Two archetypes pervade Western thinking on the subject of how reality is best apprehended, archetypes that have their ultimate ori...gin in Plato and Aristotle. For Plato sense data were at best a distraction from knowledge, which was the province of unaided reason. For Aristotle, knowledge consisted in generalizations, but these were derived in the first instance from information gathered from the outside world. These two models of human thinking, termed rationalism and empiricism, respectively, formed the major intellectual legacy of the West down to Descartes and Bacon, who represented, in the seventeenth century, the twin poles of epistemology.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is a strange charm in the thoughts of a good legacy, or the hopes of an estate, which wondrously removes or at least allevia...tes the sorrow that men would otherwise feel for the death of friends.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am fooling only myself when I say my mother exists now only in the photograph on my bulletin board or in the outline of my hand ...or in the armful of memories I still hold tight. She lives on in everything I do. Her presence influenced who I was, and her absence influences who I am. Our lives are shaped as much by those who leave us as they are by those who stay. Loss is our legacy. Insight is our gift. Memory is our guide.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Why is it that many contemporary male thinkers, especially men of color, repudiate the imperialist legacy of Columbus but affirm d...imensions of that legacy by their refusal to repudiate patriarchy?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In verity ... we are the poor. This humanity we would claim for ourselves is the legacy, not only of the Enlightenment, but of the... thousands and thousands of European peasants and poor townspeople who came here bringing their humanity and their sufferings with them. It is the absence of a stable upper class that is responsible for much of the vulgarity of the American scene. Should we blush before the visitor for this deficiency?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A man may be a tough, concentrated, successful money-maker and never contribute to his country anything more than a horrible examp...le. A manager may be tough and practical, squeezing out, while the going is good, the last ounce of profit and dividend, and may leave behind him an exhausted industry and a legacy of industrial hatred. A tough manager may never look outside his own factory walls or be conscious of his partnership in a wider world. I often wonder what strange cud such men sit chewing when their working days are over, and the accumulating riches of the mind have eluded them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No one attaches a transcendent meaning to the "errors" of comedy, much less of farce. Mistaken identities, misunderstandings about... what some character said or meant, mistakes about bedroom doors--these help to complicate the plot and are all part of the fun. On the level of farce, Oedipus was mistaken about the identity of his parents, he misunderstood the true significance of what the oracle said, and he went into the wrong bedroom.... The difference in tragedy is that the errors are fatal and that, although they can be dissipated at the end, their consequences cannot.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »