F! Yeah Philosophy

"There is nothing more necessary than truth, and in comparison with it everything else has only..."

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 21:27:40 -0400

“There is nothing more necessary than truth, and in comparison with it everything else has only secondary value. This absolute will to truth: what is it? Is it the will to not allow ourselves to be deceived? Is it the will not to deceive? One does not want to be deceived, under the supposition that it is injurious, dangerous, or fatal to be deceived.”

- Nietzsche

"We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever."

Sat, 12 May 2012 21:08:38 -0400

“We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.”

- Carl Sagan

"The first progressive step for a mind overwhelmed by the strangeness of things is to realize that..."

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:39:21 -0400

“The first progressive step for a mind overwhelmed by the strangeness of things is to realize that this feeling of strangeness is shared with all men and that human reality, in its entirety, suffers from the distance which separates it from the rest of the universe.”

- Albert Camus (via fuckyeahexistentialism)

"The question of love is one that cannot be evaded. Whether or not you claim to be interested in it,..."

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:38:02 -0400

“The question of love is one that cannot be evaded. Whether or not you claim to be interested in it, from the moment you are alive you are bound to be concerned with love, because love is not just something that happens to you: It is a certain special way of being alive. Love is, in fact, an intensification of life, a completeness, a fullness, a wholeness of life.”

- Thomas Merton

"God either wants to eliminate bad things and cannot, or can but does not want to, or neither wishes..."

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 16:59:43 -0400

“God either wants to eliminate bad things and cannot, or can but does not want to, or neither wishes to nor can, or both wants to and can. If he wants to and cannot, he is weak — and this does not apply to god. If he can but does not want to, then he is spiteful — which is equally foreign to god’s nature. If he neither wants to nor can, he is both weak and spiteful and so not a god. If he wants to and can, which is the only thing fitting for a god, where then do bad things come from? Or why does he not eliminate them?”

- Epicurus

Plato on Friendship and Eros

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 16:56:30 -0400

Plato on Friendship and Eros:

In the Phaedrus we find a more detailed account of the psychology and art of love than in the Symposium. This account will be our exclusive focus. The soul, whether divine or human, Socrates claims, is like “the natural union of a team of winged horses and their charioteer” (246a6–7). But whereas in a divine soul all three elements are “good and come from good stock,” in a human soul the white horse (familiar from Republic IV as the honor-loving spirited element) is “beautiful and good, and of similar stock,” while the black one (the Republic’s appetitive element) is “the opposite and of the opposite stock,” so that “the driving in our case is necessarily difficult and troublesome” (a7-b4). When spirit together with the charioteer (the Republic’s rational element, there too identified with what is truly human rather than bestial in us (588b10–589a4)) “leads us towards what is best and is in control,” we possess moderation (sôphrosunê) (237e2–3). But when “appetite drags us irrationally towards pleasures and rules in us, its rule is called excess (hubris)” (238a1–2). Of this excess, gluttony is one species, but erotic love another (238b7-c4). This is the bad kind of love—Pandemotic in the Symposium—that Lysias rightly disparages in the speech Phaedrus admires and reads to Socrates (230e6–234c5).

In Socrates’ view, however, there is also another kind of love, namely, “the madness of a man who, on seeing beauty here on earth, and being reminded of true beauty, becomes winged, and fluttering with eagerness to fly upwards, but unable to leave the ground, looks upwards like a bird, and takes no heed of things below—and that is what causes him to be regarded as mad” (249d5-e1).

(entire article at source)

“Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those...

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 16:45:22 -0400

“Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"Life must be understood backward. But it must be lived forward."

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 16:37:07 -0400

“Life must be understood backward. But it must be lived forward.”

- Søren Kierkegaard

"It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived...."

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 13:49:23 -0400

“It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear, on the contrary, that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning”

- Albert Camus

"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply..."

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 13:28:18 -0400

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”

- Siddhārtha Gautama (via faoiseamh)

"The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand..."

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:55:38 -0400

“The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.”

- Baruch Spinoza

"Truth, says instrumentalism, is what works out, that which does what you expect it to do. The..."

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:47:27 -0400

“

Truth, says instrumentalism, is what works out, that which does what you expect it to do. The judgment is true when you can “bank” on it and not be disappointed. If, when you predict, or when you follow the lead of your idea or plan, it brings you to the ends sought for in the beginning, your judgment is true. It does not consist in agreement of ideas, or the agreement of ideas with an outside reality; neither is it an eternal something which always is, but it is a name given to ways of thinking which get the thinker where he started. As a railroad ticket is a “true” one when it lands the passenger at the station he sought, so is an idea “true,” not when it agrees with something outside, but when it gets the thinker successfully to the end of his intellectual journey.

Truth, reality, ideas and judgments are not things that stand out eternally “there,” whether in the skies above or in the earth beneath; but they are names used to characterize certain vital stages in a process which is ever going on, the process of creation, of evolution. In that process we may speak of reality, this being valuable for our purposes; again, we may speak of truth; later, of ideas; and still again, of judgments; but because we talk about them we should not delude ourselves into thinking we can handle them as something eternally existing as we handle a specimen under the glass.

Such a conception of truth and reality, the instrumentalist believes, is in harmony with the general nature of progress. He fails to see how progress, genuine creation, can occur on any other theory on theories of finality, fixity, and authority; but he believes that the idea of creation which we have sketched here gives man a vote in the affairs of the universe, renders him a citizen of the world to aid in the creation of valuable objects in the nature of institutions and principles, encourages him to attempt things “unattempted yet in prose or rhyme,” inspires him to the creation of “more stately mansions,” and to the forsaking of his “low vaulted past.” He believes that the days of authority are over, whether in religion, in rulership, in science, or in philosophy; and he offers this dynamic universe as a challenge to the volition and intelligence of man, a universe to be won or lost at man’s option, a universe not to fall down before and worship as the slave before his master, the subject before his king, the scientist before his principle, the philosopher before his system, but a universe to be controlled, directed, and recreated by man’s intelligence.

”

- from An Introduction to Philosophy by Holly Estil Cunningham

"When any person harms you, or speaks badly of you, remember that he acts or speaks from a..."

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:41:00 -0400

“When any person harms you, or speaks badly of you, remember that he acts or speaks from a supposition of its being his duty. Now, it is not possible that he should follow what appears right to you, but what appears so to himself. Therefore, if he judges from a wrong appearance, he is the person hurt, since he too is the person deceived. For if anyone should suppose a true proposition to be false, the proposition is not hurt, but he who is deceived about it. Setting out, then, from these principles, you will meekly bear a person who reviles you, for you will say upon every occasion, “It seemed so to him.””

- Epictetus

"Diogenes did not want anything, so he did not lack anything."

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:12:11 -0400

“Diogenes did not want anything, so he did not lack anything.”

- Doubt by Jennifer Michael Hecht

"People will tell us that without the consolations of religion they would be intolerably unhappy. So..."

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 20:25:13 -0400

“People will tell us that without the consolations of religion they would be intolerably unhappy. So far as this is true, it is a coward’s argument. Nobody but a coward would consciously choose to live in a fool’s paradise. When a man suspects his wife of infidelity, he is not thought the better of for shutting his eyes to the evidence. And I cannot see why ignoring evidence should be contemptible in one case and admirable in the other.”

- Bertrand Russell

"How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it and why was I not informed of the rules..."

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 15:44:11 -0400

“How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it and why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn’t it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?”

- Søren Kierkegaard

"Courage is a kind of salvation."

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 13:19:00 -0500

“Courage is a kind of salvation.”

- Plato

"In the end these things matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you love? How deeply did..."

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 19:16:51 -0500

“In the end these things matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you love? How deeply did you learn to let go?”

- Siddhartha Gautama

"Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him..."

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 17:34:34 -0500

“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”

- Carl Sagan (via faoiseamh)

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 17:29:37 -0500

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

- Aristotle