A Brief History of Thought Quotes

“عندما انتزع نفسي من نفسي من اجل فهم الغير ، وعندما أوسع حقل تجاربي ، فإني اتفرد بما أنني أتجاوز ماهو خاص في وضعي الأصلي من أجل التوصل إما للعالمية أو على الأقل ، لمراعاة إمكانيات الإنسانية جمعاء”
― لوك فيري, Apprendre à vivre

“لو كنا خيّرين تقائياً وموجّهين طبيعياً نحو الخير لما كانت هناك حاجة لوصايا زجرية. لا بل نحن بعيدون كل البعد عن ذلك كما تلاحظ دون شك... إنما وفي أغلب الأوقات, نحن لا نجد صعوبة في معرفة مايجب القيام به من أجل العمل الصالح, لكننا لا نتوقف عن السماح لأنفسنا ببعض الاستثناءات, وذلك لأننا وبكل بساطة نفضل أنفسنا على الآخرين! لهذا السبب يدعونا الواجب الملزم للمزيد من "الضغط على الذات" ولبذل الجهود من أجل الاستمرار في التقدم والتحسن”
― Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“Greek philosophers looked upon the past and the future as the primary evils weighing upon human life, and as the source of all the anxieties which blight the present. The present moment is the only dimension of existence worth inhabiting, because it is the only one available to us. The past is no longer and the future has yet to come, they liked to remind us; yet we live virtually all of our lives somewhere between memories and aspirations, nostalgia and expectation. We imagine we would be much happier with new shoes, a faster computer, a bigger house, more exotic holidays, different friends … But by regretting the past or guessing the future, we end up missing the only life worth living: the one which proceeds from the here and now and deserves to be savoured.”
― Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“اللزوم البرهاني ((وضع النفس فى موضع الآخرين من أجل فهم أفضل لوجهة نظرهم))”
― Luc Ferry , Apprendre à vivre

“عندما انتزع نفسي من نفسي من اجل فهم الغير ، وعندما أوسع حقل تجاربي ، فإني اتفرد بما أنني أتجاوز ماهو خاص في وضعي الأصلي من أجل التوصل إما للعالمية أو على الأقل ، لمراعاة إمكانيات الإنسانية جمعاء”
― Luc Ferry, Apprendre à vivre

“Strength, beauty, intelligence – all natural gifts received at birth – are self-evidently qualities, but not on a moral plane. You can use your strength, your beauty or your intelligence to commit the most wicked crime, and you demonstrate by this alone that there is nothing inherently virtuous about natural gifts. Therefore, you can choose what use to make of them, whether good or bad, but it is the use that is moral or immoral, not the gifts themselves. ‘Free will’ becomes the determining factor of the morality of an action. With this idea, Christianity revolutionised the history of thought. For the first time in human history, liberty rather than nature had become the foundation of morality.”
― Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“Do not let your picture of the whole of your life confuse you, do not dwell upon all the manifold troubles which have come to pass and will come to pass; but ask yourself in regard to every passing moment: what is there here that cannot be borne and cannot be endured? Then remind yourself that it is not the future or the past that weighs heavy upon you, but always the present, and that this gradually grows less. (Meditations, VIII, 36)”
― Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“Unable to bring himself to believe in a God who offers salvation, the philosopher is above all one who believes that by understanding the world, by understanding ourselves and others as far our intelligence permits, we shall succeed in overcoming fear, through clear-sightedness rather than blind faith.”
― Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“The present moment is the only dimension of existence worth inhabiting, because it is the only one available to us. (...)
Yet we live virtually all of our lives somewhere between memories, and aspirations, nostalgia and expectations.”
― Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“The problem, however, is that I have yet to meet anyone, materialist or otherwise, who was able to dispense with value judgements. On the contrary, the literature of materialism is peculiarly marked by its wholesale profusion of denunciations of all sorts. Starting with Marx and Nietzsche, materialists have never been able to refrain from passing continuous moral judgement on all and sundry, which their whole philosophy might be expected to discourage them from doing.”
― Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“إننا بحاجة للآخرين لكي نفهم أنفسنا, وبحاجة إلى حريتهم وإلى سعادتهم إذا أمكن ذلك, لإتمام حياتنا الخاصة”
― Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“يلزمنا فعلاً أن نبتعد عن الواقع للحكم بصحته أو بسوئه , كما يجب اتخاذ مسافة بالنسبة لانتماءاتنا الطبيعية أو التاريخية لكي نكتسب مايسمى عادة "الفكر الناقد" الذي بدونه لا يمكن إطلاق أي حكم قيمي”
― Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“My doctrine says, the task is to live your life in such a way that you must wish to live it again – for you will anyway! If striving gives you the highest feeling, then strive! If rest gives you the highest feeling, then rest! If fitting in, following and obeying give you the highest feeling, then obey! Only make sure you come to know what gives you the highest feeling, and then spare no means. Eternity is at stake! This doctrine is mild in its treatment of those who do not believe in it. It has neither hell nor threats. But anyone who does not believe merely lives a fugitive life in the consciousness of it. (Extract from Nietzsche’s 1881 notebook)”
― Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“A further triumph is our spiritualisation of enmity. This consists in our profound understanding of the value of having enemies: in short, our doing and deciding the opposite of what people previously thought and decided … Throughout the ages the church has wanted to destroy its enemies: we, the immoralists and anti-Christians, see it as to our advantage that the church exists … Even in the field of politics, enmity has become spiritualised. Almost every party sees that self-preservation is best served if the opposite number does not lose its powers. The same is true of Realpolitik. A new creation, such as the new Reich, needs enemies more than it does friends: only by being opposed does it feel necessary; only by being opposed does it become necessary. Our behaviour towards our ‘inner enemy’ is no different: here, too, we have spiritualised enmity; here, too, we have grasped its value. (Twilight of the Idols, V, 3)”
― Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“To know one’s history, is, as in psychoanalysis, to work towards one’s own emancipation, and a democratic ideal of liberty of thought cannot dispense with the study of history, if it is to approach the present without prejudices.”
― Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“Every philosophy is a façade-philosophy’ – such is the hermit’s judgement … Every philosophy also conceals a philosophy; every opinion is also a hiding-place; every word is also a mask. (Beyond Good and Evil, 289)”
― Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“For Rousseau, animals clearly possessed intelligence, sensibility, even the faculty of communication. Therefore it is not reason, or affectivity, or even language that differentiates the human being. On the contrary, everyone who has a dog knows perfectly well that the dog is more sociable and even more intelligent than, in some cases, certain human beings.”
― Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“Or as Seneca expresses it, in the Letters to Lucilius: ‘You must dispense with these two things: fear of the future, and the recollection of ancient ills. The latter no longer concerns me, the former has yet to concern me.”
― Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“True knowledge is not to be had solely through a combat against error, bad faith and untruth, but more generally, through a combat against the illusions inherent in the sensible world.”
― Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“Aprender a viver, aprender a não mais temer em vão as diferentes faces da morte, ou, simplesmente, a superar a banalidade da vida cotidiana, o tédio, o tempo que passa, já era o principal objetivo das escolas da Antiguidade grega. A mensagem delas merece ser ouvida, pois, diferentemente do que acontece na história das ciências, as filosofias do passado ainda nos falam. Eis um ponto importante que por si só merece reflexão. Quando”
― Luc Ferry, Aprender a viver: Filosofia para os novos tempos

“لو كنا خيّرين تقائياً وموجّهين طبيعياً نحو الخير م كانت هناك حاجة لوصايا زجرية. لا بل نحن بعيدون ك البعد عن ذلك كم تلاحظ دون شك... إنما وفي أغلب الأوقات, نحن لا نجد صعوبة في معرفة مايجب القيام به من أجل العمل الصالح, لكننا لا نتوقف عن السماح لأنفسنا ببعض الاستثناءات, وذلك لأننا وبكل بساطة نفضّل أنفسنا على الآخرين! لهذا السبب يدعونا الواجب الملزم للمزيد من "الضغط على الذات" ولبذل الجهود من أجل الاستمرار في التقدم والتحسن”
― Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“هل يتبادر إلى ذهنك بأن مبدأ كل مشاكل الإنسان, ومبدأ الانحطاط والجبن, هو الخوف من الموت؟ درّب نفسك لمقاومته ولتنزع كل كلماتك وكل دراساتك وكل قراءاتك إلى ذلك وستدرك أن هذا هو السبيل الوحيد لأبناء البشر لكي يصبحوا أحراراً"
-أبيكتات”
― Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“Freedom, the virtue of disinterested action (‘good will’), and concern for the general welfare: these are the three key concepts which define the modern morality of duty, and which Kant was to express in the form of absolute commandments, known as categorical imperatives.”
― Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“Now, in the tradition of Stoicism, the innermost essence of the world is harmony, order – both true and beautiful – which the Greeks referred to by the term kosmos.”
― Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“Philosophy wants us to get ourselves out of trouble by utilising our own resources,”
― Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“a pigeon would die of hunger next to a dish filled with choice meats and a cat next to a heap of fruit or grain, though either of them could get nourishment from the foods it disdains if only it had thought of trying them. This is why dissolute men give themselves over to the excesses that bring on fevers and death, because the mind perverts the senses and the will continues to speak when nature falls silent …”
― Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“Not that we must resort to indifference, of course, which neither Stoic sage nor Buddhist monk would for a moment countenance: compassion and benevolence to others, indeed to all other forms of life, must remain the highest ethical imperative of our behaviour. But passion is not acceptable in the home of the wise man, and familial ties, when they become too binding, must be loosened. Which is why, like the Greek sage, the Buddhist monk lives, as much as possible, in a condition of solitude. (The word ‘monk’ derives from the Greek monos, meaning ‘alone’.) It is truly in solitude that wisdom can bloom, uncompromised by the difficulties associated with all forms of attachment. It is impossible, in effect, to have a wife or husband, children or friends without becoming in some degree attached to them. We must free ourselves of these ties if we wish to overcome the fear of death.”
― Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“as Freud said; that the nostalgia for lost paradises, for the joys and sorrows of childhood, lays upon our lives a weight as heavy as it is unknown to us.”
― Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“Uma das principais extravagâncias do período contemporâneo é reduzir a filosofia a uma simples "reflexão crítica" ou ainda a uma "teoria da argumentação".”
― Luc Ferry, Aprender A Viver

“Non pas, tu t’en doutes, celle d’un retour en arrière aux Lumières, à la raison, à la république et à l’humanisme, ce qui n’aurait, je t’ai dit pourquoi, aucun sens, mais une tentative de les penser à nouveaux frais, non pas « comme avant », mais au contraire après et à la lumière de la déconstruction qui a eu lieu.”
― Luc Ferry, Apprendre à vivre