes as quickly detached from a thing as he becomes attached to it. You can cajole him out of a cloth worth five rupees with a doll worth an nn, though at first he may say with great determination: 'No, I won't give it to you. My daddy bought it for me.' Again, all persons are the same to a child.
1.07 - The Three Schools of Magick 2, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The analysis of the philosophers of this School refers every phenomenon to the category of sorrow. It is quite useless to point out to them that certain events are accompanied with joy: they continue their ruthless calculations, and prove to your satisfaction, or rather dissatisfaction, that the more apparently pleasant an event is, the more malignantly deceptive is its fascination. There is only one way of escape even conceivable, and this way is quite simple, annihilation. (Shallow critics of Buddhism have wasted a great deal of stupid ingenuity on trying to make out that Nirvana or Nibbana means something different from what etymology, tradition and the evidence of the Classics combine to define it. The word means, quite simply, cessation: and it stands to reason that, if everything is sorrow, the only thing which is not sorrow is nothing, and that therefore to escape from sorrow is the attainment of nothingness.)
Western philosophy has on occasion approached this doctrine. It has at least asserted that no known form of existence is exempt from sorrow. Huxley says, in his Evolution and Ethics, "Suffering is the badge of all the tribe of sentient things."
The philosophers of this School, seeking, naturally enough, to amend the evil at the root, inquire into the cause of this existence which is sorrow, and arrive immediately at the "Second Noble Truth" of the Buddha: "The Cause of Sorrow is Desire." They follow up with the endless concatenation of causes, of which the final root is Ignorance. (I am not concerned to defend the logic of this School: I merely state their doctrine.) The practical issue of all this is that every kind of action is both unavoidable and a crime. I must digress to explain that the confusion of thought in this doctrine is constantly recurrent. That is part of the blackness of the Ignorance which they confess to be the foundation of their Universe. (And after all, everyone has surely the right to have his own Universe the way he wants it.)
This School being debased by nature, is not so far removed from conventional religion as either the White or the Yellow. Most primitive fetishistic religions may, in fact, be considered fairly faithful representatives of this philosophy. Where animism holds sway, the "medicine-man" personifies this universal evil, and seeks to propitiate it by human sacrifice. The early forms of Judaism, and that type of Christianity which we associate with the Salvation Army, Billy Sunday and the Fundamentalists of the back-blocks of America, are sufficiently simple cases of religion whose essence is the propitiation of a malignant demon.
--
A fairly pure example of the first stage of this type of thought is to be found in the Vedas, of the second stage, in the Upanishads. But the answer to the question, "How is the illusion of evil to be destroyed?", depends on another point of theory. We may postulate a Parabrahm infinitely good, etc. etc. etc., in which case we consider the destruction of the illusion of evil as the reuniting of the consciousness with Parabrahm. The unfortunate part of this scheme of things is that on seeking to define Parabrahm for the purpose of returning to Its purity, it is discovered sooner or later, that It possesses no qualities at all! In other words, as the farmer said, on being shown the elephant: There ain't no sich animile. It was Gautama Buddha who perceived the inutility of dragging in this imaginary pachyderm. Since our Parabrahm, he said to the Hindu philosophers, is actually nothing, why not stick to or original perception that everything is sorrow, and admit that the only way to escape from sorrow is to arrive at nothingness?
We may complete the whole tradition of the Indian peninsula very simply. To the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Tripitaka of the Buddhists, we have only to add the Tantras of what are called the Vamacharya Schools. Paradoxical as it may sound the Tantrics are in reality the most advanced of the Hindus. Their theory is, in its philosophical ultimatum, a primitive stage of the White tradition, for the essence of the Tantric cults is that by the performance of certain rites of Magick, one does not only escape disaster, but obtains positive benediction. The Tantric is not obsessed by the will-to-die. It is a difficult business, no doubt, to get any fun out of existence; but at least it is not impossible. In other words, he implicitly denies the fundamental proposition that existence is sorrow, and he formulates the essential postulate of the White School of Magick, that means exist by which the universal sorrow (apparent indeed to all ordinary observation) may be unmasked, even as at the initiatory rite of Isis in the ancient days of Khem. There, a Neophyte presenting his mouth, under compulsion, to the pouting buttocks of the Goat of Mendez, found himself caressed by the chaste lips of a virginal priestess of that Goddess at the base of whose shrine is written that No man has lifted her veil.
--
Let us leave the sinister figure of Schopenhauer for the mysteriously radiant shape of Spinoza! This latter philosopher, in respect at least of his Pantheism, represents fairly enough the fundamental thesis of the White tradition. Almost the first observation that we have to make is that this White tradition is hardly discoverable outside Europe. It appears first of all in the legend of Dionysus. (In this connection read carefully Browning's Apollo and the Fates.)
The Egyptian tradition of Osiris is not dissimilar. The central idea of the White School is that, admitted that "everything is sorrow" for the profane, the Initiate has the means of transforming it to "Everything is joy." There is no question of any ostrich-ignoring of fact, as in Christian Science. There is not even any more or less sophisticated argument about the point of view altering the situation as in Vedantism. We have, on the contrary, and attitude which was perhaps first of all, historically speaking, defined by Zoroaster, "nature teaches us, and the Oracles also affirm, that even the evil germs of Matter may alike become useful and good." "Stay not on the precipice with the dross of Matter; for there is a place for thine Image in a realm ever splendid." "If thou extend the Fiery Mind to the work of piety, thou wilt preserve the fluxible body."*[AC19]
1.07 - TRUTH, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
IN RELIGIOUS literature the word truth is used indiscriminately in at least three distinct and very different senses. Thus, it is sometimes treated as a synonym for fact, as when it is affirmed that God is Truthmeaning that He is the primordial Reality. But this is clearly not the meaning of the word in such a phrase as worshipping God in spirit and in truth. Here, it is obvious, truth signifies direct apprehension of spiritual Fact, as opposed to second-hand knowledge about Reality, formulated in sentences and accepted on authority or because an argument from previously granted postulates was logically convincing. And finally there is the more ordinary meaning of the word, as in such a sentence as, This statement is the truth, where we mean to assert that the verbal symbols of which the statement is composed correspond to the facts to which it refers. When Eckhart writes that whatever thou sayest of God is untrue, he is not affirming that all theological statements are false. Insofar as there can be any correspondence between human symbols and divine Fact, some theological statements are as true as it is possible for us to make them. Himself a theologian, Eckhart would certainly have admitted this. But besides being a theologian, Eckhart was a mystic. And being a mystic, he understood very vividly what the modern semanticist is so busily (and, also, so unsuccessfully) trying to drum into contemporary mindsnamely, that words are not the same as things and that a knowledge of words about facts is in no sense equivalent to a direct and immediate apprehension of the facts themselves. What Eckhart actually asserts is this: whatever one may say about God can never in any circumstances be the truth in the first two meanings of that much abused and ambiguous word. By implication St. Thomas Aquinas was saying exactly the same thing when, after his experience of infused contemplation, he refused to go on with his theological work, declaring that everything he had written up to that time was as mere straw compared with the immediate knowledge, which had been vouchsafed to him. Two hundred years earlier, in Bagdad, the great Mohammedan theologian, Al Ghazzali, had similarly turned from the consideration of truths about God to the contemplation and direct apprehension of Truth-the-Fact, from the purely intellectual discipline of the philosophers to the moral and spiritual discipline of the Sufis.
The moral of all this is obvious. Whenever we hear or read about truth, we should always pause long enough to ask ourselves in which of the three senses listed above the word is, at the moment, being used. By taking this simple precaution (and to take it is a genuinely virtuous act of intellectual honesty), we shall save ourselves a great deal of disturbing and quite unnecessary mental confusion.
--
The philosophers indeed are clever enough, but wanting in wisdom;
As to the others, they are either ignorant or puerile!
--
In connection with the Mahayanist view that words play an important and even creative part in the evolution of unregenerate human nature, we may mention Humes arguments against the reality of causation. These arguments start from the postulate that all events are loose and separate from one another and proceed with faultless logic to a conclusion that makes complete nonsense of all organized thought or purposive action. The fallacy, as Professor Stout has pointed out, lies in the preliminary postulate. And when we ask ourselves what it was that induced Hume to make this odd and quite unrealistic assumption that events are loose and separate, we see that his only reason for flying in the face of immediate experience was the fact that things and happenings are symbolically represented in our thought by nouns, verbs and adjectives, and that these words are, in effect, loose and separate from one another in a way which the events and things they stand for quite obviously are not. Taking words as the measure of things, instead of using things as the measure of words, Hume imposed the discrete and, so to say, pointilliste pattern of language upon the continuum of actual experiencewith the impossibly paradoxical results with which we are all familiar. Most human beings are not philosophers and care not at all for consistency in thought or action. Thus, in some circumstances they take it for granted that events are not loose and separate, but co-exist or follow one another within the organized and organizing field of a cosmic whole. But on other occasions, where the opposite view is more nearly in accord with their passions or interests, they adopt, all unconsciously, the Humian position and treat events as though they were as independent of one another and the rest of the world as the words by which they are symbolized. This is generally true of all occurrences involving I, me, mine. Reifying the loose and separate names, we regard the things as also loose and separatenot subject to law, not involved in the network of relationships, by which in fact they are so obviously bound up with their physical, social and spiritual environment. We regard as absurd the idea that there is no causal process in nature and no organic connection between events and things in the lives of other people; but at the same time we accept as axiomatic the notion that our own sacred ego is loose and separate from the universe, a law unto itself above the moral dharma and even, in many respects, above the natural law of causality. Both in Buddhism and Catholicism, monks and nuns were encouraged to avoid the personal pronoun and to speak of themselves in terms of circumlocutions that clearly indicated their real relationship with the cosmic reality and their fellow creatures. The precaution was a wise one. Our responses to familiar words are conditioned reflexes. By changing the stimulus, we can do something to change the response. No Pavlov bell, no salivation; no harping on words like me and mine, no purely automatic and unreflecting egotism. When a monk speaks of himself, not as I, but as this sinner or this unprofitable servant, he tends to stop taking his loose and separate selfhood for granted, and makes himself aware of his real, organic relationship with God and his neighbours.
In practice words are used for other purposes than for making statements about facts. Very often they are used rhetorically, in order to arouse the passions and direct the will towards some course of action regarded as desirable. And sometimes, too, they are used poetically that is to say, they are used in such a way that, besides making a statement about real or imaginary things and events, and besides appealing rhetorically to the will and the passions, they cause the reader to be aware that they are beautiful. Beauty in art or nature is a matter of relationships between things not in themselves intrinsically beautiful. There is nothing beautiful, for example, about the vocables, time, or syllable. But when they are used in such a phrase as to the last syllable of recorded time, the relationship between the sound of the component words, between our ideas of the things for which they stand, and between the overtones of association with which each word and the phrase as a whole are charged, is apprehended, by a direct and immediate intuition, as being beautiful.
1.08a - The Ladder, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
To the philosopher new states of consciousness will be dis- closed ; states which, because of the very path he has been pursuing, have hitherto been barred from his examination.
From the psychological point of view, the following are true of the experience under discussion :
1.08 - Information, Language, and Society, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
career. Few philosophers of politics nowadays care to confine
their investigations to the world of Ideas of Plato.
1.08 - Introduction to Patanjalis Yoga Aphorisms, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
Now the question arises: Is going back to God the higher state, or not? The philosophers of the Yoga school emphatically answer that it is. They say that man's present state is a degeneration. There is not one religion on the face of the earth which says that man is an improvement. The idea is that his beginning is perfect and pure, that he degenerates until he cannot degenerate further, and that there must come a time when he shoots upward again to complete the circle. The circle must be described. However low he may go, he must ultimately take the upward bend and go back to the original source, which is God. Man comes from God in the beginning, in the middle he becomes man, and in the end he goes back to God. This is the method of putting it in the dualistic form. The monistic form is that man is God, and goes back to Him again. If our present state is the higher one, then why is there so much horror and misery, and why is there an end to it? If this is the higher state, why does it end? That which corrupts and degenerates cannot be the highest state. Why should it be so diabolical, so unsatisfying? It is only excusable, inasmuch as through it we are taking a higher groove; we have to pass through it in order to become regenerate again. Put a seed into the ground and it disintegrates, dissolves after a time, and out of that dissolution comes the splendid tree. Every soul must disintegrate to become God. So it follows that the sooner we get out of this state we call "man" the better for us. Is it by committing suicide that we get out of this state? Not at all. That will be making it worse. Torturing ourselves, or condemning the world, is not the way to get out. We have to pass through the Slough of Despond, and the sooner we are through, the better. It must always be remembered that man-state is not the highest state.
The really difficult part to understand is that this state, the Absolute, which has been called the highest, is not, as some fear, that of the zoophyte or of the stone. According to them, there are only two states of existence, one of the stone, and the other of thought. What right have they to limit existence to these two? Is there not something infinitely superior to thought? The vibrations of light, when they are very low, we do not see; when they become a little more intense, they become light to us; when they become still more intense, we do not see them it is dark to us. Is the darkness in the end the same darkness as in the beginning? Certainly not; they are different as the two poles. Is the thoughtlessness of the stone the same as the thoughtlessness of God? Certainly not. God does not think; He does not reason. Why should He? Is anything unknown to Him, that He should reason? The stone cannot reason; God does not. Such is the difference. These philosophers think it is awful if we go beyond thought; they find nothing beyond thought.
There are much higher states of existence beyond reasoning. It is really beyond the intellect that the first state of religious life is to be found. When you step beyond thought and intellect and all reasoning, then you have made the first step towards God; and that is the beginning of life. What is commonly called life is but an embryo state.
1.08 - RELIGION AND TEMPERAMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Significantly enough, it is in essentially similar terms that Dr. Radin classifies and (by implication) evaluates primitive human beings in so far as they are philosophers and religious devotees. For him there is no doubt that the higher monotheistic forms of primitive religion are created (or should one rather say, with Plato, discovered?) by people belonging to the first of the two great psycho-physical classes of human beings the men of thought. To those belonging to the other class, the men of action, is due the creation or discovery of the lower, unphilosophical, polytheistic kinds of religion.
This simple dichotomy is a classification of human differences that is valid so far as it goes. But like all such dichotomies, whether physical (like Hippocrates division of humanity into those of phthisic and those of apoplectic habit) or psychological (like Jungs classification in terms of introvert and extravert), this grouping of the religious into those who think and those who act, those who follow the way of Martha and those who follow the way of Mary, is inadequate to the facts. And of course no director of souls, no head of a religious organization, is ever, in actual practice, content with this all too simple system. Underlying the best Catholic writing on prayer and the best Catholic practice in the matter of recognizing vocations and assigning duties, we sense the existence of an implicit and unformulated classification of human differences more complete and more realistic than the explicit dichotomy of action and contemplation.
1.08 - The Four Austerities and the Four Liberations, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Consciousness is indeed the creatrix of the universe, but love is its saviour. Conscious experience alone can give a glimpse of what love is, of its purpose and process. Any verbal transcription is necessarily a mental travesty of something which eludes all expression in every way. philosophers, mystics, occultists, have all tried to define love, but in vain. I have no pretension of succeeding where they have failed. But I wish to state in the simplest possible terms what in their writings takes such an abstract and complicated form. My words will have no other aim than to lead towards the living experience, and I wish to be able to lead even a child to it.
Love is, in its essence, the joy of identity; it finds its ultimate expression in the bliss of union. Between the two lie all the phases of its universal manifestation.
1.08 - The Gods of the Veda - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I put aside at the beginning the common assumption that since religion started from the fears & desires of savages a record of religion as ancient as the Vedas must necessarily contain a barbarous or semi-barbarous mythology empty of any profound or subtle spiritual & moral ideas or, if it contains them at all, that it must be only in the latest documents. We have no more right to assume that the Vedic Rishis were a race of simple & frank barbarians than to assume that they were a class of deep and acute philosophers. What they were is the thing we have to discover and we may arrive at either conclusion or neither, but we must not start from our goal or begin our argument on the basis of our conclusion. We know nothing of the history & thought of the times, we know nothing of the state of their intellectual & social culture except what we can gather from the Vedic hymns themselves. Indications from other sources may be useful as clues but the hymns are our sole authority.
The indications from external sources are few and inconclusive, but they are by no means favourable to the theory of a materialistic worship of Nature-Powers. The Europeans start with their knowledge of the old Pagan worship, their idea of the crudity of early Greek & German myth & practice and their minds naturally expect to find & even insist on finding an even greater crudity in the Vedas. But it must not be forgotten that in no written record of Greek or Scandinavian do the old religions appear as mere materialistic ideas or the old gods as mere Nature forces; they have also a moral significance, and show a substratum of moral and an admixture even of psychological & philosophical ideas. If in their origin, they were material and barbarous, they had already been moralised & intellectualised. Already even in Homer Pallas Athene is not the Dawn or any natural phenomenon, but a great preterhuman power of wisdom, force & intelligence; Apollo is not the Sunwho is represented by another deity, Helios but a moral or moralised deity. In the Veda, even in the European rendering, Varuna has a similar moral character and represents ethical & religious ideas far in advance of any that we find in the Homeric cult & ethics. We cannot rule out of court the possibility that others of the gods shared this Vedic distinction or that, even perhaps in their oldest hymns, the Indians had gone at least as far as the Greeks in the moralising of their religion.
1.08 - The Methods of Vedantic Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
5:In a sense all our experience is psychological since even what we receive by the senses, has no meaning or value to us till it is translated into the terms of the sense-mind, the Manas of Indian philosophical terminology. Manas, say our philosophers, is the sixth sense. But we may even say that it is the only sense and that the others, vision, hearing, touch, smell, taste are merely specialisations of the sense-mind which, although it normally uses the sense-organs for the basis of its experience, yet exceeds them and is capable of a direct experience proper to its own inherent action. As a result psychological experience, like the cognitions of the reason, is capable in man of a double action, mixed or dependent, pure or sovereign. Its mixed action takes place usually when the mind seeks to become aware of the external world, the object; the pure action when it seeks to become aware of itself, the subject. In the former activity, it is dependent on the senses and forms its perceptions in accordance with their evidence; in the latter it acts in itself and is aware of things directly by a sort of identity with them. We are thus aware of our emotions; we are aware of anger, as has been acutely said, because we become anger. We are thus aware also of our own existence; and here the nature of experience as knowledge by identity becomes apparent. In reality, all experience is in its secret nature knowledge by identity; but its true character is hidden from us because we have separated ourselves from the rest of the world by exclusion, by the distinction of ourself as subject and everything else as object, and we are compelled to develop processes and organs by which we may again enter into communion with all that we have excluded. We have to replace direct knowledge through conscious identity by an indirect knowledge which appears to be caused by physical contact and mental sympathy. This limitation is a fundamental creation of the ego and an instance of the manner in which it has proceeded throughout, starting from an original falsehood and covering over the true truth of things by contingent falsehoods which become for us practical truths of relation.
6:From this nature of mental and sense knowledge as it is at present organised in us, it follows that there is no inevitable necessity in our existing limitations. They are the result of an evolution in which mind has accustomed itself to depend upon certain physiological functionings and their reactions as its normal means of entering into relation with the material universe. Therefore, although it is the rule that when we seek to become aware of the external world, we have to do so indirectly through the sense-organs and can experience only so much of the truth about things and men as the senses convey to us, yet this rule is merely the regularity of a dominant habit. It is possible for the mind - and it would be natural for it, if it could be persuaded to liberate itself from its consent to the domination of matter, - to take direct cognisance of the objects of sense without the aid of the sense-organs. This is what happens in experiments of hypnosis and cognate psychological phenomena. Because our waking consciousness is determined and limited by the balance between mind and matter worked out by life in its evolution, this direct cognisance is usually impossible in our ordinary waking state and has therefore to be brought about by throwing the waking mind into a state of sleep which liberates the true or subliminal mind. Mind is then able to assert its true character as the one and allsufficient sense and free to apply to the objects of sense its pure and sovereign instead of its mixed and dependent action. Nor is this extension of faculty really impossible but only more difficult in our waking state, - as is known to all who have been able to go far enough in certain paths of psychological experiment.
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15:And yet the human reason demands its own method of satisfaction. Therefore when the age of rationalistic speculation began, Indian philosophers, respectful of the heritage of the past, adopted a double attitude towards the Truth they sought. They recognised in the Sruti, the earlier results of Intuition or, as they preferred to call it, of inspired Revelation, an authority superior to Reason. But at the same time they started from Reason and tested the results it gave them, holding only those conclusions to be valid which were supported by the supreme authority. In this way they avoided to a certain extent the besetting sin of metaphysics, the tendency to battle in the clouds because it deals with words as if they were imperative facts instead of symbols which have always to be carefully scrutinised and brought back constantly to the sense of that which they represent. Their speculations tended at first to keep near at the centre to the highest and profoundest experience and proceeded with the united consent of the two great authorities, Reason and Intuition. Nevertheless, the natural trend of Reason to assert its own supremacy triumphed in effect over the theory of its subordination. Hence the rise of conflicting schools each of which founded itself in theory on the Veda and used its texts as a weapon against the others. For the highest intuitive Knowledge sees things in the whole, in the large and details only as sides of the indivisible whole; its tendency is towards immediate synthesis and the unity of knowledge. Reason, on the contrary, proceeds by analysis and division and assembles its facts to form a whole; but in the assemblage so formed there are opposites, anomalies, logical incompatibilities, and the natural tendency of Reason is to affirm some and to negate others which conflict with its chosen conclusions so that it may form a flawlessly logical system. The unity of the first intuitional knowledge was thus broken up and the ingenuity of the logicians was always able to discover devices, methods of interpretation, standards of varying value by which inconvenient texts of the Scripture could be practically annulled and an entire freedom acquired for their metaphysical speculation.
16:Nevertheless, the main conceptions of the earlier Vedanta remained in parts in the various philosophical systems and efforts were made from time to time to recombine them into some image of the old catholicity and unity of intuitional thought. And behind the thought of all, variously presented, survived as the fundamental conception, Purusha, Atman or Sad Brahman, the pure Existent of the Upanishads, often rationalised into an idea or psychological state, but still carrying something of its old burden of inexpressible reality. What may be the relation of the movement of becoming which is what we call the world to this absolute Unity and how the ego, whether generated by the movement or cause of the movement, can return to that true Self, Divinity or Reality declared by the Vedanta, these were the questions speculative and practical which have always occupied the thought of India.
1.08 - THINGS THE GERMANS LACK, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
to German philosophy. "Are there any German philosophers? Are there any
German poets? Are there any good German books?" people ask me abroad. I
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of understanding the kind of seriousness from which a philosopher is
recovering in this work! It is our cheerfulness that people understand
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German philosopher worth mentioning is an increasing wonder.
Everything that matters has been lost sight of by the whole of the
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Germany have actually tolerated their philosophers, more particularly
that most deformed cripple of ideas that has ever existed--the great
1.09 - Concentration - Its Spiritual Uses, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
When two of our perceptions do not contradict each other, we call it proof. I hear something, and if it contradicts something already perceived, I begin to fight it out, and do not believe it. There are also three kinds of proof. Pratyaksha, direct perception; whatever we see and feel, is proof, if there has been nothing to delude the senses. I see the world; that is sufficient proof that it exists. Secondly, Anumna, inference; you see a sign, and from the sign you come to the thing signified. Thirdly, ptavkya, the direct evidence of the Yogis, of those who have seen the truth. We are all of us struggling towards knowledge. But you and I have to struggle hard, and come to knowledge through a long tedious process of reasoning, but the Yogi, the pure one, has gone beyond all this. Before his mind, the past, the present, and the future are alike, one book for him to read; he does not require to go through the tedious processes for knowledge we have to; his words are proof, because he sees knowledge in himself. These, for instance, are the authors of the sacred scriptures; therefore the scriptures are proof. If any such persons are living now their words will be proof. Other philosophers go into long discussions about Aptavakya and they say, "What is the proof of their words?" The proof is their direct perception. Because whatever I see is proof, and whatever you see is proof, if it does not contradict any past knowledge. There is knowledge beyond the senses, and whenever it does not contradict reason and past human experience, that knowledge is proof. Any madman may come into this room and say he sees angels around him; that would not be proof. In the first place, it must be true knowledge, and secondly, it must not contradict past knowledge, and thirdly, it must depend upon the character of the man who gives it out. I hear it said that the character of the man is not of so much importance as what he may say; we must first hear what he says. This may be true in other things. A man may be wicked, and yet make an astronomical discovery, but in religion it is different, because no impure man will ever have the power to reach the truths of religion. Therefore we have first of all to see that the man who declares himself to be an pta is a perfectly unselfish and holy person; secondly, that he has reached beyond the senses; and thirdly, that what he says does not contradict the past knowledge of humanity. Any new discovery of truth does not contradict the past truth, but fits into it. And fourthly, that truth must have a possibility of verification. If a man says, "I have seen a vision," and tells me that I have no right to see it, I believe him not. Everyone must have the power to see it for himself. No one who sells his knowledge is an Apta. All these conditions must be fulfilled; you must first see that the man is pure, and that he has no selfish motive; that he has no thirst for gain or fame. Secondly, he must show that he is superconscious. He must give us something that we cannot get from our senses, and which is for the benefit of the world. Thirdly, we must see that it does not contradict other truths; if it contradicts other scientific truths reject it at once. Fourthly, the man should never be singular; he should only represent what all men can attain. The three sorts of proof are, then, direct sense-perception, inference, and the words of an Apta. I cannot translate this word into English. It is not the word "inspired", because inspiration is believed to come from outside, while this knowledge comes from the man himself. The literal meaning is "attained".
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It is true that all knowledge is within ourselves, but this has to be called forth by another knowledge. Although the capacity to know is inside us, it must be called out, and that calling out of knowledge can only be done, a Yogi maintains, through another knowledge. Dead, insentient matter never calls out knowledge, it is the action of knowledge that brings out knowledge. Knowing beings must be with us to call forth what is in us, so these teachers were always necessary. The world was never without them, and no knowledge can come without them. God is the Teacher of all teachers, because these teachers, however great they may have been gods or angels were all bound and limited by time, while God is not. There are two peculiar deductions of the Yogis. The first is that in thinking of the limited, the mind must think of the unlimited; and that if one part of that perception is true, so also must the other be, for the reason that their value as perceptions of the mind is equal. The very fact that man has a little knowledge shows that God has unlimited knowledge. If I am to take one, why not the other? Reason forces me to take both or reject both. If I believe that there is a man with a little knowledge, I must also admit that there is someone behind him with unlimited knowledge. The second deduction is that no knowledge can come without a teacher. It is true, as the modern philosophers say, that there is something in man which evolves out of him; all knowledge is in man, but certain environments are necessary to call it out. We cannot find any knowledge without teachers. If there are men teachers, god teachers, or angel teachers, they are all limited; who was the teacher before them? We are forced to admit, as a last conclusion, one teacher who is not limited by time; and that One Teacher of infinite knowledge, without beginning or end, is called God.
1.09 - Fundamental Questions of Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
able to borrow much from the philosophers, and so medical psychology,
on encountering an unconscious psyche right at the beginning of its career,
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were formerly the province of priests and philosophers. From the degree to
which priests and philosophers no longer discharge any duties in this
respect or their competence to do so has been denied by the public, we can
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always knows in advance what he is going to say; the philosopher, because
he never says anything of the slightest practical value. And the odd thing is
1.09 - Man - About the Body, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
Great Work or the preparation of the philosophers Stone is visibly performed.
Herewith the chapter dealing with the body is finished. I do not assert that all has been regarded, but in any case, with respect to the elements, I mean to say, the four-pole magnet, I have treated the most important problems and revealed the secret of the Tetragrammaton in view of the body.
1.09 - SKIRMISHES IN A WAY WITH THE AGE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
fore? Fortunately, too, a certain philosopher contradicts him. No less
an authority than the divine Plato himself (thus does Schopenhauer
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it was the sight of them alone that set the soul of the philosopher
reeling with erotic passion, and allowed it no rest until it had
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there have been philosophers who have ascribed this function to art.
According to Schopenhauer's doctrine, the general object of art was to
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people and other philosophers.)
27
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then appears to them! They even encourage him.... But true philosophers
despise the man who wishes, as also the "desirable" man--and all the
desiderata and _ideals_ of man in general. If a philosopher could be a
nihilist, he would be one; for he finds only nonentity behind all human
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what the philosopher cannot abide.
33
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unit, the "individual," as the people and the philosopher have always
understood him, is certainly an error: he is nothing in himself, no
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of great saints. The same holds good of philosophers, that other order
of saints; their whole business compels them to concede only certain
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English:--_Beware,_ Mr philosopher, of speaking the truth....
43
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_Here the outlook is free._--When a philosopher holds his tongue it may
be the sign of the loftiness of his soul: when he contradicts himself
1.1.04 - Philosophy, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
He treads down his emotions, because emotion distorts reason and replaces it by passions, desires, preferences, prejudices, prejudgments. He avoids life, because life awakes all his sensational being and puts his reason at the mercy of egoism, of sensational reactions of anger, fear, hope, hunger, ambition, instead of allowing it to act justly and do disinterested work. It becomes merely the paid pleader of a party, a cause, a creed, a dogma, an intellectual faction. Passion and eagerness, even intellectual eagerness, so disfigure the greatest minds that even Shankara becomes a sophist and a word-twister, and even Buddha argues in a circle. The philosopher wishes above all to preserve his intellectual righteousness; he is or should be as careful of his mental rectitude as the saint of his moral stainlessness. Therefore he avoids, as far as the world will let him, the conditions which disturb. But in this way he cuts himself off from experience and only the gods can know without experience. Sieyes said that politics was a subject of which he had made a science.
He had, but the pity was that though he knew the science of politics perfectly, he did not know politics itself in the least and when he did enter political life, he had formed too rigidly the logical habit to replace it in any degree by the practical. If he had reversed the order or at least coordinated experiment with his theories before they were formed, he might have succeeded better. His readymade Constitutions are monuments of logical perfection and practical ineffectiveness. They have the weakness
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Both the logician and the philosopher are apt to forget that they are dealing with words and words divorced from experience can be the most terrible misleaders in the world. Precisely because they are capable of giving us so much light, they are also capable of lighting us into impenetrable darkness. Tato bhuya iva te tamo ya u vidyayam ratah; "Deeper is the darkness into which they enter who are addicted to knowledge alone." This sort of word worship and its resultant luminous darkness is very common in India and nowhere more than in the intellectualities of religion, so that when a man talks to me about the One and
Maya and the Absolute, I am tempted to ask him, "My friend, how much have you experienced of these things in which you instruct me or how much are you telling me out of a vacuum or merely from intellectual appreciation? If you have merely ideas and no experience, you are no authority for me and your logic is to me but the clashing of cymbals good to deafen an opponent into silence, but of no use for knowledge. If you say you have experienced, then I have to ask you, 'Are you sure you have measured all possible experience?' If you have not, then how can you be sure that my contradictory experience is not equally true? If you say you have, then I know you to be deluded or a pretender, one who has experienced a fragment or nothing; for
1.10 - Aesthetic and Ethical Culture, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Its limitations at once appear, when we look back at its prominent examples. Early Rome and Sparta were barren of thought, art, poetry, literature, the larger mental life, all the amenity and pleasure of human existence; their art of life excluded or discouraged the delight of living. They were distrustful, as the exclusively ethical man is always distrustful, of free and flexible thought and the aesthetic impulse. The earlier spirit of republican Rome held at arms length as long as possible the Greek influences that invaded her, closed the schools of the Greek teachers, banished the philosophers, and her most typical minds looked upon the Greek language as a peril and Greek culture as an abomination: she felt instinctively the arrival at her gates of an enemy, divined a hostile and destructive force fatal to her principle of living. Sparta, though a Hellenic city, admitted as almost the sole aesthetic element of her deliberate ethical training and education a martial music and poetry, and even then, when she wanted a poet of war, she had to import an Athenian. We have a curious example of the repercussion of this instinctive distrust even on a large and aesthetic Athenian mind in the utopian speculations of Plato who felt himself obliged in his Republic first to censure and then to banish the poets from his ideal polity. The end of these purely ethical cultures bears witness to their insufficiency. Either they pass away leaving nothing or little behind them by which the future can be attracted and satisfied, as Sparta passed, or they collapse in a revolt of the complex nature of man against an unnatural restriction and repression, as the early Roman type collapsed into the egoistic and often orgiastic licence of later republican and imperial Rome. The human mind needs to think, feel, enjoy, expand; expansion is its very nature and restriction is only useful to it in so far as it helps to steady, guide and streng then its expansion. It readily refuses the name of culture to those civilisations or periods, however noble their aim or even however beautiful in itself their order, which have not allowed an intelligent freedom of development.
On the other hand, we are tempted to give the name of a full culture to all those periods and civilisations, whatever their defects, which have encouraged a freely human development and like ancient Athens have concentrated on thought and beauty and the delight of living. But there were in the Athenian development two distinct periods, one of art and beauty, the Athens of Phidias and Sophocles, and one of thought, the Athens of the philosophers. In the first period the sense of beauty and the need of freedom of life and the enjoyment of life are the determining forces. This Athens thought, but it thought in the terms of art and poetry, in figures of music and drama and architecture and sculpture; it delighted in intellectual discussion, but not so much with any will to arrive at truth as for the pleasure of thinking and the beauty of ideas. It had its moral order, for without that no society can exist, but it had no true ethical impulse or ethical type, only a conventional and customary morality; and when it thought about ethics, it tended to express it in the terms of beauty, to kalon, to epieikes, the beautiful, the becoming. Its very religion was a religion of beauty and an occasion for pleasant ritual and festivals and for artistic creation, an aesthetic enjoyment touched with a superficial religious sense. But without character, without some kind of high or strong discipline there is no enduring power of life. Athens exhausted its vitality within one wonderful century which left it enervated, will-less, unable to succeed in the struggle of life, uncreative. It turned indeed for a time precisely to that which had been lacking to it, the serious pursuit of truth and the evolution of systems of ethical self-discipline; but it could only think, it could not successfully practise. The later Hellenic mind and Athenian centre of culture gave to Rome the great Stoic system of ethical discipline which saved her in the midst of the orgies of her first imperial century, but could not itself be stoical in its practice; for to Athens and to the characteristic temperament of Hellas, this thought was a straining to something it had not and could not have; it was the opposite of its nature and not its fulfilment.
This insufficiency of the aesthetic view of life becomes yet more evident when we come down to its other great example, Italy of the Renascence. The Renascence was regarded at one time as pre-eminently a revival of learning, but in its Mediterranean birth-place it was rather the efflorescence of art and poetry and the beauty of life. Much more than was possible even in the laxest times of Hellas, aesthetic culture was divorced from the ethical impulse and at times was even anti-ethical and reminiscent of the licence of imperial Rome. It had learning and curiosity, but gave very little of itself to high thought and truth and the more finished achievements of the reason, although it helped to make free the way for philosophy and science. It so corrupted religion as to provoke in the ethically minded Teutonic nations the violent revolt of the Reformation, which, though it vindicated the freedom of the religious mind, was an insurgence not so much of the reason,that was left to Science,but of the moral instinct and its ethical need. The subsequent prostration and loose weakness of Italy was the inevitable result of the great defect of its period of fine culture, and it needed for its revival the new impulse of thought and will and character given to it by Mazzini. If the ethical impulse is not sufficient by itself for the development of the human being, yet are will, character, self-discipline, self-mastery indispensable to that development. They are the backbone of the mental body.
1.10 - Concentration - Its Practice, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
Next "the indicated only" means the Buddhi, the intellect. "The indicated only" is the first manifestation of nature; from it all other manifestations proceed. The last is "the signless". There seems to be a great difference between modern science and all religions at this point. Every religion has the idea that the universe comes out of intelligence. The theory of God, taking it in its psychological significance, apart from all ideas of personality, is that intelligence is first in the order of creation, and that out of intelligence comes what we call gross matter. Modern philosophers say that intelligence is the last to come. They say that unintelligent things slowly evolve into animals, and from animals into men. They claim that instead of everything coming out of intelligence, intelligence itself is the last to come. Both the religious and the scientific statements, though seeming directly opposed to each other are true. Take an infinite series, ABAB AB. etc. The question is which is first, A or B? If you take the series as AB. you will say that A is first, but if you take it as BA, you will say that B is first. It depends upon the way we look at it. Intelligence undergoes modification and becomes the gross matter, this again merges into intelligence, and thus the process goes on. The Sankhyas, and other religionists, put intelligence first, and the series becomes intelligence, then matter. The scientific man puts his finger on matter, and says matter, then intelligence. They both indicate the same chain. Indian philosophy, however, goes beyond both intelligence and matter, and finds a Purusha, or Self, which is beyond intelligence, of which intelligence is but the borrowed light.
--- Overview of noun philosopher
The noun philosopher has 2 senses (first 2 from tagged texts)
1. (15) philosopher ::: (a specialist in philosophy)
2. (1) philosopher ::: (a wise person who is calm and rational; someone who lives a life of reason with equanimity)
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun philosopher
2 senses of philosopher
Sense 1
philosopher
=> scholar, scholarly person, bookman, student
=> intellectual, intellect
=> person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, soul
=> organism, being
=> living thing, animate thing
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
=> causal agent, cause, causal agency
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 2
philosopher
=> person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, soul
=> organism, being
=> living thing, animate thing
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
=> causal agent, cause, causal agency
=> physical entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun philosopher
1 of 2 senses of philosopher
Sense 1
philosopher
=> nativist
=> Cynic
=> eclectic, eclecticist
=> empiricist
=> epistemologist
=> esthetician, aesthetician
=> ethicist, ethician
=> existentialist, existentialist philosopher, existential philosopher
=> gymnosophist
=> libertarian
=> mechanist
=> moralist
=> naturalist
=> necessitarian
=> nominalist
=> pluralist
=> pre-Socratic
=> realist
=> Scholastic
=> Sophist
=> Stoic
=> transcendentalist
=> yogi
HAS INSTANCE=> Abelard, Peter Abelard, Pierre Abelard
HAS INSTANCE=> Anaxagoras
HAS INSTANCE=> Anaximander
HAS INSTANCE=> Anaximenes
HAS INSTANCE=> Arendt, Hannah Arendt
HAS INSTANCE=> Aristotle
HAS INSTANCE=> Averroes, ibn-Roshd, Abul-Walid Mohammed ibn-Ahmad Ibn-Mohammed ibn-Roshd
HAS INSTANCE=> Avicenna, ibn-Sina, Abu Ali al-Husain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina
HAS INSTANCE=> Bacon, Francis Bacon, Sir Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam, 1st Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Albans
HAS INSTANCE=> Bentham, Jeremy Bentham
HAS INSTANCE=> Bergson, Henri Bergson, Henri Louis Bergson
HAS INSTANCE=> Berkeley, Bishop Berkeley, George Berkeley
HAS INSTANCE=> Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
HAS INSTANCE=> Bruno, Giordano Bruno
HAS INSTANCE=> Buber, Martin Buber
HAS INSTANCE=> Cassirer, Ernst Cassirer
HAS INSTANCE=> Cleanthes
HAS INSTANCE=> Comte, Auguste Comte, Isidore Auguste Marie Francois Comte
HAS INSTANCE=> Condorcet, Marquis de Condorcet, Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat
HAS INSTANCE=> Confucius, Kongfuze, K'ung Futzu, Kong the Master
HAS INSTANCE=> Democritus
HAS INSTANCE=> Derrida, Jacques Derrida
HAS INSTANCE=> Descartes, Rene Descartes
HAS INSTANCE=> Dewey, John Dewey
HAS INSTANCE=> Diderot, Denis Diderot
HAS INSTANCE=> Diogenes
HAS INSTANCE=> Empedocles
HAS INSTANCE=> Epictetus
HAS INSTANCE=> Epicurus
HAS INSTANCE=> Haeckel, Ernst Heinrich Haeckel
HAS INSTANCE=> Hartley, David Hartley
HAS INSTANCE=> Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
HAS INSTANCE=> Heraclitus
HAS INSTANCE=> Herbart, Johann Friedrich Herbart
HAS INSTANCE=> Herder, Johann Gottfried von Herder
HAS INSTANCE=> Hobbes, Thomas Hobbes
HAS INSTANCE=> Hume, David Hume
HAS INSTANCE=> Husserl, Edmund Husserl
HAS INSTANCE=> Hypatia
HAS INSTANCE=> James, William James
HAS INSTANCE=> Kant, Immanuel Kant
HAS INSTANCE=> Kierkegaard, Soren Kierkegaard, Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
HAS INSTANCE=> Lao-tzu, Lao-tse, Lao-zi
HAS INSTANCE=> Leibniz, Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz
HAS INSTANCE=> Locke, John Locke
HAS INSTANCE=> Lucretius, Titus Lucretius Carus
HAS INSTANCE=> Lully, Raymond Lully, Ramon Lully
HAS INSTANCE=> Mach, Ernst Mach
HAS INSTANCE=> Machiavelli, Niccolo Machiavelli
HAS INSTANCE=> Maimonides, Moses Maimonides, Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon
HAS INSTANCE=> Malebranche, Nicolas de Malebranche
HAS INSTANCE=> Marcuse, Herbert Marcuse
HAS INSTANCE=> Marx, Karl Marx
HAS INSTANCE=> Mead, George Herbert Mead
HAS INSTANCE=> Mill, John Mill, John Stuart Mill
HAS INSTANCE=> Mill, James Mill
HAS INSTANCE=> Montesquieu, Baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu, Charles Louis de Secondat
HAS INSTANCE=> Moore, G. E. Moore, George Edward Moore
HAS INSTANCE=> Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
HAS INSTANCE=> Occam, William of Occam, Ockham, William of Ockham
HAS INSTANCE=> Origen
HAS INSTANCE=> Ortega y Gasset, Jose Ortega y Gasset
HAS INSTANCE=> Parmenides
HAS INSTANCE=> Pascal, Blaise Pascal
HAS INSTANCE=> Peirce, Charles Peirce, Charles Sanders Peirce
HAS INSTANCE=> Perry, Ralph Barton Perry
HAS INSTANCE=> Plato
HAS INSTANCE=> Plotinus
=> Popper, Karl Popper, Sir Karl Raimund Popper
HAS INSTANCE=> Pythagoras
HAS INSTANCE=> Quine, W. V. Quine, Willard Van Orman Quine
HAS INSTANCE=> Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
HAS INSTANCE=> Reid, Thomas Reid
HAS INSTANCE=> Rousseau, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
HAS INSTANCE=> Russell, Bertrand Russell, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, Earl Russell
HAS INSTANCE=> Schopenhauer, Arthur Schopenhauer
HAS INSTANCE=> Schweitzer, Albert Schweitzer
HAS INSTANCE=> Seneca, Lucius Annaeus Seneca
HAS INSTANCE=> Socrates
HAS INSTANCE=> Spencer, Herbert Spencer
HAS INSTANCE=> Spengler, Oswald Spengler
HAS INSTANCE=> Spinoza, de Spinoza, Baruch de Spinoza, Benedict de Spinoza
HAS INSTANCE=> Steiner, Rudolf Steiner
HAS INSTANCE=> Stewart, Dugald Stewart
HAS INSTANCE=> Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore, Sir Rabindranath Tagore
HAS INSTANCE=> Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
HAS INSTANCE=> Thales, Thales of Miletus
HAS INSTANCE=> Theophrastus
HAS INSTANCE=> Weil, Simone Weil
HAS INSTANCE=> Whitehead, Alfred North Whitehead
HAS INSTANCE=> Williams, Sir Bernard Williams, Bernard Arthur Owen Williams
HAS INSTANCE=> Wittgenstein, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ludwig Josef Johan Wittgenstein
HAS INSTANCE=> Xenophanes
HAS INSTANCE=> Zeno, Zeno of Citium
HAS INSTANCE=> Zeno, Zeno of Elea
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun philosopher
2 senses of philosopher
Sense 1
philosopher
=> scholar, scholarly person, bookman, student
Sense 2
philosopher
=> person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, soul
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun philosopher
2 senses of philosopher
Sense 1
philosopher
-> scholar, scholarly person, bookman, student
=> academician, schoolman
=> alumnus, alumna, alum, graduate, grad
=> Arabist
=> bibliographer
=> bibliophile, booklover, book lover
=> Cabalist, Kabbalist
=> doctor, Dr.
=> goliard
=> historian, historiographer
=> humanist
=> initiate, learned person, pundit, savant
=> Islamist
=> licentiate
=> Masorete, Massorete, Masorite
=> master
=> mujtihad
=> musicologist
=> pedant, bookworm, scholastic
=> philomath
=> philosopher
=> postdoc, post doc
=> reader
=> Renaissance man
=> Renaissance man, generalist
=> salutatorian, salutatory speaker
=> scholiast
=> Schoolman, medieval Schoolman
=> Shakespearian, Shakespearean
=> Sinologist
=> theologian, theologist, theologizer, theologiser
=> valedictorian, valedictory speaker
=> Vedist
HAS INSTANCE=> Crichton, James Crichton, The Admirable Crichton
HAS INSTANCE=> Lorenzo de'Medici, Lorenzo the Magnificent
HAS INSTANCE=> Malone, Edmund Malone, Edmond Malone
HAS INSTANCE=> Varro, Marcus Terentius Varro
Sense 2
philosopher
-> person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, soul
=> self
=> adult, grownup
=> adventurer, venturer
=> anomaly, unusual person
=> applicant, applier
=> appointee, appointment
=> capitalist
=> captor, capturer
=> changer, modifier
=> color-blind person
=> commoner, common man, common person
=> communicator
=> contestant
=> coward
=> creator
=> disputant, controversialist, eristic
=> engineer, applied scientist, technologist
=> entertainer
=> experimenter
=> expert
=> face
=> female, female person
=> individualist
=> inhabitant, habitant, dweller, denizen, indweller
=> native, indigen, indigene, aborigine, aboriginal
=> native
=> innocent, inexperienced person
=> intellectual, intellect
=> juvenile, juvenile person
=> lover
=> loved one
=> leader
=> male, male person
=> money handler, money dealer
=> national, subject
=> nonreligious person
=> nonworker
=> peer, equal, match, compeer
=> perceiver, percipient, observer, beholder
=> percher
=> precursor, forerunner
=> primitive, primitive person
=> religious person
=> sensualist
=> traveler, traveller
=> unfortunate, unfortunate person
=> unwelcome person, persona non grata
=> unskilled person
=> worker
=> African
=> person of color, person of colour
=> Black, Black person, blackamoor, Negro, Negroid
=> White, White person, Caucasian
=> Amerindian, Native American
=> Slav
=> gentile
=> Jew, Hebrew, Israelite
=> Aries, Ram
=> Taurus, Bull
=> Gemini, Twin
=> Cancer, Crab
=> Leo, Lion
=> Virgo, Virgin
=> Libra, Balance
=> Scorpio, Scorpion
=> Sagittarius, Archer
=> Capricorn, Goat
=> Aquarius, Water Bearer
=> Pisces, Fish
=> abator
=> abjurer
=> abomination
=> abstainer, abstinent, nondrinker
=> achiever, winner, success, succeeder
=> acquaintance, friend
=> acquirer
=> active
=> actor, doer, worker
=> adjudicator
=> admirer
=> adoptee
=> adversary, antagonist, opponent, opposer, resister
=> advisee
=> advocate, advocator, proponent, exponent
=> affiant
=> agnostic, doubter
=> amateur
=> ancient
=> anti
=> anti-American
=> apprehender
=> appreciator
=> archaist
=> arrogator
=> assessee
=> asthmatic
=> authority
=> autodidact
=> baby boomer, boomer
=> baby buster, buster
=> bad guy
=> bad person
=> baldhead, baldpate, baldy
=> balker, baulker, noncompliant
=> bullfighter, toreador
=> bather
=> beard
=> bedfellow
=> bereaved, bereaved person
=> best, topper
=> birth
=> biter
=> blogger
=> blond, blonde
=> bluecoat
=> bodybuilder, muscle builder, muscle-builder, musclebuilder, muscleman
=> bomber
=> brunet, brunette
=> buster
=> candidate, prospect
=> case
=> cashier
=> celebrant, celebrator, celebrater
=> censor
=> chameleon
=> charmer, beguiler
=> child, baby
=> chutzpanik
=> closer
=> clumsy person
=> collector, aggregator
=> combatant, battler, belligerent, fighter, scrapper
=> complexifier
=> compulsive
=> computer user
=> contemplative
=> convert
=> copycat, imitator, emulator, ape, aper
=> counter
=> counterterrorist
=> crawler, creeper
=> creature, wight
=> creditor
=> cripple
=> dancer, social dancer
=> dead person, dead soul, deceased person, deceased, decedent, departed
=> deaf person
=> debaser, degrader
=> debtor, debitor
=> defecator, voider, shitter
=> delayer
=> deliverer
=> demander
=> dieter
=> differentiator, discriminator
=> disentangler, unraveler, unraveller
=> dissenter, dissident, protester, objector, contestant
=> divider
=> domestic partner, significant other, spousal equivalent, spouse equivalent
=> double, image, look-alike
=> dresser
=> dribbler, driveller, slobberer, drooler
=> drug user, substance abuser, user
=> dyslectic
=> ectomorph
=> effecter, effector
=> Elizabethan
=> emotional person
=> endomorph
=> enjoyer
=> enrollee
=> ethnic
=> explorer, adventurer
=> extrovert, extravert
=> faddist
=> faller
=> fastener
=> fiduciary
=> first-rater
=> follower
=> free agent, free spirit, freewheeler
=> friend
=> fugitive, runaway, fleer
=> gainer
=> gainer, weight gainer
=> gambler
=> gatekeeper
=> gatherer
=> good guy
=> good person
=> granter
=> greeter, saluter, welcomer
=> grinner
=> groaner
=> grunter
=> guesser
=> handicapped person
=> hater
=> heterosexual, heterosexual person, straight person, straight
=> homosexual, homophile, homo, gay
=> homunculus
=> hope
=> hoper
=> huddler
=> hugger
=> immune
=> insured, insured person
=> interpreter
=> introvert
=> Jat
=> jewel, gem
=> jumper
=> junior
=> killer, slayer
=> relative, relation
=> kink
=> kneeler
=> knocker
=> knower, apprehender
=> large person
=> Latin
=> laugher
=> learner, scholar, assimilator
=> left-hander, lefty, southpaw
=> life
=> lightning rod
=> linguist, polyglot
=> literate, literate person
=> liver
=> longer, thirster, yearner
=> loose cannon
=> machine
=> mailer
=> malcontent
=> man
=> manipulator
=> man jack
=> married
=> masturbator, onanist
=> measurer
=> nonmember
=> mesomorph
=> mestizo, ladino
=> middlebrow
=> miracle man, miracle worker
=> misogamist
=> mixed-blood
=> modern
=> monolingual
=> mother hen
=> mouse
=> mutilator, maimer, mangler
=> namer
=> namesake
=> neglecter
=> neighbor, neighbour
=> neutral
=> nondescript
=> nonparticipant
=> nonpartisan, nonpartizan
=> nonperson, unperson
=> nonresident
=> nonsmoker
=> nude, nude person
=> nurser
=> occultist
=> optimist
=> orphan
=> ostrich
=> ouster, ejector
=> outcaste
=> outdoorsman
=> owner, possessor
=> pamperer, spoiler, coddler, mollycoddler
=> pansexual
=> pardoner, forgiver, excuser
=> partner
=> party
=> passer
=> personage
=> personification
=> perspirer, sweater
=> philosopher
=> picker, chooser, selector
=> pisser, urinator
=> planner, contriver, deviser
=> player
=> posturer
=> powderer
=> preserver
=> propositus
=> public relations person
=> pursuer
=> pussycat
=> quarter
=> quitter
=> radical
=> realist
=> rectifier
=> redhead, redheader, red-header, carrottop
=> registrant
=> reliever, allayer, comforter
=> repeater
=> rescuer, recoverer, saver
=> rester
=> restrainer, controller
=> revenant
=> rich person, wealthy person, have
=> right-hander, right hander, righthander
=> riser
=> romper
=> roundhead
=> ruler, swayer
=> rusher
=> scientist
=> scratcher
=> second-rater, mediocrity
=> seeder, cloud seeder
=> seeker, searcher, quester
=> segregate
=> sentimentalist, romanticist
=> sex object
=> sex symbol
=> shaker, mover and shaker
=> showman
=> signer, signatory
=> simpleton, simple
=> six-footer
=> skidder, slider, slipper
=> slave
=> slave
=> sleepyhead
=> sloucher
=> small person
=> smasher
=> smiler
=> sneezer
=> sniffer
=> sniffler, sniveler
=> snuffer
=> snuffler
=> socializer, socialiser
=> sort
=> sounding board
=> sphinx
=> spitter, expectorator
=> sport
=> sprawler
=> spurner
=> squinter, squint-eye
=> stifler, smotherer
=> stigmatic, stigmatist
=> stooper
=> stranger
=> struggler
=> subject, case, guinea pig
=> supernumerary
=> surrenderer, yielder
=> survivalist
=> survivor
=> suspect
=> tagger
=> tagger
=> tapper
=> tempter
=> termer
=> terror, scourge, threat
=> testator, testate
=> thin person, skin and bones, scrag
=> third-rater
=> thrower
=> tiger
=> totemist
=> toucher
=> transfer, transferee
=> transsexual, transexual
=> transvestite, cross-dresser
=> trier, attempter, essayer
=> turner
=> tyrant
=> undoer, opener, unfastener, untier
=> user
=> vanisher
=> victim, dupe
=> Victorian
=> visionary
=> visually impaired person
=> waiter
=> waker
=> walk-in
=> wanter, needer
=> ward
=> warrior
=> watcher
=> weakling, doormat, wuss
=> weasel
=> wiggler, wriggler, squirmer
=> winker
=> withholder
=> witness
=> worldling
=> yawner
--- Grep of noun philosopher
existential philosopher
existentialist philosopher
philosopher
philosopher's stone
philosopher's wool
philosophers' stone
philosophers' wool
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Wikipedia - Damo (philosopher)
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Wikipedia - Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers
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Wikipedia - Directory of American Philosophers
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Wikipedia - Encyclopedia of Concise Concepts by Women Philosophers -- Online encyclopedia
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Wikipedia - Francesco Algarotti -- Italian philosopher
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Wikipedia - Francis Anderson (philosopher)
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Wikipedia - International Directory of Philosophy and Philosophers
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Wikipedia - Leon MacLaren -- British philosopher
Wikipedia - Leon of Salamis -- Greek philosopher
Wikipedia - Leontion -- Ancient greek philosopher
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Wikipedia - Leo Strauss -- German-American political philosopher
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Wikipedia - Leslie Francis -- American philosopher
Wikipedia - Leslie Green (philosopher)
Wikipedia - Lev Shestov -- Russian existentialist philosopher (1866 - 1938)
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Wikipedia - L. Gordon Graham -- British philosopher
Wikipedia - Li Ao (philosopher)
Wikipedia - Library of Living Philosophers
Wikipedia - Li Da (philosopher)
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Wikipedia - Linda Zagzebski -- American philosopher
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Wikipedia - Lisa Shapiro -- American philosopher
Wikipedia - List of Afghan philosophers
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Wikipedia - List of analytic philosophers
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Wikipedia - List of Armenian philosophers
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Wikipedia - List of philosophers born in the 11th through 14th centuries
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Wikipedia - List of philosophers (DH)
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Wikipedia - List of philosophers (R-Z) -- Wikipedia list article
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Wikipedia - Lists of philosophers -- Wikipedia list article
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John Stuart Mill ::: Born: May 20, 1806; Died: May 8, 1873; Occupation: Philosopher;
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola ::: Born: February 24, 1463; Died: November 17, 1494; Occupation: Philosopher;
Ludwig von Mises ::: Born: September 29, 1881; Died: October 10, 1973; Occupation: Philosopher;
George Edward Moore ::: Born: November 4, 1873; Died: October 24, 1958; Occupation: Philosopher;
Jean Baudrillard ::: Born: July 27, 1929; Died: March 6, 2007; Occupation: Philosopher;
Thomas Nagel ::: Born: July 4, 1937; Occupation: Philosopher;
Ted Nelson ::: Born: June 17, 1937; Occupation: Philosopher;
Pierre Bayle ::: Born: November 18, 1647; Died: December 28, 1706; Occupation: Philosopher;
Michael Novak ::: Born: September 9, 1933; Died: February 17, 2017; Occupation: Philosopher;
Robert Nozick ::: Born: November 16, 1938; Died: January 23, 2002; Occupation: Philosopher;
Michel Onfray ::: Born: January 1, 1959; Occupation: Philosopher;
Leonard Peikoff ::: Born: October 15, 1933; Occupation: Philosopher;
Charles Sanders Peirce ::: Born: September 10, 1839; Died: April 19, 1914; Occupation: Philosopher;
Karl Popper ::: Born: July 28, 1902; Died: September 17, 1994; Occupation: Philosopher;
Pythagoras ::: Born: 571 BC; Died: 495 BC; Occupation: Philosopher;
Willard Van Orman Quine ::: Born: June 25, 1908; Died: December 25, 2000; Occupation: Philosopher;
John Rawls ::: Born: February 21, 1921; Died: November 24, 2002; Occupation: Philosopher;
Thomas Reid ::: Born: April 26, 1710; Died: October 7, 1796; Occupation: Philosopher;
Ernest Renan ::: Born: February 28, 1823; Died: October 12, 1892; Occupation: Philosopher;
Mortimer Adler ::: Born: December 28, 1902; Died: June 28, 2001; Occupation: Philosopher;
Paul Ricoeur ::: Born: February 27, 1913; Died: May 20, 2005; Occupation: Philosopher;
Jeremy Bentham ::: Born: February 15, 1748; Died: June 6, 1832; Occupation: Philosopher;
Nikolai Berdyaev ::: Born: March 18, 1874; Died: March 23, 1948; Occupation: Philosopher;
Richard Rorty ::: Born: October 4, 1931; Died: June 8, 2007; Occupation: Philosopher;
Jean-Jacques Rousseau ::: Born: June 28, 1712; Died: July 2, 1778; Occupation: Philosopher;
Bertrand Russell ::: Born: May 18, 1872; Died: February 2, 1970; Occupation: Philosopher;
Henri Bergson ::: Born: October 18, 1859; Died: January 4, 1941; Occupation: Philosopher;
George Berkeley ::: Born: March 12, 1685; Died: January 12, 1753; Occupation: Philosopher;
Marquis de Sade ::: Born: June 2, 1740; Died: December 2, 1814; Occupation: Philosopher;
Michael Sandel ::: Born: March 5, 1953; Occupation: Philosopher;
Isaiah Berlin ::: Born: June 6, 1909; Died: November 5, 1997; Occupation: Philosopher;
George Santayana ::: Born: December 16, 1863; Died: September 26, 1952; Occupation: Philosopher;
Jean-Paul Sartre ::: Born: June 21, 1905; Died: April 15, 1980; Occupation: Philosopher;
Arthur Schopenhauer ::: Born: February 22, 1788; Died: September 21, 1860; Occupation: Philosopher;
John Searle ::: Born: July 31, 1932; Occupation: Philosopher;
Hu Shih ::: Born: December 17, 1891; Died: February 24, 1962; Occupation: Philosopher;
Georg Simmel ::: Born: March 1, 1858; Died: September 28, 1918; Occupation: Philosopher;
Peter Singer ::: Born: July 6, 1946; Occupation: Philosopher;
Adam Smith ::: Born: June 5, 1723; Died: July 17, 1790; Occupation: Philosopher;
Herbert Spencer ::: Born: April 27, 1820; Died: December 8, 1903; Occupation: Philosopher;
Oswald Spengler ::: Born: May 29, 1880; Died: May 8, 1936; Occupation: Philosopher;
Baruch Spinoza ::: Born: November 24, 1632; Died: February 21, 1677; Occupation: Philosopher;
Lysander Spooner ::: Born: January 19, 1808; Died: May 14, 1887; Occupation: Philosopher;
Edith Stein ::: Born: October 12, 1891; Died: August 9, 1942; Occupation: Philosopher;
Rudolf Steiner ::: Born: February 27, 1861; Died: March 30, 1925; Occupation: Philosopher;
Max Stirner ::: Born: October 25, 1806; Died: June 26, 1856; Occupation: Philosopher;
Paul Tillich ::: Born: August 20, 1886; Died: October 22, 1965; Occupation: Philosopher;
Roberto Unger ::: Born: March 24, 1947; Occupation: Philosopher;
Jean Vanier ::: Born: September 10, 1928; Occupation: Philosopher;
Giambattista Vico ::: Born: June 23, 1668; Died: January 21, 1744; Occupation: Philosopher;
Allan Bloom ::: Born: September 14, 1930; Died: October 7, 1992; Occupation: Philosopher;
Alan Watts ::: Born: January 6, 1915; Died: November 16, 1973; Occupation: Philosopher;
Simone Weil ::: Born: February 3, 1909; Died: August 24, 1943; Occupation: Philosopher;
Adam Weishaupt ::: Born: February 6, 1748; Died: November 18, 1830; Occupation: Philosopher;
Cornel West ::: Born: June 2, 1953; Occupation: Philosopher;
Dallas Willard ::: Born: September 4, 1935; Died: May 8, 2013; Occupation: Philosopher;
Bernard Williams ::: Born: September 21, 1929; Died: June 10, 2003; Occupation: Philosopher;
Boethius ::: Born: 480; Died: 524; Occupation: Philosopher;
Ludwig Wittgenstein ::: Born: April 26, 1889; Died: April 29, 1951; Occupation: Philosopher;
Sissela Bok ::: Born: December 2, 1934; Occupation: Philosopher;
John Wycliffe ::: Born: 1320; Died: December 30, 1384; Occupation: Philosopher;
Francis Parker Yockey ::: Born: September 18, 1917; Died: June 16, 1960; Occupation: Philosopher;
Luce Irigaray ::: Born: May 3, 1930; Occupation: Philosopher;
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A.C. Grayling ::: Born: April 3, 1949; Occupation: Philosopher;
Carl Schmitt ::: Born: July 11, 1888; Died: April 7, 1985; Occupation: Philosopher;
Julia Kristeva ::: Born: June 24, 1941; Occupation: Philosopher;
F. H. Bradley ::: Born: January 30, 1846; Died: September 18, 1924; Occupation: Philosopher;
Plotinus ::: Born: 204; Died: 270; Occupation: Philosopher;
Ludwig Feuerbach ::: Born: July 28, 1804; Died: September 13, 1872; Occupation: Philosopher;
Martha C. Nussbaum ::: Born: May 6, 1947; Occupation: Philosopher;
Emmanuel Levinas ::: Born: January 12, 1906; Died: December 25, 1995; Occupation: Philosopher;
Greg L. Bahnsen ::: Born: September 17, 1948; Died: December 11, 1995; Occupation: Philosopher;
Charles Taylor ::: Born: November 5, 1931; Occupation: Philosopher;
Wei Wu Wei ::: Born: September 14, 1895; Died: January 5, 1986; Occupation: Philosopher;
Michael Joseph Oakeshott ::: Born: December 11, 1901; Died: December 19, 1990; Occupation: Philosopher;
Giorgio Agamben ::: Born: April 22, 1942; Occupation: Philosopher;
Julius Evola ::: Born: May 19, 1898; Died: June 11, 1974; Occupation: Philosopher;
Josef Pieper ::: Born: May 4, 1904; Died: November 6, 1997; Occupation: Philosopher;
J.P. Moreland ::: Born: March 9, 1948; Occupation: Philosopher;
R.J. Rushdoony ::: Born: April 25, 1916; Died: February 8, 2001; Occupation: Philosopher;
David Abram ::: Born: June 24, 1957; Occupation: Philosopher;
Cornelius Van Til ::: Born: May 3, 1895; Died: April 17, 1987; Occupation: Philosopher;
Roger Scruton ::: Born: February 27, 1944; Occupation: Philosopher;
Laozi ::: Born: 604 BC; Died: 531 BC; Occupation: Philosopher;
William Ernest Hocking ::: Born: August 10, 1873; Died: June 12, 1966; Occupation: Philosopher;
Seneca the Younger ::: Born: 4 BC; Died: 65; Occupation: Philosopher;
Mencius ::: Born: 372 BC; Died: 289 BC; Occupation: Philosopher;
Heraclitus ::: Born: 535 BC; Died: 475 BC; Occupation: Philosopher;
Humberto Maturana ::: Born: September 14, 1928; Occupation: Philosopher;
Wang Yangming ::: Born: October 31, 1472; Died: January 9, 1529; Occupation: Philosopher;
Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet ::: Born: September 17, 1743; Died: March 28, 1794; Occupation: Philosopher;
Susanne Katherina Langer ::: Born: December 20, 1895; Died: July 17, 1985; Occupation: Philosopher;
Paul de Man ::: Born: December 6, 1919; Died: December 21, 1983; Occupation: Philosopher;
Aristippus ::: Born: 435 BC; Died: 356 BC; Occupation: Philosopher;
Zhuangzi ::: Born: 369 BC; Died: 286 BC; Occupation: Philosopher;
Charles Fourier ::: Born: April 7, 1772; Died: October 10, 1837; Occupation: Philosopher;
Georgi Plekhanov ::: Born: November 29, 1856; Died: May 30, 1918; Occupation: Philosopher;
Nikolay Chernyshevsky ::: Born: July 12, 1828; Died: October 17, 1889; Occupation: Philosopher;
Slavoj Žižek ::: Born: March 21, 1949; Occupation: Philosopher;
Raymond Aron ::: Born: March 14, 1905; Died: October 17, 1983; Occupation: Philosopher;
Andre Glucksmann ::: Born: June 19, 1937; Died: November 10, 2015; Occupation: Philosopher;
Johann Gottlieb Fichte ::: Born: May 19, 1762; Died: January 27, 1814; Occupation: Philosopher;
Jean Bodin ::: Born: 1530; Died: 1596; Occupation: Philosopher;
Etienne Gilson ::: Born: June 13, 1884; Died: September 19, 1978; Occupation: Philosopher;
Giordano Bruno ::: Born: 1548; Died: February 17, 1600; Occupation: Philosopher;
Johannes Scotus Eriugena ::: Born: 815; Died: 877; Occupation: Philosopher;
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling ::: Born: January 27, 1775; Died: August 20, 1854; Occupation: Philosopher;
Henry Sidgwick ::: Born: May 31, 1838; Died: August 28, 1900; Occupation: Philosopher;
Johann Friedrich Herbart ::: Born: May 4, 1776; Died: August 14, 1841; Occupation: Philosopher;
Al-Maʿarri ::: Born: 973; Died: 1058; Occupation: Philosopher;
Bryan Magee ::: Born: April 12, 1930; Occupation: Philosopher;
Emile Chartier ::: Born: March 3, 1868; Died: June 2, 1951; Occupation: Philosopher;
Martin Buber ::: Born: February 8, 1878; Died: June 13, 1965; Occupation: Philosopher;
Ralph Barton Perry ::: Born: July 3, 1876; Died: January 22, 1957; Occupation: Philosopher;
Gersonides ::: Born: 1288; Died: April 20, 1344; Occupation: Philosopher;
Frank P. Ramsey ::: Born: February 22, 1903; Died: January 19, 1930; Occupation: Philosopher;
Claude Adrien Helvetius ::: Born: January 26, 1715; Died: December 26, 1771; Occupation: Philosopher;
Robert Hooke ::: Born: July 28, 1635; Died: March 3, 1703; Occupation: Philosopher;
Alain de Benoist ::: Born: December 11, 1943; Occupation: Philosopher;
John Armstrong ::: Born: 1966; Occupation: British writer/philosopher;
Lanza del Vasto ::: Born: September 29, 1901; Died: January 5, 1981; Occupation: Philosopher;
Marcel Conche ::: Born: 1922; Occupation: Philosopher;
Alice von Hildebrand ::: Born: March 11, 1923; Occupation: Philosopher;
Joseph Butler ::: Born: May 18, 1692; Died: June 16, 1752; Occupation: Philosopher;
Judith Butler ::: Born: February 24, 1956; Occupation: Philosopher;
Samuel Alexander ::: Born: January 6, 1859; Died: September 13, 1938; Occupation: Philosopher;
Patricia Churchland ::: Born: July 16, 1943; Occupation: Philosopher;
William Lane Craig ::: Born: August 23, 1949; Occupation: Philosopher;
Protagoras ::: Born: 490 BC; Died: 420 BC; Occupation: Philosopher;
Otto Neurath ::: Born: December 10, 1882; Died: December 22, 1945; Occupation: Philosopher;
Ibn Arabi ::: Born: July 25, 1165; Died: November 8, 1240; Occupation: Philosopher;
Douglas Harding ::: Born: February 12, 1909; Died: January 11, 2007; Occupation: Philosopher;
James Rachels ::: Born: May 30, 1941; Died: September 5, 2003; Occupation: Philosopher;
Ernst Haeckel ::: Born: February 16, 1834; Died: August 9, 1919; Occupation: Philosopher;
Johann Gottfried Herder ::: Born: August 25, 1744; Died: December 18, 1803; Occupation: Philosopher;
Josiah Royce ::: Born: November 20, 1855; Died: September 14, 1916; Occupation: Philosopher;
Proclus ::: Born: February 8, 412; Died: April 17, 485; Occupation: Philosopher;
Han Fei ::: Born: 280 BC; Died: 233 BC; Occupation: Philosopher;
Jean Meslier ::: Born: June 15, 1664; Died: June 17, 1729; Occupation: Philosopher;
Hans Reichenbach ::: Born: September 26, 1891; Died: April 9, 1953; Occupation: Philosopher;
Adi Shankara ::: Born: 788; Died: 820; Occupation: Philosopher;
Zhang Zai ::: Born: 1020; Died: 1077; Occupation: Philosopher;
Pandurang Shastri Athavale ::: Born: October 19, 1920; Died: October 25, 2003; Occupation: Philosopher;
Thomas Carlyle ::: Born: December 4, 1795; Died: February 5, 1881; Occupation: Philosopher;
James McCosh ::: Born: April 1, 1811; Died: November 16, 1894; Occupation: Philosopher;
Leo Strauss ::: Born: September 20, 1899; Died: October 18, 1973; Occupation: Philosopher;
Olavo de Carvalho ::: Born: April 29, 1947; Occupation: Philosopher;
Abhinavagupta ::: Born: 950; Died: 1020; Occupation: Philosopher;
Peter Deunov ::: Born: July 11, 1864; Died: December 27, 1944; Occupation: Philosopher;
Joseph Priestley ::: Born: March 24, 1733; Died: February 6, 1804; Occupation: Philosopher;
Bonaventure ::: Born: 1221; Died: July 15, 1274; Occupation: Philosopher;
Jean Guitton ::: Born: August 18, 1901; Died: March 21, 1999; Occupation: Philosopher;
Antony Flew ::: Born: February 11, 1923; Died: April 8, 2010; Occupation: Philosopher;
Colin McGinn ::: Born: March 10, 1950; Occupation: Philosopher;
Maurice Blondel ::: Born: November 2, 1861; Died: June 4, 1949; Occupation: Philosopher;
David Chalmers ::: Born: April 20, 1966; Occupation: Philosopher;
Victor Cousin ::: Born: November 28, 1792; Died: January 14, 1867; Occupation: Philosopher;
Peter Abelard ::: Born: 1079; Died: April 21, 1142; Occupation: Philosopher;
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy ::: Born: July 6, 1888; Died: February 24, 1973; Occupation: Philosopher;
Jacob Needleman ::: Born: October 6, 1934; Occupation: Philosopher;
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin ::: Born: May 1, 1881; Died: April 10, 1955; Occupation: Philosopher;
Francis Hutcheson ::: Born: August 8, 1694; Died: January 14, 1747; Occupation: Philosopher;
Eugene Gendlin ::: Born: December 25, 1926; Died: May 1, 2017; Occupation: Philosopher;
J. L. Austin ::: Born: March 26, 1911; Died: February 8, 1960; Occupation: Philosopher;
Jerry Fodor ::: Born: 1935; Occupation: Philosopher;
Michael Dummett ::: Born: June 27, 1925; Died: December 27, 2011; Occupation: Philosopher;
J. L. Mackie ::: Born: August 25, 1917; Died: December 12, 1981; Occupation: Philosopher;
Kwame Anthony Appiah ::: Born: May 8, 1954; Occupation: Philosopher;
C. D. Broad ::: Born: December 30, 1887; Died: March 11, 1971; Occupation: Philosopher;
G. E. M. Anscombe ::: Born: March 18, 1919; Died: January 5, 2001; Occupation: Philosopher;
Alasdair MacIntyre ::: Born: January 12, 1929; Occupation: Philosopher;
Derek Parfit ::: Born: December 11, 1942; Died: January 1, 2017; Occupation: Philosopher;
Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar ::: Born: May 21, 1921; Died: October 21, 1990; Occupation: Philosopher;
Corliss Lamont ::: Born: March 28, 1902; Died: April 26, 1995; Occupation: Philosopher;
Brand Blanshard ::: Born: August 27, 1892; Died: November 19, 1987; Occupation: Philosopher;
Robert Boyle ::: Born: January 25, 1627; Died: December 31, 1691; Occupation: Philosopher;
Carl Mitcham ::: Born: 1941; Occupation: Philosopher;
Averroes ::: Born: April 14, 1126; Died: December 10, 1198; Occupation: Philosopher;
Gilbert Ryle ::: Born: August 19, 1900; Died: October 6, 1976; Occupation: Philosopher;
Nicolas Malebranche ::: Born: August 6, 1638; Died: October 13, 1715; Occupation: Philosopher;
Tommaso Campanella ::: Born: September 5, 1568; Died: May 21, 1639; Occupation: Philosopher;
A.J. Ayer ::: Born: October 29, 1910; Died: June 27, 1989; Occupation: Philosopher;
Benedetto Croce ::: Born: February 25, 1866; Died: November 20, 1952; Occupation: Philosopher;
Ervin Laszlo ::: Born: May 12, 1932; Occupation: Philosopher;
Emile M. Cioran ::: Born: April 8, 1911; Died: June 20, 1995; Occupation: Philosopher;
Gustav Fechner ::: Born: April 19, 1801; Died: November 18, 1887; Occupation: Philosopher;
Ernest Nagel ::: Born: November 16, 1901; Died: September 20, 1985; Occupation: Philosopher;
Alexandre Koyre ::: Born: August 29, 1892; Died: April 28, 1964; Occupation: Philosopher;
Rudolf Carnap ::: Born: May 18, 1891; Died: September 14, 1970; Occupation: Philosopher;
Hilary Putnam ::: Born: July 31, 1926; Died: March 13, 2016; Occupation: Philosopher;
Nelson Goodman ::: Born: August 7, 1906; Died: November 25, 1998; Occupation: Philosopher;
Pierre Duhem ::: Born: June 9, 1861; Died: September 14, 1916; Occupation: Philosopher;
Norwood Russell Hanson ::: Born: 1924; Died: 1967; Occupation: Philosopher;
Irving Copi ::: Born: July 28, 1917; Died: August 19, 2002; Occupation: Philosopher;
Alvin Plantinga ::: Born: November 15, 1932; Occupation: Philosopher;
Ananda Coomaraswamy ::: Born: August 22, 1877; Died: September 9, 1947; Occupation: Philosopher;
Cesare Beccaria ::: Born: March 15, 1738; Died: November 28, 1794; Occupation: Philosopher;
Peter van Inwagen ::: Born: September 21, 1942; Occupation: Philosopher;
Michael Ruse ::: Born: June 21, 1940; Occupation: Philosopher;
Marsilio Ficino ::: Born: October 19, 1433; Died: October 1, 1499; Occupation: Philosopher;
Ibn Taymiyyah ::: Born: January 22, 1263; Died: September 26, 1328; Occupation: Philosopher;
Friedrich Schleiermacher ::: Born: November 21, 1768; Died: February 12, 1834; Occupation: Philosopher;
Morris Raphael Cohen ::: Born: July 25, 1880; Died: January 28, 1947; Occupation: Philosopher;
Robin G. Collingwood ::: Born: February 22, 1889; Died: January 9, 1943; Occupation: Philosopher;
Moses Mendelssohn ::: Born: September 6, 1729; Died: January 4, 1786; Occupation: Philosopher;
Auguste Comte ::: Born: January 19, 1798; Died: September 5, 1857; Occupation: Philosopher;
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi ::: Born: January 25, 1743; Died: March 10, 1819; Occupation: Philosopher;
Confucius ::: Born: 551 BC; Died: 479 BC; Occupation: Philosopher;
Louis Althusser ::: Born: October 16, 1918; Died: October 22, 1990; Occupation: Philosopher;
Bertrand de Jouvenel ::: Born: October 31, 1903; Died: March 1, 1987; Occupation: Philosopher;
Antoine Destutt de Tracy ::: Born: July 20, 1754; Died: March 9, 1836; Occupation: Philosopher;
Ernest Gellner ::: Born: December 9, 1925; Died: November 5, 1995; Occupation: Philosopher;
Ernst Cassirer ::: Born: July 28, 1874; Died: April 13, 1945; Occupation: Philosopher;
Richard M. Weaver ::: Born: March 3, 1910; Died: April 1, 1963; Occupation: Philosopher;
John Zerzan ::: Born: 1943; Occupation: Philosopher;
Henry Corbin ::: Born: April 14, 1903; Died: October 7, 1978; Occupation: Philosopher;
Philo ::: Born: 25 BC; Died: 50; Occupation: Philosopher;
Nicole Oresme ::: Born: 1320; Died: July 11, 1382; Occupation: Philosopher;
Robert Paul Wolff ::: Born: December 27, 1933; Occupation: Philosopher;
Dietrich von Hildebrand ::: Born: October 12, 1889; Died: January 26, 1977; Occupation: Philosopher;
Henri Frederic Amiel ::: Born: September 28, 1821; Died: May 11, 1881; Occupation: Philosopher;
Avital Ronell ::: Born: April 15, 1952; Occupation: Philosopher;
Jacques Ranciere ::: Born: 1940; Occupation: Philosopher;
Simon Critchley ::: Born: February 27, 1960; Occupation: Philosopher;
Thomas Metzinger ::: Born: March 12, 1958; Occupation: Philosopher;
Mary Daly ::: Born: October 16, 1928; Died: January 3, 2010; Occupation: Philosopher;
Nicholas Wolterstorff ::: Born: January 21, 1932; Occupation: Philosopher;
Andre Comte-Sponville ::: Born: March 12, 1952; Occupation: Philosopher;
Anaxagoras ::: Born: 500 BC; Died: 428 BC; Occupation: Philosopher;
Thales ::: Born: 624 BC; Died: 546 BC; Occupation: Philosopher;
Max Horkheimer ::: Born: February 14, 1895; Died: July 7, 1973; Occupation: Philosopher;
Tom Regan ::: Born: November 28, 1938; Died: February 17, 2017; Occupation: Philosopher;
Anaximander ::: Born: 610 BC; Died: 546 BC; Occupation: Philosopher;
Gorgias ::: Born: 485 BC; Died: 380 BC; Occupation: Philosopher;
Chrysippus ::: Born: 279 BC; Died: 206 BC; Occupation: Philosopher;
Juan Gines de Sepulveda ::: Born: 1490; Died: November 17, 1573; Occupation: Philosopher;
Thomas Steven Molnar ::: Born: July 26, 1921; Died: July 20, 2010; Occupation: Philosopher;
Gerard van der Leeuw ::: Born: March 18, 1890; Died: November 18, 1950; Occupation: Philosopher;
Plato ::: Born: 428 BC; Died: 348 BC; Occupation: Philosopher;
Socrates ::: Born: 471 BC; Died: 399 BC; Occupation: Philosopher;
William of Ockham ::: Born: 1288; Died: April 9, 1347; Occupation: Philosopher;
Gilles Deleuze ::: Born: January 18, 1925; Died: November 4, 1995; Occupation: Philosopher;
Democritus ::: Born: 460 BC; Died: 370 BC; Occupation: Philosopher;
Daniel Dennett ::: Born: March 28, 1942; Occupation: Philosopher;
Empedocles ::: Born: 490 BC; Died: 430 BC; Occupation: Philosopher;
Jacques Derrida ::: Born: July 15, 1930; Died: October 9, 2004; Occupation: Philosopher;
Rene Descartes ::: Born: March 31, 1596; Died: February 11, 1650; Occupation: Philosopher;
John Dewey ::: Born: October 20, 1859; Died: June 1, 1952; Occupation: Philosopher;
Zeno of Elea ::: Born: 490 BC; Died: 430 BC; Occupation: Philosopher;
Denis Diderot ::: Born: October 5, 1713; Died: July 31, 1784; Occupation: Philosopher;
Diogenes ::: Born: 412 BC; Died: 323 BC; Occupation: Philosopher;
Guo Xiang ::: Born: 252; Died: 312; Occupation: Philosopher;
Parmenides ::: Born: 502 BC; Occupation: Philosopher;
Dogen ::: Born: January 19, 1200; Died: September 22, 1253; Occupation: Philosopher;
Susan Bordo ::: Born: January 24, 1947; Occupation: Philosopher;
Hans Jonas ::: Born: May 10, 1903; Died: February 5, 1993; Occupation: Philosopher;
Abul A'la Maududi ::: Born: September 25, 1903; Died: September 22, 1979; Occupation: Political philosopher;
Georges Canguilhem ::: Born: June 4, 1904; Died: September 11, 1995; Occupation: Philosopher;
Michel Serres ::: Born: September 1, 1930; Occupation: Philosopher;
Henri Lefebvre ::: Born: June 16, 1901; Died: June 29, 1991; Occupation: Philosopher;
Peter Sloterdijk ::: Born: June 26, 1947; Occupation: Philosopher;
Jean-Luc Nancy ::: Born: July 26, 1940; Occupation: Philosopher;
Keith Ward ::: Born: August 22, 1938; Occupation: Philosopher;
Mikhail Bakhtin ::: Born: November 17, 1895; Died: March 7, 1975; Occupation: Philosopher;
Marilyn Frye ::: Born: 1941; Occupation: Philosopher;
Lev Shestov ::: Born: February 13, 1866; Died: November 19, 1938; Occupation: Philosopher;
Alexandre Kojeve ::: Born: April 28, 1902; Died: June 4, 1968; Occupation: Philosopher;
Ronald Dworkin ::: Born: December 11, 1931; Died: February 14, 2013; Occupation: Philosopher;
Daniel N. Robinson ::: Born: March 9, 1937; Occupation: Philosopher;
Emmanuel Mounier ::: Born: April 1, 1905; Died: March 23, 1950; Occupation: Philosopher;
Ludwig Buchner ::: Born: March 29, 1824; Died: May 1, 1899; Occupation: Philosopher;
Cornelius Castoriadis ::: Born: March 11, 1922; Died: December 26, 1997; Occupation: Philosopher;
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak ::: Born: February 24, 1942; Occupation: Philosopher;
Franz Rosenzweig ::: Born: December 25, 1886; Died: December 10, 1929; Occupation: Philosopher;
Max Scheler ::: Born: August 22, 1874; Died: May 19, 1928; Occupation: Philosopher;
Otto Weininger ::: Born: April 3, 1880; Died: October 4, 1903; Occupation: Philosopher;
Saul Kripke ::: Born: November 13, 1940; Occupation: Philosopher;
Charles Hartshorne ::: Born: June 5, 1897; Died: October 9, 2000; Occupation: Philosopher;
Larry Laudan ::: Born: October 16, 1941; Occupation: Philosopher;
Gilbert Simondon ::: Born: October 2, 1924; Died: February 7, 1989; Occupation: Philosopher;
Lewis Gordon ::: Born: 1962; Occupation: Philosopher;
Stephen Toulmin ::: Born: March 25, 1922; Died: December 4, 2009; Occupation: Philosopher;
Nick Bostrom ::: Born: March 10, 1973; Occupation: Philosopher;
Al-Farabi ::: Born: 872; Died: 950; Occupation: Philosopher;
Al-Kindi ::: Born: 801; Died: 873; Occupation: Philosopher;
Lucian Blaga ::: Born: May 9, 1895; Died: May 6, 1961; Occupation: Philosopher;
Donald Davidson ::: Born: March 6, 1917; Died: August 30, 2003; Occupation: Philosopher;
Jacques Ellul ::: Born: January 6, 1912; Died: May 19, 1994; Occupation: Philosopher;
Michael Hardt ::: Born: 1960; Occupation: Philosopher;
David Malet Armstrong ::: Born: July 8, 1926; Died: May 13, 2014; Occupation: Philosopher;
Epictetus ::: Born: 55; Died: 135; Occupation: Philosopher;
Epicurus ::: Born: 341 BC; Died: 270 BC; Occupation: Philosopher;
Moses Hess ::: Born: January 21, 1812; Died: April 6, 1875; Occupation: Philosopher;
Emil Fackenheim ::: Born: June 22, 1916; Died: September 18, 2003; Occupation: Philosopher;
Edgar Morin ::: Born: July 8, 1921; Occupation: Philosopher;
Tzvetan Todorov ::: Born: March 1, 1939; Died: February 7, 2017; Occupation: Philosopher;
Julien Benda ::: Born: December 26, 1867; Died: June 7, 1956; Occupation: Philosopher;
Owen Barfield ::: Born: November 9, 1898; Died: December 14, 1997; Occupation: Philosopher;
Roger Garaudy ::: Born: July 17, 1913; Died: June 13, 2012; Occupation: Philosopher;
Antisthenes ::: Born: 445 BC; Died: 365 BC; Occupation: Philosopher;
Larry Sanger ::: Born: July 16, 1968; Occupation: Philosopher;
Paul Feyerabend ::: Born: January 13, 1924; Died: February 11, 1994; Occupation: Philosopher;
Yasuhiko Kimura ::: Born: 1954; Occupation: Philosopher;
Susan Neiman ::: Born: March 27, 1955; Occupation: Philosopher;
Mario Bunge ::: Born: September 21, 1919; Occupation: Philosopher;
Albert Outler ::: Born: November 17, 1908; Died: September 1, 1989; Occupation: Philosopher;
Stanley Cavell ::: Born: September 1, 1926; Occupation: Philosopher;
Leszek Kolakowski ::: Born: October 23, 1927; Died: July 17, 2009; Occupation: Philosopher;
Karl Kautsky ::: Born: October 16, 1854; Died: October 17, 1938; Occupation: Philosopher;
Louis Claude de Saint-Martin ::: Born: January 18, 1743; Died: October 13, 1803; Occupation: Philosopher;
J. J. C. Smart ::: Born: September 16, 1920; Died: October 6, 2012; Occupation: Philosopher;
Ignacio Ellacuria ::: Born: November 9, 1930; Died: November 16, 1989; Occupation: Philosopher;
Pavel Florensky ::: Born: January 21, 1882; Died: December 8, 1937; Occupation: Philosopher;
Etienne Bonnot de Condillac ::: Born: September 30, 1714; Died: August 3, 1780; Occupation: Philosopher;
Eric Voegelin ::: Born: January 3, 1901; Died: January 19, 1985; Occupation: Philosopher;
Bruno Bauer ::: Born: September 6, 1809; Died: April 13, 1882; Occupation: Philosopher;
Renzo Novatore ::: Born: May 12, 1890; Died: November 29, 1922; Occupation: Philosopher;
Michel Foucault ::: Born: October 15, 1926; Died: June 25, 1984; Occupation: Philosopher;
Norman Geisler ::: Born: July 21, 1932; Occupation: Philosopher;
John D. Caputo ::: Born: October 26, 1940; Occupation: Philosopher;
Hannah Arendt ::: Born: October 14, 1906; Died: December 4, 1975; Occupation: Philosopher;
Aristotle ::: Born: 384 BC; Died: 322 BC; Occupation: Philosopher;
Hans-Georg Gadamer ::: Born: February 11, 1900; Died: March 13, 2002; Occupation: Philosopher;
Anthony John Patrick Kenny ::: Born: March 16, 1931; Occupation: Philosopher;
Francis J. Beckwith ::: Born: 1960; Occupation: Philosopher;
Jose Ortega y Gasset ::: Born: May 9, 1883; Died: October 18, 1955; Occupation: Philosopher;
David Schmidtz ::: Born: 1955; Occupation: Philosopher;
Maxine Greene ::: Born: December 23, 1917; Died: May 29, 2014; Occupation: Philosopher;
Gyorgy Lukacs ::: Born: April 13, 1885; Died: June 4, 1971; Occupation: Philosopher;
Cleanthes ::: Born: 330 BC; Died: 233 BC; Occupation: Philosopher;
Antonio Negri ::: Born: August 1, 1933; Occupation: Philosopher;
Quentin Smith ::: Born: August 27, 1952; Occupation: Philosopher;
John Macquarrie ::: Born: June 27, 1919; Died: May 28, 2007; Occupation: Philosopher;
Vishal Mangalwadi ::: Born: 1949; Occupation: Philosopher;
Bernard Stiegler ::: Born: April 1, 1952; Occupation: Philosopher;
Phineas Quimby ::: Born: February 16, 1802; Died: January 16, 1866; Occupation: Philosopher;
Apollonius of Tyana ::: Born: 15; Died: 100; Occupation: Philosopher;
Robert Grosseteste ::: Born: 1175; Died: October 9, 1253; Occupation: Philosopher;
Sidney Morgenbesser ::: Born: September 22, 1921; Died: August 1, 2004; Occupation: Philosopher;
Jurgen Habermas ::: Born: June 18, 1929; Occupation: Philosopher;
Ian Hacking ::: Born: February 18, 1936; Occupation: Philosopher;
Michael Walzer ::: Born: March 3, 1935; Occupation: Philosopher;
Johann Georg Hamann ::: Born: August 27, 1730; Died: June 21, 1788; Occupation: Philosopher;
Asvaghosa ::: Born: 80; Died: 150; Occupation: Philosopher;
Adelard of Bath ::: Born: 1080; Died: 1152; Occupation: Philosopher;
Bernard Lonergan ::: Born: December 17, 1904; Died: November 26, 1984; Occupation: Philosopher;
Richard Shusterman ::: Born: 1949; Occupation: Philosopher;
Gary Gutting ::: Born: April 11, 1942; Occupation: Philosopher;
T. M. Scanlon ::: Born: June 28, 1940; Occupation: Philosopher;
Antoine Arnauld ::: Born: February 16, 1612; Died: August 8, 1694; Occupation: Philosopher;
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ::: Born: August 27, 1770; Died: November 14, 1831; Occupation: Philosopher;
Martin Heidegger ::: Born: September 26, 1889; Died: May 26, 1976; Occupation: Philosopher;
Renata Salecl ::: Born: 1962; Occupation: Philosopher;
Sri Aurobindo ::: Born: August 15, 1872; Died: December 5, 1950; Occupation: Philosopher;
Thomas Hobbes ::: Born: April 5, 1588; Died: December 4, 1679; Occupation: Philosopher;
Eric Hoffer ::: Born: July 25, 1902; Died: May 21, 1983; Occupation: Philosopher;
Vilem Flusser ::: Born: May 12, 1920; Died: November 27, 1991; Occupation: Philosopher;
Keshub Chandra Sen ::: Born: November 19, 1838; Died: January 8, 1884; Occupation: Philosopher;
Avicenna ::: Born: August 980; Occupation: Philosopher;
Sidney Hook ::: Born: December 20, 1902; Died: July 12, 1989; Occupation: Philosopher;
Thomas Pogge ::: Born: August 13, 1953; Occupation: Philosopher;
Wilhelm von Humboldt ::: Born: June 22, 1767; Died: April 8, 1835; Occupation: Philosopher;
David Hume ::: Born: May 7, 1711; Died: August 25, 1776; Occupation: Philosopher;
Edmund Husserl ::: Born: April 8, 1859; Died: April 26, 1938; Occupation: Philosopher;
Hypatia ::: Born: 350; Died: March 8, 415; Occupation: Philosopher;
Max Black ::: Born: February 24, 1909; Died: August 27, 1988; Occupation: Philosopher;
Ivan Illich ::: Born: September 4, 1926; Died: December 2, 2002; Occupation: Philosopher;
Muhammad Iqbal ::: Born: November 9, 1877; Died: April 21, 1938; Occupation: Philosopher;
Raymond Geuss ::: Born: 1946; Occupation: Philosopher;
Michel Aflaq ::: Born: 1910; Died: June 23, 1989; Occupation: Philosopher;
William James ::: Born: January 11, 1842; Died: August 26, 1910; Occupation: Philosopher;
Pierre Hadot ::: Born: February 21, 1922; Died: April 24, 2010; Occupation: Philosopher;
Gaston Bachelard ::: Born: June 27, 1884; Died: October 16, 1962; Occupation: Philosopher;
Ray Brassier ::: Born: 1965; Occupation: Philosopher;
Roger Bacon ::: Born: 1214; Died: 1294; Occupation: Philosopher;
Alain Badiou ::: Born: January 17, 1937; Occupation: Philosopher;
Wilfrid Sellars ::: Born: May 20, 1912; Died: July 2, 1989; Occupation: Philosopher;
Immanuel Kant ::: Born: April 22, 1724; Died: February 12, 1804; Occupation: Philosopher;
Walter Kaufmann ::: Born: July 1, 1921; Died: September 4, 1980; Occupation: Philosopher;
Omar Khayyam ::: Born: May 18, 1048; Died: December 4, 1131; Occupation: Philosopher;
Soren Kierkegaard ::: Born: May 5, 1813; Died: November 11, 1855; Occupation: Philosopher;
Alfred Korzybski ::: Born: July 3, 1879; Died: March 1, 1950; Occupation: Philosopher;
Imre Lakatos ::: Born: November 9, 1922; Died: February 2, 1974; Occupation: Philosopher;
George Henry Lewes ::: Born: April 18, 1817; Died: November 28, 1878; Occupation: Philosopher;
John Locke ::: Born: August 29, 1632; Died: October 28, 1704; Occupation: Philosopher;
Rosa Luxemburg ::: Born: March 5, 1871; Died: January 15, 1919; Occupation: Philosopher;
Jean-Francois Lyotard ::: Born: August 10, 1924; Died: April 21, 1998; Occupation: Philosopher;
Maimonides ::: Born: March 30, 1135; Died: December 12, 1204; Occupation: Philosopher;
Joseph de Maistre ::: Born: April 1, 1753; Died: February 26, 1821; Occupation: Philosopher;
Bernard de Mandeville ::: Born: November 15, 1670; Died: January 21, 1733; Occupation: Philosopher;
Gabriel Marcel ::: Born: December 7, 1889; Died: October 8, 1973; Occupation: Philosopher;
Herbert Marcuse ::: Born: July 19, 1898; Died: June 29, 1979; Occupation: Philosopher;
Jacques Maritain ::: Born: November 18, 1882; Died: April 28, 1973; Occupation: Philosopher;
Roberto Esposito ::: Born: 1950; Occupation: Philosopher;
Elliott Sober ::: Born: June 6, 1948; Occupation: Philosopher;
Karl Marx ::: Born: May 5, 1818; Died: March 14, 1883; Occupation: Philosopher;
Terence McKenna ::: Born: November 16, 1946; Died: April 3, 2000; Occupation: Philosopher;
Marshall McLuhan ::: Born: July 21, 1911; Died: December 31, 1980; Occupation: Philosopher;
Roland Barthes ::: Born: November 12, 1915; Died: March 25, 1980; Occupation: Philosopher;
George H. Mead ::: Born: February 27, 1863; Died: April 26, 1931; Occupation: Philosopher;
Maurice Merleau-Ponty ::: Born: March 14, 1908; Died: May 3, 1961; Occupation: Philosopher;
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The Eddie Lawrence Show (1963 - 1963) - Local:WPIX TV Ch.11 NYC Weekday evenings:Monday September 3,1963-November,1963. Host/Performer:"The Old Philosopher":Eddie Lawrence
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A Touch of Spice (2003) ::: 7.5/10 -- Politiki kouzina (original title) -- A Touch of Spice Poster "A Touch of Spice" is a story about a young Greek boy (Fanis) growing up in Istanbul, whose grandfather, a culinary philosopher and mentor,teaches him that both food and life require a ... S Director: Tassos Boulmetis Writer: Tassos Boulmetis
Being in the World (2010) ::: 7.4/10 -- Unrated | 1h 21min | Documentary | 2010 (USA) -- BEING IN THE WORLD takes us on a journey around the world to meet philosophers influenced by the thought of Martin Heidegger, as well as experts in the fields of sports, music, craft, and ... S Director: Tao Ruspoli Stars:
Diva (1981) ::: 7.1/10 -- R | 1h 57min | Music, Thriller | 23 April 1982 (USA) -- Two tapes, two Parisian mob killers, one corrupt policeman, an opera fan, a teenage thief, and the coolest philosopher ever filmed all twist their way through an intricate and stylish French-language thriller. Director: Jean-Jacques Beineix Writers:
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood ::: Hagane no renkinjutsushi (original tit ::: TV-14 | 24min | Animation, Action, Adventure | TV Series (2009-2012) Episode Guide 69 episodes Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Poster -- Two brothers search for a Philosopher's Stone after an attempt to revive their deceased mother goes awry and leaves them in damaged physical forms. Creator:
Fullmetal Alchemist ::: Hagane no renkinjutsushi (original tit ::: TV-PG | 24min | Animation, Action, Adventure | TV Series (2003-2004) Episode Guide 51 episodes Fullmetal Alchemist Poster -- When a failed alchemical ritual leaves brothers Edward and Alphonse Elric with severely damaged bodies, they begin searching for the one thing that can save them; the fabled philosopher's stone. Stars:
Hannah Arendt (2012) ::: 7.1/10 -- Not Rated | 1h 53min | Biography, Drama | 10 January 2013 (Germany) -- A look at the life of philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt, who reported for 'The New Yorker' on the trial of the Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Director: Margarethe von Trotta Writers:
The Librarian III: The Curse of the Judas Chalice (2008) ::: 6.5/10 -- The Librarian: The Curse of the Judas Chalice (original title) -- The Librarian III: The Curse of the Judas Chalice Poster -- Losing his girlfriend because he was at an auction dramatically getting the magical philosopher's stone instead of a date, he needs a vacation - New Orleans but finds himself busy saving Earth from the curse of the Judas chalice/vampires. Director: Jonathan Frakes
When Nietzsche Wept (2007) ::: 6.5/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 45min | Drama | 2 August 2007 (Israel) -- Viennese doctor Josef Breuer meets with philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche to help him deal with his despair. Director: Pinchas Perry Writers: Pinchas Perry, Irvin D. Yalom (novel) (as Irvin Yalom) Stars:
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Fullmetal Alchemist -- -- Bones -- 51 eps -- Manga -- Action Adventure Comedy Drama Fantasy Magic Military Shounen -- Fullmetal Alchemist Fullmetal Alchemist -- Edward Elric, a young, brilliant alchemist, has lost much in his twelve-year life: when he and his brother Alphonse try to resurrect their dead mother through the forbidden act of human transmutation, Edward loses his brother as well as two of his limbs. With his supreme alchemy skills, Edward binds Alphonse's soul to a large suit of armor. -- -- A year later, Edward, now promoted to the fullmetal alchemist of the state, embarks on a journey with his younger brother to obtain the Philosopher's Stone. The fabled mythical object is rumored to be capable of amplifying an alchemist's abilities by leaps and bounds, thus allowing them to override the fundamental law of alchemy: to gain something, an alchemist must sacrifice something of equal value. Edward hopes to draw into the military's resources to find the fabled stone and restore his and Alphonse's bodies to normal. However, the Elric brothers soon discover that there is more to the legendary stone than meets the eye, as they are led to the epicenter of a far darker battle than they could have ever imagined. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America, Funimation -- 1,197,219 8.15
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood -- -- Bones -- 64 eps -- Manga -- Action Military Adventure Comedy Drama Magic Fantasy Shounen -- Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood -- "In order for something to be obtained, something of equal value must be lost." -- -- Alchemy is bound by this Law of Equivalent Exchange—something the young brothers Edward and Alphonse Elric only realize after attempting human transmutation: the one forbidden act of alchemy. They pay a terrible price for their transgression—Edward loses his left leg, Alphonse his physical body. It is only by the desperate sacrifice of Edward's right arm that he is able to affix Alphonse's soul to a suit of armor. Devastated and alone, it is the hope that they would both eventually return to their original bodies that gives Edward the inspiration to obtain metal limbs called "automail" and become a state alchemist, the Fullmetal Alchemist. -- -- Three years of searching later, the brothers seek the Philosopher's Stone, a mythical relic that allows an alchemist to overcome the Law of Equivalent Exchange. Even with military allies Colonel Roy Mustang, Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye, and Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes on their side, the brothers find themselves caught up in a nationwide conspiracy that leads them not only to the true nature of the elusive Philosopher's Stone, but their country's murky history as well. In between finding a serial killer and racing against time, Edward and Alphonse must ask themselves if what they are doing will make them human again... or take away their humanity. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America, Funimation -- 2,372,958 9.18
Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos -- -- Bones -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Adventure Comedy Drama Fantasy Magic Military Shounen -- Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos -- Chasing a runaway alchemist with strange powers, brothers Edward and Alphonse Elric stumble into the squalid valley of the Milos. The Milosians are an oppressed group that seek to reclaim their holy land from Creta: a militaristic country that forcefully annexed their nation. In the eye of the political storm is a girl named Julia Crichton, who emphatically wishes for the Milos to regain their strength and return to being a nation of peace. -- -- Befriending the girl, Edward and Alphonse find themselves in the midst of a rising resistance that involves the use of the very object they have been seeking all along—the Philosopher's Stone. However, their past experiences with the stone cause them reservation, and the brothers are unwilling to help. -- -- But as they discover the secrets behind Creta's intentions and questionable history, the brothers are drawn into the battle between the rebellious Milos, who desire their liberty, and the Cretan military, who seek absolute power. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- Movie - Jul 2, 2011 -- 154,554 7.31
Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos -- -- Bones -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Adventure Comedy Drama Fantasy Magic Military Shounen -- Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos -- Chasing a runaway alchemist with strange powers, brothers Edward and Alphonse Elric stumble into the squalid valley of the Milos. The Milosians are an oppressed group that seek to reclaim their holy land from Creta: a militaristic country that forcefully annexed their nation. In the eye of the political storm is a girl named Julia Crichton, who emphatically wishes for the Milos to regain their strength and return to being a nation of peace. -- -- Befriending the girl, Edward and Alphonse find themselves in the midst of a rising resistance that involves the use of the very object they have been seeking all along—the Philosopher's Stone. However, their past experiences with the stone cause them reservation, and the brothers are unwilling to help. -- -- But as they discover the secrets behind Creta's intentions and questionable history, the brothers are drawn into the battle between the rebellious Milos, who desire their liberty, and the Cretan military, who seek absolute power. -- -- Movie - Jul 2, 2011 -- 154,554 7.31
Phi Brain: Kami no Puzzle -- -- Sunrise -- 25 eps -- Original -- Action Game Mystery Shounen -- Phi Brain: Kami no Puzzle Phi Brain: Kami no Puzzle -- Kaito Daimon would be a completely average high school student except for one thing: he's a 'demon' at solving puzzles. Kaito is so brilliant, in fact, that when he's asked to take some 'special' tests of his unique ability, he immediately suspects that the test itself is a test. Kaito suddenly finds himself caught up in a lethal Philosopher's Puzzle made by the sinister group POG, a murderous maze of trap upon trap, where failing to solve the secret correctly will result in death! Fortunately, Kaito's skills prove up to the first test, both for himself and his childhood friend Nanoha, who is also caught up in the deadly scheme. But now that he has been designated as a Solver, he is pulled into a new life where he must travel the world with other Solvers, attempting to solve the latest deadly riddles left by POG. There's a new conundrum around every corner and each deception could lead to death, but once a riddle has been posed, you can count on Kaito to unfold, unravel and unlock it! -- -- (Source: Sentai Filmworks) -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- TV - Oct 2, 2011 -- 97,029 7.20
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