classics digests, reflections and reviews
Connexion of the Sensible and the Abstract Some things are perceived by the senses immediately, some mediately, with the intervention of others. The latter may be signified and suggested to the mind by sensible marks, with which they have an arbitrary connexion. For instance, in reading a book, what I immediately perceive are the letters; but mediately, or by means of these, the notions of justice, virtue, truth, etc. Philosophers […]
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The Meaning of Reality I’ve learned since childhood that reality is what exists independently of human perception and knowledge. We gain knowledge of reality if and only if our ideas correspond to it. Fantasy is that which has no correspondence in reality, and exists only in the mind of an individual. Unless he communicates his fantasy, others have no way of knowing it. George Berkeley shows a different way of […]
Read moreIf the human race passed through the world as a ship through the sea or the wind through the desert, a thoughtless and fruitless whim, if an eternal oblivion always lurked angrily for its prey and there were no power strong enough to wrest it from its clutches — how empty and devoid of comfort would life be! –Søren Kierkegaard Although Kierkegaard died four years before the publication of Origin […]
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