Steven Foulds > Quotes

“As a person, you are not primarily a spectator/knower but an actor/participant.”
― Steven Foulds, A Simple Guide to Being and Time

“It is only the mistaken idea of the idealised subject [the 'pure I'] being 'in here' while objects of knowledge are 'out there' in a world of which we are not essentially part, that makes scepticism even thinkable”
― Steven Foulds, A Serious guide to Being and Time

“Curiosity, for which nothing is closed off, and idle talk, for which everything is supposedly understood, provide persons with the guarantee of a 'life' which, supposedly, is genuinely 'lively'.”
― Steven Foulds, A Serious guide to Being and Time

“All persons repeat behaviours [ways of existing]. If, as is normal, we repeat past behaviours out of habit then we forget the past (i.e., forget the values which gave us our original reasons for existing as we did, see forgetting). Only when we repeat past behaviours out of an ongoing re-commitment to our chosen values are we existing resolutely.”
― Steven Foulds, A Serious guide to Being and Time

“A snail, for example, may crawl all over a hammer, a cat may sniff it and a dog may piss on it, but only persons deal with its Being as a hammer, that is, its meaningful character as a tool having a particular function in the world.”
― Steven Foulds, A Simple Guide to Being and Time

“Anxiety is the primordial and authentic mood of persons[15] in which you confront the very Being from which you have turned away in falling”
― Steven Foulds, A Simple Guide to Being and Time

“Discourse is engaged with Being. Idle talk (colloquially known as ‘bullshit’) is idle by being disengaged; it has a life of its own that, in effect, floats on top of the world. Although popular nature or history documentaries are more insidious modes of idle talk, the kind of celebrity gossip found in certain magazines and newspapers is probably the most obvious mode. In idle talk you receive, discuss and pass on, what is said without checking the veracity of the claims. Idle talk takes on a life of its own which becomes increasingly detached from what it is supposed to be about.”
― Steven Foulds, A Simple Guide to Being and Time