17 quotes
To act nobly, a noble heart is not enough. It needs help from a sharp mind.
Looking for an Honest Man (2009)
Could technology, understood as the disposition and activity of mastery, turn out to be a stumbling block in the path of the master himself?
The Problem of Technology (1993)
Although not all flesh is forbidden, everything that is forbidden is flesh.
Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder.
I have come to believe that looking honestly for the human being, following the path wherever it leads, may itself be an integral part of finding it.
Looking for an Honest Man (2009)
"Soul" names the unified powers of aliveness, awareness, action, and appetite that living beings all manifest.
Looking for an Honest Man (2009)
Aristotle says over and over again that the ethically excellent human being acts for the sake of the noble, for the sake of the beautiful.
Looking for an Honest Man (2009)
Sight and seeing are powers and activities of soul, relying on the underlying materials but not reducible to them. Moreover, sight and seeing are not knowable through our objectified science, but only through lived experience.
Looking for an Honest Man (2009)
In contrast to 50 years ago, few licensed humanists today embrace any view of the humanities that could in fact justify making them the centerpiece of a college curriculum.
Looking for an Honest Man (2009)
Ancient science had sought knowledge of what things are, to be contemplated as an end in itself satisfying to the knower. In contrast, modern science seeks knowledge of how things work, to be used as a means for the relief and comfort of all humanity, knowers and non-knowers alike.
The Problem of Technology (1993)
Anyone who cannot see that courage is more beautiful than cowardice or rashness, or that liberality is more beautiful than miserliness or prodigality, suffers, one might say, from the moral equivalent of color-blindness.
Looking for an Honest Man (2009)
To seek an honest man is, at once, to seek a human being worthy of the name, an honest-to-goodness exemplar of the idea of humanity, a truthful and truth-speaking embodiment of the animal having the power of articulate speech.
Looking for an Honest Man (2009)
Prudence is … more than mere shrewdness. If not tied down to the noble and just ends that one has been habituated to love, the soul's native power of cleverness can lead to the utmost knavery.
Looking for an Honest Man (2009)
A blind neuroscientist could give precise quantitative details regarding electrical discharges in the eye produced by the stimulus of light, and a blind craftsman could with instruction fashion a good material model of the eye; but sight and seeing can be known only by one who sees.
In leading laboratories, academic and industrial, new creators are confidently amassing their powers and quietly honing their skills, while on the street their evangelists are zealously prophesying a posthuman future. For anyone who cares about preserving our humanity, the time has come to pay attention.
Diogenes … refuses to be taken in by complacent popular belief that we already know human goodness from our daily experience, or by confident professorial claims that we can capture the mystery of our humanity in definitions.
Looking for an Honest Man (2009)
Many of our fellow citizens do not share the blind faith in the simple beneficence of all technological innovation. And because they do not share the corporealist, morally neutral, and in some cases atheistic world-view that they attribute (fairly or not) to science and scientists, they are reluctant to surrender the power of decision to the very people who they think are creating the problem.
Forbidding Science: Some Beginning Reflections (2006)