Ernest Gellner quotes - page 2

The way forward does not lie in amateur and comically timeless linguistic sociology which takes 'forms of life ' for granted (and this is what philosophy has been recently), but in the systematic study of forms of life which does not take them for granted at all. It hardly matters whether such an inquiry is called philosophy or sociology. (Ernest Gellner)
Philosophy is explicitness, generality, orientation and assessment. View quote
Ernest Gellner
The way forward does not lie in amateur and comically timeless linguistic sociology which takes ‘forms of life' for granted (and this is what philosophy has been recently), but in the systematic study of forms of life which does not take them for granted at all. View quote
Ernest Gellner
It is the Soft Porn of Irrationalism. View quote
Ernest Gellner
When knowledge is the slave of social considerations, it defines a special class; when it serves its own ends only, it no longer does so. View quote
Ernest Gellner
Civil Society is a cluster of institutions and associations strong enough to prevent tyranny, but which are, none the less, entered and left freely, rather than imposed by birth or sustained by awesome ritual. View quote
Ernest Gellner
Addicts would be subject to blackmail. View quote
Ernest Gellner
Hermeneutics between consenting adults should not, in my view, be the object of any statutory restrictions. View quote
Ernest Gellner
I do not recommend any legislative action against hermeneutics. View quote
Ernest Gellner
Civil Society is a cluster of institutions and associations strong enough to prevent tyranny, but which are, none the less, entered and left freely, rather than imposed by birth or sustained by awesome ritual. You can join the Labour Party without slaughtering a sheep ... View quote
Ernest Gellner
Wittgenstein's appeal lies in the fact that he provides a strange kind of vindication of romanticism, of conceptual Gemeinschaft, of custom-based concepts rather than statute-seeking Reform, and that he does so through a very general theory of meaning, rather than from the premisses habitually used for this purpose. Because there is no unique formal notation valid for all speech, each and every culture is vindicated. One never knew that could be done - and so quickly too! It is that above all which endows his philosophy with such a capacity to attract and to repel. His mystique of consensual custom denies that anything can sit in judgment of our concepts, that some may be more rational and others less so. So all of them are in order and have nothing to fear from philosophy, as indeed he insists. This is a fairly mild form of irrationalism, invoking no fierce dark Gods, merely a consensual community. It is the Soft Porn of Irrationalism. (Ernest Gellner)
In practice, those who espouse this universal cultural tolerance are indeed inevitably selective; what they mean is nice, cosy, traditional cultures, not as they exist, but as they are pictured in the romantic imagination. And above all, they are interested in selective preservation within their own society. Not surprisingly, they dislike scientism, positivism, rationalism in their own society, and rather ignore the fact that these traits also constitute a culture, and one which, from the viewpoint of their initial and rather abstract starting point, has at least as good a claim as the cosiest of closed societies. View quote
Ernest Gellner