Philosophy ... lost its prestige to the extent that it lost its evident advantage in cleverness to "normal life." In the transition from archaic teachings of wisdom to philosophy based on argument, it itself was engulfed in the twilight of alienation from life. It had to accept that the independent cleverness theories of pragmatics, economics, strategy, and politics proved themselves to be its better, until, with its logical niceties, it became infantile and academic, and stood there as the Utopian idiot with its reminiscences about great ideals. Today philosophy is surrounded on all sides by maliciously clever empiricisms and realistic disciplines that "know better."
Peter SloterdijkRelated topics
academic advantage alienation archaic argument based cleverness economics extent great idiot independent life lost normal philosophy politics prestige stand strategy transition twilight utopian wisdom today pragmaticsRelated quotes
New York is one of the capitals of the world and Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic, San Francisco is a lady, Boston has become Urban Renewal, Philadelphia and Baltimore and Washington wink like dull diamonds in the smog of Eastern Megalopolis, and New Orleans is unremarkable past the French Quarter. Detroit is a one-trade town, Pittsburgh has lost its golden triangle, St. Louis has become the golden arch of the corporation, and nights in Kansas City close early. The oil depletion allowance makes Houston and Dallas naught but checkerboards for this sort of game. But Chicago is a great American city. Perhaps it is the last of the great American cities.
Norman Mailer
We must resist the temptation to be "normal,” because those who are now considered normal accept the values and practices of an insane world. In modern society, for example, normal people strive to accumulate as many commodities as possible, because they believe that their success and personal worth are linked to the number of possessions they have acquired. As the joke goes, "The one who dies with the most toys, wins.” If we espouse this viewpoint, the toys we have to play with form the measure of our personal worth. Unfortunately, this notion confuses acquired material worth with our inherent worth as spiritual beings.
Bhakti Tirtha Swami
God has permitted and does permit us to be shaken by adversity. Difficult times lie ahead. We will be greatly tested. We have to take this warning seriously and live spiritually... Many saints would have loved to have lived in our times and have had our chance to struggle for Christ... Our struggle matters because it is not a struggle against an Ali Pasha, or a Hitler and a Mussolini, but a struggle against the devil himself. For this reason, our wages will be heavenly... The saints will become more holy and the vile will become more vile. Yet I feel great consolation inside. This is only a storm; like past storms, it will pass. May the Good God take evil and turn it into good. Amen.
Paisios of Mount Athos
Future historians will include the no-temple argument of the 1990s as a remarkable case study in their surveys of academic fraud and politicized scholarship. With academic, institutional and media power, a new academic-journalistic consensus has been manufactured denying the well-established history of temple demolition by Islamic iconoclasm to the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi site; at least among people with prestige and influence but no firsthand knowledge of the issue. But the facts will remain the facts, and their ongoing suppression is bound to give way as new generations of scholars take a fresh look at the data.
Koenraad Elst
The statements of academic psychology often seem to imply that logical thinking is a continuous function of the mature person - that the sufficiently normal infant develops from syncretism and non-logic to logic and skilled performance. Such a description seems to be supported by much of the work of Piaget, of Claparede, and, with respect to the primitive, by Levy-Bruhl. If one examines the facts with care, either in industry or in clinic, one finds immediately that this implication, so flattering to the civilized adult, possesses only a modicum of truth. Indeed, one may go further and say that it is positively misleading.
Elton Mayo
