Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society
Source: Lectures on Negative Dialectics (1965-66), p. 20
Source: Wozu noch Philosophie? [Why still philosophy?] (1963), p. 7
Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society
Source: Lectures on Negative Dialectics (1965-66), p. 20
Bimal Krishna Matilal (1935–1991) Indian philosopher
Central Philosophy of Jainism (1981), p. 2
“Rationality is not an arbiter of traditions, it is itself a tradition or an aspect of a tradition.”
Paul Karl Feyerabend book Science in a Free Society
pg 27
Science in a Free Society (1978)
Context: Traditions are neither good nor bad, they simply are... Rationality is not an arbiter of traditions, it is itself a tradition or an aspect of a tradition.
Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society
Source: Wozu noch Philosophie? [Why still philosophy?] (1963), p. 6
Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher
Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 16
Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author
I had noted in my teens that major writers are usually those who have had to struggle against the odds -- to "pull their cart out of the mud," as I put it -- while writers who have had an easy start in life are usually second rate -- or at least, not quite first-rate. Dickens, Balzac, Dostoevsky, Shaw, H. G. Wells, are examples of the first kind; in the twentieth century, John Galsworthy, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, and Samuel Beckett are examples of the second kind. They are far from being mediocre writers; yet they tend to be tinged with a certain pessimism that arises from never having achieved a certain resistance against problems.
Source: The Books in My Life (1998), p. 188
Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998) German sociologist, administration expert, and social systems theorist
Source: Art As a Social System (2000), p. 145.
“The task of philosophy is to recover the totality obscured by the selection.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher
Pt. I, ch. 1, sec. 6.
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)
Context: Philosophy is the self-correction by consciousness of its own initial excess of subjectivity. Each actual occasion contributes to the circumstances of its origin additional formative elements deepening its own peculiar individuality. Consciousness is only the last and greatest of such elements by which the selective character of the individual obscures the external totality from which it originates and which it embodies. An actual individual, of such higher grade, has truck with the totality of things by reason of its sheer actuality; but it has attained its individual depth of being by a selective emphasis limited to its own purposes. The task of philosophy is to recover the totality obscured by the selection.