Great Throughts Treasury

"It usually really matters to someone if there is a disconnect between how they see themselves and how others see them."

"It is situation, not character, which often makes the biggest difference to what we do."

"It?s like being told that you?re going on holiday to somewhere that is just like the Bahamas, apart from the fact it?s cold, wet and there are no beaches."

"Kierkegaard achieved the necessary condition of any great romantic intellectual figure, which is rejection by his own time and society."

"It?s an empty question: it looks like a genuine question that should have an answer, but it has none. All sorts of questions of sameness in real life are of this kind."

"Losing your self is so egotistical. The reason I am being a little brutal here is that I think there is a terrible dishonesty among some of those who claim that what they are trying to achieve is a lessening of attachment to ego. The clear truth is that people who find this path satisfying are living contented lives. In other words, they like their "spiritual practices" because they make them feel more content, at peace, or whatever, than alternatives they have tried. So despite all the fine words about losing their egos, they are in fact simply engaging in another form of self-gratification. This isn't materialistic or harmful to others, so we tend to look upon it quite kindly. But it is not in any sense a way of life which shows disregard for self-interest."

"Many philosophers have argued that we are constituted by a psychologically continuous web of thoughts, feelings, beliefs and memories. Dementia says, well, okay, let?s pick that web apart, piece by piece and see if anything of you remains."

"Meaning of life is now, or never. I have rejected the view that life's purpose can be understood by looking backwards to its origins. But that doesn't mean the only alternative is looking forward to its ultimate end. Just as the restaurant staff are fulfilling their professional purposes in the present simply by doing their job, couldn't we fulfill life's purpose in the present simply by living our lives?... So if life is to be meaningful, the "why/because" series cannot extend indefinitely into the future. At some point we have to reach an end point where a further "why" question is unnecessary, misguided, or nonsensical. Otherwise the purpose of life is forever beyond our reach... As we have repeatedly seen, at some point we have to reach the stage where a "why" question can be met with an answer along the lines of "Are you nuts? Why wouldn't anyone want that?" If not, the "why/because" series just extends into the indefinite future... Yet so many of us do look towards some idyllic future when we have "made it" as providing purpose for what we do. This is a mistake and at its root is a failure to realize that if what is being worked towards is worthwhile in itself, then so are many other things that are within our grasp right now."

"Matters become more contentious when it comes to determining which are the main blades. The problem here is that people are too quick to assume that the functions they themselves most appreciate are the ones which define what universities are really for. So, for instance, those working in the humanities must justify what they do by appeal to the lofty ideas of learning for learning's sake, with perhaps a nod to the value of a broad, humanistic education in producing well-rounded citizens. Hence they are hostile to any suggestion that universities serve utilitarian functions, like vocational training. But were, say, a philosopher to stroll across campus to the medical school, she would discover that the rationale for study there involves precisely the kind of talk of skills and utility which is anathema to humanities scholars. These faculties are there to produce medics and researchers. Their role is not primarily to push back the boundaries of knowledge for its own sake but to save lives and improve health. So although we can give perfectly coherent answers to the questions 'what are medial faculties for?' and 'what are literature departments for?', the moment we try and bring both answers together to determine what the university as a whole is for, we get contradictory rationales. On the Swiss army knife model, this isn't a problem. The whole point of such an instrument is to fulfill a variety of functions. Yet one question remains: why combine all these different functions in the one institution? Why have one multi-purpose tool rather than a variety of more specialized ones? The analogy here is useful again. The virtue of the Swiss army knife is that we have the need to draw on its different functions at different times, and we can't predict in advance when those times will be."

"Memories are not passive chunks of information. Rather, memory is an active process, the contents of which are forever in flux."

"More worryingly, our willingness to cause terrible harms also seems to be highly situation-dependent."

"Much religious hope is about this world too, not just that God will intervene to cure the sick, but that justice will ultimately prevail, that evil will not be allowed to win, that we might live in communion with the transcendent and in accordance with a divine purpose."

"Moral claims are judgments it is always possible to someone to disagree with... without saying something that is factually false... you may disagree with me but you cannot say I have made a factual error."

"Morality is more than possible without God, it is entirely independent of him."

"Nested hierarchies can be visualized as concentric circles, with the smallest circle in the center at the ?bottom? of the hierarchy and the largest, outer circle at the ?top? of it. To say such a hierarchy is nested is simply to say that the top levels incorporate the lower ones. Higher levels are not therefore independent of lower ones. Take away the lowest level and the highest is left with a donut-like hole at its center, and it just can?t function."

"No matter how jumbled my brain is in some ways, unity of agency only requires a reasonably stable set of intentions, and the ability to carry them through."

"No matter what their adult personality is, many people revert to childhood versions of themselves when they gather together as family."

"Not all that is precious impresses at first sight: more people have got rich mining coal than diamonds, and oil moves more machinery than gold."

"On a simple bundle view, wedding vows make no sense: I cannot bind my future self if that self is in a real sense not the same self as I am."

"Not only memories, but skills and personality traits are often to some extent state-dependent."

"Only a minority of people are actually of consistent good character, and, likewise, only a few of consistent bad character."

"Our knowledge of situationism should be used to build character more wisely, not to give up on it."

"One of the cheapest and most effective rhetorical tricks in the book is the use of the debunking ?just? or ?mere?. Many perfectly sound ideas can be made to appear quite implausible by the judicious insertion of one of these words."

"Our lives are like symphonies that last decades, and the instrument we are given to play it on will do a great deal to shape how it sounds."

"Our sense of self is rooted in what we think and how we feel. Our bodies at least in part shape this sense of self, as a plaster cast molds a statue. But just as no one would confuse the cast with the work of art, so we should not misidentify the body with the core of self."

"Our sense of self may well be strongly affected by the social world we inhabit, but the sense itself remains inner, psychological."

"Paradoxes of the self: beliefs we have about who and what we are which have an equal force yet which contradict one another."

"Our self-knowledge is severely limited if we fail to see how our interactions with others also reveal important truths about who we are."

"Over time, we change completely, yet remain completely the same."

"Part of the problem with assessing how religious we are is that it is not clear what "being religious" means. Although it is often said that Britain is not a particularly religious country, it is even less of an overtly irreligious one. Atheists remain in the minority, with the majority being what one BBC survey described as "vaguely spiritual". Part of the problem with assessing how religious we are is that it is not clear what "being religious" means. There is, however, one sense in which being religious is extremely common indeed; so common, in fact, that even many atheists fall under the description. This version of religiosity, however, is often missed, squeezed out between two competing notions of religion as logos or mythos, ideas which Karen Armstrong has been so effective in explaining and disseminating. According to this account, religious truth is often assumed to be fundamentally about certain creeds that are literally true, sacred texts that describe historical facts and values that are absolute. This is religion as logos. The alternative view is that religious truth should be seen as mythos - not myth in the dismissive kind of way, but as a source of insight into reality and how to live. To understand religion in this way requires a certain mental dexterity, since it rejects the attempt to treat religious teachings as "mere metaphors" that need to be translated into non-sacred language as firmly as it does the attempt to see them as literal descriptions of the way the cosmos is. Yet logos and mythos do not exhaust the meanings of religiosity. There is a third sense; one which I believe is more important and more widely held. This is the idea of having a religious attitude. Attitudes are not beliefs at all, literal, analogical or otherwise. They are, however, deeply important to how we live, for they determine our entire orientation to the world around us. Among the primary religious attitudes are those of awe, reverence, gratitude and humility. What each have in common is that they capture a sense that there is something greater than us, which commands us, and which we cannot control. And it is the perceived absence of these attitudes in atheism that lends it the reputation for arrogance. Yet although religion arguably allows for a more natural expression of these attitudes, they are compatible with even the most naturalistic cosmology. A theist, for example, has a clear object for their feeling of gratitude: the creator God. But an atheist can clearly have a sense of their own good fortune and an understanding that any period of prosperity may be impermanent. Likewise, a theist feels awe and reverence for "creation", yet as even the atheist Richard Dawkins has described in his Unweaving the Rainbow, almost identical emotional responses to the natural world can be shared by materialist scientists. As for humility, believing in an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent deity certainly gives you clear cause to be humble. But so can an awareness of the limits of human knowledge, power and benevolence. There are some, such as the philosopher David Cooper, who argue that secular humanism cannot sustain such attitudes. If man is the measure of all things, how can we accept that our own judgments are answerable to something other than ourselves? Yet even for humanists, beliefs have to be answerable to the facts and to the court of human experience, not just the experiences of ourselves and those whose beliefs we share. If atheists can hold such religious attitudes, is it therefore right to describe them as religious? That would be misleading, but the question itself is not important. We don't need to be religious to see that one of the great benefits and attractions of religion has nothing to do with its truth as mythos or logos, but for the attitudes towards the world, life and others it fosters. If that is correct, then believers and non-believers alike would do well to make sure that when they embrace or reject religion, they don't lose sight of what is truly good in it."

"Passive character is the set of dispositions we just happen to have as a result of our genes, upbringing and experience, without any particular effort on our own part."

"PERSON is not a biological category, but a functional one."

"People almost invariably believe that there is such an essence, a core of self that holds steady through life. This is sometimes called the ?pearl? view. The problem is that no one seems to be quite sure where to locate this precious gem."

"People romanticize death and ageing in order to put it out of their minds and get on with their miserably short lives.? Aubrey de Grey, biomedical gerontologist"

"Personal identity cannot float free from the physical, but it is not entirely determined by the physical."

"Real life is about accepting ups and downs, the good and the bad, the possibility of failure as well as the ambition to succeed. Atheism speaks to the truth about our human nature because it recognizes all this and does not seek to shield us from the truth by myth and superstition."

"Philosophy without criticism is like hunting deer without a shotgun, so, if you want people to like you, avoid robust philosophical debate."

"Postmodernists seem to me like thinkers who have tasted potent conceptual liquor and, lacking all moderation, have become intellectual dipsomaniacs."

"Qualified support, then, but only from a confirmed atheist who is unusually supportive of religion, an agnostic ex-priest, an ecumenical former nun who has rejected all dogma, and another atheist. It?s like discovering that central state socialism has its defenders, it?s just that none are actual central state socialists? In this case, the worry is that people who do not at all represent real, existing religion are defending it by appealing to characteristics it doesn?t actually have."

"Science is indeed one of our highest human achievements and we should respect it, admire it and draw on its findings to inform our world view. But it cannot provide the entirety of such a view and nor can we blithely assume that it will always support our most fundamental beliefs."

"Religion is also about trying to live sub specie aeternitatis; orienting oneself to the transcendent rather than the immanent; living in a moral community of shared practice or as part of a valuable tradition; cultivating certain attitudes, such as gratitude and humility; and so on. To say, as Sam Harris does, that ?religion is nothing more than bad concepts held in place of good ones for all time? misses all this. The practices of religion may be more important than the narratives, even if people believe those narratives to be true."

"Ryle accused dualists of making what he called a ?category mistake?. They started from the correct idea that thoughts, feelings and sensations were not physical things. The category mistake was to conclude that they must therefore be a different kind of thing, a non-physical thing."

"Second, you have no immaterial soul. Whatever stuff you are made from, it is the same kind of stuff that everything else is made of, be it plankton, cabbages or orangutans."

"Self-creation is not heroic but necessary."

"Short shots of wisdom are not shortcuts to wisdom."

"So consistency in character is something to be created; it does not arise organically."

"So like a field to be cultivated, like an arrow to be fashioned, like a block of wood to be sculpted, so the person through their actions creates themselves."

"So when you are very angry you do not have access to the same memories that you have when you are feeling very benign and relaxed.?"

"Something only seems to be missing because you?re expecting much more."

"Sometimes we believe we have successfully imagined something when we have in fact done no such thing."