Term
“If it is true that our civilization has something pitiable about it, you have the choice of concluding with Rousseau that this pitiable civilization is to blame for our bad morality, or against Rousseau that our good morality is to blame for the pitiableness of our civilization.”
“The truth cannot possibly be on both sides. And is it on either of them? Test them and see” |
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Definition
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Term
“Supposing truth is a woman—what then?
Are there not grounds for the suspicion that all
philosophers, insofar as they were dogmatists, have been very inexpert about women?” |
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Definition
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Term
“the worst, most durable, and most dangerous of all errors so far… Plato’s invention of the pure spirit and the good as such.”
“standing truth on her head and denying perspective, the basic condition of all life.”
“Christianity is Platonism for ‘the people’ |
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Definition
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Term
| “They are not honest enough in their work, although they all make a lot of virtuous noise when the problem of truthfulness is touched even remotely.” |
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Definition
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Term
“a cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic” Is actually “an assumption, a hunch, indeed a kind of inspiration’—most often a desire of the heart that has been filtered and made abstract—that they defend with reasons they have sought after the fact.”
Philosophers are “Advocates who resent that name, and for the most part even wily spokesmen for their prejudices which they baptize ‘truths’” |
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Definition
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Term
“But now that it is overcome, now that Europe is breathing freely again after this nightmare and at least can enjoy a healthier—sleep…
we, whose task is wakefulness itself, are the heirs of all that strength which has been fostered by the fight against this error...
But the fight against Plato or, to speak more clearly and for ‘the people,’ the fight against the Christian-ecclesiastical pressure of millennia...has created in Europe a magnificent tension of the spirit the like of which had never yet existed on earth:
with so tense a bow we can now shoot for the most distant goals.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “…where does one not encounter that veiled glance, which burdens one with a profound sadness, that inward glance born of failure, which betrays how such people speak to themselves, that glance which is a sigh. If only I were someone else, sighs that glance. But there is no hope of that; I am who I am. How could I ever get free of myself? And yet, I am sick of myself.” |
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Definition
| Nietzsche - Genealogy of Morals |
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Term
Once one sacrificed human beings to one’s god, perhaps precisely those whom one loved most…
Then, during the moral epoch of mankind, one sacrificed to one’s god one’s own strongest instincts, one’s ‘nature’: this festive joy lights up the cruel eyes of the ascetic, the ‘anti-natural’ enthusiast.
Finally—what remained to be sacrificed?...didn’t one have to sacrifice God himself and, from cruelty against oneself, worship the stone, stupidity, gravity, fate, the nothing? |
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Definition
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Term
| “What they would like to strive for with all their powers is the universal green-pasture happiness of the herd, with security, lack of danger, comfort, and an easier life for everyone; the two songs and doctrines which they repeat most often are “equality of rights” and “sympathy for all that suffers”– and suffering itself they take for something that must be abolished.” |
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Definition
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Term
| You want if possible—and there is no madder “if possible”—to abolish suffering; and we?—it really does seem that we would rather increase it and make it worse than it has ever been! Well-being as you understand it—that is no goal, that seems to us an end! A state which soon renders man ludicrous and contemptible—which makes it desirable that he should perish! The discipline of suffering, of great suffering—do you not know that it is this discipline alone which has created every elevation of mankind hitherto? |
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Definition
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Term
Refraining mutually from injury, violence, and exploitation and placing one’s will on a par with that of someone else– this may become…good manners among individuals if the appropriate conditions are present (namely, if these men are actually similar in strength and value standards and belong together in one body).
But as soon as this principle is extended, and possibly even accepted as the fundamental principle of society, it immediately proves to be what it really is– a will to the denial of life, a principle of disintegration and decay. |
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Definition
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Term
“…life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, overpowering of what is alien and weaker; suppression, hardness, imposition of one’s own forms, incorporation and at least, at its mildest, exploitation…
Exploitation does not belong to a corrupt or imperfect and primitive society; it belongs to the essence of what lives, as a basic organic function; it is a consequence of the will to power, which is after all the will of life.” |
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Definition
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Term
| Our pity is a higher and more farsighted pity: we see how man makes himself smaller, how you make him smaller - and there are moments when we behold your very pity with indescribable anxiety, when we resist this pity - when we find your seriousness more dangerous than any frivolity. |
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Definition
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Term
| “the ideal of the most high-spirited, alive, and world-affirming human being who has not only come to terms and learned to get along with whatever was and is, but who wants to have what was and is repeated into all eternity, shouting insatiably da capo —not only to himself but to the whole play and spectacle…and who makes it necessary because again and again he needs himself—and makes himself necessary—What? And this wouldn’t be— circulus vitiosus deus?” |
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Definition
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Term
| “Man has all too long had an ‘evil eye’ for his natural inclinations, so that they have finally become inseparable from his ‘bad conscience.’ An attempt at the reverse would in itself be possible—but who is strong enough for it?—that is, to wed the bad conscience to all the unnatural inclinations, all those aspirations to the beyond, to that which runs counter to sense, instinct, nature, animal, in short all ideals hitherto, which are one and all hostile to life and ideals that slander the world. To whom should one turn today with such hopes and demands? |
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Definition
| Nietzsche - Gen. of Morals |
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Term
| The essential characteristic of a good and healthy aristocracy…is that it experiences itself not as a function (whether of the monarchy or the commonwealth) but as their meaning and highest justification– that it therefore accepts with a good conscience the sacrifice of untold human beings who, for its sake, must be reduced and lowered to incomplete human beings, to slaves, to instruments. |
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Definition
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Term
It is not actions that prove him– actions are always open to many interpretations, always unfathomable– nor is it “works.” Among artists and scholars today one finds enough of those who betray by their works how they are impelled by a profound desire for what is noble; but just this need for what is noble is fundamentally different from the needs of the noble soul itself and actually the eloquent and dangerous mark of its lack.
The noble soul has reverence for itself.” |
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Definition
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Term
| Their fundamental faith simply has to be that society must not exist for society’s sake but only as the foundation and scaffolding on which a choice type of being is able to raise itself to its higher task and to a higher state of being…” |
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Definition
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Term
“a child which as yet has nothing past to deny, playing between the fences of past and future in blissful blindness…”
“…comes to understand the phrase ‘it was,’ that password with which struggle, suffering and boredom approach man to remind him what his existence basically is—a never to be completed imperfect tense.” |
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Definition
| Nietzsche - Advant and Disadvan of Hist for LIFE |
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Term
| “…only so far as I am the nursling of more ancient times, especially the Greek, could I come to have such untimely experiences about myself as a child of the present age. That much I must be allowed to grant myself on the grounds of my profession as a classical philologist. For I do not know what meaning classical philology would have for our age if not to have an untimely effect within it, that is, to act against the age and so have an effect on the age to the advantage, it is to be hoped, of a coming age.” |
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Definition
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Term
“Monumental history deceives with analogies: with tempting similarities the courageous are enticed to rashness, the enthusiastic to fanaticism; and if one thinks of this history as being in the hands and heads of talented egoists and enraptured rascals then empires are destroyed, princes murdered, wars and revolutions instigated and the number of historical ‘effects in themselves,’ that is, of effects without sufficient causes, is further increased.”
“…what can it not inflict if the impotent and inactive master it and put it to their uses!” |
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Definition
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Term
“..belongs to the preserving and revering soul– to him who with loyalty and love looks back on his origins; through this reverence he, as it were, give thanks for his existence.
By tending with loving hands what has long survived he intends to preserve the conditions in which he grew up for those who will come after him– and so he serves life.” |
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Definition
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Term
“This antiquarian historical sense of reverence is of highest value where it imbues modest, coarse, even wretched conditions in which a man or a people live with a simple touching feeling of pleasure and contentment.
How could history serve life better than by tying even less favored generations and populations to their homeland and its customs, by making them sedentary and preventing their searching and contentiously fighting for something better in foreign lands? |
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Definition
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Term
| “The time will finally come when everything old and past which has not totally been lost sight of will simply be taken as equally venerable, while whatever does not approach the old with veneration, that is, the new and growing, will be rejected and treated with hostility. |
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Definition
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Term
| “It merely understands how to preserve life, not how to generate it; therefore it always underestimates what is in process of becoming because it has no instinct for discerning its significance. Thus it hinders the powerful resolve for new life, thus it paralyzes the man of action who, as a man of action, will and must always injure some piety or other.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “every past, however, is worth condemning— for that is how matters happen to stand with human affairs: human violence and weakness have always contributed strongly to shaping them. It is not justice which here sits in judgment; even less is it mercy which here pronounces judgment: but life alone, that dark, driving, insatiably self-desiring power.” |
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Definition
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Term
“At best we may bring about a conflict between our inherited, innate nature and our knowledge…
We implant a new habit, a new instinct, a second nature so that the first nature withers away.
It is an attempt…a posteriori to give oneself a past from which one would like to be descended in opposition to the past from which one is descended.” |
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Definition
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Term
“a man can be very educated and yet be historically quite uneducated…from ourselves we moderns have nothing at all; only by filling and overfilling ourselves with alien ages, customs, arts, philosophies, religions and knowledge do we become something worthy of notice, namely walking encyclopedias…”
“Now I ask whether it would be at all possible to present our contemporary literati, popular men, officials, politicians as Romans; it would be quite impossible because they are not men but only incarnate compendia and, as it were, concrete abstractions. |
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Definition
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Term
“only strong personalities can endure history; the weak are completely extinguished by it.”
“The man who no longer dares to trust himself, but, seeking counsel from history about his feelings, asks ‘how am I to feel here,’ will, from timidity, gradually become an actor and play a role, mostly even many roles and therefore each so badly and superficially.” |
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Definition
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Term
“The whole of modern culture is essentially internal: on the outside the bookbinder has printed something like ‘Handbook of Inner Culture for External Barbarians.’”
“Only the one means, to accept it as easily as possible in order quickly to lay it aside again and expel it.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “If you want to strive for and promote the culture of a people, then strive for and promote this higher unity and work to annihilate modern pseudo-culture in favor of a true culture; dare to devote some thought to the problem of restoring the health of a people which has been impaired by history, to how it may recover its instincts and therewith its integrity.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “must have the strength to recast the well known into something never heard before and to proclaim the general so simply and profoundly that one overlooks its simplicity because of its profundity and its profundity because of its simplicity.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “Satisfy your souls on Plutarch and dare to believe in yourselves when you believe in his heroes. A hundred such men educated against the modern fashion, that is, men who have ripened and are used to the heroic, could now silence forever the whole noisy pseudo-education of our time.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “must taste this truth drop by drop, taste it as a bitter and violent medicine, and each individual of this generation must bring himself to a judgment about himself which as a general judgment about a whole age he would be able to endure more easily: we are without culture, still more, we are spoiled for living, for correct and simple seeing and hearing, for the happy grasping of the nearest and natural, and so far do not even have the foundation of a culture because we ourselves are not convinced of having a true life in us.” |
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Definition
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Term
“life itself collapses into itself and becomes feeble and discouraged when the concept-quake which science provokes takes from man the foundation of his security and calm, the belief in the enduring and eternal.”
“Thus science requires a higher supervision and guarding: a hygiene of life is placed close beside science and one proposition of this hygiene would read: the unhistorical and the superhistorical are the natural antidotes to the stifling of life by history, to the historical malady.” |
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Definition
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Term
“The Greeks learned gradually to organize chaos by reflecting on themselves in according with the Delphic teaching, that is, by reflecting on their genuine needs, and letting their sham needs die out. Thus they took possession of themselves again…
This is a parable for each one of us: he must organize the chaos within himself by reflecting on his genuine needs. His honesty, his sound and truthful character must at some time rebel against secondhand thought, secondhand learning and imitation…” |
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Definition
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Term
“I have read from the pen of a reputable historian that writers and thinkers of the 1960 and 1970 avant-gardes spread a reign of terror in the use of language, and that the conditions for a fruitful exchange must be restored by imposing on the intellectuals a common way of speaking…”
“I have read that a new philosopher is discovering what he drolly calls Judaeo-Christianism, and intends by it to put an end to the impiety which we are supposed to have spread.” |
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Definition
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Term
But in the diverse invitations to suspend artistic experimentation, there is an identical call for order, a desire for unity, for identity, for security, or popularity…Artists and writers must be brought back into the bosom of the community, or at least, if the latter is considered to be ill, they must be assigned the task of healing it.
There is an irrefutable sign of this common disposition: it is that for all those writers nothing is more urgent than to liquidate the heritage of the avant-gardes. |
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Definition
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Term
| The postmodern would be that which, in the modern, puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself; that which denies itself the solace of good forms, the consensus of a taste which would make it possible to share collectively the nostalgia for the unattainable; that which searches for new presentations, not in order to enjoy them but in order to impart a stronger sense of the unpresentable. |
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Definition
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Term
But Kant also knew that the price to pay for such an illusion is terror. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have given us as much terror as we can take. We have paid a high enough price for the nostalgia of the whole and the one…Under the general demand for slackening and appeasement, we can hear the mutterings of the desire for a return of terror, for the realization of the fantasy to seize reality.”
“The answer is: Let us wage a war on totality; let us be witnesses to the unpresentable; let us activate the differences and save the honor of the name.” |
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Definition
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Term
| There can be no possible exercise of power without a certain economy of discourses of truth which operates through and on the basis of this association. We are subjected to the production of truth through power and we cannot exercise power except through the production of truth. |
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Definition
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Term
| When we say that sovereignty is the central problem of right in Western societies, what we mean basically is that the essential function of the discourse and techniques of right has been to efface the domination intrinsic to power in order to present the latter at the level of appearance under 2 different aspects: on the one hand, as the legitimate rights of sovereignty; and on the other, the legal obligation to obey it. |
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Definition
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Term
| My general project over the last few years had been, in essence, to reverse the mode of analysis followed by the entire discourse of right from the time of the Middle Ages. My aim, therefore, was to invert it, to give due weight, that is, to the fact of domination, to expose both its latent nature and its brutality. I then wanted to show not only how right is, in a general way, the instrument of this domination… but also to show the extent to which, and the forms in which, right…transforms and puts in motion relations that are not relations of sovereignty but of domination. |
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Definition
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Term
| Let us not ask why certain people want to dominate, what they seek, what is their overall strategy. Let us ask, instead, how things work at the level of on-going subjugation, at the level of those continuous and uninterrupted processes which subject our bodies, govern our gestures, dictate our behaviors, etc. |
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Definition
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Term
| We should direct our researches on the nature of power not toward the juridical edifice of sovereignty, the State apparatuses and the ideologies which accompany them, but toward domination and the material operators of power, towards forms of subjection and the inflections and utilizations of their localized systems, and toward strategic apparatuses. We must eschew the model of Leviathan in the study of power. We must escape from the limited field of juridical sovereignty and State institutions, and instead base our analysis of power on the study of the techniques and tactics of domination. |
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Definition
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Term
| The political public sphere in the welfare state is characterized by a singular weakening of its critical functions. Whereas at one time publicness was intended to subject persons or things to the public use of reason and to make political decisions susceptible to revision before the tribunal of public opinion, today it has often enough already been enlisted in the aid of the secret policies of interest groups… |
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Definition
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Term
| “This leads to a kind of “refeudalization” of the public sphere. Large-scale organizations strive for political compromises with the state and with one another, behind closed doors if possible; but at the same time they have to secure at least plebiscitarian approval from the mass of the population through the deployment of a staged form of publicity. |
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Definition
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Term
| Every adult should be able to make as many effective decisions without fear or favor about as many aspects of her or his life as is compatible with the like freedom of every other adult. That belief is the original and only defensible meaning of liberalism. It is a political notion, because the fear and favor that have always inhibited freedom are overwhelmingly generated by governments, both formal and informal. |
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Definition
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Term
“a mixture of natural science, technology, industrialization, skepticism, loss of religious orthodoxy, disenchantment, nihilism, and atomistic individualism.”
“This is far from being a complete list, but it covers the main characteristics of modernity as it is perceived by those who believe that the word stands for centuries of despair and that liberalism is its most characteristic political manifestation.” |
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Definition
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Term
To insist that individuals must make their own choices about the most important matter in their lives—their religious beliefs—without interference from public authority, is to go very far indeed toward liberalism. It is, I think, the core of its historical development, but it would be wrong to think of principled toleration as equivalent to political liberalism.
Limited and responsible government may be implicit in the claim for personal autonomy, but without an explicit political commitment to such institutions, liberalism is still doctrinally incomplete. |
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Definition
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Term
| “The liberalism of fear in fact does not rest on a theory of moral pluralism [or relativism]. It does not, to be sure, offer a summum bonum [highest good] toward which all political agents should strive, but it certainly does begin with a summum malum [greatest evil], which all of us know and would avoid if only we could. That evil is cruelty and the fear it inspires, and the very fear of fear itself. To that extent the liberalism of fear makes a universal and especially a cosmopolitan claim, as it historically always has done.” |
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Definition
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Term
| We must therefore be suspicious of ideologies of solidarity, precisely because they are so attractive to those who find liberalism emotionally unsatisfying, and who have gone on in our century to create oppressive and cruel regimes of unparalleled horror. The assumption that these offer something wholesome to the atomized citizen may or may not be true, but the political consequences are not, on the historical record, open to much doubt. |
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Definition
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Term
| It is also of necessity a democratic one, because without enough equality of power to protect and assert one’s rights, freedom is but a hope. Without the institutions of representative democracy and an accessible, fair, and independent judiciary open to appeals, and in the absence of a multiplicity of politically active groups, liberalism is in jeopardy. It is the entire purpose of the liberalism of fear to prevent that outcome. It is therefore fair to say that liberalism is monogamously, faithfully, and permanently married to democracy—but it is a marriage of convenience. |
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Definition
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Term
| “The basis of irreligious criticism is this: man makes religion; religion does not make man. Religion is indeed man’s self-consciousness and self-awareness so long as he has not found himself or has lost himself again. But man is not an abstract being, squatting outside the world. Man is the human world, the state, society. This state, this society, produce religion which is an inverted world consciousness, because they are an inverted world.” |
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Definition
| Marx - Contr. to Critique |
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Term
Religious suffering is at the same time an expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of men, is a demand for their real happiness. The call to abandon their illusions about their condition is a call to abandon a condition which requires illusions.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “It is the task of history, therefore, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. The immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, is to unmask human self-alienation in its secular form now that it has been unmasked in its sacred form. Thus the criticism of heaven is transformed into the criticism of earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.” |
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Definition
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Term
| A class must be formed which has radical chains, a class in civil society which is not a class of civil society, a class which is the dissolution of all classes, a sphere of society which has a universal character because its sufferings are universal, and which does not claim a particular redress because the wrong which is done to it is not a particular wrong but wrong in general…" |
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Definition
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Term
| …a sphere, finally, which cannot emancipate itself without emancipating itself from all the other spheres of society, without, therefore, emancipating all these other spheres, which is, in short a total loss of humanity and which can only redeem itself by a total redemption of humanity. This dissolution of society, as a particular class, is the proletariat.” |
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Definition
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Term
| The way in which men produce their means of subsistence depends first of all on the nature of the actual means of subsistence they find in existence and have to reproduce. This mode of production must not be considered simply as being the reproduction of the physical existence of the individuals. Rather it is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a define form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part. |
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Definition
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Term
| As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce. The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production. |
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Definition
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Term
“Each new productive force, insofar as it is not merely a quantitative extension of productive forces already known (for instance the bringing into cultivation of fresh land), causes a further development of the division of labor.”
“the existing stage in the division of labor determines also the relations of individuals to one another with reference to the material, instrument, and product of labor.”
“…the satisfaction of the first need (the action of satisfying, and the instrument of satisfaction which has been acquired) leads to new needs; and this production of new needs is the first historical act.” |
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Definition
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Term
| The division of labor implies a contradiction between the interest of the individual and that of the community. In communist society, no one has one exclusive sphere of activity and society regulates the general production |
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Definition
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Term
| “…the division of labor offers us the first example of how, as long as man remains in natural society, that is, as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him….each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape.” |
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Definition
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Term
“Political Economy proceeds from the fact of private property. It does not explain it…
Theology in the same way explains the origin of evil by the fall of man: that is, it assumes as a fact, in historical form, what has to be explained.”
“…the worker becomes and ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates.” |
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Definition
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Term
“free, conscious activity is man’s species character.. Conscious life-activity directly distinguishes man from animal life-activity. It is just because of this that he is a species being.”
“Estranged labor turns thus: Man’s species being, both nature and his spiritual species property, into a being alien to him, into a means to his individual existence. It estranges man’s own body from him, as it does external nature and his spiritual essence, his human being." |
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Definition
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Term
| “The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labor becomes an object…but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a power of its own confronting him; it means that the life which he has conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “In fact, the proposition that man’s species nature is estranged from him means that one man is estranged from the other, as each of them is from man’s essential nature.” |
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Definition
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Term
Private property is thus the product, the result, the necessary consequence, of alienated labor, of the external relation of the worker to nature and to himself.”
“Communism is the positive transcendence of private property, or human self-estrangement, and therefore is the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man. It is a complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e., human) being”
The transcendence of private property is the complete emancipation of all human senses and attributes. |
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Definition
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Term
Money is the alienated ability of mankind
“Money is the pimp between man's need and the object, between his life and his means of life. But that which mediates my life for me, also mediates the existence of other people for me”
“…what I am and am capable of is by no means determined by my individuality…Money is the supreme good, therefore its possessor is good.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it-- …in short, when it is used by us…In place of all these physical and mental senses there has therefore come the sheer estrangement of all these senses—the sense of having |
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Definition
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Term
| “…in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after diner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “It will be seen how in place of the wealth and poverty of political economy come the rich human being and rich human need. The rich human being is simultaneously the human being in need of a totality of human life-activities…” |
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Definition
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Term
| “The ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another.” |
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Definition
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Term
“The Utility of a thing makes it a use-value… Being limited by the physical properties of the commodity, it has no existence apart from that commodity.”
“Exchange-value, at first sight, presents itself as a quantitative relation, as the proportion in which values in use of one sort are exchanged for those of another sort… a mere congelation of homogeneous human labor.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “If then we leave out of consideration the use-value of commodities, they have only one common property left, that of being products of labor…all are reduced to one and the same sort of labor, human labor in the abstract.” |
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Definition
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Term
“The simplest form of the circulation of commodities is C-M-C, the transformation of commodities into money, and the change of the money back again into commodities; or selling in order to buy. But alongside of this form we find another specifically different form:
M-C-M, the transformation of money into commodities, and the change of commodities back again into money; or buying in order to sell. Money that circulates in the latter manner is thereby transformed into, becomes capital, and is already potentially capital. |
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Definition
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Term
| “The simple circulation of commodities – selling in order to buy – is a means of carrying out a purpose unconnected with circulation, namely, the appropriation of use-values, the satisfaction of wants. The circulation of money as capital is, on the contrary, an end in itself, for the expansion of value takes place only within this constantly renewed movement. The circulation of capital has therefore no limits.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “In order to be able to extract value from the consumption of a commodity, our friend, Moneybags, must be so lucky as to find, within the sphere of circulation, in the market, a commodity, whose use-value possesses the peculiar property of being a source of value, whose actual consumption, therefore, is itself an embodiment of labour, and, consequently, a creation of value. The possessor of money does find on the market such a special commodity in capacity for labour or labour-power. |
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Definition
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Term
| “Capital is dead labor, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks. The time during which the laborer works, is the time during the the capitalist consumes the labor-power he has purchased of him.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.” |
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Definition
| marx - theses on Feuerbach |
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Term
“There is no possibility of thinking of anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be regarded as good without qualification, except a good will.”
“A good will is good not because of what it effects or accomplishes… it is good only through its willing, i.e., it is good in itself.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “Only a rational being has the power to act according to his conception of laws, i.e. according to principles, and thereby has he a will. Since the derivation of actions from laws requires reason, the will is nothing but practical reason.” |
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Definition
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Term
“Act according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
“Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means.” |
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Definition
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Term
Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another.
This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another.
The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding! |
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Definition
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Term
| “Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large proportion of men…gladly remain immature for life… It is so convenient to be immature! |
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Definition
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Term
“Thus it is difficult for each separate individual to work his way out of the immaturity which has become almost second nature to him. He has even grown fond of it…
There is more chance of an entire public enlightening itself. This is indeed almost inevitable, if only the public concerned is left in freedom.” |
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Definition
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Term
“History is concerned with giving an account of these phenomena [human actions], no matter how deeply concealed their causes may be, and it allows us to hope that, if it examines the free exercise of the human will on a large scale, it will be able to discover a regular progression among freely willed actions.
In the same way, we may hope that what strikes us in the actions of individuals as confused and fortuitous may be recognized, in the history of the entire species, as a steadily advancing but slow development of man’s original capacities.” |
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Definition
| Kant - Idea for Uni Hist. |
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Term
| “Individual man and even entire nations little imagine that, while they are pursuing their own ends, each in his own way and often in opposition to others, they are unwittingly guided in their advance along a course intended by nature. They are unconsciously promoting an end which, even if they knew what it was, would scarcely arouse their interest.” |
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Definition
| Kant - idea for Uni hist. |
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Term
| “The highest purpose of nature—i.e. the development of all natural capacities…can be fulfilled only in a society which has not only the greatest freedom, and therefore a continual antagonism among its members, but also the most precise specification and preservation of the limits of this freedom in order that it can co-exist with the freedom of others.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “We should bear this in mind, and we should likewise observe the ambitions of rulers and their servants, in order to indicate to them the only means by which they can be honourably remembered in the most distant ages. And this may provide us with another small motive for attempting a philosophical history of this kind. |
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Definition
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Term
Now the republican constitution is the only one which does complete justice to the rights of man. But it is also the most difficult to establish, and even more to preserve, so that many maintain that it would only be possible within a state of angels…
But in fact, nature comes to the aid of the universal and rational human will, so admirable in itself but so impotent in practice, and makes use of precisely those self-seeking inclinations in order to do so. It only remains for men to create a good organization for the state, a task which is well within their capability, and to arrange it in such a way that their self-seeking energies are opposed to one another, each thereby neutralizing or eliminating the destructive effects of the rest. |
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Definition
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Term
| And as far as reason is concerned, the result is the same as if man’s selfish tendencies were non-existent, so that man, even if he is not morally good in himself, is nevertheless compelled to be a good citizen. As hard as it may sound, the problem of setting up a state can be solved even by a nation of devils (so long as they possess understanding).” |
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Definition
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Term
| “And the end which is a duty in itself in such external relationships, and which is indeed the highest formal condition of all other external duties, is the right of men under coercive public laws by which each can be given what is due to him and secured against attack from any others.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “Right is the restriction of each individual’s freedom so that it harmonizes with the freedom of everyone else (in so far as this is possible within the terms of a general law). And public right is the distinctive quality of the external laws which make this constant harmony possible.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “Since every restriction of freedom through the arbitrary will of another party is termed coercion, it follows that a civil constitution is a relationship among free men who are subject to coercive laws, while they retain their freedom within the general union with their fellows.” |
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Definition
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Term
“The civil state, regarded purely as a lawful state, is based on the following a priori principles:
1.) The freedom of every member of society as a human being.
2.) The equality of each with all the others as a subject.
3.) The independence of each member of a commonwealth as a citizen.
These principles are not so much laws given by an already established state, as laws by which a state can alone be established in accordance with pure rational principles of external human right.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “No-one can compel me to be happy in accordance with his conception of the welfare of others, for each may seek his happiness in whatever way he sees fit, so long as he does not infringe upon the freedom of others to pursue a similar end which can be reconciled with the freedom of everyone else within a workable general law.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “the subjects, as immature children who cannot distinguish what is truly useful or harmful to themselves, would be obliged to behave purely passively and to rely upon the judgment of the head of state as to how they ought to be happy… Such a government is the greatest conceivable despotism…” |
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Definition
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Term
| “The only conceivable government for men who are capable of possessing rights, even if the ruler is benevolent, is not, a paternal but a patriotic government. A patriotic attitude is one where everyone in the state, not excepting its head, regards the commonwealth as a maternal womb, or the land as the paternal ground from which he himself sprang…” |
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Definition
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Term
| “Each member of the commonwealth has rights of coercion in relation to all the others, except in relation to the head of state. For he alone is not a member of the commonwealth, but its creator or preserver, and he alone is authorized to coerce others without being subject to any coercive law himself.” |
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Definition
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Term
“Every member of the commonwealth must be entitled to reach any degree of rank which a subject can earn through his talent, his industry and his good fortune.”
“He can be considered happy in any condition so long as he is aware that, if he does not reach the same level as others, the fault lies either with himself (i.e. lack of ability or serious endeavor) or with circumstances for which he cannot blame others… For as far as right is concerned, his fellow-subjects have no advantage over him.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “…a public law which defines for everyone that which is permitted and prohibited by right, is the act of a public will, from which all right proceeds and which must not therefore itself be able to do an injustice to any one. And this requires no less than the will of the entire people (since all men decide for all men and each decides for himself). For only towards oneself can one never act unjustly.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “The only qualification required by a citizen (apart, of course, from being an adult male) is that he must be his own master, and must have some property (which can include any skill, trade, fine art or science) to support himself.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “While I trust that no-one will accuse me of flattering monarchs too much by declaring them inviolable, I likewise hope that I shall be spared the reproach of claiming too much for the people if I maintain that the people too have inalienable rights against the head of the state, even if these cannot be rights of coercion. Hobbes is of the opposite opinion…” |
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Definition
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Term
| “Thus freedom of the pen is the only safeguard of the rights of the people, although it must not transcend the bounds of respect and devotion towards the existing constitution, which should itself create a liberal attitude of mind among the subjects.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “…it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force…” |
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Definition
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Term
| To presume a want of motives for such contests as an argument against their existence, would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious. To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages. |
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Definition
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Term
| If, according to the noble precept, it be lawful to accept good advice even from an enemy, shall we set the ignoble example of refusing such advice even when it is offered by our friends? The prudent inquiry, in all cases, ought surely to be, not so much FROM WHOM the advice comes, as whether the advice be GOOD. |
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Definition
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Term
“The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished.”
“..our governments are too unstable, …the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and …measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.” |
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Definition
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Term
“There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects.”
“There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.” |
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Definition
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Term
“It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires.
The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves.” |
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Definition
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Term
| The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties. |
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Definition
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Term
| No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time; yet what are many of the most important acts of legislation, but so many judicial determinations, not indeed concerning the rights of single persons, but concerning the rights of large bodies of citizens? And what are the different classes of legislators but advocates and parties to the causes which they determine? |
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Definition
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Term
| “hearken not to the voice which petulantly tells you that the form of government recommended for your adoption is a novelty in the political world; that it has never yet had a place in the theories of the wildest projectors; that it rashly attempts what it is impossible to accomplish.” |
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Definition
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Term
“the republican principle,… enables the majority to defeat [a minority faction’s] sinister views by regular vote.”
“derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it.” |
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Definition
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Term
| It is said to be necessary, that all classes of citizens should have some of their own number in the representative body, in order that their feelings and interests may be the better understood and attended to. But we have seen that this will never happen under any arrangement that leaves the votes of the people free. Where this is the case, the representative body, with too few exceptions to have any influence on the spirit of the government, will be composed of landholders, merchants, and men of the learned professions. |
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Definition
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Term
| “…what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.” |
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Definition
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Term
| But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. |
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Definition
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Term
| Answer me…you from whom we have received so much sublime knowledge; if you had never taught us any of these things, would we therefore have been any less numerous, less well governed, less formidable, less flourishing or more perverse? |
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Definition
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Term
Princes always view with pleasure the spread, among their subjects, of the taste for pleasant arts and luxuries not resulting in the exporting of money. For, in addition to nurturing in them that pettiness of soul so appropriate to servitude, they know very well that all the needs the populace imposes on itself are so many chains which burden it.
…the savages of America who go totally naked and who live off the fruit of their hunting have never been tamed. Indeed, what yoke could be imposed upon men who need nothing? |
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Definition
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Term
Those whom nature destined to be her disciples had no need of teachers. The likes of Verulam, Descartes, Newton, these tutors of mankind had none themselves.
But if we want nothing to be beyond their genius, nothing must be beyond their hopes. That is the only encouragement they need. The soul imperceptibly proportions itself to the objects that occupy it, and it is great events that make great men.
Let kings not disdain to admit into their councils the men most capable of counseling them well…May learned men of the first rank find honorable asylum in their courts. |
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Definition
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Term
| “So long as power is alone on one side, with enlightenment and wisdom alone on the other, learned men will rarely think about great things, princes will more rarely perform noble deeds, and peoples will continue to be vile, corrupt, and unhappy.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “in order to learn [virtue’s] laws, to commune with oneself and, in the silence of the passions, to listen to the voice of one’s conscience. That is the true philosophy”. |
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Definition
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Term
“Religion commands us to believe that since god himself drew men out of the state of nature, they are unequal because he wanted them to be so; but it does not forbid us to form conjectures, drawn solely from the nature of man and the beings that surround him, concerning what the human race could have become, if it had been left to itself.”
“O man…here is your history, as I have thought to read it, not in the books of your fellowmen, who are liars, but in nature, who never lies.” |
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Definition
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Term
What then! Must we destroy societies, annihilate thine and mine, and return to live in the forests with bears?—
As for men like me, whose passions have forever destroyed their original simplicity, who can no longer feed on grass and acorn[s], nor get by without laws and chiefs… |
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Definition
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Term
| Discovering the rules of society best suited to nations would require a superior intelligence that beheld all the passions of men without feeling any of them; who had no affinity with our nature, yet knew it through and through; whose happiness was independent of us, yet who nevertheless was willing to concern itself with ours; finally, who, in the passage of time, procures for himself a distant glory, being able to labor in one age and find enjoyment in another. Gods would be needed to give men laws. |
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Definition
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Term
| “whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole of society, which means nothing more or less than that he will be forced to be free.” |
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Definition
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Term
‘Find a form of association which defends and protects with all common forces the person and goods of each associate, and by means of which each one, while uniting with all, nevertheless obeys only himself and remains as free as before.’ This is the fundamental problem for which the social contract provides the solution.
These clauses, properly understood, are all reducible to a single one, namely the total alienation of each associate, together with all of his rights, to the entire community. For first of all, since each person gives himself whole and entire, the condition is equal for everyone, no one has an interest in making it burdensome for the others. |
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Definition
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Term
| Each of us places his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will; and as one we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole. |
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Definition
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Term
He who dares to undertake the establishment of a people should feel that he is, so to speak, in a position to change human nature, to transform each individual (who by himself is a perfect and solitary whole), into a part of a larger whole from which this individual receives, in a sense, his life and his being…
Thus if each citizen is nothing and can do nothing except in concert with all the others…one can say that the legislation has achieved the highest possible point of perfection. |
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Definition
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Term
| But when the executive power is not sufficiently dependent upon the legislative power…this defect in the proportion must be remedied by dividing the government; for then all of its parts have no less authority over the subjects, and their division makes all of them together less forceful against the sovereign. |
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Definition
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Term
| And if in addition providence had joined to it a charming location, a temperate climate, a fertile country and the most delightful appearance there is under the heavens, to complete my happiness I would have desired only to enjoy all these goods in the bosom of that happy homeland, living peacefully in sweet society with my fellow citizens, and practicing toward them (following their own example) humanity, friendship, and all the virtues… |
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Definition
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Term
| But admittedly that was done better and more pleasurably on a fertile and solitary island, naturally closed off and separated from the rest of the world, where nothing but cheerful images came to me…where the society of the small number of inhabitants was gentle and sweet, without being so interesting as to occupy me continuously. |
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Definition
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Term
| When it is necessary to do what is opposite to my will, I do not do it at all, no matter what; I abstain from acting, for all of my weakness is with regard to action, all of my strength is negative, and all of my sins are of omission, rarely of commission. I have never believed that man’s freedom consisted in doing what he wants, but rather in never doing what he does not want to do; and that is the freedom I have always laid claim to, often preserved, and most scandalized my contemporaries about. |
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Definition
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Term
“…does anyone fail to see that everything seems to remove savage man from the temptation and the means of ceasing to be savage? His imagination depicts nothing to him; his heart asks nothing of him. His modest needs are so easily found at hand, and he is so far from the degree of knowledge necessary to make him desire to acquire greater knowledge, that he can have neither foresight nor curiosity…
His soul, agitated by nothing, is given over to the single feeling of his own present existence, without any idea of the future, however, near it may be, and his projects, as limited as his views, hardly extend to the end of the day.” |
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Definition
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Term
| As if when men, quitting the state of Nature, entered into society, they agreed that all of them but one should be under the restraint of laws; but that he should still retain all the liberty of the state of Nature, increased with power, and made licentious by impunity. This is to think that men are so foolish that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by polecats or foxes, but are content, nay, think it safety, to be devoured by lions. |
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Definition
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Term
| “Prerogative can be nothing, but the Peoples permitting their Rulers, to do several things of their own free choice, where the Law was silent, and sometimes too against the direct Letter of the Law, for the publick good; and their acquiescing in it when so done.” |
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Definition
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Term
The old Question will be asked in this matter of Prerogative, But who shall be Judge when this Power is made a right use of?
I Answer:… there can be no Judge on Earth…
The People have no other remedy in this, as in all other cases where they have no Judge on Earth, but to appeal to Heaven.…they have, by a law antecedent and paramount to all positive laws of men, reserved that ultimate determination to themselves which belongs to all mankind, where there lies no appeal on earth, viz. to judge, whether they have just cause to make their appeal to Heaven. And this Judgment they cannot part with, it being out of a Man’s power so to submit himself to anohter, as to give him a liberty to destroy him…” |
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Definition
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Term
| And this judgment they cannot part with, it being out of a man's power so to submit himself to another, as to give him a liberty to destroy him; God and nature never allowing a man so to abandon himself, as to neglect his own preservation: and since he cannot take away his own life, neither can he give another power to take it. Nor let any one think, this lays a perpetual foundation for disorder; for this operates not, till the inconveniency is so great, that the majority feel it, and are weary of it, and find a necessity to have it amended. |
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Definition
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Term
“Want of a common Judge with Authority, puts all Men in a State of Nature…
But force, or a declared design of force upon the Person of another, where there is no common Superior on Earth to appeal to for relief, is the State of War:
And ‘tis the want of such an appeal gives a Man the Right of War even against an aggressor, through he be in Society and a fellow Subject. Force without Right, upon a Man’s Person, makes a State of War, both where there is, and is not, a common Judge. |
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Definition
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Term
| …where an appeal to the Law, and constituted Judges lies open, but the remedy is deny’d by a manifest perverting of Justice, and a barefaced wresting of the lawes, to protect or indemnifie the violence or injuries of some Men, or Party of Men, there it is hard to imagine any thing but a State of War.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “when nature has accumulated too much superfluous material…by means of a purge [it] restores health to the body…when every province is replete with inhabitants who can neither obtain a livelihood nor move elsewhere since all other places are occupied and full up…the world must needs be purged in one of these three ways, so that mankind, being reduced to comparatively few and humbled by adversity, may adopt a more appropriate form of life and grow better.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “what is life is but a motion of Limbs…what is the Heart, but a Spring; and the Nerves, but so many Strings; and the Joynts, but so many Wheeles, giving motion to the whole Body, such as was intended by the Artificer?” |
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Definition
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Term
| “for the similitude of the thoughts, and Passions of one man, to the thoughts, and Passions of another, whosoever looketh into himselfe, and considereth what he doth, when he does Think, Opine, Reason, Hope, Feare, &c, and upon what grounds; he shall thereby read and know, what are the thoughts, and Passions of all other men, upon the like occasions.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “From the Elements, which are Names, to Assertions made by Connection of one of them to another; and so to Syllogisms, which are the Connections of one Assertion to another, till we come to a knowledge of all the consequences of names appertaining to the subject in hand; and this…men call SCIENCE.” |
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Definition
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Term
| For these words of good, evil, and contemptible are ever used with relation to the person that useth them: there being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any common rule of good and evil to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves; but from the person of the man, where there is no Commonwealth; or, in a Commonwealth, from the person that representeth it; or from an arbitrator or judge, whom men disagreeing shall by consent set up and make his sentence the rule thereof. |
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Definition
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Term
But neither of us accuse man’s nature in it. The Desires, and other Passions of man, are in themselves no Sin. No more are the Actions, that proceed from those Passions, till they know a Law that forbids them: which till Lawes be made they cannot know: nor can any Law be made, till they have agreed upon the Person that shall make it.
“To this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law; where no law, no injustice. Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues. |
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Definition
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Term
| “The passions that incline men to peace are: fear of death; desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living; and a hope by their industry to obtain them. And reason suggesteth convenient articles of peace upon which men may be drawn to agreement. These articles are they which otherwise are called the laws of nature, whereof I shall speak more particularly in the two following chapters.” |
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Definition
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Term
| That every man, ought to endeavor Peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek, and use, all helps, and advantages of War. |
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Definition
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Term
| The right of nature, which writers commonly call jus naturale, is the liberty each man hath to use his own power as he will himself for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life; and consequently, of doing anything which, in his own judgment and reason, he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto. |
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Definition
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Term
| That a man be willing, when others are so too, as far forth as for peace and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himself. For as long as every man holdeth this right, of doing anything he liketh; so long are all men in the condition of war. But if other men will not lay down their right, as well as he, then there is no reason for anyone to divest himself of his. |
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Definition
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Term
| From that law of Nature, by which we are obliged to transferre to another, such Rights, as being retained, hinder the peace of Mankind, there followeth a Third; which is this, That Men Performe Their Covenants Made: without which, Covenants are in vain, and but Empty words; and the Right of all men to all things remaining, wee are still in the condition of Warre. |
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Definition
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Term
| “For he that should be modest and tractable, and perform all he promises in such time and place where no man else should do so, should but make himself a prey to others, and procure his own certain ruin, contrary to the ground of all laws of nature which tend to nature's preservation. And again, he that having sufficient security that others shall observe the same laws towards him, observes them not himself, seeketh not peace, but war, and consequently the destruction of his nature by violence.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “The felicity of this life consisteth not in the repose of a mind satisfied. For there is no such finis ultimus (utmost aim) nor summum bonum (greatest good) as is spoken of in the books of the old moral philosophers. Nor can a man any more live whose desires are at an end than he whose senses and imaginations are at a stand. Felicity is a continual progress of the desire from one object to another, the attaining of the former being still but the way to the latter. The cause whereof is that the object of man's desire is not to enjoy once only, and for one instant of time, but to assure forever the way of his future desire.” |
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Definition
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Term
“The end, for which he was trusted with the Sovereign Power, namely the Procuration of the Safety of the People; to which he is obliged by the Law of Nature, and to render an account thereof to God, the Author of that Law, and to none but him.”
“But by Safety here, is not meant a bare Preservation, but also all other Contentments of life, which every man by lawfull Industry, without danger, or hurt to the Commonwealth, shall acquire to himself.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “Never would they set forth on an expedition until they had convinced the troops that the gods had promised them victory.” |
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Definition
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Term
| …since my intent is to write something useful to whoever understands it, it has appeared to me more fitting to go directly to the effectual truth of the thing than to the imagination of it. And many have imagined republics and principalities that have never been seen or known to exist in truth… |
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Definition
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Term
| …for it is so far from how one lives to how one should live that he who lets go of what is done for what should be done learns his ruin rather than his preservation. For a man who wants to make a profession of good in all regards must come to ruin among so many who are not good. |
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Definition
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Term
| For to judge aright, one should esteem men because they are generous, not because they have the power to be generous; and, in like manner, should admire those who know how to govern a kingdom, not those who, without know how, actually govern one.” |
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Definition
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