Library, page 10

“The body is not a thing, it is a situation.”

Simone de Beauvoir · Existentialism

“Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth.”

Simone de Beauvoir · Existentialism

“To exist is to make oneself a lack of being; it is to cast oneself into the world.”

Simone de Beauvoir · Existentialism

“The genuine human being will not agree to recognise any foreign absolute.”

Simone de Beauvoir · Existentialism

“Old age is a biological phenomenon, but also a cultural fact.”

Simone de Beauvoir · Existentialism

“To will oneself free is to effect the transition from nature to morality by establishing a genuine freedom on the original upsurge of our existence.”

Simone de Beauvoir · Existentialism

“He asserts himself as a pure internality against which no external power can take hold, and he also experiences himself as a thing crushed by the dark weight of other things.”

Simone de Beauvoir · Existentialism

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Albert Camus · Absurdism

“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.”

Albert Camus · Absurdism

“The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.”

Albert Camus · Absurdism

“I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.”

Albert Camus · Absurdism

“I rebel — therefore we exist.”

Albert Camus · Absurdism

“There are more things to admire in people than to despise.”

Albert Camus · Absurdism

“I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.”

Albert Camus · Absurdism

“The only means of fighting a plague is common decency.”

Albert Camus · Absurdism

“Forgiving and promising are the only moral precepts that are not applied to action from the outside.”

Hannah Arendt · Political philosophy

“Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists for another; that is, it exists only in being acknowledged.”

G. W. F. Hegel · German idealism

“The world is my representation.”

Arthur Schopenhauer · Philosophical pessimism

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”

Karl Marx · Historical materialism

“The true hero, the true subject, the centre of the Iliad, is force.”

Simone Weil · Moral philosophy

“The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad.”

Michel Foucault · Post-structuralism

“I, at any rate, am convinced that He is not playing at dice.”

Albert Einstein · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“The 'essence' of Dasein lies in its existence.”

Martin Heidegger · Phenomenology

“The human being is not the lord of beings. The human being is the shepherd of Being.”

Martin Heidegger · Phenomenology

“Myths are not lies. Nor are they detached stories. They are imaginative patterns…”

Mary Midgley · Moral philosophy

“Much that I did not make goes towards making me whatever I shall be praised or blamed for being.”

Martha Nussbaum · Capabilities approach

“The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort.”

Carl Jung · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.”

Carl Jung · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“These resistances are usually bound up with projections, which are not recognized as such, and their recognition is a moral achievement beyond the ordinary.”

Carl Jung · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“What is suppressed comes up again in another place in altered form, but this time loaded with a resentment that makes the otherwise harmless natural impulse our enemy.”

Carl Jung · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“Individuation means becoming an 'in-dividual,' and, in so far as 'individuality' embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one's own self.”

Carl Jung · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“Individuation, therefore, can only mean a process of psychological development that fulfils the individual qualities given; in other words, it is a process by which a man becomes the definite, unique being he in fact is.”

Carl Jung · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”

Carl Jung · Thinkers beyond philosophy

There are only two means of valid knowledge, perception and inference, because there are only two kinds of object, the particular and the general.

Dharmakīrti · Buddhist epistemology (pramāṇa)

The virtuous city is the one whose people cooperate to reach true happiness; cities that aim at wealth, honour or pleasure mistake their goal.

al-Fārābī · Islamic Neoplatonism / Aristotelianism (falsafa)

Investigate the principle in each thing, one after another, and after long effort understanding will one day connect everything.

Zhu Xi · Neo-Confucianism

Historians go wrong through partisanship, by relying on transmitters, and by not knowing the nature of society; test a report against what is possible.

Ibn Khaldūn · Historiography / social theory

The four moral sprouts arise from principle, with material force following; the seven feelings arise from material force, with principle riding on them.

Yi Hwang (Toegye) · Korean Neo-Confucianism

Every faith says it alone is true. Since they cannot all be right, test each claim by the reason God gave to all people.

Zera Yacob · Ethiopian rationalism

This world is the best of all possible worlds.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · Rationalism

'The morning star' and 'the evening star' refer to the same thing, Venus, but differ in sense, which is why saying they are the same tells us something.

Gottlob Frege · Analytic philosophy / Logicism

Virtues are corrective. They stand at a point where there is some temptation to be resisted or some deficiency of motivation to be made good.

Philippa Foot · Virtue ethics

We are not just rather like animals; we are animals.

Mary Midgley · Moral philosophy

Before you accept a philosophical concept that came through a colonial language, state it in your own and see whether it still makes sense.

Kwasi Wiredu · African analytic philosophy

The key question to ask is what a person is able to do and to be, not only what resources they hold.

Martha Nussbaum · Capabilities approach

The moral ought gives a reason for acting only where the person already has the relevant aim. It is a hypothetical imperative, not a categorical one.

Philippa Foot · Virtue ethics

To call a living thing good or defective is to measure it against the form of life of its species. Moral evaluation of human beings is a case of that kind of judgement, not a separate invention.

Philippa Foot · Virtue ethics

“Thales, the founder of this kind of philosophy, says the principle is water.”

Thales of Miletus · Milesian

“I am looking for a human being.”

Diogenes of Sinope · Cynicism

“The end is to live in agreement with nature.”

Zeno of Citium · Stoicism