This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
I am free... when my existence depends upon myself. This self-contained existence of spirit is none other than self-consciousness, consciousness of one’s own being. Two things must be distinguished in consciousness; first, the fact that I know; secondly, what I know. In self consciousness these are merged in one; for spirit knows itself. It involves an appreciation of its own nature, as also an energy enabling it to realize itself; to make itself actually that which it is potentially.
Appreciation | Consciousness | Energy | Existence | Nature | Self | Spirit | Appreciation |
George Berkeley, also Bishop Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne
It is evident to any one who takes a survey of the objects of human knowledge, that they are either ideas actually imprinted on the senses, or else such as are perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind, or lastly ideas formed by help of memory and imagination, either compounding, dividing, or barely representing those originally perceived in the aforesaid ways... But besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects of knowledge, there is likewise something which knows or perceives them, and exercises divers operations, as willing, imagining, remembering about them. This perceiving, active being is what I call mind, spirit, soul or my self. By which words I do not denote any of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein they exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby they are perceived; for the existence of an idea consist in being perceived.
Existence | Ideas | Imagination | Knowledge | Memory | Mind | Self | Soul | Spirit | Words |
The loss of certainty of truth has ended in a new, entirely unprecedented zeal for truthfulness - as though man could afford to be a liar only so long as he was certain of the unchallengable existence of truth and objective reality, which surely would survive and defeat all his lies.
There is nothing impossible in the existence of the supernatural. Its existence seems to me decidedly probable.
Happiness is the only sanction in life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
Existence | Experiment | Life | Life | Happiness |
If spring came but once in a century, instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change! But now the silent succession suggests nothing but necessity. To most men only the cessation of the miracle would be miraculous, and the perpetual existence of God's power seems less wonderful than its withdrawal would be.
Change | Existence | Expectation | God | Men | Necessity | Nothing | Power | Silence | Sound | Wonder | Expectation |
The consciousness of my existence is at the same time an immediate consciousness of the existence of other things outside me.
Consciousness | Existence | Time |
The permanent in phenomena must be regarded as the substratum of all determination of time, and consequently also as the condition of the possibility of all synthetical unity of perceptions, that in time can only be regarded as a mode in the existence of that which abides unchangeably. Therefore, in all phenomena, the permanent is the object in itself.
Determination | Existence | Object | Phenomena | Time | Unity |
The soul of the truly benevolent man does not seem to reside much in his own body. Its life, to a great extent, is a mere reflex of the lives of others. It migrates into their bodies, and identifying its existence with their existence, finds its own happiness in increasing and prolonging their pleasures, in extinguishing or solacing their pains.
Ibn `Arabi, full name was Abū 'Abdillāh Muḥammad ibn 'Alī ibn Muḥammad ibn `Arabī
The whole of existence is imagination, while true Being is God alone.
Existence | God | Imagination | God |
Happiness is the condition of a rational being in the world, in whose whole existence everything goes according to wish and will. It thus rests on the harmony of nature with his entire end and with the essential determining ground of his will.
The righteous man may say: I will that there be a God, that my existence in this world be also an existence outside the chain of physical causes and in a pure world of the understanding, and lastly that my duration be endless; I firmly abide by this, and will not let this faith be taken from me; for in this instance alone my interest, because I must not relax anything of it, inevitably determines my judgment.
Existence | Faith | God | Judgment | Man | Understanding | Will | World |
Man is a being in whom existence precedes essence, that he is a free being who, in various circumstances, can want only his freedom, I have at the same time recognized that I can want only the freedom of others. Therefore, in the name of this will for freedom, which freedom itself implies, I may pass judgment on those who seek to hide from themselves the complete arbitrariness and the complete freedom of their existence. Those who hide their complete freedom from themselves out of a spirit of seriousness or by means of deterministic excuses, I shall call cowards.
Circumstances | Existence | Freedom | Judgment | Man | Means | Spirit | Time | Will |
The true happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self; and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions; it loves shade and solitude, and naturally haunts groves and fountains, fields and meadows; in short, it feels everything it wants within itself, and receives no addition from multitudes of witnesses and spectators. On the contrary, false happiness loves to be in a crowd, and to draw the eyes of the world upon her. She does not receive satisfaction from the applauses which she gives herself, but from the admiration which she raises in others. She flourishes in courts and palaces, theaters and assemblies, and has no existence but when she is looked upon.
Admiration | Conversation | Enemy | Enjoyment | Existence | Nature | Noise | Receive | Self | Solitude | Wants | World | Friendship | Happiness |
Nothing about his life is more strange to [man] or more unaccountable in purely mundane terms than the stirrings he finds in himself, usually fitful but sometimes overwhelming, to look beyond his animal existence and not be fully satisfied with its immediate substance. He lacks the complacency of the other animals: he is obsessed by pride and guilt, pride at being something more than a mere animal, built at falling short of the high aims he sets for himself.
Aims | Complacency | Existence | Guilt | Life | Life | Man | Nothing | Pride |
In the social production of their existence, human beings necessarily enter into determinate relations, independent of their will, relations of production, corresponding to a given stage of development of their material productive powers. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation on which rises a legal and political superstructure and tow which correspond determinate forms of social consciousness. the mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and spiritual life. It is not the consciousness of human beings which determines their existence, but their social existence determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive powers of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or - this merely expresses the same things in terms of right - with the property relations in the framework of which they have thus far operated. From forms of development of the productive powers these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.
Consciousness | Era | Existence | Life | Life | Property | Revolution | Right | Society | Will | Society |
Directly stated, the evolution of the entire universe - stars, elements, life, man - is a process of drawing something out of nothing, out of the utter void of nonbeing. The creative element in the mind of man - the latency which can conceive gods, carve statues, move the heart with the symbols of great poetry, or devise the formulas of modern physics - emerge in as mysterious a fashion as those elementary particles which leap into momentary existence in great cyclotrons, only to vanish again like infinitesimal ghosts.
Evolution | Existence | Heart | Life | Life | Man | Mind | Nothing | Poetry | Universe |