Quotes About Philosophy

Roquentin is visited by a deeper, more philosophical ailment: he falls into bouts of what he calls his "Nausea." These are episodes in which, afflicted by his sense that there is "absolutely no more reason for living

Pas facile, pour le philosophe, de dialoguer si l'interlocuteur met en cause sa doctrine tout en refusant de parler philosophie!

Mizantropul este om: e absolut necesar ca umanistul sa fie intr-o oarecare masura mizantrop.Dar e un mizantrop stiintific, care a stiut sa-si dozeze ura, care incepe prin a-i uri pe oameni pentru a-i putea iubi mai bine, apoi.

At one point, Roquentin realizes that the seat he is on is a seat only by name: "it could just as well be a dead donkey. . . . Things are divorced from their names. They are there, grotesque, headstrong, gigantic, and it seems ridiculous to call them seats or say anything at all about them: I am in the midst of things, nameless things.

Mein augenblickliches Leben ist nicht besonders glanzvoll, [...]

Man is nothing other than what he makes of himself.

I'd come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language.

Is building n sugar really better than building on sand?

Instead of countering Plato's argument, or approving it or modifying it, Derrida insists on its instabilities. It is inhabited at every turn by an undecidability that it cannot fully master.

But Derrida is confronting an argument for the priority of speech over writing. A side issue? According to Derrida, setting speech to rule over writing is crucial to the underpinning presuppositions of Western philosophy.

Derrida maintains that through three millenia of Western philosophy, from Plato and Aristotle to Rousseau, Hegel, Husserl and others, philosophers have indeed privileged speech. What have they claimed?

Différance is actively disruptive. Language, thought and meaning aren't to be allowed the comfort of their daily routines. If that leaves philosophical language ruined, sick with its own instabilities, what about ordinary language and everyday communication? Can we rely on grounded decidability in the supermarket, the office and the lecture hall?

an undecidable presence-absence at the origin of meaning.

Does this eradicate CONTEXT? For Derrida, no. There are contexts, but they have no centre and can never entirely govern meanings.

This strikes at the very roots of Western metaphysics, because it's the claim to full presence which underpins metaphysical concepts and procedures.

Our reality is similar to the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis; we live in a simulated world, but it is not in a computer—it is in our head.

If the universe came into and out of existence and there were no brains to know it, did the universe really exist? Who would know?

Cartesian theatre (Dan Dennett's term)

Shakespeare's metaphors are the paragon of creativity. "Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs." "Adversity's sweet milk, philosophy." "There's daggers in men's smiles.

Truly random thoughts don't exist.

Chinese Room

And here I always thought morality was useless

Was insanity really easier to accept than unconsciousness?

It revealed a cruelty that really made one wonder if the universe was such a good idea after all.