June 2013
2 posts
May 2013
3 posts
“But, after all, why must we proclaim so loudly and with such intensity what we are, what we want, and what we do not want? Let us look at this more calmly and wisely; from a higher and more distant point of view. Let us proclaim it, as if among ourselves, in so low a tone that all the world fails to hear it and us! Above all, however, let us say it slowly… This preface comes late, but not too late: what, after all, do five or six years matter? Such a book, and such a problem, are in no hurry; besides, we are friends of the lento, I and my book. It is not for nothing that one has been a philologist, perhaps one is a philologist still, that is to say, a teacher of slow reading: in the end one also writes slowly. Nowadays it is not only my habit, it is also to my taste—a malicious taste, perhaps?—no longer to write anything which does not reduce to despair every sort of man who is “in a hurry.” For philology is that venerable art which demands of its votaries one thing above all: to go aside, to take time, to become still, to become slow—it is a goldsmith’s art and connoisseurship of the word which has nothing but delicate, cautious work to do and achieves nothing if it does not achieve it lento. But for precisely this reason it is more necessary than ever today, by precisely this means does it entice and enchant us the most, in the midst of an age of “work,” that is to say, of hurry, of indecent and perspiring haste, which wants to “get everything done” at once, including every old or new book: this art does not so easily get anything done, it teaches to read well, that is to say, to read slowly, deeply, looking cautiously before and aft, with reservations, with doors left open, with delicate eyes and fingers … My patient friends, this book desires for itself only perfect readers and philologists: learn to read me well!”
—Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality. Preface (to the Second Edition, 1887)
March 2013
2 posts
“
My whole tendency and, I believe, the tendency of all men who ever tried to write or talk Ethics or Religion, was to run against the boundaries of language.
This running against the walls of our cage is perfectly, absolutely hopeless. Ethics so far as it springs from the desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable, can be no science. What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. But it is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply and I would not for my life ridicule it.
” —Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics
“
Paris change! mais rien dans ma mélancolie
N’a bougé! palais neufs, échafaudages, blocs,
Vieux faubourgs, tout pour moi devient allégorie
Et mes chers souvenirs sont plus lourds que des rocs.
Paris changes! but naught in my melancholy
Has stirred! New palaces, scaffolding, blocks of stone,
Old quarters, all become for me an allegory,
And my dear memories are heavier than rocks.
February 2013
4 posts
“Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working-day, he may safely leave the final result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning, to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation, in whatever pursuit he may have singled out. Silently, between all the details of his business, the power of judging in all that class of matter will have built itself up within him as a possession that will never pass away. Young people should know this truth in advance. The ignorance of it has probably engendered more discouragement and faint-heartedness in youths embarking on arduous careers than all other causes put together.”
—William James on Habit
January 2013
2 posts
December 2012
5 posts
“Homer was wrong in saying, “Would that strife might perish from amongst gods and men.” For if that were to occur, then all things would cease to exist.”
—Heraclitus
“[Thinking is] speech that the soul itself goes through with itself about whatever it considers. Of course it’s as one who doesn’t know that I’m declaring it to you. For it has this look to me, that when it’s thinking the soul is doing nothing other than conversing, asking itself questions and and answering them itself, and affirming and denying.”
—Socrates, Plato’s Theaetetus 189E-190A
November 2012
2 posts
“Our soul is a three-masted ship seeking its Icaria;
A voice reverberates on the bridge: “Open the eye!”
A voice from the top, ardent and mad, cries:
“Love… glory… happiness!” Damn—it’s a reef!” —Le Voyage by Charles Baudelaire, from Fleurs du Mal
A voice reverberates on the bridge: “Open the eye!”
A voice from the top, ardent and mad, cries:
“Love… glory… happiness!” Damn—it’s a reef!” —Le Voyage by Charles Baudelaire, from Fleurs du Mal
“Adults discourage children from asking philosophical questions, first by being patronizing to them and then by directing their inquiring minds towards more “useful” questions. Most adults aren’t themselves interested in philosophical questions. They may be threatened by some of them. Moreover, it doesn’t occur to most adults that there are questions that a child can ask that they can’t provide a definitive answer to and that aren’t answered in a standard dictionary or encyclopedia either.”
—Philosophy and the Young Child by Gareth B. Matthews
