Die Möglichkeit aller Philosophie ... dass sich die Intelligenz durch Selbstberührung eine Selbstgesezmäßige Bewegung - d.i. eine eigne Form der Tätigkeit gibt.
Schriften, p. 63, as translated in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings: Volume 1, 1913-1926 (1996), p. 133
“Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy.”
Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning) [Beitrage Zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis)], notes of 1936–1938, as translated by Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (1989)
Context: Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy. Those who idolize "facts" never notice that their idols only shine in a borrowed light.
Context: Those in the crossing must in the end know what is mistaken by all urging for intelligibility: that every thinking of being, all philosophy, can never be confirmed by "facts," ie, by beings. Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy. Those who idolize "facts" never notice that their idols only shine in a borrowed light. They are also meant not to notice this; for thereupon they would have to be at a loss and therefore useless. But idolizers and idols are used wherever gods are in flight and so announce their nearness.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Martin Heidegger 69
German philosopher 1889–1976Related quotes
Piero Scaruffi quotes (as selected by his readers) http://www.scaruffi.com/quotes.html
“Philosophy leads to death, sociology leads to suicide.”
“Science is a philosophy of discovery. Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance.”
Source: Death by Black Hole - And Other Cosmic Quandaries
Episode 13: "The Long Childhood"
The Ascent of Man (1973)
Context: And I am infinitely saddened to find myself suddenly surrounded in the west by a sense of terrible loss of nerve, a retreat from knowledge into—into what? Into Zen Buddhism; into falsely profound questions about, Are we not really just animals at bottom; into extra-sensory perception and mystery. They do not lie along the line of what we are able to know if we devote ourselves to it: an understanding of man himself. We are nature’s unique experiment to make the rational intelligence prove itself sounder than the reflex. Knowledge is our destiny. Self-knowledge, at last bringing together the experience of the arts and the explanations of science, waits ahead of us.
“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language.”
Die Philosophie ist ein Kampf gegen die Verhexung unsres Verstandes durch die Mittel unserer Sprache.
§ 109
Source: Philosophical Investigations (1953)
The Myth of Sisyphus and other essays by Albert Camus, An Absurd Reasoning : Absurdity and Suicide p. 3 (1942, 1955)
Absurdity and Suicide
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), An Absurd Reasoning
Context: There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest – whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories – comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer. And if it is true, as Nietzsche claims, that a philosopher, to deserve our respect, must preach by example, you can appreciate the importance of that reply, for it will precede the definitive act. These are facts the heart can feel; yet they call for careful study before they become clear to the intellect. If I ask myself how to judge that this question is more urgent than that, I reply that one judges by the actions it entails. I have never seen anyone die for the ontological argument.