Sebastian Rödl > Quotes

“God is not simply other than our knowledge of Him. It is through God and God alone that we know God. Descartes elaborates this in this way: We know God because he left a mark of Himself in us; this mark is nothing other than our self-consciousness. Knowing God through this mark of His, we know God in every act of reason.”
― Sebastian Rödl, Self-Consciousness and Objectivity: An Introduction to Absolute Idealism

“The literature on Hegel is fond of representing him as someone who had very particular ideas and opinions. That is not only false; Hegel would have found it embarassing.”
― Sebastian Rödl

“It has been held that, since its essential normativity cannot be accommodated within the natural sciences, we might be forced to throw the concept of action and with it action concepts on the trash heap of outdated theories. With action concepts a logical basis of first person thought disappears. Renouncing action concepts is a form of self-annihilation: logical self-annihilation. It annihilates a source of the power to think and say 'I'.”
― Sebastian Rödl, Self-Consciousness

“We may think the following a prime example of a response to a stimulus: I clap my hands, and the cat shies away, hiding under the sofa. The following is just as good an example: I throw the cat into the fire, and she burns to ashes.’ The first is a life-process: it is something that plays a certain role in a cat's life. The second is not: it is a purely physical process which the cat undergoes.”
― Sebastian Rödl

“Wenn wir einsehen, dass das Urteilen nicht über dem Gegensatz von 'ist' und 'ist nicht' stehen kann, ziehen wir also nicht die Schlussfolgerung, dass das Urteilen zwei entgegengesetzte Formen hat, 'ist' und 'ist nicht'. Vielmehr folgern wir, dass es Ablehnung, Verneinung, Nein-Sagen ist. Das Urteilen ist nicht die unendliche Kraft, das Sein zu erfassen, sondern die universale Kraft zu Verneinen, auszulöschen, zu zermalmen. Die Kraft des Urteilens zur Negation ist universal, weil seine Idee von sich selbst als verneinen a priori ist, das heißt rein. Das Urteilen versteht sich selbst als Verneinen, indem es sich selbst in seiner absoluten Abstraktion erfasst. Da dieses Selbstverständnis von nichts Gegebenem abhängt, ist es absolut. Darum ist das Wort, das den Begriff des Gegenstands des Urteils ausdrückt, wie er im Selbstbewusstsein des Urteilens verstanden wird, »Nichts«. Während »nicht« der Spezifizierung dessen, was negiert werden soll, bedarf, gibt »Nichts« die Universalität des Verneinens wieder, als das sich das Urteilen selbst versteht.”
― Sebastian Rödl

“No Aristotelian ever thought that what strikes me as self-evident cannot fail to be true. If I am enough of an idiot, the most errant nonsense may strike me as self-evident.”
― Sebastian Rödl, Self-Consciousness

“Philosophers are in the habit of indicating the object of judgement by the letter p. There is an insouciance with respect to this fateful letter. It stands ready quietly, unobstrusively, to assure us that we know what we are talking about. For example, when we do epistemology, we are interested in what it is for someone to know - know what? oh yes: p. If we inquire into rational requirements on action or intention, we ask what it is to be obliged to - what? oh yes: see to it that p, intend that, if p, then q, and so on. However, if we udnertake to reflect on thought, on its self-consciousness and its objectivity, then the letter p signifies the deepest question and the deepest comprehension. If only we understood the letter p, the whole world would be open to us.”
― Sebastian Rödl, Self-Consciousness and Objectivity: An Introduction to Absolute Idealism

“A judgment is conscious of its own validity. This shows that the measure of validity to which it refers itself in this consciousness is inherent in the nature of judgment: a judgment is subject to this measure not in virtue of any circumstance in which it may find itself, but simply as judgment. Now when we think of an act simply as a judgment, we refer it to the power as an act of which it is a judgment: the power of judgment. Hence, the measure of validity of judgment is nothing other than the power of judgment. A judgment, being conscious of its validity, refers itself to the power from which it springs (as, e.g., St. Thomas Aquinas observes).”
― Sebastian Rödl

“Die Hegelliteratur stellt Hegel gern als jemanden dar, der ganz eigene Ideen und Meinungen hat. Das ist nicht nur falsch; Hegel hätte es peinlich gefunden.”
― Sebastian Rödl

“What is philosophy? Albrecht Wellmer, I say, or John McDowell. This is how I know what philosophy is.”
― Sebastian Rödl

“Moral Psychology is a manifestation in the philosophical discipline of ethical nihilism.”
― Sebastian Rödl

“A free will not subject to immutable laws would be "ein Unding", a non-thing. If being autonomous were being under laws imposed in what would have to be arbitrary, lawless acts, then autonomy would be a non-reality. If this is right, then there is no need for a concept of autonomy - anyway paradoxical and therefore empty - according to which being autonomous is being under laws one has freely chosen. For then there is no apparent conflict of being free and being under laws, which autonomy so conceived would resolve.”
― Sebastian Rödl, Self-Consciousness

“Yet, the notion that the self-comprehension that is episteme (Wissenschaft) could result from amalgamating a form of episteme from which the first person is expelled with a form of spiritual activity that is incapable of rigorous conceptual articulation is bizarre.”
― Sebastian Rödl, Self-Consciousness and Objectivity: An Introduction to Absolute Idealism

“Consciousness of a manifold of subjects lies deeper than any empirical content judged. It is inside the logical concept of judgment, inside the concept of being and truth. As you contradict me, you figure in my consciousness not as an object with determinations. You figure in my consciousness as judgment. Anything I think of you is subordinated to and informed by this conception.”
― Sebastian Rödl

“I need Sushi. Sakura delivers. I must call Sakura. Straightaway, I call.”
― Sebastian Rödl

“The principle of human action is the thought of good and evil and thus good and evil. In this, in its principle, lies the infinite difference of human action from animal movement. Perhaps this is not evident when we confine our attention to things done like baking a cake. Not because human action is something other than baking cakes and the like. But because it is not possible to understand what it is to bake a cake without its wider context, as Thompson puts it in a phrase of Anscombe’s. This wider context is thought in thought of the good. And the wider context of human action is infinitely different from that of animal action. For it is not just wider; it is the widest. The context of human action is illimitable. This character of the principle of human action affects its temporality. As its principle is illimitable, so is its temporality. Human action is temporal in such a way as to be all time and eternity. This comes out in the way in which my action is not over when it’s over: I repent, I am punished. My past is my present, which thus is eternity, or hell. And it comes out in the way in which my action may be undone: I confess, I am forgiven. My past is annulled, it is perfectly powerless in my present, which thus is eternity, or heaven.”
― Sebastian Rödl