Ritchie Robertson > Quotes

“Thus empiricism directed attention away from abstract principles to the data of experience. Hence, while the philosophers of the pre-Enlightenment period favoured the geometric method, reasoning deductively from first principles, their successors worked by induction, first observing particular details and arriving eventually at general truths.”
― Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

“The answer is not to suppress our desires, as a Christian ascetic would recommend, for that leads to a condition of vegetation rather than life, but rather the prudent management of our desires, for example by eliminating whatever in them is chimerical.”
― Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

“In me there are two souls, alas, and their Division tears my life in two. One loves the world, it clutches her, it binds Itself to her, clinging with furious lust; The other longs to soar beyond the dust Into the realm of high ancestral minds. (lines 1102–7)”
― Ritchie Robertson, Goethe: A Very Short Introduction

“methods of education that would bring out pupils’ individuality and equip them to understand the world around them.”
― Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!”
― Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

“To them, happiness was not, as it often is in present-day discussions, simply a subjective state, such as might be induced by chemicals; it meant attaining the preconditions for personal happiness, including domestic affection, material sufficiency and a suitable degree of freedom.”
― Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

“They hoped to attain knowledge of the world that was absolutely certain. Their model was the logical certainty provided by mathematics. Knowledge should start from a principle that was known intuitively and was beyond doubt. From that principle, a chain of rigorous arguments should be constructed, as in geometry. Each proposition could be deduced from the one before it, demonstrated to be true, and give rise to another proposition which could be demonstrated in its turn. Thus the certainty of the initial principle would be transmitted all the way down the chain of reasoning and result in a system of knowledge that was free from doubt.”
― Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

“Believing, with Locke, that all our knowledge comes ultimately from the senses, and is thus empirical, not metaphysical, in origin, the philosophes do not profess to know what lies behind empirical phenomena.151 They do not inquire into the ultimate nature of things.”
― Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

“A wise man is free from passions, though Kant admits that, as the passions are so all-pervasive, we may have to search for this wise man in the moon.”
― Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

“human beings are very narcissistic, they like to see themselves everywhere and be the foil for the rest of creation’ (I, iv).”
― Ritchie Robertson, Goethe: A Very Short Introduction

“Art imitates nature, but does not copy it.”
― Ritchie Robertson, Goethe: A Very Short Introduction

“we are naturally inclined to search for happiness, but he argues that nature has destined us never to find it. We will always be somewhat discontented, and that very discontent is good for us by spurring on our energies and our creativity.”
― Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

“A self-perpetuating aristocracy easily hardens into an oligarchy, and therefore a senate, for example, should be replenished from the ranks of the people.”
― Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

“hypothetical, because, as Kafka shows, success within an institution requires one to accept its rules, including its system of hierarchy, so that anything different becomes intolerable, even unthinkable. Josef K. is the supreme example of a professional man committed to order. His arrest”
― Ritchie Robertson, Kafka: A Very Short Introduction

“An age of enlightenment is one in which people are free to think as their intellect guides them. No body, even the Church, can permanently restrict freedom of thought by prescribing what people must believe, now and for ever.”
― Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

“More than a popular belief, it was a delusion of the learned.”
― Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

“Reason must be deployed not to reduce compassion and affection, but to direct them effectively, and to avoid throwing oneself away on unworthy objects of love.”
― Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

“How fine to be willing to admit that one does not know what one does not know, instead of spewing out such nonsense and disgusting oneself!’ (Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods).”
― Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

“The esprit de système favours closed, rigid systems, whereas the esprit systématique accepts the authority of empirical phenomena and comes to conclusions that are provisional and can be modified in the light of further findings.”
― Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

“Most people, Kant continues, are too lazy to think for themselves. They allow guardians of various kinds to think for them, and the guardians are only too happy to take control”
― Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

“The Enlightenment, the so-called ‘age of reason’, would increasingly rely on the guidance of the emotions. Reason untempered by feeling was felt to be inadequate, even dangerous. ‘Virtue born of reason alone,’ said Pietro Verri, ‘makes us just, faithful, discreet and circumspect; but that which springs from sentiment makes us generous, affectionate, benevolent; the first tends to remove evil from our actions, the second urges us with positive actions towards the good.”
― Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

“The Enlightenment’s search for the betterment of human life, for the increase of happiness, required a more accurate understanding of the world.”
― Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

“While it would be absurd to doubt the reality of the external world, it would be mistaken to claim that we can have any certain knowledge of it. The study of the external world can never claim certainty, only a degree (often a very high degree) of probability.”
― Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

“When different religion managed to coexist peacefully for a long period, the visibility of other religion tended to weaken one's conviction of the unique excellence of one's own.”
― Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness 1680-1790

“Passions of the soul are potentially valuable. Unlike the Stoics, Descartes thinks they should not be suppressed, but put to good use.”
― Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

“[I came without my consent into this perverse world; since I am here, I am a citizen of the universe; I am a cosmopolitan, like Diogenes, I embrace with my love the entire human race. All mortals together, yellow, black, and white are everywhere my neighbours, are everywhere my relatives.]”
― Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

“Democracies can become corrupt when the egalitarian spirit becomes so extreme that nobody wants to acknowledge anyone else’s authority: this will lead to anarchy, which will in turn be quelled by the emergence of a tyrant.”
― Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

“As late as 1711, Addison says cautiously: ‘I believe in general that there is, and has been such a thing as Witchcraft; but at the same time can give no Credit to any Particular Instance of it.”
― Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

“More than a popular belief, it was a delusion of the learned. The demonologists, who produced shelves of erudite treatises around 1600, have been claimed as the leading intellectuals of their day, and even as reputable scientists.76 Armed with an unfalsifiable theory, the licence to confirm it by torture, and a conviction that they were Christendom’s last defence against the power of Satan, these intellectuals had, in reality, the destructive effect that their fantasy ascribed to witches.”
― Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790