school Philosophy
Philosophical thought and inquiry
format_quote Quotes
"Europe has never been a producer of origins. It has been a consumer and a transmitter. Its genius lies not in invention ex nihilo but in the capacity to digest what it receives and to pass it on transformed, deepened, made available for new generations."
menu_book Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization
View Full Quote"Europe is characterized by what I shall call its eccentricity. I mean by this that Europe does not have its center in itself. Its source and its norm lie elsewhere, before it, and outside it."
menu_book Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization
View Full Quote"If we speak of human dignity, we must be able to say what it is grounded in. It cannot be grounded in mere membership in a biological species. It must be grounded in what is specifically human — in those capacities by which the human being rises above the rest of nature while remaining part of it."
menu_book What Is Distinctive to Man
View Full Quote"Ethics is not one capacity among others. It is the capacity that makes all others specifically human. To reason, to make art, to use language — all these can be done well or badly, and the judgment of well or badly is always already an ethical judgment."
menu_book What Is Distinctive to Man
View Full Quote"The human being is the only animal that asks what it is for. Not what it is good for — that is a question every living thing resolves in practice — but what the whole enterprise of its existence is aimed at, and whether that aim is worthy."
menu_book What Is Distinctive to Man
View Full Quote"To be rational is not simply to calculate correctly. It is to be able to ask what is true — not only what is useful. The animal that solves a problem has no interest in truth as such. The human being who asks a question is already asking whether reality is really what it appears to be."
menu_book What Is Distinctive to Man
View Full Quote"What is properly human is the capacity to step back from oneself — to take a distance from one's own drives, one's own history, one's own perspective — and to ask whether what one is doing is good. No animal can call itself into question."
menu_book What Is Distinctive to Man
View Full Quote"The model of European identity is not exclusive but inclusive. Europe is defined not by what it excludes but by what it is capable of integrating. Its capacity to welcome the foreign without ceasing to be itself is what constitutes its originality."
menu_book Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization
View Full Quote"Religion is not primarily a set of beliefs, nor a system of practices, nor a community. These are its expressions. Its essence lies in a certain relationship — to a source of goodness and being that one has not produced oneself and from which one continues to receive."
menu_book On Religion
View Full Quote"At the heart of every religious act there is something that resembles gratitude — an acknowledgment that what I am and what I have has not been produced by myself, that I exist in a relationship of dependence which is not servitude but recognition."
menu_book On Religion
View Full Quote"Religion is not a form of ethics. It is not morality applied to the relationship with God. Ethics deals with what I owe to other human beings; religion deals with what I owe — or rather, receive — from the principle of my existence itself."
menu_book On Religion
View Full Quote"Rome is not the origin of European culture. It is the instrument of its transmission. Rome receives from Greece and from Israel, and passes on to the Latin West what it has received. To be Roman is to come in second place."
menu_book Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization
View Full Quote"What I call the 'secondarity' of European culture is not a defect. It is, on the contrary, a constitutive feature — perhaps the most essential one. A culture that knows how to receive is not impoverished; it is enriched by what it takes in and makes its own."
menu_book Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization
View Full QuoteView Full Quote"The world doesn't just contain optimists and pessimists, and wise and unwise technology users. It contains enemies of civilization as well. And knowledge is impartial. It can be used for good or evil. But the enemies of civilization all necessarily have one thing in common. They are wrong. And so they fear error correction and truth. And that's why they resist changes in their ideas, which makes them less creative and slower to innovate. So our defense against the existential danger from malevolent uses of technology, the only defense, is speed. The good guys must use their only advantage to stay ahead."
"How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it."
menu_book The Theory of Moral Sentiments
View Full Quote"The constrained vision sees the evils of the world as deriving from the limited and biased nature of man himself — and therefore sees the social challenge as being to make the best of the possibilities which exist within that constraint, rather than to try to change human nature."
menu_book A Conflict of Visions
View Full Quote"In the unconstrained vision, human nature is not fixed but is capable of being changed by social institutions and social policies. If human beings are capable of improvement — even of perfection — then the question of how to design the best society, with the best social institutions, is a much more open-ended question than if human nature is treated as a given constraint."
menu_book A Conflict of Visions
View Full Quote"When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness."
menu_book Democracy in America
View Full Quoteauto_stories Books
A Conflict of Visions
Sowell's landmark 1987 work arguing that the deepest divide in political and social thought is not between left and right, but between two fundamen...
Read MoreComentario Resolutorio de Cambios (Commentary on Exchange)
Martín de Azpilcueta's 1556 treatise on monetary exchange, containing the earliest clear statement of what would become the quantity theory of mone...
Read MoreDe Iustitia et Iure (On Justice and Law)
Luis de Molina's six-volume masterwork on justice and law, completed in 1593. Molina's most enduring economic contribution is his clear formulation...
Read MoreDe Iustitia et Iure (On Justice and Law)
Domingo de Soto's systematic treatment of justice and law, published in 1553. Soto develops a rigorous natural law analysis of property rights, the...
Read MoreDe Rege et Regis Institutione (On the King and the Royal Institution)
Juan de Mariana's major work of political theory, published in 1599. Mariana argues that political power originates in the community and is held in...
Read MoreEccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization
Brague's foundational work arguing that European culture is fundamentally "eccentric" — it has always received its cultural substance from outside ...
Read MoreWhat Is Distinctive to Man
Brague's inquiry into what distinguishes the human being from all other animals. Drawing on philosophy, biology, and theology, he examines the capa...
Read MoreThe Open Society and Its Enemies
A defence of liberal democracy against totalitarian ideologies, arguing that no one possesses ultimate truth and that society must remain open to c...
Read MoreOn Religion
A philosophical examination of what religion actually is — its essence, structure, and necessity. Brague asks what distinguishes the religious rela...
Read MoreThe Vision of the Anointed
The 1995 sequel to *A Conflict of Visions*, focusing specifically on the unconstrained vision as held by a self-appointed intellectual elite — 'the...
Read MoreThe Theory of Moral Sentiments
Adam Smith's foundational work on moral philosophy, exploring how human sympathy and the impartial spectator guide ethical judgment, long before he...
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psychology Concepts
Ad Hominem Fallacy
A logical fallacy in which an argument is rejected or dismissed not by addressing its substance, but by attacking the character, motives, or person...
Learn MoreHanlon's Razor
An adage or rule of thumb that states: 'Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.' This principle encourages the a...
Learn MoreIkigai
A Japanese concept meaning 'a reason for being' or 'a reason to wake up in the morning.' Ikigai represents the intersection of four fundamental ele...
Learn MoreMünchhausen Trilemma
A fundamental problem in epistemology demonstrating that any attempt to justify a claim of knowledge inevitably leads to one of three unsatisfactor...
Learn MoreThe Principle of Optimism
All evils are caused by insufficient knowledge. This principle, articulated by physicist and philosopher school Philosophy psychology Knowledge wb_sunny Optimism menu_book Epistemology
Strawman Fallacy
A logical fallacy in which someone misrepresents or distorts another person's argument, making it easier to attack. Instead of addressing the actua...
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