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Full Idea
Intelligence flourishes only in the ages when beliefs wither. ...Every period's ending is the mind's paradise, for the mind regains its play and its whims only within an organism in utter dissolution.
Gist of Idea
Intelligence only fully flourishes at the end of a historical period
Source
E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Felicity')
Book Ref
Cioran,E.M.: 'A Short History of Decay', ed/tr. Howard,Richard [Penguin 2010], p.84
A Reaction
I wouldn't have thought that the facts of history supported this very well. The golden ages of philosophy are the Age of Pericles, the Aristotelian Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the early twentieth century.
| 12104 | All ideas must be understood historically [Comte] |
| 12105 | Our knowledge starts in theology, passes through metaphysics, and ends in positivism [Comte] |
| 19624 | Intelligence only fully flourishes at the end of a historical period [Cioran] |
| 19599 | Ideas are neutral, but people fill them with passion and weakness [Cioran] |
| 19631 | The history of ideas (and deeds) occurs in a meaningless environment [Cioran] |
| 19629 | A nation gives expression to its sum of values, and is then exhausted [Cioran] |
| 19645 | Some thinkers would have been just as dynamic, no matter when they had lived [Cioran] |
| 7460 | The great moments are the death of Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Romanticism [Berlin, by Watson] |
| 21852 | Nomads are the basis of history, and yet almost unknowable [Deleuze] |
| 7461 | The three key ideas are the soul, Europe, and the experiment [Watson] |
| 7464 | The big idea: imitation, the soul, experiments, God, heliocentric universe, evolution? [Watson] |