display all the ideas for this combination of texts
5 ideas
19600 | When man abandons religion, he then follows new fake gods and mythologies [Cioran] |
Full Idea: Even when he turns from religion, man remains subject to it; depleting himself to create fake gods, he then feverishly adopts them: his need for fiction, for mythology triumphs over evidence and absurdity alike. | |
From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Genealogy') | |
A reaction: Cioran had just lived through the high water mark of communism and fascism. I don't think modern atheists fit this description very well. |
19643 | A religion needs to motivate killings, and cannot tolerate rivals [Cioran] |
Full Idea: A religion dies when it tolerates truths which exclude it; and the god in whose name one no longer kills is dead indeed. | |
From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 6 'Views') | |
A reaction: I fear that in our time we have people who are killing in the name of their religion as a last resort to try to convince themselves that their religion is not dying. It is startlingly how religion can now be publicly mocked. Unthinkable 50 years ago. |
20830 | Death can't separate soul from body, because incorporeal soul can't unite with body [Chrysippus] |
Full Idea: Death is a separation of soul from body. But nothing incorporeal can be separated from a body. For neither does anything incorporeal touch a body, and the soul touches and is separated from the body. Therefore the soul is not incorporeal. | |
From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Tertullian - The Soul as an 'Astral Body' 5.3 | |
A reaction: This is the classic interaction difficulty for substance dualist theories of mind. |
19623 | Circles of hell are ridiculous; all that matters is to be there [Cioran] |
Full Idea: What a preposterous notion, to draw circles in hell, to make the intensity of the flames vary in its compartments, to hierarchise its torments! The important thing is to be there. | |
From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], '1 'La Perduta') |
21404 | There is a rationale in terrible disasters; they are useful to the whole, and make good possible [Chrysippus] |
Full Idea: The evil which occurs in terrible disasters has a rationale [logos] peculiar to itself: for in a sense it occurs in accordance with universal reason, and is not without usefulness in relation to the whole. For without it there could be no good. | |
From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by A.A. Long - Hellenistic Philosophy 4.4.5 | |
A reaction: [a quotation from Chrysippus. Plutarch, Comm Not 1065b] A nice question about any terrible disaster is whether it is in some way 'useful', if we take a broader view of things. Almost everything has a good aspect, from that perspective. |