|
Real0ne -> RE: Books/videos about politics & religion you recommend (2/5/2017 1:01:35 PM)
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: Edwird
quote:
ORIGINAL: Real0ne
sure,
Dirkheim
Kant
Kierkegaard
Aquinas
Augustine
Hegel
Hume
Marx
Nietzsche
Plato
Explain what you think to be worthy from these authors, if you would. Just two or three of them is okay.
Instead of paraphrasing, how about in their own words?
Even the quotes do not really do background work much justice since quotes alone do not enlighten anyone not into this stuff with the necessary supporting arguments they used to create the quote. Otherwise excellent 'stuff' to give to young people a view a handful diverse perspectives to work through if they have propensities toward sorting out various distinctions to do with philosophy, metaphysics, supernatural, natural, theology and so forth.
Enjoy
Durkheim:
When morals are sufficient, law is unnecessary; when morals are insufficient, law is unenforceable.
We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.
A society whose members are united by the fact that they think in the same way in regard to the sacred world and its relations with the profane world, and by the fact that they translate these common ideas into common practices, is what is called a Church. In all history, we do not find a single religion without a Church..
When man discovered the mirror, he began to lose his soul.
Man cannot become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs. To free him from all social pressure is to abandon him to himself and demoralize him.
Science cannot describe individuals, but only types. If human societies cannot be classified, they must remain inaccessible to scientific description.
Friedrich Nietzsche:
In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
Without music, life would be a mistake.
You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.
There are no facts, only interpretations.
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.
Kant:
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.
A categorical imperative would be one which represented an action as objectively necessary in itself, without reference to any other purpose.
Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.
Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.
The only objects of practical reason are therefore those of good and evil. For by the former is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by the latter one necessarily shunned, also according to a principle of reason.
Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law. So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.
All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason.
Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.
Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.
By a lie, a man... annihilates his dignity as a man.
If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on.
Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another.
Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.
Kierkegaard:
There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.
Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion — and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion… while truth again reverts to a new minority.
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
People settle for a level of despair they can tolerate and call it happiness.
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.
The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
Once you label me you negate me.
The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.
Love is the expression of the one who loves, not of the one who is loved. Those who think they can love only the people they prefer do not love at all. Love discovers truths about individuals that others cannot see
Christ was crucified because he would have nothing to do with the crowd (even though he addressed himself to all). He did not want to form a party, an interest group, a mass movement, but wanted to be what he was, the truth, which is related to the single individual. Therefore everyone who will genuinely serve the truth is by that very fact a martyr. To win a crowd is no art; for that only untruth is needed, nonsense, and a little knowledge of human passions. But no witness to the truth dares to get involved with the crowd.
For without risk there is no faith, and the greater the risk, the greater the faith.
The object of (Christian) faith is not the teaching but the Teacher.
People settle for a level of despair they can tolerate and call it happiness.
Aquinas:
The theologian considers sin mainly as an offense against God; the moral philosopher as contrary to reasonableness.
A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational.
Justice is in subjects as well as in rulers.
As the saints will rejoice in all goods, so will the damned grieve for all goods.
To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.
Distinctions drawn by the mind are not necessarily equivalent to distinctions in reality.
Faith has to do with things that are not seen and hope with things that are not at hand.
Because of the diverse conditions of humans, it happens that some acts are virtuous to some people, as appropriate and suitable to them, while the same acts are immoral for others, as inappropriate to them.
It is possible to demonstrate God’s existence, although not a priori, yet a posteriori from some work of His more surely known to us.
Human salvation demands the divine disclosure of truths surpassing reason.”
By nature all men are equal in liberty, but not in other endowments.”
Moral science is better occupied when treating of friendship than of justice.
Most men seem to live according to sense rather than reason.
Spinoza:
Men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.
The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts.
In the state of nature, wrong-doing is impossible ; or, if anyone does wrong, it is to himself, not to another.
Laws which prescribe what everyone must believe, and forbid men to say or write anything against this or that opinion, are often passed to gratify, or rather to appease the anger of those who cannot abide independent minds.
The supreme mystery of despotism, its prop and stay, is to keep men in a state of deception, and with the specious title of religion to cloak the fear by which they must be held in check, so that they will fight for their servitude as if for salvation.
The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.
No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.
Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.
Freedom is self-determination.
Reason connot defeat emotion, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion.
He who loves God cannot endeavor that God should love him in return.
Laws which can be broken without any wrong to one's neighbor are a laughing-stock; and such laws, instead of restraining the appetites and lusts of mankind, serve rather to heighten them. Nitimur in vetitum semper, cupimusque negata [we always resist prohibitions, and yearn for what is denied us].
Plato:
Democracy does not contain any force which will check the constant tendency to put more and more on the public payroll. The state is like a hive of bees in which the drones display, multiply and starve the workers so the idlers will consume the food and the workers will perish.
If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools.
Those who refuse to engage in politics will be led by their inferiors
A wise man speaks because he has something to say; a fool because he has to say something.
Misanthropy ariseth from a man trusting another without having sufficient knowledge of his character, and, thinking him to be truthful, sincere, and honourable, finds a little afterwards that he is wicked, faithless, and then he meets with another of the same character. When a man experiences this often, and more particularly from those whom he considered his most dear and best friends, at last, having frequently made a slip, he hates the whole world, and thinks that there is nothing sound at all in any of them.
All knowledge is but remembrance.
Rousseau:
The falsification of history has done more to impede human development than any one thing known to mankind.
To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. For he who renounces everything no indemnity is possible. Such a renunciation is incompatible with man's nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts.
There is no subjection so perfect as that which keeps the appearance of freedom.
I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.
Those people who treat politics and morality separately will never understand either of them.
To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness.
There are always four sides to a story: your side, their side, the truth and what really happened.
Descartes:
We do not describe the world we see, we see the world we can describe.
Doubt is the origin of wisdom
I think therefore am.
Truths are more likely to be discovered by one man than by a nation
I know that I exist; the question is, What is this 'I' that 'I' know.
Marx:
Medicine heals doubts as well as diseases.
Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose, but their chains. Workers of the world unite!
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.
There is a specter haunting Europe, the specter of Communism.
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.
The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.
Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.
The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.
It is absolutely impossible to transcend the laws of nature. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws expose themselves.
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please.
Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.
The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.
Colonial system, public debts, heavy taxes, protection, commercial wars, etc., these offshoots of the period of manufacture swell to gigantic proportions during the period of infancy of large-scale industry. The birth of the latter is celebrated by a vast, Hero-like slaughter of the innocents.
From the outset, the Christian was the theorizing Jew, the Jew is therefore the practical Christian, and the practical Christian has become a Jew again.
Civil servants and priests, soldiers and ballet-dancers, schoolmasters and police constables, Greek museums and Gothic steeples, civil list and services list — the common seed within which all these fabulous beings slumber in embryo is taxation.
Capital is money, capital is commodities. By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.
The Tories in England had long imagined that they were enthusiastic about the monarchy, the church and beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about rent.
All social rules and all relations between individuals are eroded by a cash economy, avarice drags Pluto himself out of the bowels of the earth.
Comte:
Each department of knowledge passes through three stages. The theoretic stage; the theological stage and the metaphysical or abstract stage.
If we do not allow free thinking in chemistry or biology, why should we allow it in morals or politics?
Religion is an illusion of childhood, outgrown under proper education.
Everything is relative; and only that is absolute.
But now, I, [Insert Name], have discovered the truth. Therefore, there is no longer any need for freedom of thought or freedom of the press. I want to rule and to organize the whole country.
Induction for deduction, with a view to construction.
Foreknowledge is power.
Hume:
There is no such thing as freedom of choice unless there is freedom to refuse.
It is seldom, that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. Slavery has so frightful an aspect to men accustomed to freedom, that it must steal upon them by degrees, and must disguise itself in a thousand shapes, in order to be received.
Moving from an objective statement of fact to a subjective statement of value does not work, because it leaves open questions that have not been answered.
Belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object, than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain.
Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.
Weakness, fear, melancholy, together with ignorance, are the true sources of superstition. Hope, pride, presumption, a warm indignation, together with ignorance, are the true sources of enthusiasm.
A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century.
Sartre;
If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.
We are our choices.
[M]an is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, in other respect is free; because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. The Existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never agree that a sweeping passion is a ravaging torrent which fatally leads a man to certain acts and is therefore an excuse. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion.
In wanting freedom we discover that it depends entirely on the freedom of others, and that the freedom of others depends on ours. . . I am obliged to want others to have freedom at the same time that I want my own freedom. I can take freedom as my goal only if I take that of others as a goal as well.
Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.
Augustine:
The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
Faith is to believe what you do not yet see; the reward for this faith is to see what you believe.
Don’t you believe that there is in man a depth so profound as to be hidden even to him in whom it is?
Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.
He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent.
Patience is the companion of wisdom.
If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.
Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.
It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels.
Forgiveness is the remission of sins. For it is by this that what has been lost, and was found, is saved from being lost again.
God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.
Love is the beauty of the soul.
To abstain from sin when one can no longer sin is to be forsaken by sin, not to forsake it.
Hegel:
Philosophy is by its nature something esoteric, neither made for the mob nor capable of being prepared for the mob.
We learn from history that we do not learn from history
To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great.
Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.
Truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in an emergent synthesis which reconciles the two.
The History of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony--periods when the antithesis is in abeyance.
Freedom is the fundamental character of the will, as weight is of matter... That which is free is the will. Will without freedom is an empty word.
I have the courage to be mistaken.
What the English call "comfortable" is something endless and inexhaustible. Every condition of comfort reveals in turn its discomfort, and these discoveries go on for ever. Hence the new want is not so much a want of those who have it directly, but is created by those who hope to make profit from it.
Every idea, extended into infinity, becomes its own opposite.
Impatience asks for the impossible, wants to reach the goal without the means of getting there. The length of the journey has to be borne with, for every moment is necessary.
|
|
|
|
