A Quote by Leo Strauss
Nothing ought to be said or done which could create the impression that unbiased reconsideration of the most elementary premises of philosophy is a merely academic or historical affair.
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There is nothing in philosophy which could not be said in everyday language.
The fact that people of all colors have been ensnared by the drug war helps to preserve the system as a whole from serious critique, as it creates the impression - at a glance - that the war is being waged in an unbiased manner, even when nothing could be further from the truth.
In the mid-1960s, as hard to believe as it may be now, choosing to go into academic philosophy was not an imprudent career choice. There were lots of academic jobs in philosophy then.
If the world is an objective reality that exists independently of us, then humans themselves, even in their own eyes, are nothing more than objects, and their life stories merely a series of disconnected historical accidents, which they may wonder at, but which they themselves have nothing to do with.
With foster care, you have to remain unbiased, which is one of the huge challenges of it because you get to know the kids and if you care about the kids, it's really hard to present yourself as unbiased. But you're supposed to really be an unbiased party.
I drifted into a career in academic philosophy because I couldn't see anything outside the academy that looked to be anything other than drudgery. But I wouldn't say I 'became a philosopher' until an early mid-life crisis forced me to confront the fact that, while 'philosophy' means 'love of wisdom', and 'wisdom' is the knowledge of how to live well, the analytic philosophy in which I had been trained seemed to have nothing to do with life.
I think I summed up my attitude to philosophy when I said: philosophy ought really to be written only as a poetic composition.
I was trained as a philosopher never to put philosophers and their ideas into historical contexts, since historical context has nothing to do with the validity of the philosopher's positions. I agree that assessing validity and contextualizing historically are two entirely distinct matters and not to be confused with one another. And yet that firm distinction doesn't lead me to endorse the usual way in which history of philosophy is presented.
To create a minimum standard of life below which no human being can fall is the most elementary duty of the democratic state.
Philosophy ought to question the basic assumptions of the age. Thinking through, critically and carefully, what most of us take for granted is, I believe, the chief task of philosophy, and the task that makes philosophy a worthwhile activity.
I have the most ill-regulated memory. It does those things which it ought not to do and leaves undone the things it ought to have done. But it has not yet gone on strike altogether.
I said that if I hadn't been a politician, I'd have liked to be a barrister, or an academic. My beloved wife said: 'You'd be a very good barrister and a hopeless academic.' I said 'Why?' She said: 'Because you're not an original thinker.'
It is only about things that do not interest one that one can give a really unbiased opinion, which is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is always absolutely valueless.
We the undersigned, intend to establish an instruction and training institution which differs from the common elementary schools principally in that it will embrace, outside of (in addition to) the general and elementary curriculum, all branches of the classical high school, which are necessary for a true Christian and scientific education, such as: Religion, the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, French and English languages; History, Geography, Mathematics, Physics, natural history, Introduction to Philosophy, Music, and Drawing.
You can create a good impression on yourself by being right . . . but for creating a good impression on others there's nothing to beat being totally and catastrophically wrong.
You can create a good impression on yourself by being right, he realizes, but for creating a good impression on others there's nothing to beat being totally and catastrophically wrong.
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