The Brothers Karamazov: II. The Nature of Freedom

Choice vs. Freedom There is an important distinction, which most people overlook, between free choice of the will, commonly known as free will, and freedom. Choice is consequent of multiplicity, but freedom is consequent of power of being or becoming. For example, when a person is present at a crossroad, he has a choice between one way or the other, but he does not necessarily have the freedom to walk […]

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“Physics” by Aristotle

Contraries as Principles All philosophers identify their principles with the contraries. They differ, however, from one another in that some assume contraries which are more knowable in the order of explanation, i.e. universal, others those more familiar to sense, i.e., particular. ‘The great and the small’, for example, belong to the former class, ‘the dense and the rare’ to the latter. In any one genus there is only one contrariety, […]

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“Pensées” by Blaise Pascal

What is Man in Nature? Let man then contemplate the whole of nature in her full and grand majesty, and turn his vision from the low objects which surround him. Let him gaze on that brilliant light, set like an eternal lamp to illumine the universe; let the earth appear to him a point in comparison with the vast circle described by the sun; and let him wonder at the […]

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