Daniël Zevenhuizen’s Reviews > An Essay on Metaphysics > Status Update

Ja, ik lees 'm al voor de derde keer. Maar wat wil je met passages als de volgende:

"In unscientific thinking our thoughts are coagulated into knots and tangles; we fish up a thought out of our minds like an anchor foul of its own cable, hanging upside-down and draped in seaweed with shellfish sticking to it, and dump the whole thing on deck quite pleased with ourselves for having got it up at all."

"We do not acquire absolute presuppositions by arguing; on the contrary, unless we have them already arguing is impossible to us."

On account of our deepest suppositions, not arguing matters but revelation through historical analysis. Revealing them stings like an open nerve, provoking emotional response. But only then do we understand the rationale of our institutions, especially when they are in need of change.

<3Collingwood: "..if I never think at all except in this quite causal and unscientific way [as when I apprehend a clothes-line and say 'That is a clothes-line'], I shall always be content to believe this is all that knowledge can ever be...This theory of knowledge is called 'realism'; and 'realism' is based upon the grandest foundation a philosophy can have, namely human stupidity."

Alsof alles z'n plekje al heeft!

"...it is not a 'metaphysical doctrine' ... of Spinoza's that Nature is the same as God. ... what he is doing is to state an historical fact about the religious foundation of seventeenth-century natural science."

"it is a special characteristic of modern European civilization that metaphysics is habitually frowned upon and the existence of absolute presuppositions denied. This habit is neurotic. It is an attempt to overcome a superstitious dread by denying that there is any cause for it. If this neurosis ever achieves its ostensible object...the eradication of science and civilization will be accomplished at the same time."

"Ours is an age when people pride themselves on having abolished magic and pretend that they have no superstitions. But they have as many as ever. The difference is that they have lost the art, which must always be a magical art, of conquering them. 1/2