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2 ideas
7910 | Pursue truth with the urgency of someone whose clothes are on fire [Ashvaghosha] |
Full Idea: As though your turban or your clothes were on fire, so with a sense of urgency should you apply your intellect to the comprehension of the truths. | |
From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI) | |
A reaction: The best philosophers need no such urging. I retain a romantic view that we should be 'natural' in these things. See Plato's views in Idea 2153 and 1638. However, maybe I should be confronted with this quotation every morning when I awake. |
7001 | If you begin philosophy with language, you find yourself trapped in it [Heil] |
Full Idea: If you start with language and try to work your way outwards, you will never get outside language. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Pref) | |
A reaction: This voices my pessimism about the linguistic approach to philosophy (and I don't just mean analysis of ordinary language), though I wonder if the career of (say) John Searle is a counterexample. |