As quoted in Schrödinger: Life and Thought (1989) by Walter Moore
“Kant … discovered “the scandal of reason,” that is the fact that our mind is not capable of certain and verifiable knowledge regarding matters and questions that it nevertheless cannot help thinking about.”
Source: The Life of the Mind (1971/1978), p. 14.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Hannah Arendt 85
Jewish-American political theorist 1906–1975Related quotes
Introduction<!-- pp. 3-4 -->
The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry Into Its Origin and Growth (1921)
Context: Science has been advancing without interruption during the last three of four hundred years; every new discovery has led to new problems and new methods of solution, and opened up new fields for exploration. Hitherto men of science have not been compelled to halt, they have always found ways to advance further. But what assurance have we that they will not come up against impassable barriers?... Take biology or astronomy. How can we be sure that some day progress may not come to a dead pause, not because knowledge is exhausted, but because our resources for investigation are exhausted... It is an assumption, which cannot be verified, that we shall not reach a point in our knowledge of nature beyond which the human intellect is unqualified to pass.
La plupart des évènements ont des causes aussi petites. Nous les ignorons, parce que la plupart des historiens les ont ignorées eux-mêmes, ou parce qu’ils n’ont pas eu d’yeux pour les appercevoir. Il est vrai qu’à cet égard l’esprit peut réparer leurs omissions : la connoissance de certains principes supplée facilement à la connoissance de certains faits.
Essay III, Chapter I
De l'esprit or, Essays on the Mind, and Its Several Faculties (1758)
Paul Cilliers (2005: 263) as quoted in: Vikki Bell (2007) Culture and Performance: The Challenge of Ethics, Politics and Feminist Theory. p. 8
"Alas, All Human" in Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1979
General sources
Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/ch04.htm (1886)
“Philosophy is an activity: it is a way of thinking about certain sorts of question.”
Philosophy : the basics (Fifth Edition, 2013), Introduction