#theory

Theology is just not important in Judaism, or in any other religion, really. There's no orthodoxy, as you have it in the Catholic Church. No complicated creeds to which everybody must subscribe. No infallible pronouncements by a pope. Nobody can tell Jews what to believe. Within reason, you can believe what you like... We have orthopraxy instead of orthodoxy. Right practice rather then right belief. That's all. You Christians make such a fuss about theology, but it's not important in the way you think. It's just poetry, really, ways of talking about the inexpressible. ↗

— Hyam Maccoby

#christianity #judaism #practice #theory #religion

In order to disprove the assertion that all crows are black, one white crow is sufficient. ↗

— William James

#proof #religion #science #spirituality #theory

Property breeds lawyers, I said, forbearing to add a belief that unfortunately property now seemed the only thing palpable enough to demand the respect of governments, and perhaps was the generating clout against encroachments on the spiritual protections for speech, assembly, and so on. It might turn out that without the right to possess we are not sure we really have the right to speak and to be. ↗

— Arthur Miller

#property-rights #respect

In essence what relativity says is that space and time are not absolute but relative both to the observer and the thing being observed, and the faster one moves the more pronounced these effects will become. We can never accelerate ourselves to the speed of light, and the harder we try(the faster we go) the more distorted we become, relative to an outside observer. ↗

— Bill Bryson

#relativity-theory #science #science

When the critic has said everything in his power about a literary text, he has still said nothing; for the very existence of literature implies that it cannot be replaced by non-literature ↗

— TODOROV TZVETAN

#literary-theory #literature #literary-criticism

Humans do not simply, innocently, and honestly disagree with each other about the good, the just, the right, the principles and applications of moral distinction and valuation, for they are already caught, like it or not, in a complex dynamic of each other’s desires, recognition, power, and comparisons which not only relativizes moral distinctions and valuations, but makes them a constant and dangerous source of discord. ↗

— Gregory B. Sadler

#desire #disagreements #moral-theory #morality #philosophy

Sovereign is he who decides on the exception. ↗

— Carl Schmitt

#political-theory #politics #political-philosophy

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. Therefore in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests. ↗

— John Rawls

#individuals #justice #liberalism #philosophy #social-institutions

All resistance is a rupture with what is. And every rupture begins, for those engaged in it, through a rupture with oneself. ↗

— Alain Badiou

#ontology #philosophy #politics #resistance-theory #political-philosophy