HKB
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Often appears with: justice as a virtue · reason and the intellect · fate, destiny, and necessity · doubt, skepticism, and certainty · universal certainty · sciences as harmful · rejected fatalism · real constitution · prudence and practical wisdom · physical motion · ordered will · nominal essence
Usually: argument (4) · detachment (3) · skepticism (2) · reflection (1) · crisis of belief (1) · curiosity (1) · exhortation (1) · indignation (1) · resignation (1) · wonder (1)
“Because, not knowing the real constitution on which sensation, power of motion, and reasoning, with that peculiar shape, depend, and whereby they are united together in the same subject, there are very few other qualities with which we can perceive them to have a necessary connexion.” John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 2 · insight
“Tell me, said Epictetus, think you not that some dogs are beautiful, and some horses, and so of the other animals?” Epictetus (trans. T. W. Rolleston), The Teaching of Epictetus · observation
“For thou art not flesh and hair, but a Will: if thou keep this beautiful, then wilt thou be beautiful.” Epictetus (trans. T. W. Rolleston), The Teaching of Epictetus · insight
“Sciences therefore crept into the world with other the pests of mankind, from the same head from whence all other mischiefs spring; we'll suppose it devils, for so the name imports when you call them demons, that is to say, knowing.” Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly · insight
“One must think that everything is not complete in nature, as Newton has demonstrated, and that every movement is not communicated step by step until it makes a circuit of the world” Voltaire, Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary · insight
“The world can exist only by contradictions: what is needed to abolish them? to assemble the states of the human race.” Voltaire, Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary · insight
Locke claims that because we lack knowledge of substances’ real constitutions, we can make only very few certain universal propositions about things like humans, hemlock, and nourishing materials.
15. Whilst our complex Ideas of Substances contain not ideas of their real Constitutions, we can make but few general Propositions concerning them. This is evident, the abstract complex ideas of substances, for which their general names stand, not comprehending their real constitutions, can afford us very little universal certainty. Because our ideas of them are not made up of that on which those qualities we observ…
He defines his task as being good, and says it is achieved through general principles—especially principles about the nature of the universe and the proper constitution of human beings.
certain reference to circumstances. And in short, a man must learn a great deal to enable him to pass a correct judgment on another man’s acts (IX. 38; IV. 51). Sixth, consider when thou art much vexed or grieved, that man’s life is only a moment, and after a short time we are all laid out dead (VII. 58; IV. 48). Seventh, that it is not men’s acts which disturb us, for those acts have their foundation in men’s ruli…
Voltaire launches into “contradictions,” claiming the world runs through opposites, praising mathematicians’ rule-bound certainty and animals’ instinct, and arguing history’s moral contrasts are faithful portraits of human nature.
circles in a well or three, that he slept on the left side or on the right; I do not see that that has had much influence on present affairs. One must think that everything is not complete in nature, as Newton has demonstrated, and that every movement is not communicated step by step until it makes a circuit of the world, as he has demonstrated still further. Throw into water a body of like density, you calculate ea…
Epictetus argues that beauty depends on excellence according to each thing’s nature: a dog, horse, and human are beautiful only when each has its proper virtue, especially human virtue as ordered Will.
OF ADORNMENT OF THE PERSON. 1. A certain young man, a rhetorician, having come to Epictetus with his hair dressed in an unusually elaborate way, and his other attire much adorned, Tell me, said Epictetus, think you not that some dogs are beautiful, and some horses, and so of the other animals? ----"I do think it," said he. And men too--are not some beautiful and some ill-favored? ----"How otherwise?" Whether, th…
Responding to philosophers, Erasmus argues that calling human foolishness “miserable” is wrong because error suits human nature; he then claims sciences and learning originated from deceptive devils and disrupt happiness.
What are you the worse if the people hiss at you, so you applaud yourself? And that a man be able to do so, he must owe it to folly. But methinks I hear the philosophers opposing it and saying 'tis a miserable thing for a man to be foolish, to err, mistake, and know nothing truly. Nay rather, this is to be a man. And why they should call it miserable, I see no reason; forasmuch as we are so born, so bred, so instruc…