Preface, § 2
The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807)
“Any philosophic explanation of Quality is going to be both false and true precisely because it is a philosophic explanation.”
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 20
Context: Any philosophic explanation of Quality is going to be both false and true precisely because it is a philosophic explanation. The process of philosophic explanation is an analytic process, a process of breaking something down into subjects and predicates. What I mean (and everybody else means) by the word ‘quality’ cannot be broken down into subjects and predicates. This is not because Quality is so mysterious but because Quality is so simple, immediate and direct.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Do you have more details about the quote "Any philosophic explanation of Quality is going to be both false and true precisely because it is a philosophic explana…" by Robert M. Pirsig?
Robert M. Pirsig 164
American writer and philosopher 1928–2017Related quotes
George Long
(1800–1879) English classical scholar
The Philosophy of Antoninus
Context: The doctrines of Epictetus and Antoninus are the same, and Epictetus is the best authority for the explanation of the philosophical language of Antoninus and the exposition of his opinions.
Source: The Quincunx of Time (1973), Chapter 8, “The Courtship of Posi and Nega” (p. 89)
Pierre Hadot
(1922–2010) French historian and philosopher
Les progrès scientifiques ont amené les philosophes à détourner leur attention de l’explication des phénomènes physiques, abandonnée désormais à la science, pour la diriger vers le problème de l’être lui-même.
La voile d'Isis: Essai sur l'histoire de l'idée de Nature (2004)
“We want philosophers, among other reasons, because the world is full of false philosophy.”
L. P. Jacks
(1860–1955) British educator, philosopher, and Unitarian minister
The Usurpation Of Language (1910)
Context: We want philosophers, among other reasons, because the world is full of false philosophy. The way of experience is beset on every hand by a multitude of verbal judgments, of empty phrases, of word-copies, which pass themselves off as the real thing, which pretend to do duty for concrete fact and, by force of their number and importunity, capture our attention and cause the true originals to be overlooked. If it is true that philosophy must perforce fight its battles with words, is it not equally true that words are the weapons against which it must everywhere contend? The philosopher bent on the enlargement of experience perceives at once that his work cannot be done, cannot even be commenced, until he has cleared away the heaps of verbal detritus under which the bedrocks of experience lie buried.
Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi
(1804–1851) German mathematician
Letter to Legendre (July 2, 1830) in response to Fourier's report to the Paris Academy Science that mathematics should be applied to the natural sciences, as quoted in Science (March 10, 1911) Vol. 33 https://books.google.com/books?id=4LU7AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA359, p.359, with additional citations and dates from H. Pieper, "Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi," Mathematics in Berlin (2012) p.46
Source: How to Live, or, A Life of Montaigne in one Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (2010), p. 51.
Lawrence M. Schoen
(1959) American writer and klingonist
Source: Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard (2015), Chapter 32, “Ghost in the Machine” (p. 298)