Quotes from Peter Watson

One of the many innovations of modernism was the new demands it placed on the audience. Music, painting, literature, even architecture, would never again be quite so 'easy' as they had been.

For many scientists, as Lyotard concedes, scientific knowledge is the only form of knowledge there is, but if so, how then do we understand fairy stories and law?

Doubt is an awful snake of an emotion. Once it has you in it's grip, it won't let go. It spoils everything.

Live with the consequences of your deeds and enjoy the warmth they create. The only warmth in the cold, indifferent universe is that which we create ourselves. And that is what a work of art is, it is what a constructed life is, a fulfilled life, the warmth of acts.

The final new elements in music making (as opposed to listening, considered in the next section) were introduced by Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826). Weber had a diseased hip and walked with a limp but he was a virtuoso of the guitar and an excellent singer, until he damaged his voice by accidentally drinking a glass of nitric acid.

From 1781, by which time Goethe had been in Weimer for six years, he confided to Charlotte that he no longer felt able to address her as "Sie," and must use the more intimate "du." This brought about a sea change. As one critic put it, Goethe's letters now became "prose poems of happy love with few parallels in any literature.

It seems to me a case of negligence if, after becoming firm in our faith, we do not strive to understand what we believe.

Another aspect of that legacy was the buoyant optimism in the schools. All the masters shared the view that man, even in his fallen state, was 'capable of the fullest intellectual and spiritual enlargement', that the universe was ordered and therefore accessible to rational inquiry, and that man's mastery of his environment through his intellect, cumulative knowledge and experience was possible.22 Outside

The proper concern of natural science is not what God could do if he wished, but what he has done; that is, what happens in the world "according to the inherent causes of nature".'30 Aristotle had said that 'to know . . . is to understand the causes of things'.31 We see here, in Albertus, the first

Los seres humanos no podrían soportar una vida carente de sentido.»

Es posible que la existencia carezca de sentido. Y sin embargo, la pasión de vivir es más fuerte que la explicación de la vida.»

he pugnaciously advanced his view that the study of 'high culture' has to be the main aim of education. Above all, he said, we must pay attention to ancient Greece, because it provided 'the models for modern achievement'. Bloom believed that the philosophers and poets of the classical world are those from whom we have most to learn, because the big issues they raised have not changed as the years have passed.

reader is asked, for the moment, to accept this as a reasonable statement of fact, that in a part of the world that had for centuries been civilised, and quite highly civilised, there gradually emerged a people, not very numerous, not very powerful, not very well organised, who had a totally new conception of what human life was for, and showed for the first time what the human mind was for.

Si Dios no existe, todo queda permitido.» FIODOR DOSTOIEVSKI

This contrasted with logos, which also meant 'word' but in the sense of a truth which can be argued and maybe changed (as in, 'what's the word on . . .?'). Unlike logoi, which were written in prose, myths were recorded in verse.

This council was called the boule and it was scarcely less cumbersome, consisting of 500 citizens, not elected but chosen by ballot, the point being that in this way it never developed a corporate identity which might have corrupted and distorted the business of the Assembly.

Poterunt discussis forte tenebris Ad puram priscumque iubar remeare nepotes Tunc Elicona noua reuitentem stripe iudebis Tunc lauros frondere sacras; tunc alta resurgent Ingenia atque animi dociles, quibus ardour honesti Pyeridum studii ueterem geminabit amorem.

Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794), who thought that the French Revolution was the dividing line between the past and a 'glorious future', believed there were three outstanding issues in history – the destruction of inequality between nations, the progress of equality within one and the same nation, and the perfecting of mankind.

For him, humans were born with potential and, given the use of reason and the right upbringing/education, could be ethically good. This was the very opposite of what would become the Christian view under St Augustine and the notion of original sin.

Above all we get by in societies where the often anonymous state is there to guard against the crude selfishness of human nature.

This complex structure, in which people were required to predict the behaviour of others in social situations, is generally regarded as the mechanism by which consciousness evolved. In predicting the behaviour of others, an individual would have acquired a sense of self.

Grief is an ocean where the waves obey their own rhythm, their own tide, where we are just thrown about to stay afloat as best we can. Where there is in fact no guarantee that we will keep our heads above water.

In Plato and in many Greek tragedies we learn that the Athenians did not seem to believe in rewards and punishments after death. 'In fact, they do not seem to have expected very much at all. "After death every man is earth and shadow: nothing goes to nothing".' (This is a character in one of Euripides' plays.) In Plato's Phaedo, Simmias betrays his worry that at his death his soul will be scattered 'and this is their end'.52

Nearly our entire intellectual education originates from the Greeks. A thorough knowledge of their origin is the indisputable prerequisite for freeing ourselves from their overwhelming influence.