Hobbes is arguing for the absolute power of kings to levy money and soldiers in the defense of the country and its citizens, without even having to go through parliament.

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Hume is the skeptic that maintains we cannot know with certainty what is beyond our senses, but that we have come to rely on custom, or habit, for what we do know. When we hit a billiard ball a particular way and observe its effect, and then witness the same thing over and over again, we come to expect that this is the way it is with billiard ( Read more... )

“If Marx, Bruno Bauer and Feuerbach come together to found a theological-philosophical review, God would do well to surround Himself with all His angels and indulge in self-pity, for these three will certainly drive Him out of his heaven.”-- a young radical, unnamed ( Read more... )

"We are on a journey of becoming that which we already are. That is the impossible paradox of our lives."

-- Leonard Jacobson, "Journey Into Now"

"In religion, the ego manifests as the Devil, and of course no one realizes how smart the ego is, because it created the Devil so you can blame someone else. ... There is no such thing as an external ( Read more... )

“It is a mistake to say ‘I think’; one should say ‘I am being thought’ - forgive the wordplay. I is someone else. So much the worse for the wood which finds it is a violin ( Read more... )

“All previous philosophy often seemed to me like a Tower of Babel: the object of all the great exertions is to penetrate into heaven or create heaven on earth.”

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

And I suppose that contemporary, pessimistic philosophy is about how to make do with living in hell on earth.

[Source: Ronald Hayman, “Nietzsche: A Critical ( Read more... )

Both Dostoevsky and Nietzsche were deeply religious by temperament; both were terrified of where nihilism could lead. If God is alive, everything is meaningful; if God is dead, everything is permitted, and nothing is comprehensible. “I made up my mind long ago not to understand,” says Ivan Karamazov in one of the earliest statements about ‘ ( Read more... )

We have another excerpt from Susan Sontag’s introduction to Cioran’s book, regarding his pessimistic perspective on life and its philosophy - sort of a self-loathing philosopher, a dour priest of the Church of Our Despair.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<[This conception of philosophy] demands the sacrifice of health, of mundane happiness, often of participation in ( Read more... )

I went back into his office to ask permission to switch from one course to another. “Which courses?” he said indifferently. “I’m meant to be reading Foucault, but I want to do a course on Derrida.” “Man” he replied “that’s like going from horseshit to bullshit.”Well, I feel better about never getting around to Foucault and Derrida. Not that it ( Read more... )

Life is absurd! Who can disagree with that, especially if you are plowing through middle-age? Although this is a simplistic reduction of Camus’s philosophy, it is the charming proposition by which most of us know the man, and it perhaps does fairly capture an essential character of his thought, of man in his existential dilemma. However, Camus ( Read more... )