HKB
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Often appears with: perception and the senses · thomas paine · spiritual perception · secret correspondence · science of appearances · rights and liberties · religious persecution and toleration · reason and the intellect · rational inquiry · prudence and practical wisdom · prudence · prejudice
Usually: argument (2) · crisis of belief (2) · skepticism (2) · description (1) · letter or document (1) · reflection (1) · temptation (1) · censure (1) · detachment (1) · exhortation (1)
“My ease, my domestic happiness, my rural pleasures, my little property, my personal liberty, my reputation, my life, have little weight and ever had in my own estimation, in comparison with the great object of my country.” John Adams (as compiled/edited by Charles Francis Adams), Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife Abigail · insight
“On the subject of this sleeve he forms in his head a chaos of ideas which he is afraid to disentangle; and this veritably is not to have common sense.” Voltaire, Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary · observation
John Adams responds to Abigail’s letters, praises her secrecy, recounts his devotion to American interests over personal comfort, and assesses Thomas Paine’s Common Sense—approving its sense while criticizing its constitutional plans.
persons and places, or any other circumstances which might designate to strangers the writer, or the person written to, or the persons mentioned. Characters and description will do as well. The lie which you say occasioned such disputes at the tavern was curious enough. Who could make and spread it? I am much obliged to an uncle for his friendship. My worthy fellow-citizens may be easy about me. I never can forsake …
In the essay on Prudence, Emerson admits personal limitations, defines prudence as the virtue of the senses and the science of appearances, and ranks knowledge into common sense, taste, and spiritual perception.
false when detached. It is legitimate when it is the Natural History of the soul incarnate, when it unfolds the beauty of laws within the narrow scope of the senses. There are all degrees of proficiency in knowledge of the world. It is sufficient to our present purpose to indicate three. One class live to the utility of the symbol, esteeming health and wealth a final good. Another class live above this mark to the b…
He contests and weighs reasons for distinguishing interior senses and argues against treating common sense, memory, imagination, and estimative power as unnecessary or undistinguished from the senses.
touch grasps several contraries; such as hot or cold, damp or dry, and suchlike. Therefore it is not a single sense but several. Therefore there are more than five senses. Obj. 4: Further, a species is not divided against its genus. But taste is a kind of touch. Therefore it should not be classed as a distinct sense of touch. *On the contrary,* The Philosopher says (De Anima iii, 1): "There is no other besides the …
He explains different degrees of sleep: heavy evaporation suspends senses and yields no phantasms, while lighter evaporation leaves distorted or partial phantasms, so syllogizing may occur but is later recognized as flawed.
from the senses, and its first and principal objects are founded in sensible things. And therefore suspension of the senses necessarily involves a hindrance to the judgment of the intellect. Reply Obj. 2: The senses are suspended in the sleeper through certain evaporations and the escape of certain exhalations, as we read in _De Somn. et Vigil._ iii. And, therefore, according to the amount of such evaporation, the s…
Voltaire explains “common sense” as reason guided by the senses yet crippled by fear and prejudice, using an Arab example who can do science but believes in Mohammed’s ‘half-moon’ despite rational doubt.
vastly deceived in another. This Arab, who will be a good calculator, a learned chemist, an exact astronomer, will believe nevertheless that Mohammed put half the moon in his sleeve. Why will he go beyond common sense in the three sciences of which I speak, and why will he be beneath common sense when there is question of this half moon? Because in the first cases he has seen with his eyes, he has perfected his inte…