Quotes About Philosophy

In 1998, the New York Times reported that "in the [annual UCLA] survey taken at the start of the fall semester, 74.9 percent of freshmen chose being well off as an essential goal and 40.8 percent chose developing a philosophy. In 1968, the numbers were reversed, with 40.8 percent selecting financial security and 82.5 percent citing the importance of developing a philosophy."4

Is there some reason for my being here except to live out my allotted time, to burn my days alongside others who are, in turn, burning theirs?

The absurd itself is something very precise. It is the confrontation of our need for meaning with the unwillingness of the universe to yield it to us.

Thomas Kuhn, who once said that he came to realize that he did not understand a thinker until he could see the world through that thinker's eyes.

Plato's distinction between lovers of opinion and philosophers is a distinction between those who embrace present particulars just as they self-evidently are and those who instead recognize absent universals as what makes particulars into what they are. The implicit link between philosophy and emancipation is clear here. Emancipation is nothing if not the refusal to rest content with what is merely present.

The radicality of the universal lies in its imperceptibility.

Taking [Hegel's] philosophy as the point of reference, we could say that emancipation involves making explicit and embracing contradiction, whereas conservatism aims at repressing or eliminating it.

For Hegel, philosophy intervenes politically by making clear the relations that already exist.

Recognizing the self-division of the other doesn't reduce everyone to sameness but eliminates the possibility for anyone's hierarchical elevation above another. It is a philosophy of universal equality through the split of every subject from itself.

According to Hegel, philosophy should not try to change the world because it cannot. It always arrives too late on the scene to offer concrete political proposals.

Hegel] sees that no principles is sustainable as a first principle since it implicitly relies on other principles in order to distinguish itself.

Rather than the death that occurs at the end of life, the death drive comes out of a death that occurs within life.

On n'a rien trouvé, on n'a rien inventé. Nous ne pouvons rien savoir sinon que nous ne savons rien. C'est là le degré suprême de la sagesse humaine. (Guerre et Paix, livre deuxième, 2ième partie, ch. I)

I have learned what must be, and therefore have come to see the whole horror of what is.

On sentait ce détachement de toutes les choses de ce monde qui terrifie un homme en vie.

The very same thing, don't you see, may be looked at tragically, and turned into a misery, or it may be looked at simply and even humorously. Possibly you are inclined to look at things too tragically.

For this writer, evil was a matter not of behavior, or even choice, but of being.

Do you believe in God?' Julie asked. 'No. But I'm old enough to recognize that we simply have no idea what lies beyond the boundaries of our knowledge and to take some comfort from that ignorance.

The purpose of a liberal education is to make you philosophical enough to accept the fact that you will never make much money.

Dünyan?n çocuklar?n?n neden tinsel bir bilinçle birbirlerine ba?l? olduklar?n? anlad?. Onlar? ba?layan, ortak ba?? yaratan dünyan?n kendisiydi. Ortak felsefe ya da dü?ünce ve safl?k dünyan?n bizzat kendisiydi.

It emerged from two other disciplines, physiology and philosophy. German Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) is seen as the father of psychology because he insisted it should be a separate discipline, more empirical than philosophy and more focused on the mind than physiology. In the 1870s he created the first experimental psychology laboratory, and wrote his huge work Principles of Physiological Psychology.

Burns points out that the basic idea of cognitive therapy—that our thoughts affect our emotions and mood, not the other way around—goes back a long way: The ancient philosopher Epictetus rested his career on the idea that it is not events that determine your state of mind, but how you decide to feel about the events. This

The literal is always abstract ? because reality is so much more than we can ever know or experience or imagine.

Being a victim is more palatable than having to recognize the intrinsic contradictions of one's own governing philosophy.