The philosopher is like a man fasting in the midst of universal intoxication. He alone perceives the illusion of which all creatur...es are the willing playthings; he is less duped than his neighbor by his own nature. He judges more sanely, he sees things as they are. It is in this that his liberty consists--in the ability to see clearly and soberly, in the power of mental record.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Hebraism contains no eternal realm of essence, which Greek philosophy was to fabricate, through Plato, as affording the intellectu...al deliverance from the evil of time. Such a realm of eternal essences is possible only for a detached intellect, one who, in Plato's phrase, becomes a "spectator of all time and all existence." This ideal of the philosopher as the highest human type--the theoretical intellect who from the vantage point of eternity can survey all time and existence--is altogether foreign to the Hebraic concept of the man of faith who is passionately committed to his own mortal being. Detachment was for the Hebrew an impermissible state of mind, a vice rather than a virtue; or rather it was something that Biblical man was not yet even able to conceive, since he had not reached the level of rational abstraction of the Greek. His existence was too earth-bound, too laden with oppressive images of mortality, to permit him to experience the philosopher's detachment.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Wittgenstein imagined that the philosopher was like a therapist whose task was to put problems finally to rest, and to cure us of ...being bewitched by them. So we are told to stop, to shut off lines of inquiry, not to find things puzzling nor to seek explanations. This is intellectual suicide.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For a courageous man cannot die dishonorably, a man who has attained the consulship cannot die before his time, a philosopher cann...ot die wretchedly.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »