“The course of history does not include eternal problems, problems of essences or of dialectics; it only offers valorizations that differ from one culture to another and even from one individual to another. … What is opposed to time as well as eternity is our own valorization of the present. What does it matter that time passes and that its frontier wipes out our valorizations? No warrior has been shaken in his patriotism by the idea that, had he been born on the other side of the border, his heart would have beaten for the other side.”

—  Paul Veyne

"The Final Foucault and His Ethics," Critical Inquiry, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Autumn, 1993)

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 "The course of history does not include eternal problems, problems of essences or of dialectics; it only offers valoriza…" by Paul Veyne?
Paul Veyne photo
Paul Veyne 1
French historian 1930

Related quotes

Vilna Gaon photo
John F. Kennedy photo

“…what really counts is not the immediate act of courage or of valor, but those who bear the struggle day in and day out — not the sunshine patriots but those who are willing to stand for a long period of time.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

"Remarks at the White House to Members of the American Legion (70)" (1 March 1962) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx
1962

Tsunetomo Yamamoto photo
Pierre Corneille photo

“True, I am young, but for souls nobly born
Valor doesn’t await the passing of years.”

Je suis jeune, il est vrai; mais aux âmes bien nées
La valeur n’attend point le nombre des années.
Don Rodrigue, act II, scene ii.
Le Cid (1636)

Michel De Montaigne photo

“Valor is strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul; it consists not in the worth of our horse or our weapons, but in our own.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Source: Cannibales

Mircea Eliade photo

“It is above all the valorizing of the present that requires emphasizing.”

Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer and philosopher

As quoted in Myth and Religion in Mircea Eliade (2002) by Douglas Allen, p. 90.
Context: It is above all the valorizing of the present that requires emphasizing. The simple fact of existing, of living in time, can comprise a religious dimension. This dimension is not always obvious, since sacrality is in a sense camouflaged in the immediate, in the "natural" and the everyday. The joy of life discovered by the Greeks is not a profane type of enjoyment: it reveals the bliss of existing, of sharing — even fugitively — in the spontaneity of life and the majesty of the world. Like so many others before and after them, the Greeks learned that the surest way to escape from time is to exploit the wealth, at first sight impossible to suspect, of the lived instant.

Thomas Kuhn photo
Theodore von Kármán photo
Miguel de Unamuno photo

Related topics