Quotes About Metaphysics

The notion of a "pure" science free from metaphysical and theological contamination is a fiction and therefore already the expression of a theology.

Still more striking is the fact that Kant unites epistemology and ethics specifically through the concept of law.

An idea, as Kant uses the term, is a representation of a "totality of conditions to a given conditioned thing," made possible by an unconditioned condition or absolute.

La práctica de la astronomía y la voluntad científica vacían el cielo cristiano como una bañera llena de agua residual. La física es una antimetafísica; permite una ontología material

It was impossible for the human mind to suspect that it was itself the sole creator of the divine world. It found the divine world before it; it found it as history, as tradition, as a sentiment, as a habit of thought; and it necessarily made it the object of its loftiest speculations. Thus was born metaphysics, and thus were developed and perfected the divine ideas, the basis of Spiritualism.

Theologians have done more harm than religious beliefs. Just as metaphysicians have confused our minds with abstract concepts.

Inasmuch a real mover does not move, and a non-mover does not move, apart from a mover and a non-mover, what third thing could move?

On one hand, Kant thought science led to the conclusion that humans are elements in a vast machine operating by the laws of physics. On the other hand, he said, to salvage morality, we must act as if we were free. And to ratify our moral standards, we must act as if God existed. And because morality makes no sense unless justice prevails in the end, we must act as if there were an afterlife.

Powerful logical or metaphysical reasons for supposing we can't have strong free will keep coming up against equally powerful psychological reasons why we can't help believing that we do have it.… It seems that we cannot live or experience our choices as determined, even if determinism is true.

And the reason is that they thought matter was eternal.

a self-creating universe is a contradiction in terms.

Go ahead; take Kant's PROLEGOMENA TO ANY FUTURE METAPHYSIC and get it to show what he is telling. We would all be a lot happier.

Modern man denies himself every metaphysical dimension and considers himself a mere object of science. But he screams when they exterminate him as such.

The philosophy of Schopenhauer does not necessarily exclude God. It just does not include Him. God would be the goal of the will therein and the only nourishment that would satisfy it.

They have buried metaphysics so many times that it must be considered immortal.

The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.

Plato had one Big Idea from which everything else derived. He fundamentally defined reality as that which is permanent and unchanging. Only ideas are permanent and unchanging; anything material deteriorates and decays.

Wittgenstein says in the Tractatus: 'Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is' (§ 6.44). 1 believe that a certain feeling of amazement that anything should exist at all, was sometimes experienced by Wittgenstein, not only during the Tractatus period, but also when I knew him.4 Whether this feeling has anything to do with

The true philosophical act is the slaying of the self; this is the real beginning of all philosophy, therein lies the requirement for all philosophic youths, and only this act answers all criteria and conditions for the transcendental deed.

For Einstein, as for Gödel, philosophy without ontology was an illusion, and physics without philosophy reduced to engineering.

Ex nihilo nihil fit

To be and to have meaning are the same.

for "to be thought" and "to be" are the same thing.

Or how could it come into being ? If it came into being, it is not; nor is it if it is going to be in the future. Thus is becoming extinguished and passing away not to be heard of Nor is it divisible, since it is all alike, and there is no more of it in one place than in another, to hinder it from holding together, nor less of it, but everything is full of what is.