“The Present Age, according to my view of it, stands in that Epoch which in my former lecture I named the THIRD, and which I characterized as the Epoch of Liberation—directly from the external ruling Authority, indirectly from the power of Reason as Instinct, and generally from Reason in any form; the Age of absolute indifference towards all truth, and of entire and unrestrained licentiousness:–the state of completed sinfulness.”

Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 16

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Johann Gottlieb Fichte102

German philosopher 1762–1814

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“We arrived at five great Epochs of the Earthly Life of the Human Race, which are the only possible Epochs thereof, and thoroughly exhaust the whole of this Life:–First, That in which human affairs are governed by Reason as Instinct without violence or constraint. Second, That in which this Instinct has become weaker, and now only manifests itself in a few chosen Individuals, and thereby becomes an External Ruling Authority in reference to all the rest. Third, That in which this Authority is thrown off; and, with it, Reason in every shape which it has yet assumed. Fourth, That in which Reason in the shape of Science appears among men. Fifth, That in which Art associates itself with this Science, in order to mold Human Life with a firmer and surer hand into harmony with Science, and in which the ordering of all the relations of Man according to Reason is, by means of this Art, freely accomplished, the object of the Earthly Life attained, and our Race enters upon the higher spheres of Eternity.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 64

“Among other men Reason awakes in another form—as the impulse towards Personal Freedom, which, although it never opposes the mild rule of the inward Instinct which it loves, yet rises in rebellion against the pressure of a stranger Instinct which has usurped its rights; and in this awakening it breaks the chains,—not of Reason as Instinct itself, but of the Instinct of foreign natures clothed in the garb of external power.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 8

“In these pages, I continue the struggle to which my whole life is devoted. Describing, I also characterize and evaluate; narrating, I also defend myself, and more often attack. It seems to me that this is the only method of making an autobiography objective in a higher sense, that is, of making it the most adequate expression of personality, conditions, and epoch.
Objectivity is not the pretended indifference with which confirmed hypocrisy, in speaking of friends and enemies, suggests indirectly to the reader what it finds inconvenient to state directly. Objectivity of this sort is nothing but a conventional trick. I do not need it. Since I have submitted to the necessity of writing about myself — nobody has as yet succeeded in writing an autobiography without writing about himself — I can have no reason to hide my sympathies or antipathies, my loves or my hates.”

Leon Trotsky book My Life

Foreword
My Life (1930)

“Great men are the inspired (speaking and acting) texts of that divine Book of Revelations, wherof a chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named History.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Bk. II, ch. 8.
1830s, Sartor Resartus (1833–1834)

“My best wishes, in the joys, and festivities, and the solemn services of that day on which will be completed the fiftieth year from its birth, of the independence of the United States: a memorable epoch in the annals of the human race, destined in future history to form the brightest or the blackest page, according to the use or the abuse of those political institutions by which they shall, in time to come, be shaped by the human mind.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Reply to an invitation to 50th Independence Day celebrations from a committee of the citizens of Quincy, Massachusetts (7 June 1826); quoted in "Eulogy, Pronounced at Bridgewater, Massachusetts" http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC02570179&id=17ge0_OSAfIC&pg=RA1-PA160&lpg=RA1-PA160&dq=%22solemn+services+of+that+day+on+which+will+be+completed+%22&num=100 (2 August 1826) by John A. Shaw, in A Selection of Eulogies, Pronounced in the Several States, in Honor of Those Illustrious Patriots and Statesmen, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson (1826) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18196/18196.txt <br class="br">1820s

“Only through blind Instinct, in which the only possible guidance of the Imperative is awanting, does the Power in Intuition remain undetermined; where it is schematised as absolute it becomes infinite; and where it is presented in a determinate form, as a principle, it becomes at least manifold. By the above-mentioned act of Intelligising, the Power liberates itself from Instinct, to direct itself towards Unity.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

XI.
Outline of the Doctrine of Knowledge (1810)

“For authority proceeds from true reason, but reason certainly does not proceed from authority. For every authority which is not upheld by true reason is seen to be weak, whereas true reason is kept firm and immutable by her own powers and does not require to be confirmed by the assent of any authority.”

John Scotus Eriugena book De divisione naturae

Original: (la) Auctoritas siquidem ex vera ratione processit, ratio vero nequaquam ex auctoritate. Omnis enim auctoritas, quae vera ratione non approbatur, infirma videtur esse. Vera autem ratio, quum virtutibus suis rata atque immutabilis munitur, nullius auctoritatis adstipulatione roborari indigent.

De Divisione Naturae, Bk. 1, ch. 69; translation by I. P. Sheldon-Williams, cited from Peter Dronke (ed.) A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy (Cambridge: CUP, 1988) p. 2.

“Let us not fall into the vulgar error, which is to curse and to dishonour the age in which we live. However deep the shame of the present, whatever blows we receive from the fluctuation of events, whatever the apparent desertion or the momentary lethargy of mental vigour, none of us... will repudiate the magnificent epoch in which we live, the virile age of mankind.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Conclusion, Part Second, II
Napoleon the Little (1852)

“Consider what kind of authority [can be ascribed to] any principle which it open to us to choose to regard as authoritative or not. I may choose for example to observe a regimen of asceticism and fasting … for reasons of health … What authority such principles possess derives from the reasons for my choice. Insofar as they are good reasons, the principles have corresponding authority; insofar as they are not, the principles are to that same extent deprived of authority. It would follow that a principle for the choice of which no reasons could be given would be a principle devoid of authority. I might indeed adopt such a principle from whim or caprice or from some arbitrary purpose … but if I then chose to abandon the principle whenever it suited me, I would be entirely free to do so.”

Alasdair MacIntyre book After Virtue

Source: After Virtue (1981), p. 42.

“The general form of the total conception of ideology is being used by the analyst when he has the courage to subject not just the adversary's point of view but all points of view, including his own, to the ideological analysis.
At the present stage of our understanding it is hardly possible to avoid this general formulation of the total conception of ideology, according to which the thought of all parties in all epochs is of an ideological character.”

Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) Hungarian sociologist

Ideology and Utopia (1929)

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Johann Gottlieb Fichte102

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