Sublime

An adequate account, we argue, requires —viewing objects only as entities relative to our interactions with the world and our projections on it —viewing properties as interactional rather than inherent —viewing categories as experiential gestalts defined via prototype instead of viewing them as rigidly fixed and defined via set theory

Homo faber—Arendt’s term for man the fabricator—thinks, she says, in terms of ends and means, of “in order to” rather than “for the sake of.” In this way, he deprives himself of the capacity to see things as they are, for the sake of themselves.

Karl Marx had a different view: that being occupied by good work was living well. Engagement in productive, purposeful work was the means by which people could realise their full potential.

what the French fin de siècle social theorist Gabriel Tarde called “the grooves of borrowed thought”71—patterns of thought that are unlikely to create any serious disruption of the status quo.

What Marx is describing here is how the abandonment of tradition has actually ushered in a gigantic crisis in humanity’s

Knowledge must lead to understanding. In the field of history, even when largely restricted to contemporary history, that meant trying to grasp general ideas about human behaviour, in war and politics, in revolution and government.

phronesis

Das neuzeitliche Pathos des Neuen löst das Sein in den Prozess auf. Unter den Bedingungen des Neuen ist kein kontemplatives Leben möglich. Kontemplation ist Wiederholung. Das Pathos des Handelns, das sich nun mit der Emphase des Neuen verbindet, setzt viel Unruhe in die Welt.

In 1700 the mental outlook of educated men was completely modern; in 1600, except among a very few, it was still largely medieval.