“I say that it is possible to have some knowledge without the help of the senses. For in the Divine Mind all knowledge exists from eternity, and not only is there in it certain knowledge of universals but also of all singulars. …Similarly, intelligence receiving irradiation from the primary light see all knowable things, both universal and singulars, in the primary light itself. Moreover, the Divine Mind, in the reflection of its intelligence upon Itself, knows the very things which come after Itself, because it is itself their cause. Therefore, those who are without any senses have true knowledge.”

— Robert Grosseteste

Commentarius in Posteriorum Analyticorum Libros (c. 1217-1220)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Aug. 29, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I say that it is possible to have some knowledge without the help of the senses. For in the Divine Mind all knowledge e…" by Robert Grosseteste?

Robert Grosseteste 22

English bishop and philosopher 1175–1253

Related quotes

“The highest part of the human soul, which is called the intelligence and which is not the act of any body and does not need for its proper operation a corporeal instrument—this intelligence, if it were not obscured and weighed down by the mass of the body, would itself have complete knowledge from the irradiation received from the superior light without the help of sense, just as it will have when the soul is drawn forth from the body, and as perhaps those people have who are free from the love and the imaginings of corporeal things.”

Robert Grosseteste (1175–1253) English bishop and philosopher

Commentarius in Posteriorum Analyticorum Libros (c. 1217-1220)

“All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in our own mind.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

“The true knowledge or science which exists nowhere but in the mind itself, has no other entity at all besides intelligibility; and therefore whatsoever is clearly intelligible, is absolutely true.”

Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688) English philosopher

Source: Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality (1731), Ch. 5, sct. 7

“I say, then, that the universe and all its parts both received their first order from divine providence, and are at all times administered by it.”
Dico igitur providentia deorum mundum et omnes mundi partes et initio constitutas esse et omni tempore administrari.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Book II, section 30
De Natura Deorum – On the Nature of the Gods (45 BC)

“Just as the light of the sun irradiates the organ of vision and things visible, enabling the former to see and the latter to be seen, so too the irradiation of a spiritual light brings the mind into relation with that which is intelligible.”

Robert Grosseteste (1175–1253) English bishop and philosopher

Commentary on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, i.17 as quoted by Francis Seymour Stevenson, Robert Grosseteste: Bishop of Lincoln http://books.google.com/books?id=-pIuAAAAYAAJ, p. 52 (footnote 2)

“The premisses of demonstrative knowledge must be true, primary, immediate, more knowable than and prior to the conclusion, which is further related to them as effect to cause… The premisses must be the cause of the conclusion, more knowable than it, and prior to it; its causes, since we posses scientific knowledge of a thing only when we know its cause; prior, in order to be causes; antecedently known, this antecedent knowledge being not our mere understanding of the meaning, but knowledge of the fact as well. Now 'prior' and 'more knowable' are ambiguous terms, for there is a difference between what is prior and more knowable in the order of being and what is prior and knowable to man. I mean that objects nearer to sense are prior and more knowable to man; objects without qualification prior and more knowable are those further from sense. Now the most universal causes are furthest from sense and particular causes are nearest to sense, and they are thus exactly opposed to each other.”

Aristotle book Posterior Analytics

I. 2, 71b.9 sqq
Posterior Analytics

“The Doctrine of Knowledge, apart from all special and definite knowing, proceeds immediately upon Knowledge itself, in the essential unity in which it recognises Knowledge as existing; and it raises this question in the first place — How this Knowledge can come into being, and what it is in its inward and essential Nature?”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

I.
Outline of the Doctrine of Knowledge (1810)
Context: The Doctrine of Knowledge, apart from all special and definite knowing, proceeds immediately upon Knowledge itself, in the essential unity in which it recognises Knowledge as existing; and it raises this question in the first place — How this Knowledge can come into being, and what it is in its inward and essential Nature?
The following must be apparent: — There is but One who is absolutely by and through himself, — namely, God; and God is not the mere dead conception to which we have thus given utterance, but he is in himself pure Life. He can neither change nor determine himself in aught within himself, nor become any other Being; for his Being contains within it all his Being and all possible Being, and neither within him nor out of him can any new Being arise.

“The truth is the good of our knowing mind, upon which the mind fixes itself by nature; it is not granted to the mind to choose or not choose that good (truth!) on the basis, again, of knowledge. The finite mind does not comprehend itself so profoundly, and does not have such power over itself, that it follows its own light.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance (1965)

“What must be the knowledge of Him, from whom all created minds have derived both their power of knowledge, and the innumerable objects of their knowledge! What must be the wisdom of Him, from whom all things derive their wisdom!”

Timothy Dwight IV (1752–1817) American historian

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 275.

“The mathematician speculates the causes of a certain sensible effect, without considering its actual existence; for the contemplation of universals excludes the knowledge of particulars; and he whose intellectual eye is fixed on that which is general and comprehensive, will think but little of that which is sensible and singular.”

Proclus (412–485) Greek philosopher

"A Dissertation on the Doctrine of Ideas, &c."
The Philosophical and Mathematical Commentaries of Proclus on the First Book of Euclid's Elements Vol. 1 (1788)

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Robert Grosseteste 22

Related quotes

Related topics