Ernest Gellner: Doe

Ernest Gellner was Czech anthropologist, philosopher and sociologist. Explore interesting quotes on doe.
Ernest Gellner: 64   quotes 0   likes

“The way forward does not lie in amateur and comically timeless linguistic sociology which takes ‘forms of life’ for granted (and this is what philosophy has been recently), but in the systematic study of forms of life which does not take them for granted at all.”

Ernest Gellner

The crisis in the humanities and in the mainstream of philosophy (1964), reprinted in The Devil in Modern Philosophy (1974)
Context: The way forward does not lie in amateur and comically timeless linguistic sociology which takes ‘forms of life’ for granted (and this is what philosophy has been recently), but in the systematic study of forms of life which does not take them for granted at all. It hardly matters whether such an inquiry is called philosophy or sociology.

Life , Lie , Way , Study

“When knowledge is the slave of social considerations, it defines a special class; when it serves its own ends only, it no longer does so.”

Ernest Gellner

Plough, Sword and Book (1988)
Context: When knowledge is the slave of social considerations, it defines a special class; when it serves its own ends only, it no longer does so. There is of course a profound logic in this paradox: genuine knowledge is egalitarian in that it allows no privileged source, testers, messengers of Truth. It tolerates no privileged and circumscribed data. The autonomy of knowledge is a leveller.

Knowledge

“The model that can be drawn up, of a plural society in which the multiplicity of forces and institutions prevent any one of their number dominating the rest, and which function on the basis of a broad and non-doctrinaire consensus — this picture does not warm the blood like wine. To appreciate and savour its appeal, one needs a rather sophisticated taste, perhaps.”

Ernest Gellner

Contemporary Thought and Politics (1974)

Wine

“Tribalism never prospers, for when it does, everyone will respect it as a true nationalism, and no-one will dare call it tribalism.”

Ernest Gellner

Source: Nations and Nationalism (1983), Chapter 6, Social Entropy And Equality, p. 87

“When knowledge is the slave of social considerations, it defines a special class; when it serves its own ends only, it no longer does so. There is of course a profound logic in this paradox: genuine knowledge is egalitarian in that it allows no privileged source, testers, messengers of Truth. It tolerates no privileged and circumscribed data. The autonomy of knowledge is a leveller.”

Ernest Gellner

Plough, Sword, and Book : The Structure of Human History (1988), Ch. 5 : Codification, p. 123

Knowledge , Truth