Rebecca Goldstein Quotes About Philosophy

Quotes about: Philosophy

• Everybody is struggling to refine their views in opposition to the other people. And that's one of the most important things that philosophy actually has to teach us that you have to air your views and bring them to the table with people - with whom you disagree very much.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Philosophy, Struggle, Air

• God doesn't help. I think that's a knockdown argument. I think that it really shows that whatever moral knowledge we have and whatever moral progress we make in our knowledge or whatever progress we make in our moral knowledge is not coming really from religion. It's coming from the very hard work really of moral philosophy, of trying to ground our moral reasonings.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Philosophy, Hard Work, Thinking

  Source: bigthink.com

• From the beginning philosophy sought for The order behind the disorder Thales sipped cheap wine And in this did divine: "Why it's nothing at all but pure water!"

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Philosophy, Wine, Order

  Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (2014). “Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away”, p.36, Atlantic Books Ltd

• Philosophy is this amazing technique we've devised for getting reality to answer us back when we're getting it wrong. Science itself can't make those arguments. You actually have to rely on philosophy, on philosophy of science.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Philosophy, Reality, Technique

  "What Do We Have To Teach Plato?". "Here And Now" with Jeremy Hobson, news.stlpublicradio.org. April 22, 2014.

• It was while I was studying philosophy that I came to understand. . . that it is no sign of moral or spiritual strength to believe that for which one has no evidence, neither a priori evidence as in math, nor a posteriori evidence as in science. . . . It's a violation almost immoral in its transgressiveness to shirk the responsibilities of rationality.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Spiritual, Philosophy, Believe

• Everybody have equal rights to a life of full flourishing. Philosophy slowly, slowly has given us arguments saying, look, you already committed to your own life flourishing, and you're being inconsistent if you don't expand it. So philosophy often works in trying to show us that there's an inner incoherence in our points of view. We're all committed to one thing when it comes to us and our own kind, but we're not willing to expand it and we're guilty of inconsistency.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Philosophy, Rights, Views

• I was trained as a philosopher never to put philosophers and their ideas into historical contexts, since historical context has nothing to do with the validity of the philosopher's positions. I agree that assessing validity and contextualizing historically are two entirely distinct matters and not to be confused with one another. And yet that firm distinction doesn't lead me to endorse the usual way in which history of philosophy is presented.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Confused, Philosophy, Ideas

  Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (2014). “Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away”, p.165, Atlantic Books Ltd

• Philosophy addresses, in a systematic and progress-making way, questions of deep concern to everyone.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Philosophy, Progress, Systematic

• What is remarkable about the Greeks - even pre-philosophically - is that despite the salience of religious rituals in their lives, when it came to the question of what it is that makes an individual human life worth living they didn't look to the immortals but rather approached the question in mortal terms. Their approaching the question of human mattering in human terms is the singularity that creates the conditions for philosophy in ancient Greece, most especially as these conditions were realized in the city-state of Athens.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Religious, Philosophy, Cities

• Because of the failure of religion to offer satisfying answers to an increasing number of people, it's time for philosophy to address forcefully these questions that everybody is wondering about.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Philosophy, Numbers, People

  "Interview With Rebecca Goldstein on Plato at the Googleplex, Philosophy for the Public, and Everything". Interview with Ophelia Benson, www.butterfliesandwheels.org. March 20, 2014.

• Plato conceived of philosophy as necessarily gregarious rather than solitary. The exposure of presumptions is best done in company, the more argumentative the better.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Plato, Philosophy, Done

  Rebecca Goldstein (2014). “Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away”, p.41, Pantheon

• Almost everybody thinks about philosophy, even if they don't realize it's philosophy and even if they have no sense of the difficulty of the problems, the array of possible answers.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Philosophy, Thinking, Answers

  "Interview with Rebecca Goldstein on Plato at the Googleplex, philosophy for the public, and everything". Interview with Ophelia Benson, www.butterfliesandwheels.org. March 20, 2014.

• And what is it, according to Plato, that philosophy is supposed to do? Nothing less than to render violence to our sense of ourselves and our world, our sense of ourselves in the world.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Plato, Philosophy, Our World

  "Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away". Book by Rebecca Goldstein, 2014.

• Philosophers feel a little more cautious about letting down their technical guard lest the general public doesn't recognize their special credentials. It's the fact that philosophy is of general interest that, paradoxically, keeps philosophers from wanting to speak in a way that's accessible to the general public.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Philosophy, Special, Littles

  "Interview with Rebecca Goldstein on Plato at the Googleplex, philosophy for the public, and everything". Interview with Ophelia Benson, www.butterfliesandwheels.org. March 20, 2014.

• Like mathematics and music and cosmology and philosophy, poetry, too, can "infinitize" us, granting us what immortality there is to be had in this mortal life. And all those who vibrate in harmony to language that itself vibrates to the harmonies of the infinite are entitled to inclusion among the "small group of people.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Philosophy, People, Groups

• It's something that's very often said that philosophy, as opposed to science, never makes any progress.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Philosophy, Progress, Said

  "What Do We Have To Teach Plato?". "Here And Now" with Jeremy Hobson, news.stlpublicradio.org. April 22, 2014.

• I would say to anybody who thinks that all the problems in philosophy can be translated into empirically verifiable answers - whether it be a Lawrence Krauss thinking that physics is rendering philosophy obsolete or a Sam Harris thinking that neuroscience is rendering moral philosophy obsolete - that it takes an awful lot of philosophy - philosophy of science in the first case, moral philosophy in the second - even to demonstrate the relevance of these empirical sciences.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Philosophy, Thinking, Answers

  "Interview with Rebecca Goldstein on Plato at the Googleplex, philosophy for the public, and everything". Interview with Ophelia Benson, www.butterfliesandwheels.org. March 20, 2014.

• Plato worried that philosophical writing would take the place of living conversations for which, in philosophy, there is no substitute.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Plato, Philosophy, Philosophical

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