“We cannot exert our understanding without from time to time understanding something of importance; and this act of understanding may be accompanied by the awareness of our understanding, by the understanding of understanding, by noesis noesos, and this is so high, so pure, so noble an experience that Aristotle could ascribe it to his God.”

— Leo Strauss

“What is liberal education,” p. 8
Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968)

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Leo Strauss 78

Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservati… 1899–1973

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“We cannot understand without wanting to understand, that is, without wanting to let something be said.”

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Source: Aesthetics and Hermeneutics (1964), p. 101 http://books.google.com/books?id=7RP-TggufEEC&pg=PA101
Context: We cannot understand without wanting to understand, that is, without wanting to let something be said. It would be an inadmissible abstraction to contend that we must first have achieved a contemporaneousness with the author or the original reader by means of a reconstruction of his historical horizon before we could begin to grasp the meaning of what is said. A kind of anticipation of meaning guides the effort to understand from the very beginning.

“We shall not act unfairly in any way. We shall not allow our understanding to let us down. For a leader who has to take care of a volk/people, cannot govern, driven by emotions or vengefulness. It is our task in these heavy times, while the heart often wants to speak, to let understanding dominate; understanding and faith. Carried by faith in God, the government will not be able to govern unfairly. Faith and understanding does not, however, say that we have to act timidly when greater evils may follow. Power is sometimes the best means to get peace.”

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Context: Do you know what eternal life is? You think it's everlasting life. But your own theologians will tell you that that is crazy, because everlasting is still within time. It is time perduring forever. Eternal means timeless — no time. The human mind cannot understand that. The human mind can understand time and can deny time. What is timeless is beyond our comprehension. Yet the mystics tell us that eternity is right now. How's that for good news? It is right now. People are so distressed when I tell them to forget their past. They're crazy! Just drop it! When you hear "Repent for your past," realize it's a great religious distraction from waking up. Wake up! That's what repent means. Not "weep for your sins.": Wake up! understand, stop all the crying. Understand! Wake up!

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Source: Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science
Context: Whenever we proceed from the known into the unknown we may hope to understand, but we may have to learn at the same time a new meaning of the word "understanding."

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“People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.”

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Variant: People understand me so little that they do not even understand when I complain of being misunderstood.
Source: The Journals of Kierkegaard

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Leo Strauss 78

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