psychology Rationalism
Reason as the primary source of knowledge
format_quote Quotes
"Modernity does not simply challenge religion from outside. It has grown, in large part, from within the religious tradition it now contests. The secularization of the West is not an escape from its Christian heritage but a transformation of it — one that has forgotten its own sources."
menu_book On Religion
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."
"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
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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 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 MoreThe Myth of the Framework: In Defence of Science and Rationality
Collection of essays defending scientific rationality and critical discussion against relativism and the idea that meaningful communication is impo...
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...
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