
Classic, Romantic, Modern (1961), ch. I: "Romanticism — Dead or Alive?"
Matthew 16:25
Source: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Heaven … But Never Dreamed of Asking (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), p. 74
Classic, Romantic, Modern (1961), ch. I: "Romanticism — Dead or Alive?"
Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 285
Compare Gottfried Leibniz argument for the "best of all possible worlds" in his Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil
Ch.12
Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III
Context: Galen, in the third section of his book, "The Use of the Limbs," says correctly that it would be in vain to expect to see living beings formed of the blood of menstruous women and the semen virile, who will not die, will never feel pain, or will move perpetually, or shine like the sun. This dictum of Galen is part of the following more general proposition:—Whatever is formed of matter receives the most perfect form possible in that species of matter; in each individual case the defects are in accordance with that individual matter.
Section 29
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)
Context: A fateful process is set in motion when the individual is released "to the freedom of his own impotence" and left to justify his existence by his own efforts. The autonomous individual, striving to realize himself and prove his worth, has created all that is great in literature, art, music, science and technology. The autonomous individual, also, when he can neither realize himself nor justify his existence by his own efforts, is a breeding call of frustration, and the seed of the convulsions which shake our world to its foundations.
The individual on his own is stable only so long as he is possessed of self-esteem. The maintenance of self-esteem is a continuous task which taxes all of the individual's powers and inner resources. We have to prove our worth and justify our existence anew each day. When, for whatever reason, self-esteem is unattainable, the autonomous individual becomes a highly explosive entity. He turns away from an unpromising self and plunges into the pursuit of pride — the explosive substitute for self-esteem. All social disturbances and upheavals have their roots in crises of individual self-esteem, and the great endeavor in which the masses most readily unite is basically a search for pride.
Leonard Read Journals, September 18, 1959 https://history.fee.org/leonard-read-journal/1959/leonard-e-read-journal-september-1959
The altruists, Christian or Maoist, agree. A cozy accomodation; and, I submit, a suspicious one. What if this antagonistic intedependence, this reciprocal reliance reflects and conceals an accord? Could egoism be altruism’s loyal opposition?
Preface to The Right To Be Greedy (1983 edition)