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Read through the most famous quotes by topic #phil
Whence came I, whither go I? Science cannot tell us a word about why music delights us, of why and how an old song can move us to tears. Science is reticent too when it is a question of the great Unity – the One of Parmenides – of which we all somehow form part, to which we belong. The most popular name for it in our time is God – with a capital ‘G’. Whence come I and whither go I? That is the great unfathomable question, the same for every one of us. Science has no answer to it. ↗
One day in 1948 or 1949, the Brentwood County Mart, a shopping complex in an upscale neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, was the scene of a slight disturbance that carried overtones of the most spectacular upheaval in twientieth-century music. Marta Feuchtwanger, wife of émigré novelist Lion Feuchtwanger, was examining grapefruit in the produce section when she heard a voice shouting German from the far end of the aisle. She looked up to see Arnold Schoenberg, the pioneer of atonal music and the codifier of twelve-tone composition, bearing down on her, with his bald pate and burning eyes. Decades later, in conversation with the writer Lawrence Weschler, Feuchtwanger could recall every detail of the encounter, including the weight of the grapefruit in her hand. “Lies, Frau Marta, lies!” Schoenberg was yelling. “You have to know, I never had syphilis! ↗
The principle of democracy is a recognition of the sovereign, inalienable rights of man as a gift from God, the Source of law. ↗
The ideological blackmail that has been in place since the original Live Aid concerts in 1985 has insisted that ‘caring individuals’ could end famine directly, without the need for any kind of political solution or systemic reorganization. It is necessary to act straight away, we were told; politics has to be suspended in the name of ethical immediacy. Bono’s Product Red brand wanted to dispense even with the philanthropic intermediary. ‘Philanthropy is like hippy music, holding hands’, Bono proclaimed. ‘Red is more like punk rock, hip hop, this should feel like hard commerce’. The point was not to offer an alternative to capitalism - on the contrary, Product Red’s ‘punk rock’ or ‘hip hop’ character consisted in its ‘realistic’ acceptance that capitalism is the only game in town. No, the aim was only to ensure that some of the proceeds of particular transactions went to good causes. The fantasy being that western consumerism, far from being intrinsically implicated in systemic global inequalities, could itself solve them. All we have to do is buy the right products. ↗
#capitalism #capitalist-realism #charity #consumerism #cultural-capitalism
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. ↗
…let us point out precisely the difficulties of empiricism as a theory of knowledge. First, it begins with two fixed, unchangeable ultimates--mind and matter. Second, it asserts that knowledge is the agreement of ideas with each other, in which case we are not dealing with nature or things at all, and consequently, have left out one of our ultimates. Third, it then asserts (for it is essential that knowledge should somehow or other be connected with things) that knowledge consists in the agreement between an idea and a thing; and in this case we can never tell when the agreement takes place; and furthermore, it is impossible for ideas and things to disagree, for, according to the theory, ideas are copies of things. This means that empiricism can not account for the fact of error. Every theory of knowledge must make a place for error, for, as is evident, error seems to be as industrious as truth. Consequently, if knowledge actually does take place, if there is such an activity, thing, or relation as knowledge, empiricism fails to give an account of it which is free from contradictions. The moral is, as the stories in our school readers say, don't begin with fixed things, for they beguileth one into inconsistencies. ↗
Digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones. ↗
Currently spirituality is at an ebb in the more advanced technological societies. This in part because memes that validate spiritual order tend to lose their credibility with time, and need to be recast in new forms again and again. At present we are living in an era when many of the basic tenents of Christianity, which has supported Western spiritual values for almost two thousand yearsm have come into conflict with the conclusions of science and philosophy. While religions have lost much of their power, science and technology have not been able to generate convincing value systems to replace them. ↗
لقد ارتسمت حقائق الأشياء أمام أفلاطون صوراً سماوية لا تتبدل ولا تتغير , و على الأشياء و فى دنيا الطبيعة و الواقع أن تقترب من تلك النماذج ما استطاعت . كذلك ارتسمت حقائق الأشياء أمام أرسطو أجناساً و انواعاً , لكل منها تعريف ثابت ساكن أزلى أبدى , يضعه حيث هو من بقية الأشياء . لكن حقائق الأشياء لا تثبت هكذا و لا تستقر إلا حين تجمد أوضاع الحياة على حالة هادئة ساكنة يرضى عنها الإنسان . أما حين يزول عن الإنسان هذا الرضا , و يهمّ بالانتقال إلى حالة أخرى , فعنئذ تكون حقيقة الكائنات أنها تتغير , و بخاصة الإنسان . و لا يعيب الإنسان إذ هو فى مرحلة التغير , مرحلة التحول , مرحلة السفر , أن تهتز القيم و ترتجَّ المعايير , بل العيب هو ألا ترتجَّ هذه و ألا تهتز تلك .. فلا ينبغى أن تكون لشىء أو لفكرة , أو لوضع , أو لنظام , حصانة تصونه من النقد و التجريح . إن كل الأشياء و الأفكار و الأضاع و النظم تريد أن تتغير , و تتجدد , فكيف يتم لها ما تريده إذا لم تقع على أوجه النقص فيما ننقده , و نجرّحه , لكى تتكشف حقيقته و تتعرى ؟ ↗
