Quotes About Philosophy

We receive our notions of Divine meaning from a three-millennia-old lineage stretching back to the ancient Jews; we receive our notions of reason from a twenty-five-hundred-year-old lineage stretching back to the ancient Greeks. In rejecting those lineages—in seeking to graft ourselves to rootless philosophical movements of the moment, cutting ourselves off from our own roots—we have damned ourselves to an existential wandering.

What does this mean for human beings? What makes a man virtuous is his capacity to engage in the activities that make him a man, not an animal—man has a telos, too. What is our telos? Our end, according to both Plato and Aristotle, is to reason, judge, and deliberate.

To Aristotle, "good" wasn't a subjective term, something for each of us to define for ourselves; "good" was a statement of objective fact. Something was "good" if it fulfilled its purpose. A good watch tells time; a good dog defends its master. What does a good human being do? Acts in accordance with right reason.

Like the Bible, Aristotle didn't define happiness as temporary joy. He saw happiness in a life well-lived.

The Founding Fathers were devotees of Cicero and Locke, of the Bible and Aristotle.

The first contribution of the ancient Greeks was the philosophy of natural law.

As a religious person, I do agree with much of Ayn Rand's profoundly negative view of religion. Still, to minimize her contribution to philosophy is ridiculous. Her espousal of capitalism is incredibly important, today more than ever before. With taxes rising and government intervening in all sectors of life, her libertarian philosophy is required at least to balance the debate.

The philosophy of the United States centers on three central principles, as articulated in the Declaration: on the reality of natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that preexist government; on the equality of men before the law; and on the notion that government is instituted only to protect those preexisting rights and equality of men before the law.

Essentially, Aquinas argued that all things in life are a combination of actual and potential—that a candle, for example, is a candle right now, and has the potential to become a pool of wax when operated on by fire.

The reason the candle is currently in its state is because of something acting upon it. That something, in turn, is dependent on something else. But, Aquinas argues, that chain cannot continue forever; in the end, there must be a final cause, an Unmoved Mover standing behind things as they are.

Voltaire, Kant, Bentham—all assumed that reason could construct morality from scratch. But their moralities did not coincide. Practically speaking, their morality lifted elements, even if unconsciously, from the Judeo-Christian tradition and Greek telos they suggested they had exploded.

So what is the moral case for capitalism? It lies in recognition that socialism isn't a great idea gone wrong — it's an evil philosophy in action. It isn't driven by altruism; it's driven by greed and jealousy.

with the increased separation of church and state came an end to religious control of the schools, and with that, a return to the Socratic philosophy of challenging authority.

It was left to Hume, once again, to completely circumscribe reason. "Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions," Hume famously wrote, taking to its logical extreme the thought of his predecessors. "[Reason] cannot be the source of moral good or evil, which are found to have that influence."24

And what gives Professor Commoner the right to take someone's property and hand it over to someone else? Only if there were no property rights would such a thing be acceptable.

When Professor Orlando Patterson of Harvard University was interviewed on NewsHour with Jim Lehrer regarding President Bill Clinton's perjury, he said, "I think it's important to emphasize the fact that there are no absolutes in our moral precepts. Kant may have believed that, and some fascists do. . . . [P]erjury is not an absolute.

Professor Peter Singer of Princeton University advocates the killing of disabled newborns. Reports the New York Times, "To Singer, a newborn has no greater right to life than any other being of comparable rationality and capacity for emotion, including pigs, cows and dogs."6 This is evil. Equating newborn humans with animals is absolutely sickening. But that is what Singer is teaching in his course at Princeton.

These three elements—America's philosophy of reason, equality, liberty, and limited government; America's culture of individual rights and social duties; and America's shared history—define our country.

Moral Relativism is a widespread disease.

Because the polis is the context in which virtue is cultivated—and because cultivating virtue is the ultimate goal of man—the polis must be governed rigorously so that human beings are inculcated with virtue, according to Plato.

Then there is another strain of thought. Throughout American history, this strain of thought has emerged victorious—though never without pain and struggle, and sometimes at the cost of death. This philosophy argues that what unites Americans is far stronger and deeper than what divides us, that our vows to one another were cemented in blood, that we are inextricably intertwined. A separation would kill us both.

If the wealthiest segment of the population has no money, who gives the poor their jobs? The government? There's a name for that economic philosophy—communism.

individual purpose lay in acting virtuously—fulfilling our telos by pursuing right reason in accordance with nature. Virtue, in turn, could only be defined with reference to the community. The individual, in this view, tends to disappear into the community.

Professor Richard Sklar of UCLA described socialism as a "great idea"3 and communist dictator Mao Tse-Tung as a "great leader.