Ernest Gellner citations

Source: Words and Things (1959), p. 265
Contexte: Philosophy is explicitness, generality, orientation and assessment. That which one would insinuate, thereof one must speak.

The crisis in the humanities and in the mainstream of philosophy (1964), reprinted in The Devil in Modern Philosophy (1974)
Contexte: 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.

Concepts and Community, in Relativism and the Social Sciences (1985)
Contexte: Wittgenstein's appeal lies in the fact that he provides a strange kind of vindication of romanticism, of conceptual Gemeinschaft, of custom-based concepts rather than statute-seeking Reform, and that he does so through a very general theory of meaning, rather than from the premisses habitually used for this purpose. Because there is no unique formal notation valid for all speech, each and every culture is vindicated. One never knew that could be done — and so quickly too! It is that above all which endows his philosophy with such a capacity to attract and to repel. His mystique of consensual custom denies that anything can sit in judgment of our concepts, that some may be more rational and others less so. So all of them are in order and have nothing to fear from philosophy, as indeed he insists. This is a fairly mild form of irrationalism, invoking no fierce dark Gods, merely a consensual community. It is the Soft Porn of Irrationalism.

Plough, Sword and Book (1988)
Contexte: 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.

Conditions of Liberty (1994)
Contexte: Civil Society is a cluster of institutions and associations strong enough to prevent tyranny, but which are, none the less, entered and left freely, rather than imposed by birth or sustained by awesome ritual. You can join the Labour Party without slaughtering a sheep...

Anthropology and Politics (1995)
Contexte: I do not recommend any legislative action against hermeneutics. I am a liberal person opposed to all unnecessary state limitation of individual liberties. Hermeneutics between consenting adults should not, in my view, be the object of any statutory restrictions. I know, only too well, what it would entail. Hermeneutic speakeasies would spring up all over the place, smuggled Thick Descriptions would be brought in by the lorry-load from Canada by the Mafia, blood and thick meaning would clot in the gutter as rival gangs of semiotic bootleggers slugged it out in a series of bloody shoot-outs and ambushes. Addicts would be subject to blackmail. Consumption of deep meanings and its attendant psychic consequences would in no way diminsh, but the criminal world would benefit, and the whole fabric of civil society would be put under severe strain. Never!

Anthropology and Politics (1995)
Contexte: I do not recommend any legislative action against hermeneutics. I am a liberal person opposed to all unnecessary state limitation of individual liberties. Hermeneutics between consenting adults should not, in my view, be the object of any statutory restrictions. I know, only too well, what it would entail. Hermeneutic speakeasies would spring up all over the place, smuggled Thick Descriptions would be brought in by the lorry-load from Canada by the Mafia, blood and thick meaning would clot in the gutter as rival gangs of semiotic bootleggers slugged it out in a series of bloody shoot-outs and ambushes. Addicts would be subject to blackmail. Consumption of deep meanings and its attendant psychic consequences would in no way diminsh, but the criminal world would benefit, and the whole fabric of civil society would be put under severe strain. Never!

Anthropology and Politics (1995)
Contexte: I do not recommend any legislative action against hermeneutics. I am a liberal person opposed to all unnecessary state limitation of individual liberties. Hermeneutics between consenting adults should not, in my view, be the object of any statutory restrictions. I know, only too well, what it would entail. Hermeneutic speakeasies would spring up all over the place, smuggled Thick Descriptions would be brought in by the lorry-load from Canada by the Mafia, blood and thick meaning would clot in the gutter as rival gangs of semiotic bootleggers slugged it out in a series of bloody shoot-outs and ambushes. Addicts would be subject to blackmail. Consumption of deep meanings and its attendant psychic consequences would in no way diminsh, but the criminal world would benefit, and the whole fabric of civil society would be put under severe strain. Never!

Contemporary Thought and Politics (1974)

Postmodernism, Reason and Religion (1992)

Words and Things (1959)

Thought and Change (1964)

Contemporary Thought and Politics (1974)

Source: Words and Things (1959), p. 94

"Reply to Critics" in The Social Philosophy of Ernest Gellner

Anthropology and Politics (1995)

Source: Nations and Nationalism (1983), Chapter 7, A Typology Of Nationalism, p. 97

Thought and Change (1964)

The Coming of Nationalism and Its Interpretation: The Myths of Nation and Class in Mapping the Nation

Spectacles & Predicaments (1979)

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

Nations and Nationalism (1983)

Source: Nations and Nationalism (1983), Chapter 1, Definitions, p. 1

Conditions of Liberty (1994)

Source: Words and Things (1959), p. 138

Legitimation of Belief (1974), p. 99

Source: Nations and Nationalism (1983), Chapter 8, The Future Of Nationalism, p. 114

Nationalism (1997)

Poker Player (1969), reprinted in The Devil in Modern Philosophy (1974)