Kevin Perry > Quotes

“In such thoughtless amnesia, Dostoevsky would quip, we sink to the level of happy cattle, to the sort of bovine contentment that is the aim of much new age spirituality which gets systematically confused with happiness.”
― Kevin Perry, Philosophy

“One of the tasks of philosophy, then, is to engage in a critique of scientism. But—and in many ways this is even more pernicious—the perverted flipside of scientism is obscurantism, namely the idea that the explanations of natural sciences are wrong and have to be rejected in favor of an alternative causal story that is somehow of a higher order, but essentially occult. To”
― Kevin Perry, Philosophy

“naturalism—the view that natural causes and material conditions, rather than supernatural or non-natural forces, account for the universe’s existence.”
― Kevin Perry, Philosophy

“In this pivotal work, Aristotle maintained his teacher’s belief that the life of the mind is ultimately the life most worth living. Unlike Plato, however, he emphasized the social and linguistic dimensions of flourishing (eudaimonia).”
― Kevin Perry, Philosophy

“So why does there have to be meaning? Is “meaning” equivalent to “purpose”? Is purpose tied to the designs of a Creator? Since the time of the Ancient Greeks, philosophers have tried to determine whether or not human beings have a unique essence and function. The hope was that understanding what those were would provide a basis for determining the purpose and value of our lives.”
― Kevin Perry, Philosophy

“It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well. DISCOURSE ON METHOD”
― Kevin Perry, Philosophy

“Until philosophers are kings, or the kings of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy… will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day. THE REPUBLIC (BOOK 5) We can illustrate this through his famous Allegory of the Cave and his Theory of Forms. Plato believed that the world we perceive through our senses is deceptive, whereas the ideas that survive the scrutiny of rational thought are not.”
― Kevin Perry, Philosophy

“A good life is one that remains committed to obeying and being guided by the universally applicable and sustainable duties we impose on ourselves through rationality, and not through psychological desire.”
― Kevin Perry, Philosophy

“Camus believed humans do not have an ultimate essence or purpose: they must construct it. Even if life seems like an absurd struggle, they must keep on living.”
― Kevin Perry, Philosophy

“we cannot gain certainty from experience, because experience only tells us what is and not what must be.”
― Kevin Perry, Philosophy

“To live a self-depriving life committed to a fixed view of the good is to live with “resentment,” which disguises the fact that one is too weak to fully express one’s creative urges. This urge to create is what Nietzsche called the Will to Power. The healthiest life is one that does not hold back or fear the freedom of living without ultimate truths. A person capable of living such a life is what Nietzsche called the Übermensch or “higher man.”
― Kevin Perry, Philosophy

“We should remain critical of conceptions of authenticity, becoming-one, becoming who you are, of the idiotic conviction that everything is somehow connected, tendencies that are endemic in a whole variety of cultural phenomena. Authenticity is nothing but an ideology of late capitalism.”
― Kevin Perry, Philosophy

“We have no idea that there is a larger world of truth outside these confines, and we mistake these phantom images for reality. We laugh, cry, love and fight in a phantom world. The task of the philosopher is to break those chains, exit the cave, and see the deeper causes of things—to gaze, however tenuously, at the sun that casts light on this whole farce and, by doing so, inspire others to follow suit. When we mistake the shadows for truth, we take the changing appearances of the senses to be the whole of reality.”
― Kevin Perry, Philosophy