Only by these facts can we explain the spoiled-child psychology of the urban masses. The scientists have given him the impression that there is nothing he cannot know, an false propagandists have told him that there is nothing he cannot have. Since the prime object of the latter is to appease, he has received concessions…
Read moreDostoyevsky on Reason
In short, anything can be said of world history, anything conceivable even by the most disordered imagination. There is only one that that you can’t say — that it had anything to do with reason. The very first word would choke you. Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground, p. 37
Read moreDostoyevsky on Free Will
If men really turned out to be piano-keys, and if it was proved to them by science and mathematics, even then they would not see reason, but on the contrary would deliberately do something out of sheer ingratitude in order, in fact, to have their own way. And if they had not the means to…
Read moreDostoyevsky on Human Caprice
Now I ask you, what can one expect of man, as a creature endowed with such strange qualities? Shower him with all earthly blessings, plunge him so deep into happiness that nothing is visible but the bubbles rising to the surface of his happiness, as if it were water; give him such economic prosperity that…
Read moreDostoyevsky on Human Folly
And here is something this is always cropping up: people are always appearing who are terribly sensible and moral, terribly sage, terrible lovers of the human race, who really set themselves, as the goal of their whole lives, to conduct themselves in teh noblest and most rational manner and let their light shine before their…
Read moreWeaver on Nihilism
It is said that physicians sometimes ask patients, “Do you really wish to get well?” And, to be perfectly realistic in this matter, we must put the question of whether modern civilization wishes to survive. One can detect signs of suicidal impulse; one feels at times that the modern world is calling for madder music…
Read moreWeaver on Democracy
To one group “democracy” means access to the franchise; to another it means economic equality administered by a dictatorship. Weaver, Richard M., Ideas Have Consequences, p. 148
Read moreWeaver on Language
Even empirical investigations of the learning process bear this out. Such conclusions lead to the threshold of a significant commitment: ultimate definition is, as Aristotle affirmed, a matter of intuition. Primordial conception is somehow in us; from this we proceed as already noted by analogy, or the process of finding resemblance to one thing in…
Read moreWeaver on Language
Even empirical investigations of the learning process bear this out. Such conclusions lead to the threshold of a significant commitment: ultimate definition is, as Aristotle affirmed, a matter of intuition. Primordial conception is somehow in us; from this we proceed as already noted by analogy, or the process of finding resemblance to one thing in…
Read moreWeaver on the First Mover
Therefore one inviolable right there must be to validate all other rights. Unless something exists from which we can start with moral certitude, we cannon depend on those deductions which are the framework of coherent behavior. I have read recently that a liberal is one who doubts his premises even when he is proceeding on…
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