Status Updates From The Proper Study of Mankind

太难读了 读得眼睛发涩 太阳穴发胀 🙂‍↕️ 这样也才堪堪读了十几页。 目标明年才能读完这本了

Science cannot destroy the consciousness of freedom, without which there is no morality and no art, but it can refute it. Power and accident are but names for ignorance of the casual chains, but the chains exit whether we feel them or not. Fortunately we do not, for if we felt their weight, we could scarcely act at all.

For the mathematician, the proof of these theorems is part of the free exercise of his natural reasoning capacity.

The greatest of these is the open war that is being fought between two systems of ideas which return different and conflicting answers to what has been the central question of politics - the question of obedience and coercion.

To demand a unity of method in philosophy, and reject whatever the method cannot successfully manage - is merely to allow oneself to remain at the mercy of primitive and uncriticized political beliefs.

Action is choice; choice is free commitment to this or that way of behaving, living, and so on; the possibilities are never fewer than two: to do or not to do; be or not be.

One of the most influential books of my youth. For me, rooted as it was in Catholic Social Teaching, my political thought started with Isaiah Berlin.

Back to my roots.*

"Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home." (James Joyce)

*In literature, my first love was Joseph Conrad.