JCJBergman

“I can doubt that the world really exists, but I cannot doubt that I have intentional consciousness, since doubt is itself a form of conscious intention.”
― David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God : Being, Consciousness, Bliss

“Some people maintain that the fear of death does not have a deeper justification, because as long as there is an I there is no death, and once dead there is no I any longer. These people have forgotten about the very strange phenomenon of gradual agony. What comfort does this artificial distinction between the I and death offer a man who has a strong premonition of death? What meaning can logical argument or subtle thought have for someone deeply imbued with a feeling of the irrevocable? All attempts to bring existential questions onto a logical plane are null and void. Philosophers are too proud to confess their fear of death and too supercilious to acknowledge the spiritual fecundity of illness. Their reflections on death exhibit a hypocritical serenity; in fact, they tremble with fear more than anyone else. One should not forget that philosophy is the art of masking inner torments.”
― Emil M. Cioran, On the Heights of Despair

“As Raymond Martin has put it: 'When it comes to understanding the past, historians are the acknowledged experts. But when it comes to understanding how we understand the past, there are no experts.' The American apostle of quantitative history Robert Fogel declares somewhat gloomily in the light of all this, that historians have a choice: 'Either they ignore the philosophers and get on with what they are doing, but that might mean that they will continue to work without understanding how they are doing it. Or they down tools to listen to the philosophers, but this will most likely mean that tools will stay permanently drowned.' But this counsel of despair is belied by the numerous examples of practicing historians who have managed to do both. [...] The more this happens, the better.”
― Richard J. Evans, In Defense of History

“And, pray tell, what were you before birth?" inquired that brilliant woman. "Several unqualified lumps of unorganized matter as yet without definite form or at least lacking any form you can hope to remember. Well, you're going to turn back into those same or similar lumps of matter, you're going to become the raw material out of which new beings will be fashioned, and this will happen when natural processes bring it about. Shall you find all this pleasurable? No. Shall you suffer? No. Is there anything truly objectionable here? No; and what is he who on earth agrees to sacrifice all his pleasures in exchange for the certitude of never having to undergo pain? What would he be, if he were able to strike this bargain? An inert, motionless being. And after he died, what will he be? Exactly the same thing. What then is the use of fretting, since the law of Nature positively condemns you to the same state you'd gladly accept if you were given the opportunity to choose? Eh, Juliette, have you existed since the beginning of time? No; and does that fact make you grieve and despair? Have you any better cause to despair at the fact that you're not going to exist till the end of time? La, la, calm yourself, my pigeon; the cessation of being affrights only the imagination that has created the execrable dogma of an afterlife.”
― Marquis de Sade, Juliette