ids

“In Nietzsche, Reitzel discovered a thinker who blended a merciless realism about the unholy authority of institutionalized religion with the romantic prophecy of a future liberated selfhood.”
― Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas

“The fundamental question of philosophy: not 'What is the nature of being? What are the conditions of knowledge? or 'How do I know?' but rather, as Emerson put it, 'How shall I live?”
― Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas

“as if aristocratic Aristotle’s endorsement was the kiss of moral death, as if a truth could not be tangled up with moral ugliness.”
― Zena Hitz, Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life

“The one drawback to print is that the uniform finality of black on white leads the innocent to believe that every word so enshrined is true. And when these truths diverge from book to book (for the incentive to write and publish is also increased), the intellectual life is changed. From being more or less a duel, it becomes a free-for-all. The scrimmage makes for a blur of ideas, now accepted as a constant and fondly believed to be, like the free market, the ideal method for sifting truth.”
― Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present