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May 12, 2015 by kevinstilley

Justice – select quotes

justice.001.jpg.001Justice is an unassailable fortress, built on the brow of a mountain which cannot be overthrown by the violence of torrents, nor demolished by the force of armies.
~ Joseph Addison

Justice turns the scale, bringing to some learning through suffering.
~ Aeschylus

Liberty, equality – bad principles! The only true principle for humanity is justice; and justice to the feeble is protection and kindness.
~ Henri-Frédéric Amiel

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.
~ Aristotle

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
~ Aristotle

In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?
~ Augustine

Punishment is justice for the unjust.
~ Augustine

If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.
~ Francis Bacon

Next to religion, let your care be to promote justice.
~ Francis Bacon

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
~ James A. Baldwin

The dead cannot cry out for justice. It is a duty of the living to do so for them.
~ Lois McMaster Bujold

Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.
~ Edmund Burke

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.
~ Edmund Burke

Justice while she winks at crimes, stumbles on innocence sometimes.
~ Samuel Butler

Justice consists in doing no injury to men; decency in giving them no offense.
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Justice is the set and constant purpose which gives every man his due.
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

The more laws the less justice.
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, in De Officiis

Parents are not interested in justice, they’re interested in peace and quiet.
~ Bill Cosby

Justice is truth in action.
~ Benjamin Disraeli

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.
~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

There really can be no peace without justice. There can be no justice without truth. And there can be no truth, unless someone rises up to tell you the truth.
~ Louis Farrakhan

Let justice be done, though the world perish.
~ Ferdinand I

Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.
~ Benjamin Franklin

The first requisite of civilization is that of justice.
~ Sigmund Freud

Justice that love gives is a surrender, justice that gives is a punishment.
~ Mahatma Gandhi

We win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.
~ Mahatma Gandhi

Justice delayed is justice denied.
~ William E. Gladstone

I think the first duty of society is justice.
~ Alexander Hamilton

Justice will overtake fabricators of lies and false witnesses.
~ Heraclitus

Justice should remove the bandage from her eyes long enough to distinguish between the vicious and the unfortunate.
~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Mere precedent is a dangerous source of authority.
~ President Andrew Jackson

A man must be willing to die for justice. Death is an inescapable reality and men die daily, but good deeds live forever.
~ Jesse Jackson

Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.
~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Compassion is no substitute for justice.
~ Rush Limbaugh

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
~ Abraham Lincoln

Justice is a temporary thing that must at last come to an end; but the conscience is eternal and will never die.
~ Martin Luther

Peace is more important than all justice; and peace was not made for the sake of justice, but justice for the sake of peace.
~ Martin Luther

I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice no matter who it’s for or against.
~ Malcolm X

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what sting is justice.
~ H. L. Mencken

Justice without force is powerful; force without justice is tyrannical.
~ Blaise Pascal

Justice means minding one’s own business and not meddling with other men’s concerns.
~ Plato

Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.
~ Plato

Social justice cannot be attained by violence. Violence kills what it intends to create.
~ Pope John Paul II

If you want peace, work for justice.
~ Pope Paul IV

Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt

If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment; ‘Thou shalt not ration justice.’
~ Sophocles

There is a time when even justice brings harm.
~ Sophocles

Law and justice are not always the same.
~ Gloria Steinem

Fairness is what justice really is.
~ Potter Stewart

Justice is expensive in America. There are no Free Passes…You might want to remember this, the next time you get careless and blow off a few parking tickets. They will come back to haunt you the next time you see a cop car in your rear-view mirror.
~ Hunter S. Thompson

Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is hard and discordant.
~ Henry David Thoreau

Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck.
~ Orson Welles

Judging from the main portions of the history of the world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy.
~ Walt Whitman

Made for spirituality, we wallow in introspection.  Made for joy, we settle for pleasure.  Made for justice, we clamor for vengeance.
~ N.T. Wright, in Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense
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June 22, 2014 by kevinstilley

Truth – select quotes

blinded.001

Every truth has two sides; it is as well to look at both, before we commit ourselves to either.
~ Aesop

There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.
~ Maya Angelou

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.
~ Marcus Aurelius

For every good reason there is to lie, there is a better reason to tell the truth.
~ Bo Bennett

A truth that’s told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.
~ William Blake

There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.
~ Allan Bloom, in The Closing of the American Mind (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1987), page 25

Truth exists; only lies are invented.
~ Georges Braque

The absolute truth is indestructible. Being eternal, it is self-existent. Being self-existent, it is infinite. Being infinite, it is vast and deep. Being vast and deep, it is transcendental and intelligent.
~ Confucius, in The Doctrine of the Mean

Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again;
Th’ eternal years of god are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
And dies among his worshippers.
~ William Cullen Bryant, in The Battlefield, st. 9

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
~ Winston Churchill

The pursuit of truth will set you free; even if you never catch up with it.
~ Clarence Darrow

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in you life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
~ Rene Descartes

There is no God and there is no soul. Hence, there are no needs for the props of traditional religion. With dogma and creed excluded, the immutable truth is also dead and buried.
~ John Dewey

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.
~ Denis Diderot

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.
~ Benjamin Disraeli

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.
~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.
~ Albert Einstein

If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
~ Albert Einstein

Half a truth is often a great lie.
~ Benjamin Franklin

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.
~ Galileo Galilei

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.
~ Mahatma Gandhi

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.
~ Mahatma Gandhi

The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.
~ James A. Garfield

Follow not truth too near the heels, lest it dash out thy teeth.
~ George Herbert

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Seek the truth
Listen to the truth
Teach the truth
Love the truth
Abide by the truth
And defend the truth
Unto death.
~ John Hus

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
~ Thomas Jefferson

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
~ Aldous Huxley

A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
~ John F. Kennedy

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.
~ John F. Kennedy

If God should hold enclosed in his right hand all truth, and in his left hand only the ever-active impulse after truth, although with the condition that I must always and forever err, I would with humility turn to his left hand, and say, “Father, give me this . . . ”
~ Gotthold E. Lessing, in Anti-Gotze

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.
~ C. S. Lewis

Peace if possible, truth at all costs.
~ Martin Luther

I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice no matter who it’s for or against.
~ Malcolm X

Seek not greatness, but seek truth and you will find both.
~ Horace Mann

A harmful truth is better than a useful lie.
~ Thomas Mann

Relativism, then is a position for which the world still awaits an argument. It is also self-defeating in the sense that every self-styled relativist is forced, sooner or later, to appeal to absolutes of his own making. And it is a theory that robs life of elements needed for any life to have meaning.
~ Ronald Nash, in The Closing of the American Heart, page 67

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
~ Isaac Newton

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
~ Flannery O’Connor

Truth without emotion produces dead orthodoxy and a church full (or half full) of artificial admirers (like people who write generic anniversary cards for a living). Emotion without truth produces empty frenzy and cultivates shallow people who refuse the disciplines of rigorous thought. But true worship comes from people who are deeply emotional and who love deep and sound doctrine. Strong affections from God rooted in truth are the bone and marrow of biblical worship.
~ John Piper, in Desiring God (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 1986), page 76

Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away.
~ Elvis Presley

Sometimes the truth hurts. And sometimes it feels real good.
~ Henry Rollins

People will generally accept facts as truth only if the facts agree with what they already believe.
~ Andy Rooney

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer

The truth is always the strongest argument.
~ Sophocles

Truth will always be truth, regardless of lack of understanding, disbelief or ignorance.
~ W. Clement Stone

Facts are many, but the truth is one.
~ Rabindranath Tagore

The first reaction to truth is hatred.
~ Tertullian

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
~ Henry David Thoreau

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.
~ Leo Tolstoy

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.
~ Mark Twain

It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.
~ Mark Twain

Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.
~ Mark Twain

When in doubt tell the truth.
~ Mark Twain

Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light.
~ George Washington

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
~ Oscar Wilde

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
~ Oscar Wilder

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
~ Virginia Woolf

The truth is more important than the facts.
~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Eyes blinded by the fog of Things cannot see Truth. Ears deafened by the din of Things cannot hear Truth. Brains bewildered by the whirl of Things cannot think Truth. Hearts deadened by the weight of Things cannot feel Truth. Throats choked by the dust of Things cannot speak Truth.
~ Harold Bell Wright, from The Uncrowned King (1910)

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November 6, 2013 by kevinstilley

The Religious Mood / Discussion Questions for Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good & Evil”, chapter 3

[The complete text of Beyond Good & Evil, chapter 3 can be found below the following discussion questions.]

1. Nietzsche writes, “But a curiosity like mine is once for all the most agreeable of vices–pardon me! I meant to say that the love of truth has its reward in heaven, and already upon the earth.” [paragraph 45] Is this consistent with what he said about the search for truth in chapters 1 & 2? [compare to paragraph 43] What do you think might be his definition of “truth”?

2. What does Nietzsche mean when he speaks of the “religious neurosis”? [paragraph 47] What about the “Christian infection”? [paragraph 48]

3. How does Nietzsche describe Augustine? How does this relate to his overall perspective on Christianity? Is it possible that there is an element of truth in Nietzsche’s accusations? [paragraph 50]

4. Why does Nietzsche claim that modern philosophy, as epistemological skepticism, is anti-Christian but not anti-religious? [paragraph 54]

5. How does Nietzsche’s description of ancient religion compare with Paul’s description of perverted religion in Romans 1? How might Nietzsche interact with Romans 1?
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CHAPTER III. THE RELIGIOUS MOOD

45. The human soul and its limits, the range of man’s inner experiences hitherto attained, the heights, depths, and distances of these experiences, the entire history of the soul UP TO THE PRESENT TIME, and its still unexhausted possibilities: this is the preordained hunting-domain for a born psychologist and lover of a “big hunt”. But how often must he say despairingly to himself: “A single individual! alas, only a single individual! and this great forest, this virgin forest!” So he would like to have some hundreds of hunting assistants, and fine trained hounds, that he could send into the history of the human soul, to drive HIS game together. In vain: again and again he experiences, profoundly and bitterly, how difficult it is to find assistants and dogs for all the things that directly excite his curiosity. The evil of sending scholars into new and dangerous hunting-domains, where courage, sagacity, and subtlety in every sense are required, is that they are no longer serviceable just when the “BIG hunt,” and also the great danger commences,—it is precisely then that they lose their keen eye and nose. In order, for instance, to divine and determine what sort of history the problem of KNOWLEDGE AND CONSCIENCE has hitherto had in the souls of homines religiosi, a person would perhaps himself have to possess as profound, as bruised, as immense an experience as the intellectual conscience of Pascal; and then he would still require that wide-spread heaven of clear, wicked spirituality, which, from above, would be able to oversee, arrange, and effectively formulize this mass of dangerous and painful experiences.—But who could do me this service! And who would have time to wait for such servants!—they evidently appear too rarely, they are so improbable at all times! Eventually one must do everything ONESELF in order to know something; which means that one has MUCH to do!—But a curiosity like mine is once for all the most agreeable of vices—pardon me! I mean to say that the love of truth has its reward in heaven, and already upon earth.

46. Faith, such as early Christianity desired, and not infrequently achieved in the midst of a skeptical and southernly free-spirited world, which had centuries of struggle between philosophical schools behind it and in it, counting besides the education in tolerance which the Imperium Romanum gave—this faith is NOT that sincere, austere slave-faith by which perhaps a Luther or a Cromwell, or some other northern barbarian of the spirit remained attached to his God and Christianity, it is much rather the faith of Pascal, which resembles in a terrible manner a continuous suicide of reason—a tough, long-lived, worm-like reason, which is not to be slain at once and with a single blow. The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice the sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit, it is at the same time subjection, self-derision, and self-mutilation. There is cruelty and religious Phoenicianism in this faith, which is adapted to a tender, many-sided, and very fastidious conscience, it takes for granted that the subjection of the spirit is indescribably PAINFUL, that all the past and all the habits of such a spirit resist the absurdissimum, in the form of which “faith” comes to it. Modern men, with their obtuseness as regards all Christian nomenclature, have no longer the sense for the terribly superlative conception which was implied to an antique taste by the paradox of the formula, “God on the Cross”. Hitherto there had never and nowhere been such boldness in inversion, nor anything at once so dreadful, questioning, and questionable as this formula: it promised a transvaluation of all ancient values—It was the Orient, the PROFOUND Orient, it was the Oriental slave who thus took revenge on Rome and its noble, light-minded toleration, on the Roman “Catholicism” of non-faith, and it was always not the faith, but the freedom from the faith, the half-stoical and smiling indifference to the seriousness of the faith, which made the slaves indignant at their masters and revolt against them. “Enlightenment” causes revolt, for the slave desires the unconditioned, he understands nothing but the tyrannous, even in morals, he loves as he hates, without NUANCE, to the very depths, to the point of pain, to the point of sickness—his many HIDDEN sufferings make him revolt against the noble taste which seems to DENY suffering. The skepticism with regard to suffering, fundamentally only an attitude of aristocratic morality, was not the least of the causes, also, of the last great slave-insurrection which began with the French Revolution.

47. Wherever the religious neurosis has appeared on the earth so far, we find it connected with three dangerous prescriptions as to regimen: solitude, fasting, and sexual abstinence—but without its being possible to determine with certainty which is cause and which is effect, or IF any relation at all of cause and effect exists there. This latter doubt is justified by the fact that one of the most regular symptoms among savage as well as among civilized peoples is the most sudden and excessive sensuality, which then with equal suddenness transforms into penitential paroxysms, world-renunciation, and will-renunciation, both symptoms perhaps explainable as disguised epilepsy? But nowhere is it MORE obligatory to put aside explanations around no other type has there grown such a mass of absurdity and superstition, no other type seems to have been more interesting to men and even to philosophers—perhaps it is time to become just a little indifferent here, to learn caution, or, better still, to look AWAY, TO GO AWAY—Yet in the background of the most recent philosophy, that of Schopenhauer, we find almost as the problem in itself, this terrible note of interrogation of the religious crisis and awakening. How is the negation of will POSSIBLE? how is the saint possible?—that seems to have been the very question with which Schopenhauer made a start and became a philosopher. And thus it was a genuine Schopenhauerian consequence, that his most convinced adherent (perhaps also his last, as far as Germany is concerned), namely, Richard Wagner, should bring his own life-work to an end just here, and should finally put that terrible and eternal type upon the stage as Kundry, type vecu, and as it loved and lived, at the very time that the mad-doctors in almost all European countries had an opportunity to study the type close at hand, wherever the religious neurosis—or as I call it, “the religious mood”—made its latest epidemical outbreak and display as the “Salvation Army”—If it be a question, however, as to what has been so extremely interesting to men of all sorts in all ages, and even to philosophers, in the whole phenomenon of the saint, it is undoubtedly the appearance of the miraculous therein—namely, the immediate SUCCESSION OF OPPOSITES, of states of the soul regarded as morally antithetical: it was believed here to be self-evident that a “bad man” was all at once turned into a “saint,” a good man. The hitherto existing psychology was wrecked at this point, is it not possible it may have happened principally because psychology had placed itself under the dominion of morals, because it BELIEVED in oppositions of moral values, and saw, read, and INTERPRETED these oppositions into the text and facts of the case? What? “Miracle” only an error of interpretation? A lack of philology?

48. It seems that the Latin races are far more deeply attached to their Catholicism than we Northerners are to Christianity generally, and that consequently unbelief in Catholic countries means something quite different from what it does among Protestants—namely, a sort of revolt against the spirit of the race, while with us it is rather a return to the spirit (or non-spirit) of the race.

We Northerners undoubtedly derive our origin from barbarous races, even as regards our talents for religion—we have POOR talents for it. One may make an exception in the case of the Celts, who have theretofore furnished also the best soil for Christian infection in the North: the Christian ideal blossomed forth in France as much as ever the pale sun of the north would allow it. How strangely pious for our taste are still these later French skeptics, whenever there is any Celtic blood in their origin! How Catholic, how un-German does Auguste Comte’s Sociology seem to us, with the Roman logic of its instincts! How Jesuitical, that amiable and shrewd cicerone of Port Royal, Sainte-Beuve, in spite of all his hostility to Jesuits! And even Ernest Renan: how inaccessible to us Northerners does the language of such a Renan appear, in whom every instant the merest touch of religious thrill throws his refined voluptuous and comfortably couching soul off its balance! Let us repeat after him these fine sentences—and what wickedness and haughtiness is immediately aroused by way of answer in our probably less beautiful but harder souls, that is to say, in our more German souls!—”DISONS DONC HARDIMENT QUE LA RELIGION EST UN PRODUIT DE L’HOMME NORMAL, QUE L’HOMME EST LE PLUS DANS LE VRAI QUANT IL EST LE PLUS RELIGIEUX ET LE PLUS ASSURE D’UNE DESTINEE INFINIE…. C’EST QUAND IL EST BON QU’IL VEUT QUE LA VIRTU CORRESPONDE A UN ORDER ETERNAL, C’EST QUAND IL CONTEMPLE LES CHOSES D’UNE MANIERE DESINTERESSEE QU’IL TROUVE LA MORT REVOLTANTE ET ABSURDE. COMMENT NE PAS SUPPOSER QUE C’EST DANS CES MOMENTS-LA, QUE L’HOMME VOIT LE MIEUX?”… These sentences are so extremely ANTIPODAL to my ears and habits of thought, that in my first impulse of rage on finding them, I wrote on the margin, “LA NIAISERIE RELIGIEUSE PAR EXCELLENCE!”—until in my later rage I even took a fancy to them, these sentences with their truth absolutely inverted! It is so nice and such a distinction to have one’s own antipodes!

49. That which is so astonishing in the religious life of the ancient Greeks is the irrestrainable stream of GRATITUDE which it pours forth—it is a very superior kind of man who takes SUCH an attitude towards nature and life.—Later on, when the populace got the upper hand in Greece, FEAR became rampant also in religion; and Christianity was preparing itself.

50. The passion for God: there are churlish, honest-hearted, and importunate kinds of it, like that of Luther—the whole of Protestantism lacks the southern DELICATEZZA. There is an Oriental exaltation of the mind in it, like that of an undeservedly favoured or elevated slave, as in the case of St. Augustine, for instance, who lacks in an offensive manner, all nobility in bearing and desires. There is a feminine tenderness and sensuality in it, which modestly and unconsciously longs for a UNIO MYSTICA ET PHYSICA, as in the case of Madame de Guyon. In many cases it appears, curiously enough, as the disguise of a girl’s or youth’s puberty; here and there even as the hysteria of an old maid, also as her last ambition. The Church has frequently canonized the woman in such a case.

51. The mightiest men have hitherto always bowed reverently before the saint, as the enigma of self-subjugation and utter voluntary privation—why did they thus bow? They divined in him—and as it were behind the questionableness of his frail and wretched appearance—the superior force which wished to test itself by such a subjugation; the strength of will, in which they recognized their own strength and love of power, and knew how to honour it: they honoured something in themselves when they honoured the saint. In addition to this, the contemplation of the saint suggested to them a suspicion: such an enormity of self-negation and anti-naturalness will not have been coveted for nothing—they have said, inquiringly. There is perhaps a reason for it, some very great danger, about which the ascetic might wish to be more accurately informed through his secret interlocutors and visitors? In a word, the mighty ones of the world learned to have a new fear before him, they divined a new power, a strange, still unconquered enemy:—it was the “Will to Power” which obliged them to halt before the saint. They had to question him.

52. In the Jewish “Old Testament,” the book of divine justice, there are men, things, and sayings on such an immense scale, that Greek and Indian literature has nothing to compare with it. One stands with fear and reverence before those stupendous remains of what man was formerly, and one has sad thoughts about old Asia and its little out-pushed peninsula Europe, which would like, by all means, to figure before Asia as the “Progress of Mankind.” To be sure, he who is himself only a slender, tame house-animal, and knows only the wants of a house-animal (like our cultured people of today, including the Christians of “cultured” Christianity), need neither be amazed nor even sad amid those ruins—the taste for the Old Testament is a touchstone with respect to “great” and “small”: perhaps he will find that the New Testament, the book of grace, still appeals more to his heart (there is much of the odour of the genuine, tender, stupid beadsman and petty soul in it). To have bound up this New Testament (a kind of ROCOCO of taste in every respect) along with the Old Testament into one book, as the “Bible,” as “The Book in Itself,” is perhaps the greatest audacity and “sin against the Spirit” which literary Europe has upon its conscience.

53. Why Atheism nowadays? “The father” in God is thoroughly refuted; equally so “the judge,” “the rewarder.” Also his “free will”: he does not hear—and even if he did, he would not know how to help. The worst is that he seems incapable of communicating himself clearly; is he uncertain?—This is what I have made out (by questioning and listening at a variety of conversations) to be the cause of the decline of European theism; it appears to me that though the religious instinct is in vigorous growth,—it rejects the theistic satisfaction with profound distrust.

54. What does all modern philosophy mainly do? Since Descartes—and indeed more in defiance of him than on the basis of his procedure—an ATTENTAT has been made on the part of all philosophers on the old conception of the soul, under the guise of a criticism of the subject and predicate conception—that is to say, an ATTENTAT on the fundamental presupposition of Christian doctrine. Modern philosophy, as epistemological skepticism, is secretly or openly ANTI-CHRISTIAN, although (for keener ears, be it said) by no means anti-religious. Formerly, in effect, one believed in “the soul” as one believed in grammar and the grammatical subject: one said, “I” is the condition, “think” is the predicate and is conditioned—to think is an activity for which one MUST suppose a subject as cause. The attempt was then made, with marvelous tenacity and subtlety, to see if one could not get out of this net,—to see if the opposite was not perhaps true: “think” the condition, and “I” the conditioned; “I,” therefore, only a synthesis which has been MADE by thinking itself. KANT really wished to prove that, starting from the subject, the subject could not be proved—nor the object either: the possibility of an APPARENT EXISTENCE of the subject, and therefore of “the soul,” may not always have been strange to him,—the thought which once had an immense power on earth as the Vedanta philosophy.

55. There is a great ladder of religious cruelty, with many rounds; but three of these are the most important. Once on a time men sacrificed human beings to their God, and perhaps just those they loved the best—to this category belong the firstling sacrifices of all primitive religions, and also the sacrifice of the Emperor Tiberius in the Mithra-Grotto on the Island of Capri, that most terrible of all Roman anachronisms. Then, during the moral epoch of mankind, they sacrificed to their God the strongest instincts they possessed, their “nature”; THIS festal joy shines in the cruel glances of ascetics and “anti-natural” fanatics. Finally, what still remained to be sacrificed? Was it not necessary in the end for men to sacrifice everything comforting, holy, healing, all hope, all faith in hidden harmonies, in future blessedness and justice? Was it not necessary to sacrifice God himself, and out of cruelty to themselves to worship stone, stupidity, gravity, fate, nothingness? To sacrifice God for nothingness—this paradoxical mystery of the ultimate cruelty has been reserved for the rising generation; we all know something thereof already.

56. Whoever, like myself, prompted by some enigmatical desire, has long endeavoured to go to the bottom of the question of pessimism and free it from the half-Christian, half-German narrowness and stupidity in which it has finally presented itself to this century, namely, in the form of Schopenhauer’s philosophy; whoever, with an Asiatic and super-Asiatic eye, has actually looked inside, and into the most world-renouncing of all possible modes of thought—beyond good and evil, and no longer like Buddha and Schopenhauer, under the dominion and delusion of morality,—whoever has done this, has perhaps just thereby, without really desiring it, opened his eyes to behold the opposite ideal: the ideal of the most world-approving, exuberant, and vivacious man, who has not only learnt to compromise and arrange with that which was and is, but wishes to have it again AS IT WAS AND IS, for all eternity, insatiably calling out da capo, not only to himself, but to the whole piece and play; and not only the play, but actually to him who requires the play—and makes it necessary; because he always requires himself anew—and makes himself necessary.—What? And this would not be—circulus vitiosus deus?

57. The distance, and as it were the space around man, grows with the strength of his intellectual vision and insight: his world becomes profounder; new stars, new enigmas, and notions are ever coming into view. Perhaps everything on which the intellectual eye has exercised its acuteness and profundity has just been an occasion for its exercise, something of a game, something for children and childish minds. Perhaps the most solemn conceptions that have caused the most fighting and suffering, the conceptions “God” and “sin,” will one day seem to us of no more importance than a child’s plaything or a child’s pain seems to an old man;—and perhaps another plaything and another pain will then be necessary once more for “the old man”—always childish enough, an eternal child!

58. Has it been observed to what extent outward idleness, or semi-idleness, is necessary to a real religious life (alike for its favourite microscopic labour of self-examination, and for its soft placidity called “prayer,” the state of perpetual readiness for the “coming of God”), I mean the idleness with a good conscience, the idleness of olden times and of blood, to which the aristocratic sentiment that work is DISHONOURING—that it vulgarizes body and soul—is not quite unfamiliar? And that consequently the modern, noisy, time-engrossing, conceited, foolishly proud laboriousness educates and prepares for “unbelief” more than anything else? Among these, for instance, who are at present living apart from religion in Germany, I find “free-thinkers” of diversified species and origin, but above all a majority of those in whom laboriousness from generation to generation has dissolved the religious instincts; so that they no longer know what purpose religions serve, and only note their existence in the world with a kind of dull astonishment. They feel themselves already fully occupied, these good people, be it by their business or by their pleasures, not to mention the “Fatherland,” and the newspapers, and their “family duties”; it seems that they have no time whatever left for religion; and above all, it is not obvious to them whether it is a question of a new business or a new pleasure—for it is impossible, they say to themselves, that people should go to church merely to spoil their tempers. They are by no means enemies of religious customs; should certain circumstances, State affairs perhaps, require their participation in such customs, they do what is required, as so many things are done—with a patient and unassuming seriousness, and without much curiosity or discomfort;—they live too much apart and outside to feel even the necessity for a FOR or AGAINST in such matters. Among those indifferent persons may be reckoned nowadays the majority of German Protestants of the middle classes, especially in the great laborious centres of trade and commerce; also the majority of laborious scholars, and the entire University personnel (with the exception of the theologians, whose existence and possibility there always gives psychologists new and more subtle puzzles to solve). On the part of pious, or merely church-going people, there is seldom any idea of HOW MUCH good-will, one might say arbitrary will, is now necessary for a German scholar to take the problem of religion seriously; his whole profession (and as I have said, his whole workmanlike laboriousness, to which he is compelled by his modern conscience) inclines him to a lofty and almost charitable serenity as regards religion, with which is occasionally mingled a slight disdain for the “uncleanliness” of spirit which he takes for granted wherever any one still professes to belong to the Church. It is only with the help of history (NOT through his own personal experience, therefore) that the scholar succeeds in bringing himself to a respectful seriousness, and to a certain timid deference in presence of religions; but even when his sentiments have reached the stage of gratitude towards them, he has not personally advanced one step nearer to that which still maintains itself as Church or as piety; perhaps even the contrary. The practical indifference to religious matters in the midst of which he has been born and brought up, usually sublimates itself in his case into circumspection and cleanliness, which shuns contact with religious men and things; and it may be just the depth of his tolerance and humanity which prompts him to avoid the delicate trouble which tolerance itself brings with it.—Every age has its own divine type of naivete, for the discovery of which other ages may envy it: and how much naivete—adorable, childlike, and boundlessly foolish naivete is involved in this belief of the scholar in his superiority, in the good conscience of his tolerance, in the unsuspecting, simple certainty with which his instinct treats the religious man as a lower and less valuable type, beyond, before, and ABOVE which he himself has developed—he, the little arrogant dwarf and mob-man, the sedulously alert, head-and-hand drudge of “ideas,” of “modern ideas”!

59. Whoever has seen deeply into the world has doubtless divined what wisdom there is in the fact that men are superficial. It is their preservative instinct which teaches them to be flighty, lightsome, and false. Here and there one finds a passionate and exaggerated adoration of “pure forms” in philosophers as well as in artists: it is not to be doubted that whoever has NEED of the cult of the superficial to that extent, has at one time or another made an unlucky dive BENEATH it. Perhaps there is even an order of rank with respect to those burnt children, the born artists who find the enjoyment of life only in trying to FALSIFY its image (as if taking wearisome revenge on it), one might guess to what degree life has disgusted them, by the extent to which they wish to see its image falsified, attenuated, ultrified, and deified,—one might reckon the homines religiosi among the artists, as their HIGHEST rank. It is the profound, suspicious fear of an incurable pessimism which compels whole centuries to fasten their teeth into a religious interpretation of existence: the fear of the instinct which divines that truth might be attained TOO soon, before man has become strong enough, hard enough, artist enough…. Piety, the “Life in God,” regarded in this light, would appear as the most elaborate and ultimate product of the FEAR of truth, as artist-adoration and artist-intoxication in presence of the most logical of all falsifications, as the will to the inversion of truth, to untruth at any price. Perhaps there has hitherto been no more effective means of beautifying man than piety, by means of it man can become so artful, so superficial, so iridescent, and so good, that his appearance no longer offends.

60. To love mankind FOR GOD’S SAKE—this has so far been the noblest and remotest sentiment to which mankind has attained. That love to mankind, without any redeeming intention in the background, is only an ADDITIONAL folly and brutishness, that the inclination to this love has first to get its proportion, its delicacy, its gram of salt and sprinkling of ambergris from a higher inclination—whoever first perceived and “experienced” this, however his tongue may have stammered as it attempted to express such a delicate matter, let him for all time be holy and respected, as the man who has so far flown highest and gone astray in the finest fashion!

61. The philosopher, as WE free spirits understand him—as the man of the greatest responsibility, who has the conscience for the general development of mankind,—will use religion for his disciplining and educating work, just as he will use the contemporary political and economic conditions. The selecting and disciplining influence—destructive, as well as creative and fashioning—which can be exercised by means of religion is manifold and varied, according to the sort of people placed under its spell and protection. For those who are strong and independent, destined and trained to command, in whom the judgment and skill of a ruling race is incorporated, religion is an additional means for overcoming resistance in the exercise of authority—as a bond which binds rulers and subjects in common, betraying and surrendering to the former the conscience of the latter, their inmost heart, which would fain escape obedience. And in the case of the unique natures of noble origin, if by virtue of superior spirituality they should incline to a more retired and contemplative life, reserving to themselves only the more refined forms of government (over chosen disciples or members of an order), religion itself may be used as a means for obtaining peace from the noise and trouble of managing GROSSER affairs, and for securing immunity from the UNAVOIDABLE filth of all political agitation. The Brahmins, for instance, understood this fact. With the help of a religious organization, they secured to themselves the power of nominating kings for the people, while their sentiments prompted them to keep apart and outside, as men with a higher and super-regal mission. At the same time religion gives inducement and opportunity to some of the subjects to qualify themselves for future ruling and commanding the slowly ascending ranks and classes, in which, through fortunate marriage customs, volitional power and delight in self-control are on the increase. To them religion offers sufficient incentives and temptations to aspire to higher intellectuality, and to experience the sentiments of authoritative self-control, of silence, and of solitude. Asceticism and Puritanism are almost indispensable means of educating and ennobling a race which seeks to rise above its hereditary baseness and work itself upwards to future supremacy. And finally, to ordinary men, to the majority of the people, who exist for service and general utility, and are only so far entitled to exist, religion gives invaluable contentedness with their lot and condition, peace of heart, ennoblement of obedience, additional social happiness and sympathy, with something of transfiguration and embellishment, something of justification of all the commonplaceness, all the meanness, all the semi-animal poverty of their souls. Religion, together with the religious significance of life, sheds sunshine over such perpetually harassed men, and makes even their own aspect endurable to them, it operates upon them as the Epicurean philosophy usually operates upon sufferers of a higher order, in a refreshing and refining manner, almost TURNING suffering TO ACCOUNT, and in the end even hallowing and vindicating it. There is perhaps nothing so admirable in Christianity and Buddhism as their art of teaching even the lowest to elevate themselves by piety to a seemingly higher order of things, and thereby to retain their satisfaction with the actual world in which they find it difficult enough to live—this very difficulty being necessary.

62. To be sure—to make also the bad counter-reckoning against such religions, and to bring to light their secret dangers—the cost is always excessive and terrible when religions do NOT operate as an educational and disciplinary medium in the hands of the philosopher, but rule voluntarily and PARAMOUNTLY, when they wish to be the final end, and not a means along with other means. Among men, as among all other animals, there is a surplus of defective, diseased, degenerating, infirm, and necessarily suffering individuals; the successful cases, among men also, are always the exception; and in view of the fact that man is THE ANIMAL NOT YET PROPERLY ADAPTED TO HIS ENVIRONMENT, the rare exception. But worse still. The higher the type a man represents, the greater is the improbability that he will SUCCEED; the accidental, the law of irrationality in the general constitution of mankind, manifests itself most terribly in its destructive effect on the higher orders of men, the conditions of whose lives are delicate, diverse, and difficult to determine. What, then, is the attitude of the two greatest religions above-mentioned to the SURPLUS of failures in life? They endeavour to preserve and keep alive whatever can be preserved; in fact, as the religions FOR SUFFERERS, they take the part of these upon principle; they are always in favour of those who suffer from life as from a disease, and they would fain treat every other experience of life as false and impossible. However highly we may esteem this indulgent and preservative care (inasmuch as in applying to others, it has applied, and applies also to the highest and usually the most suffering type of man), the hitherto PARAMOUNT religions—to give a general appreciation of them—are among the principal causes which have kept the type of “man” upon a lower level—they have preserved too much THAT WHICH SHOULD HAVE PERISHED. One has to thank them for invaluable services; and who is sufficiently rich in gratitude not to feel poor at the contemplation of all that the “spiritual men” of Christianity have done for Europe hitherto! But when they had given comfort to the sufferers, courage to the oppressed and despairing, a staff and support to the helpless, and when they had allured from society into convents and spiritual penitentiaries the broken-hearted and distracted: what else had they to do in order to work systematically in that fashion, and with a good conscience, for the preservation of all the sick and suffering, which means, in deed and in truth, to work for the DETERIORATION OF THE EUROPEAN RACE? To REVERSE all estimates of value—THAT is what they had to do! And to shatter the strong, to spoil great hopes, to cast suspicion on the delight in beauty, to break down everything autonomous, manly, conquering, and imperious—all instincts which are natural to the highest and most successful type of “man”—into uncertainty, distress of conscience, and self-destruction; forsooth, to invert all love of the earthly and of supremacy over the earth, into hatred of the earth and earthly things—THAT is the task the Church imposed on itself, and was obliged to impose, until, according to its standard of value, “unworldliness,” “unsensuousness,” and “higher man” fused into one sentiment. If one could observe the strangely painful, equally coarse and refined comedy of European Christianity with the derisive and impartial eye of an Epicurean god, I should think one would never cease marvelling and laughing; does it not actually seem that some single will has ruled over Europe for eighteen centuries in order to make a SUBLIME ABORTION of man? He, however, who, with opposite requirements (no longer Epicurean) and with some divine hammer in his hand, could approach this almost voluntary degeneration and stunting of mankind, as exemplified in the European Christian (Pascal, for instance), would he not have to cry aloud with rage, pity, and horror: “Oh, you bunglers, presumptuous pitiful bunglers, what have you done! Was that a work for your hands? How you have hacked and botched my finest stone! What have you presumed to do!”—I should say that Christianity has hitherto been the most portentous of presumptions. Men, not great enough, nor hard enough, to be entitled as artists to take part in fashioning MAN; men, not sufficiently strong and far-sighted to ALLOW, with sublime self-constraint, the obvious law of the thousandfold failures and perishings to prevail; men, not sufficiently noble to see the radically different grades of rank and intervals of rank that separate man from man:—SUCH men, with their “equality before God,” have hitherto swayed the destiny of Europe; until at last a dwarfed, almost ludicrous species has been produced, a gregarious animal, something obliging, sickly, mediocre, the European of the present day.

Filed Under: Blog, Books, Epistemology, History, Philosophy Tagged With: Epistemology, Ethics, morals, Nietzsche, truth

September 16, 2013 by kevinstilley

The Gospel – select quotes

He who has not felt what sin is in the Old Testament knows little what grace is in the New. He who has not trembled in Moses, and wept in David, and wondered in Isaiah will rejoice little in Matthew or rest little in John. He who has not suffered under the Law will scarcely hear the glad sound of the gospel.
~ R. W. Barbour

The bottom line is this. That the gospel is about the forgiveness of sins so the Spirit might come. The goal of all this covenant activity is to restore a lost relationship to connect God to his people as he lives within.
~ Darrell Bock

The gospel is about the privilege of God entering our lives permanently from within our being, restoring his relationship with us, and making us part of his precious family.
~ Darrell Bock

The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less.
~ Tim Keller

The true gospel is a call to self-denial. It is not a call to self-fulfillment.
~ John MacArthur

The power of the gospel changes him… and makes them into a new creation. … for the work of Christ sweeps away both his good and his evil and turns him into another man. …it also includes an actual change in the life of the individual. … a transformation as deep as the roots of his human life. If it does not go that deep, it does not go deep enough.
~ A.W. Tozer

Filed Under: Blog, Quotes, Soteriology Tagged With: Evangelism, gospel, truth

February 23, 2013 by kevinstilley

Honesty – select quotes

One lie will destroy a whole reputation for integrity.
~ Baltasar Gracian, in The Art of Worldly Wisdom

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
~ Samuel Butler

Falsehood is never so successful as when she baits her hook with truth, and no opinions so fastly misled us as those that are not wholly wrong, as no timepieces so effectually deceive the wearer as those that are sometimes right.
~ Charles Caleb Colton

It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.
~ Noel Coward

I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don’t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.
~ Charles Dickens

The louder he talked of his honor the faster we counted our spoons.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

I deny the lawfulness of telling a lie to a sick man for fear of alarming him; you have no business with consequences you are to tell the truth.
~ Samuel Johnson

White lies are but the ushers to black ones.
~ Frederick Marryat

An honest man is the noblest work of God.
~ Alexander Pope

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch. Nay, you may kick it about all day, and it will be round and full at evening.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.
~ Winston Churchill

O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!
~ Walter Scott

No legacy is so rich as honesty.
~ William Shakespeare

Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive!
~ William Shakespeare

The liar’s punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.
~ George Bernard Shaw

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
~ Mark Twain

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.
~ Mark Twain

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Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Blog, character, deception, Ethics, folly, Honesty, integrity, lies, Quotes, truth

October 23, 2012 by kevinstilley

All Truth Is God’s Truth?

A person who is a good and true Christian should realize that truth belongs to his Lord, wherever it is found, gathering and acknowledging it even in pagan literature, but rejecting superstitious vanities and deploring and avoiding those who ‘though they knew God did not glorify him as God or give thanks but became enfeebled in their own thoughts and plunged their senseless minds into darkness. Claiming to be wise they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for the image of corruptible mortals and animals and reptiles’ [Rom. 1:21-3].
~ Augustine of Hippo, In De Doctrina Christiana, Book II

Any statements by those who are called philosophers, especially the Platonists, which happen to be true and consistent with our faith should not cause alarm, but be claimed for our own use, as it were from owners who have no right to them.
~ Augustine of Hippo. In De Doctrina Christiana

Gold from Egypt is still gold.
~ Augustine of Hippo

All truth is God’s truth.
~ Arthur F. Holmes

Whatever things were rightly said among all men are the property of us Christians.
~ Justin, 2 Apology 13

____________

Sometimes the slogan “All truth is God’s truth” is used to justify dealing in any sphere of knowledge as an act of worship or stewardship. The impression is given that just knowing God’s truth and recognizing it as such is a good thing, even a worthy end. But the problem with this is that the devil does it.

“If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.” (1 Corinthians 8:2-3). Which I take to mean that until we know in such a way that we love God more because of it, we do not yet know as we ought to know.

Alongside “All truth is God’s truth,” we need to say, “All truth exists to display more of God and awaken more love for God.” This means that knowing truth and knowing it as God’s truth is not a virtue until it awakens desire and delight in us for the God of truth. And that desire and delight are not complete until they give rise to words or actions that display the worth of God. That is, we exist to glorify God (1 Corinthians 10:31), and merely knowing a truth to be God’s truth does not glorify him any more than the devil does.

All truth exists to make God known and loved and shown. If it does not have those three effects it is not known rightly and should not be celebrated as a virtue.
~ John Piper

Filed Under: Blog, Epistemology, Quotes, Worldview Tagged With: Epistemology, truth, Worldview

October 21, 2012 by kevinstilley

Trust – select quotes

The man who trusts men will make fewer mistakes than he who distrusts them.
~ Camillo Cavour

Trust everybody, but cut the cards.
~ Finley Peter Dunne

Few delights can equal the presence of one whom we trust utterly.
~ George MacDonald

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.
~ William Shakespeare

Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.
~ Corrie Ten Boom

He who mistrusts most should be trusted least.
~ Theognis of Megara

Learning to trust is one of life’s most difficult tasks.
~ Isaac Watts

Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.
~ The Bible, Luke 16:10

Filed Under: Blog, Quotes Tagged With: Blog, faithfulness, fidelity, Honesty, Quotes, trust, truth

June 10, 2012 by kevinstilley

J.C. Ryle – select quotes

All heaven and earth resound with that subtle and delicately balanced truth that the old paths are the best paths after all.

I pity the man who never thinks about heaven.

Love should be the silver thread that runs through all your conduct. Kindness, gentleness, long-suffering, forbearance, patience, sympathy, a willingness to enter into childish troubles, a readiness to take part in childish joys, — these are the cords by which a child may be led most easily, — these are the clues you must follow if you would ind the way to his heart.

Parents, do you wish to see your children happy? Take care, then, that you train them to obey when they are spoken to, –to do as they are bid…. Teach them to obey while young, or else they will be fretting against God all their lives long, and wear themselves out with the vain idea of being independent of His control.

Parents, if you love your children, do all that lies in your power to train them up to a habit of prayer. Show them how to begin. Tell them what to say. Encourage them to persevere. Remind them if they become careless and slack about it. Let it not be your fault, at any rate, if they never call on the name of the Lord.
~ in The Duties of Parents

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Filed Under: Blog, Quotes Tagged With: J.C. Ryle, Quotes, truth, Worldview

February 10, 2012 by kevinstilley

Oedipus the King – discussion questions

What were your initial thoughts about the character of Oedipus?  Did your thoughts about him change as you read through the drama?

“Dramatic irony is a relationship of contrast between a character’s limited understanding of his or her situation in some particular moment of the unfolding action and what the audience, at the same instant, understands the character’s situation actually to be.” Where do we see dramatic irony in this drama?

Why was Teiresias hesitant to share what he knew about the death of King Laius?

Did Teiresias really believe that it would be better for everyone if truth were to remain undisclosed?  Jocasta also asks Oedipus to stop investigating his lineage (line 1063).  Is truth always best known.  Always best shared?  Is it always best for guilt to be made public?  In government?   In marriage?  In the church?  Is ignorance bliss?  Is bliss the greatest good? 

Oedipus says, “Indeed I am so angry I shall not hold back a jot of what I think.”    Can kings afford to get angry?  Other leaders?  Pastors?  What should leaders do with their anger? [Anger – select quotes]

The Chorus advises Oedipus that “those who are qick of temper are not safe.”  Oedipus responds that plots must be dealt with quickly.  (lines 615-620)  Which one is right?

Teiresias is blind but sees.  Oedipus has eyes but is blind. (line 413)  Why is Oedipus, the man who solved the riddle of the Sphinx, so slow to solve the riddle of his own identity?

At what point does steadfastness and perseverence become mere obstinancy? (line 550)

Creon says to Oedipus, “But do not charge me on obscure opinion without some proof to back it.  It’s not just lightly to count your knaves as honest men, nor honest men as knaves.  To throw away an honest friend is, as it were, to throw your life away, which a man loves the best.”  Have you ever been accused falsely?  Betrayed?  Have you ever accused a friend or family member on the basis of “obscure opinion without some proof to back it?  do you think that this is a major problem in the church?  In politics?  What does the Bible say about this?

What does Creon mean when he says “time in the only test of honest men, one day is space enough to know a rogue”?

Oedipus asks, “Was I not born evil?  Am I not utterly unclean?”  What is the Christian response to these questions?

The Chorus contrasts insolence with eager ambition. (lines 874-884)  Are they opposites? 

Jocasta declares, “Now when we look to him [Oedipus] we are all afraid; he’s pilot of our ship and he is frightened.” (lines 921-922)  Can leaders show fear?

Freud was fascinated with this drama, particularly that element of it described by Jocasta, “As to your mother’s marriage bed, –dont fear it.  Before this, in dreams too, as well as oracles, many a man has lain with his own mother.  But he to whom such tings are nothing bears his life most easily.”  Should we just gag and go on, or is there something  in this that should be considered by us?

Why did Oedipus blind himself?  Do you believe his explanation for why he blinded himself? 

Creon refuses to banish Oedipus until he has consulted the gods.  How does this compare with the manner in which Oedipus governed?  Do you think Creon will prove to be a great leader as he takes over the reigns of government?

The last line of the drama is “Count no mortal happy till he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain.”  Huh?  How does this compare with what Aristotle says about happiness in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics?  With what Solon says about happiness when discoursing with King Croesus?

Who (or what)  is to blame for this great big mess? The gods?  Oedipus?  Jocasta? Fate?  (MSNBC reported that it was George Bush’s fault.)

Where do we see hubris in these lines of text?  Where do we see the conflict between the forces of nomos and physis?

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Some notes on Oedipus from Aristotle’s Poetics:

“Reversal of the Situation is a change by which the action veers round to its opposite, subject always to our rule of probability or necessity. Thus in the Oedipus, the messenger comes to cheer Oedipus and free him from his alarms about his mother, but by revealing who he is, he produces the opposite effect.”

“Recognition, as the name indicates, is a change from ignorance to knowledge, producing love or hate between the persons destined by the poet for good or bad fortune. The best form of recognition is coincident with a Reversal of the Situation, as in the Oedipus.”

“A perfect tragedy should, as we have seen, be arranged not on the simple but on the complex plan. It should, moreover, imitate actions which excite pity and fear, this being the distinctive mark of tragic imitation. It follows plainly, in the first place, that the change of fortune presented must not be the spectacle of a virtuous man brought from prosperity to adversity: for this moves neither pity nor fear; it merely shocks us. Nor, again, that of a bad man passing from adversity to prosperity: for nothing can be more alien to the spirit of Tragedy; it possesses no single tragic quality; it neither satisfies the moral sense nor calls forth pity or fear. Nor, again, should the downfall of the utter villain be exhibited. A plot of this kind would, doubtless, satisfy the moral sense, but it would inspire neither pity nor fear; for pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune
of a man like ourselves. Such an event, therefore, will be neither pitiful nor terrible. There remains, then, the character between these two extremes- that of a man who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty. He must be one who is highly renowned and prosperous- a personage like Oedipus, Thyestes, or other illustrious men of such families.”

“A well-constructed plot should, therefore, be single in its issue, rather than double as some maintain. The change of fortune should be not from bad to good, but, reversely, from good to bad. It should come about as the result not of vice, but of some great error or frailty, in a character either such as we have described, or better rather than worse. The practice of the stage bears out our view. At first the poets recounted any legend that came in their way. Now, the best tragedies are founded on the story of a few houses- on the fortunes of Alcmaeon, Oedipus, Orestes, Meleager, Thyestes, Telephus, and those others who have done or suffered something terrible. A tragedy, then, to be perfect according to the rules of art should be of this construction.”

“Fear and pity may be aroused by spectacular means; but they may also result from the inner structure of the piece, which is the better way, and indicates a superior poet. For the plot ought to be so constructed that, even without the aid of the eye, he who hears the tale told will thrill with horror and melt to pity at what takes Place. This is the impression we should receive from hearing the story of the Oedipus. But to produce this effect by the mere spectacle is a less artistic method, and dependent on extraneous aids. Those who employ spectacular means to create a sense not of the terrible but only of the monstrous, are strangers to the purpose of Tragedy; for we must not demand of Tragedy any and every kind of pleasure, but only that which is proper to it. And since the pleasure which the poet should afford is that which comes from pity and fear through imitation, it is evident that this quality must be impressed upon the incidents.”

Filed Under: Blog, Books, History, Philosophy Tagged With: Family, Freud, government, Oedipus, secrets, Sophocles, truth

May 15, 2011 by kevinstilley

Frank Lloyd Wright – select quotes

The truth is more important than the facts.

Television. Chewing gum for the eyes.

The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.

Filed Under: Blog, Quotes Tagged With: Frank Lloyd Wright, truth

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