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Aristotle could speak of human technologies and institutions as being inevitably reinvented over and over because he regarded human nature as fixed and the human species, along with all other species, as eternal: the world itself had always existed, and

All war is based on deception ~ Sun Tzu, in the 'Art of War' When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance. - Oscar Wilde, in 'The Picture of Dorian Gray

Philosophy becomes tortured thinking. Thinking that devours itself -- and continues intact and even flourishes, in spite of these repeated acts of self-cannibalism. Or because of them, perhaps? The thinker plays both roles in the passion-play of thought.

Nostalgia (from ‘nostos’ -- return home, and algia -- longing) is a longing for a home that no longer exists or has never existed. Nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but it is also a romance with one’s own fantasy. Nostalgic love can only

I was walking late one night along a tree-lined path; a chestnut fell at my feet. The noise it made as it burst, the resonance it provoked in me, and an upheaval out of all proportions to this insignificant event thrust me into miracle, into the rapture

In all history, nothing is so surprising or so difficult to account for as the sudden rise of civilization in Greece. Much of what makes civilization had already existed for thousands of years in Egypt and in Mesopotamia, and had spread thence to

The humility required for good judgment is not self-doubt -- the sense that you are untalented, unintelligent, or unworthy. It is intellectual humility. It is a recognition that reality is profoundly complex, that seeing things clearly is a constant

Perhaps the greatest of Newton's defenders among philosophers was the late-eighteenth century philosopher Immanuel Kant. In 'The Critique of Pure Reason,' Kant tried to show that when it came to physics, Newtonian mechanics was the only game in town. But

• Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you. • In all things, strive to cause no harm. • Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and respect. • Do not

'Demagogue' comes from 'demos,' the people, and 'agogos', leading: it means a leader who plays upon popular prejudices.

“We reach out in our search for meaning, until we suddenly realise it is we who actually provide the purpose in a universe which otherwise would have none.'”~ Richard Dawkins

Carl Gustav Jung [1875-1961] established an analytic psychology that emphasized the self -- the achievement of harmony among the various strands of personality. He displayed an early ambivalence in his approach to psychology: on the one hand, he developed

What separates prior from subsequent is exactly nothing; for in every obstacle to be cleared there is something positive which gives itself as about to be cleared. The prior consciousness is always there (though with the modification of "pastness") It

Mind is a utility oriented technical faculty ` Osho

Atheism is a minority position in today’s world. At least in the parts of the globe accessible to pollsters, most people believe in God.. . . . Consider, for example, the United States, where, despite the country’s constitutional commitment to the

“Invidia” between creator and creature can be directly competitive. Mythologies, so often a shorthand for logic, bear witness. A lighthearted maiden boasts of spinning a web more delicate, more prodigal of adornment that any Athena can weave. She is

*Reading does not make a man wise; it only makes him learned. *Respectability is the cloak under which fools cover their stupidity. *No action is in itself good or bad, but only such according to convention *The man who in these conditions listens

There is a kind of immortality in every garden - Stillmeadow Daybook, Gladys Teber, 1899-1980 .......according to the legend that has persisted for a full century, Bateson en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bateson spent most of that train ride immersed in an

The 'Penguin English Dictionary' defines a delusion as 'a false belief o impression'. Surprisingly the illustrative quotation the dictionary gives is from phillip e Johnson: "Darwinism is the story of humanity's liberation from the delusion that its

The pluralism of Empedocles (495-435 BC) was more modest. He argued that a small set of elements sufficed to explain the material nature of the world. Probably borrowing from his predecessors, he took water, air, and life, added a fourth element earth,

"Philosophy is the education of grown-ups ~ Stanley Cavell

About two hundred years ago, the idea that truth was made rather than found began to take hold of the imagination of Europe. The French Revolution had shown that the whole vocabulary of social relations, and the whole spectrum of social institutions,

There is a bit of old gossip that continues to be retold amongst biologists. According to this take, the eminent British biologist, J.B.S. Haldane, was attending a cocktail party when he was confronted by a prelate with a rather unusual question. Repeated

. . . Most theorists of beauty from Kant through the twentieth century would heartily agree: to think that our response to work of art should depend on its market value is today regarded as gross vulgarity. However, if we are looking back not only

This is the moment when you see again the red berries of the mountain ash and in the dark sky the birds' night migrations. It grieves me to think the dead won't see them— these things we depend on, they disappear. What will the soul do for solace then?

I am not a person I am a succession of persons Held together by memory. When the string breaks, The beads are scattered.

::THE DIVIDED SELF:: . . . . Feelings of guilt, lust, or fear were often stronger than reasoning. (On the other hand, I was quite good at lecturing friends in similar situations about what was right for them) The Roman poet Ovid captured my situation

One summer in the early 1740s, on the last day of his life, a young man from Paris became the first modern cartographer to see the mountain called ‘Le Gerbier de Jone.’ This weird volcanic cone juts out of an empty landscape of pastures and ravines,

"Whosoever wishes to grasp God with his with his intellect becomes an atheist.” Zinzendorf of Moravian Brotherhood

In Egyptian societies and in earlier ones, magic, played an important role in the treatment of illness, but it was proscribed in Judaism. Instead, prayer was the principal form of treatment. This makes sense considering that the source of illness was

Craft, Collingwood plato.stanford.edu/entries/collingwood-a esthetics argued, is skilled work purposefully directed toward a final product or designed artifact; the ‘craftsman knows in advance’ what the end product will look like. The craftsman’s

Tragedy is not injustice ~ Ihab Hassan

People with a fixed mindset towards anxiety tend to see it as a fundamental part of who they are, and something over which they have no control. But managing emotions and learning how to control anxiety is a skill that takes practice, just like learning

One of the greatest philosophers of nineteenth century, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) believed that human action is determined not by reason by but by 'will' -- the blind and irrational desire for physical existence. This selection of his writing on

No one approaches the condition of a sage if he has not had the good luck to be forgotten in his lifetime.

The xenophobia, racism, and patriarchy that rules long before the advent of the nation-state, when it arrived, was just a more efficient means to raise the death toll of narratives. The Old Testament is only the best known of these vehicles of in-group

What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance ~ Epictetus

“Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it.” (Lady philosophy to Boethius)

THE APPEARANCE OF A WORLD Consciousness is the 'appearance of a world'. The essence of the phenomenon of consciousness experience is that a single and unified reality becomes present: If you are conscious, a world appears to you. This is true in dreams

I realized that nostalgia goes beyond individual psychology. At first glance, nostalgia is a longing for a place, but actually it is a yearning for a different time -- the time of our childhood, the slower rhythms of our dreams. In a broader sense,

How superb to become wise without being boring; how sad to be boring without being wise.

Denis Diderot (1713-1784) is best known as a co-editor, with Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, of the ‘Encyclopedie’ --a monument to rationalist, secularist, and humanist thought of the French Enlightenment. The central project in all his writing was to dispel

I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For, so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight. I breathed a song into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For who has sight so keen and strong, That it can

In his book 'Unconscious Memory' - 1880