“Symbolic impoverishment ceases to be a problem precisely because the rich have found functional equivalents for a system of compelling moral demands, in analysis and art, which may be said to be a mode of self-reverence.”

—  Philip Rieff

The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Symbolic impoverishment ceases to be a problem precisely because the rich have found functional equivalents for a syste…" by Philip Rieff?
Philip Rieff photo
Philip Rieff 16
American sociologist 1922–2006

Related quotes

Duncan Gregory photo

“In this chapter I shall collect those Theorems in the Differential Calculus which, depending only on the laws of combination of the symbols of differentiation, and not on the functions which are operated on by these symbols, may be proved by the method of the separation of the symbols : but as the principles of this method have not as yet found a place in the elementary works on the Calculus, I shall first state? briefly the theory on which it is founded.”

Duncan Gregory (1813–1844) British mathematician

Source: Examples of the processes of the differential and integral calculus, (1841), p. 237; Lead paragraph of Ch. XV, On General Theorems in the Differential Calculus,; Cited in: James Gasser (2000) A Boole Anthology: Recent and Classical Studies in the Logic of George Boole,, p. 52

Lotfi A. Zadeh photo

“In general, complexity and precision bear an inverse relation to one another in the sense that, as the complexity of a problem increases, the possibility of analysing it in precise terms diminishes. Thus 'fuzzy thinking' may not be deplorable, after all, if it makes possible the solution of problems which are much too complex for precise analysis.”

Lotfi A. Zadeh (1921–2017) Electrical engineer and computer scientist

Zadeh (1972) "Fuzzy languages and their relation to human intelligence". in: Proceedings of the International Conference Man and Computer, Bordeaux, France. Basel: S. Karger, pp. 130-165. cited in Gaines (1976) "Foundations of fuzzy reasoning" in: International Journal of Man-Machine Studies 8(6), p. 624
1970s

“Philosophers who function within analytic traditions tend to reflect on the self in a way that unwittingly impoverishes and objectifies self.”

Bruce Wilshire (1932–2015) American philosopher

Source: Fashionable Nihilism (2002), p. xiii

George Boole photo
George Peacock photo
Talcott Parsons photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“I may grow rich by art I am compelled to follow, I may recover health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own judgment, but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve & abhor.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Notes on Religion (October 1776), published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 2 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-02_Bk.pdf, p. 266
1770s
Context: Compulsion in religion is distinguished peculiarly from compulsion in every other thing. I may grow rich by art I am compelled to follow, I may recover health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own judgment, but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve & abhor.

Colin Powell photo

Related topics