19 quotes
True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness: "I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live."
Kulturphilosophie (1923)
Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility to everything that has life.
Kulturphilosophie (1923)
The ethical ideas on which civilization rests have been wandering about the world, poverty-stricken and homeless.
Kulturphilosophie (1923)
Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.
Kulturphilosophie (1923)
Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.
Kulturphilosophie (1923)
Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me.
Kulturphilosophie (1923)
The last fact which knowledge can discover is that the world is a manifestation, and in every way a puzzling manifestation, of the universal will to live.
Kulturphilosophie (1923)
World-view is a product of life-view, not vice versa.
Kulturphilosophie (1923)
It is the fate of every truth to be an object of ridicule when it is first acclaimed.
Kulturphilosophie (1923)
Reverence for life, veneratio vitæ, is the most direct and at the same time the profoundest achievement of my will-to-live.
Kulturphilosophie (1923)
In no other fire than that of the mysticism of reverence for life can the broken sword of idealism be forged anew.
Kulturphilosophie (1923)
Affirmation of the world, which means affirmation of the will-to-live that manifests itself around me, is only possible if I devote myself to other life.
Kulturphilosophie (1923)
The good conscience is an invention of the devil.
Kulturphilosophie (1923)
Every world-view which fails to start from resignation in regard to knowledge is artificial and a mere fabrication, for it rests upon an inadmissible interpretation of the universe.
Kulturphilosophie (1923)
The man who has become a thinking being feels a compulsion to give every will-to-live the same reverence for life that he gives to his own. He experiences that other life in his own.
Kulturphilosophie (1923)
Ethics in our Western world has hitherto been largely limited to the relations of man to man. But that is a limited ethics. We need a boundless ethics which will include the animals also.
Kulturphilosophie (1923)
Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. That is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.
Kulturphilosophie (1923)
Awakening of Western thought will not be complete until that thought steps outside itself and comes to an understanding with the search for a world-view as this manifests itself in the thought of mankind as a whole.
Kulturphilosophie (1923)
Never for a moment do we lay aside our mistrust of the ideals established by society, and of the convictions which are kept by it in circulation. We always know that society is full of folly and will deceive us in the matter of humanity. … humanity meaning consideration for the existence and the happiness of individual human beings.
Kulturphilosophie (1923)