“If someone needs the "unusual" to be moved to astonishment, that person has lost the ability to respond rightly to the wondrous, the mirandum, of being. The hunger for the sensational, posing, as it may, in "bohemian garb," is an unmistakable sign of the loss of the true power of wonder, for a bourgeois-ized humanity.”

—  Josef Pieper

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, p. 102

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 "If someone needs the "unusual" to be moved to astonishment, that person has lost the ability to respond rightly to the …" by Josef Pieper?
Josef Pieper photo
Josef Pieper 45
German philosopher 1904–1997

Related quotes

“Someone needs to mention what may be lost.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

"Neil Postman Ponders High Tech" at Online Newshour : Online Forum (17 January 1996)
Context: Someone needs to mention what may be lost. Of course, one of the problems is that what I would judge to be a negative consequence, someone else might see as a positive consequence. For example, telephones in automobiles seem to me a very bad idea. So does spending a lot of hours "communicating" on the Internet when one could use that time reading Cervantes' Don Quixote.

“And in this, that philosophy begins in wonder [Plato, Theaetetus 155d], lies the, so to speak, non-bourgeois character of philosophy; for to feel astonishment and wonder is something non-bourgeois (if we can be allowed, for a moment, to use this all-too-easy terminology). For what does it mean to become bourgeois in the intellectual sense? More than anything else, it means that someone takes one's immediate surroundings (the world determined by the immediate purposes of life) so "tightly" and "densely," as if bearing an ultimate value, that the things of experience no longer become transparent. The greater, deeper, more real, and (at first) invisible world of essences is no longer even suspected to exist; the "wonder" is no longer there, it has no place to come from; the human being can no longer feel wonder. The commonplace mind, rendered deaf-mute, finds everything self-explanatory. But what really is self-explanatory? Is it self-explanatory, then, that we exist? Is it self-explanatory that there is such a thing as "seeing"? These are questions that someone who is locked into the daily world cannot ask; and that is so because such a person has not succeeded, as anyone whose senses (like a deaf person) are simply not functioning — has not managed even for once to forget the immediate needs of life, whereas the one who experiences wonder is one who, astounded by the deeper aspect of the world, cannot hear the immediate demands of life — if even for a moment, that moment when he gazes on the astounding vision of the world.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, pp. 101–102

“Feeling is an emotional interpretation of experience and these sensations don't need interpretation; they are just good or right. Making physical love rightly is a sensation, not a feeling. So is the love of God. The same goes for joy and beauty; both are sensational.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Love is not a feeling ~ The Article (1995)
Context: Love is not a feeling; it's a sensation. Drinking water when you're thirsty is a sensation, not a feeling. Being in nature or swimming in the sea is a sensation, not a feeling. Lying down when you're tired is sensational, not a feeling, although you may say it feels good. Feeling is an emotional interpretation of experience and these sensations don't need interpretation; they are just good or right. Making physical love rightly is a sensation, not a feeling. So is the love of God. The same goes for joy and beauty; both are sensational.

Fritz Leiber photo
Constantine P. Cavafy photo

“On hearing about powerful love, respond, be moved
like an aesthete.
On hearing about powerful love, respond, be moved
like an aesthete. Only, fortunate as you’ve been,
remember how much your imagination created for you.”

Constantine P. Cavafy (1863–1933) Greek poet

Source: http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=157&cat=4 On Hearing of Love
Collected Poems (1992)

Arthur Sullivan photo

“I am astonished and somewhat terrified at the results of this evening's experiments – astonished at the wonderful power you have developed, and terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever! … I think it is the most wonderful thing that I have ever experienced, and I congratulate you with all my heart on this wonderful discovery.”

Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900) English composer of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

A message on a phonograph cylinder, recorded by Arthur Sullivan at a demonstration of Thomas Edison's phonograph in London on 5 October 1888; cited from Michael Chanan Repeated Takes: A Short History of Recording and its Effects on Music (London: Verso, 1995) p. 26. See also "Historic Sullivan Recordings" http://diamond.boisestate.edu/gas/sullivan/html/historic.html at the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive; and Very Early Recorded Sound http://www.nps.gov/edis/photosmultimedia/very-early-recorded-sound.htm at the National Historical Park website. The recording was issued on CD by the British Library (Voices of History 2: NSACD 19-20, 2005).

Josh Billings photo

“If thare iz enny human being that i thoroughly loath, it iz the one who haz nothing tew boast ov but hiz money--a mere pimp tew hiz welth.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

Heinz Guderian photo

Related topics