“Pragmatism starts from assumptions similar to those of empiriocriticism, but differs from the latter by its striking formulations, loose aphorisms, and analytical unscrupulousness.”
Source: The Alienation of Reason (1966), Chapter Seven, Pragmatism and Positivism, p. 166
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Leszek Kolakowski45
Philosopher, historian of ideas 1927–2009Related quotes
J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)
Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), Egoism and Altruism, pp. 120–121
Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) American politician
Footnote - The very remarkable speeches of Mr. Garfield, afterward President of the United States, which had so great an influence on the settlement of the inflation question throughout the Union, were on the main lines laid down in Turgot's letter
Source: Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1915), p. 171
Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer
Source: The Best That Money Can't Buy: Beyond Politics, Poverty, & War (2002), p. 31.
John Piper (artist) (1903–1992) English painter and printmaker (1903-1992)
Lost, A valuable object, in Myfanwy Piper's anthology-"The Painters Object" 1937
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist
Source: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 95
Brunello Cucinelli (1953) Italian entrepreneur and philanthropist
Source: THE VALUE OF HUMAN DIGNITY: Brunello Cucinelli’s Vision for a Better World https://gearpatrol.com/2018/12/20/brunello-cucinelli-interview/ John Zientek, Gear Patrol, December 20, 2018
David D. Friedman (1945) American economist, physicist, legal scholar, and libertarian theorist
Price Theory: An Intermediate Text, 1986
Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) German-born Israeli philosopher and historian
Source: On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (1960), Ch. 1 : Religious Authority and Mysticism
Context: We shall start from the assumption that a mystic, insofar as he participates actively in the religious life of a community, does not act in the void. It is sometimes said, to be sure, that mystics, with their personal striving for transcendence, live outside of and above the historical level, that their experience is unrelated to historical experience. Some admire this ahistorical orientation, others condemn it as a fundamental weakness of mysticism. Be that as it may, what is of interest to the history of religions is the mystic's impact on the historical world, his conflict with the religious life of his day and with his community. No historian can say — nor is it his business to answer such questions whether a given mystic in the course of his individual religious experience actually found what he was so eagerly looking for. What concerns us here is not the mystic's inner fulfillment. But if we wish to understand the specific tension that often prevailed between mysticism and religious authority, we shall do well to recall certain basic facts concerning mysticism.
A mystic is a man who has been favored with an immediate, and to him real, experience of the divine, of ultimate reality, or who at least strives to attain such experience. His experience may come to him through sudden illumination, or it may be the result of long and often elaborate preparations. From a historical point of view, the mystical quest for the divine takes place almost exclusively wit a prescribed tradition-the exceptions seem to be limited to modern times, with their dissolution of all traditional ties. Where such a tradition prevails, a religious authority, established long before the mystic was born, has been recognized by the com munity for many generations.
Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)