On Ethics I

Even if ethics is unrealizable in its most ideal form in this world, the question has always been if this would be a better world with unrealizable ethics compared to the world without unrealizable ethics.

On Philosophy and Philosophers II

"...as Cleanthes used to say, that what philosophers say may be contrary to expectation, but not to reason." --Epictetus.

On Philosophy and Philosophers I

"Philosophy lacks the advantage, which the other sciences enjoy, of being able to presuppose its objects as given immediately by representation. And, with regard to its beginning and advance, it cannot presuppose the method of cognition as one that is already accepted."--Hegel

"The philosopher and philosophy can do nothing by themselves, but what can we do without them?"--Henri Lefebvre, from The Urban Revolution (2003).

On the plight of the Somalians

When Satre spoke of his idea of a radical freedom to choose, he clearly did not have this in mind--the kind of absolutely stark choices between two impossibly, inhumane fates: “If they stay in Somalia, they will die of hunger,” he said bluntly. That’s what the choice comes down to for many Somalis: Do they risk starvation at home or torture and rape while fleeing?" (reported by Kristof for NYT).

This decision-tree left me cold.

On mining ores

"And it is just the same with men's best wisdom. When you come to a good book, you must ask yourself, 'Am I inclined to work as an Australian miner would? Are my pickaxes and shovels in good order, and am I in good trim myself, my sleeves well up to the elbow, and my breath good, and my temper?' And, keeping the figure a little longer, even at cost of tiresomeness, for it is a thoroughly useful one, the metal you are in search of being the author's mind or meaning, his words are as the rock which you have to crush and smelt in order to get at it. And your pickaxes are your own care, wit, and learning; your smelting furnace is your own thoughtful soul. Do not hope to get at any good author's meaning without those tools and that fire; often you will need sharpest, finest chiselling, and patientest fusing, before you can gather one grain of the metal."

-- John Ruskin, in John Ruskin on Genius (2011), p.75.

On the idea of living in the solution

"When one is living in the solution, one does not understand the problem."

--Peter Sloterdijk, Neither Sun nor Death (2011).

On a Drift to Low Performance

"Thus though man has never before been so complacent about what he has, or as confident of his ability to do whatever he sets his mind upon, it is at the same time true that he never before accepted so low an estimate of what he is. The same scientific method which enabled him to create his wealth and to unleash the power he wields has, he believes, enabled biology and psychology to explain him away--or at least to explain away whatever used to seem unique or even in any way mysterious...Truly he is, for all his wealth and power, poor in spirit."

--Joseph Krutch (1959), cited in D.H. Meadows's, Thinking in Systems: A Primer, pp.185.