18 quotes
Socrates reminds us that it is not the same thing, but almost the opposite, to understand religion and to accept it.
In Praise of Philosophy (1963)
Montaigne [puts] not self-satisfied understanding but a consciousness astonished at itself at the core of human existence.
It is a great good fortune, as Stendhal said, for one “to have his passion as a profession.”
In Praise of Philosophy (1963)
What makes a philosopher is the movement which leads back without ceasing from knowledge to ignorance, from ignorance to knowledge, and a kind of rest in this movement.
In Praise of Philosophy (1963)
The world is nothing but 'world-as-meaning.'
Phenomenology of Perception (1945)
Language transcends us and yet, we speak.
Phenomenology of Perception (1945)
De Lubac discusses an atheism which means to suppress this searching, he says, “even including the problem as to what is responsible for the birth of God in human consciousness.”
In Praise of Philosophy (1963)
Machiavelli is the complete contrary of a machiavellian, since he describes the tricks of power and “gives the whole show away.” The seducer and the politician, who live in the dialectic and have a feeling and instinct for it, try their best to keep it hidden.
In Praise of Philosophy (1963)
The philosopher will ask himself … if the criticism we are now suggesting is not the philosophy which presses to the limit that criticism of false gods which Christianity has introduced into our history.
In Praise of Philosophy (1963)
Thinking which displaces, or otherwise defines, the sacred has been called atheistic, and that philosophy which does not place it here or there, like a thing, but at the joining of things and words, will always be exposed to this reproach without ever being touched by it.
In Praise of Philosophy (1963)
Theology recognizes the contingency of human existence only to derive it from a necessary being, that is, to remove it. Theology makes use of philosophical wonder only for the purpose of motivating an affirmation which ends it. Philosophy, on the other hand, arouses us to what is problematic in our own existence and in that of the world, to such a point that we shall never be cured of searching for a solution.
In Praise of Philosophy (1963)
By becoming the pure subject who knows the world objectively, man ultimately realizes that absolute consciousness with respect to which the body and individual existence are no longer anything but objects; death is deprived of meaning. Reduced to the status of object of consciousness, the body could not be conceived as an intermediary between "things" and the consciousness which knows them.
The Structure of Behavior (1942)
The philosopher ... is well able to understand religion as one of the expressions of the central phenomenon of consciousness. But the example of Socrates reminds us that it is not the same thing, but almost the opposite, to understand religion and to accept it.
[The sensate body possesses] an art of interrogating the sensible according to its own wishes, an inspired exegesis
Hardness and softness, roughness and smoothness, moonlight and sunlight present themselves in our recollection not preeminently as sensory contents but as certain kinds of symbioses, certain ways outside has of invading us and certain ways we have of meets this invasion...
Phenomenology of Perception (1945)
Thought without language, says Lavelle, would not be a purer thought; it would be no more than the intention to think. And his last book offers a theory of expressiveness which makes of expression not “a faithful image of an already realized interior being, but the very means by which it is realized.”
In Praise of Philosophy (1963)
Philosophy is in history, and is never independent of historical discourse. But for the tacit symbolism of life it substitutes, in principle, a conscious symbolism; for a latent meaning, one that is manifest. It is never content to accept its historical situation. It changes this situation by revealing it to itself.
In Praise of Philosophy (1963)
The whole universe of science is built upon the world as directly experienced, and if we want to subject science itself to a rigorous scrutiny, and arrive at a precise assessment of its meaning and scope, we must begin by reawakening the basic experience of the world, of which science is the second-order expression.
Phenomenology of Perception (1945)