“Man is a self-conscious Nothing.”

—  Julius Bahnsen

Quoted by Thomas Ligotti in The Conspiracy Against The Human Race, 2011, p. 13.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 26, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Man is a self-conscious Nothing." by Julius Bahnsen?
Julius Bahnsen photo
Julius Bahnsen 4
German philosopher 1830–1881

Related quotes

“What we may call a blind struggle for betterment in the atoms, becomes in man a self-conscious yearning to grow, to become ever more the divinity within himself, arising in a recognition, now quasi-conscious, that man is a son of the gods. This same urge becomes in the gods a divine knowledge that they are inseparable parts of the universe, and are growing to take a vaster self-conscious part in the universal labor.”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

Source: The Esoteric Tradition (1935), Chapter 6

Daniel Bell photo

“Nihilism, then, is the end process of rationalism. It is man's self conscious will to destroy his past and control his future. It is modernity at its extreme.”

Daniel Bell book The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

Introduction, The Disjunction of Realms, p. 4
The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976)

Kanye West photo

“Man, I promise I'm so self conscious/Thats why you always see me with at least one of my watches”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

All Falls Down
Lyrics, The College Dropout (2004)

Ernest Becker photo

“What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal?”

Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death

The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one is food for worms. The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one is food for worms. This is the terror: to I have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression—and with all this yet to die. It seems like a hoax, which is why one type of cultural man rebels openly against the idea of God. What kind of deity would, create such complex, and fancy worm food?
"The Psychoanalyst Kierkegaard", p. 87
The Denial of Death (1973)

Ray Bradbury photo

“Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't "try" to do things. You simply "must" do things.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer
Sören Kierkegaard photo

“To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one's self…. And to venture in the highest is precisely to be conscious of one's self.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

“A nation is a far more self-conscious community than an ethnicity.”

Adrian Hastings (1929–2001) Roman Catholic priest, historian and author

Source: The construction of nationhood: ethnicity, religion, and nationalism (1997), p. 3; cited in: Ciarán Benson (2001) The Cultural Psychology of the Self: Place, Morality, Art. p. 211.

W.E.B. Du Bois photo

“The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, -- this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost… He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American…”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

Source: Souls of Black Folk & Era of Franklin D. Roosevelt 1933-1945 & Movements of the New Left 1950-1975

Pitirim Sorokin photo

“Man is a conscious, rational thinker and a supra-conscious creator genius.”

Pitirim Sorokin (1889–1968) American sociologist

Pitirim Sorokin (1964) The basic trends of our times http://books.google.nl/books?id=SXrO4qCbmMIC, p. 39

“There is something more in life… No man has reached the maximum capacity for self-preservation and growth, no man has attained the full measure of conscious spiritual existence, no man has entered into the deepest communion with God or is entirely devoted to his service.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Source: Something More, A Consideration of the Vast, Undeveloped Resources of Life (1920), p. 63

Related topics