어느 철학자의 글에서 보는 철학, 철학자

       

[H] A. C. Grayling, "The Heart of Things: Applying Philosophy to the 21st Century" (2005).

[M] A. C. Grayling, "The Mystery of Things" (2004)

영국 철학자 A. C. Grayling 의  이 두 에세이집은

<The Book Stack>에서 운 좋게 줏은 두 알의 보석이다.

읽는 기쁨이 이 보석의 빛이다.

 이 에세이들에 내비친

철학자 Grayling, 그가 생각하는 철학, 철학자를

보는 것은 내겐 특별한 즐거움이었다.

철학(자)에게서 기대할 수 있는 최상은

생각하는 사람끼리의 대화다.

(앤서니 그레일링, "우리가 일상에서 부딪히는 철학적 질문" (2013)은

어떤 책인지 모르겠다.)

이해력이 빠른 사람에게는 하나의 암시가 논문이나 마찬가지일  -- 종종 어쩌면 더 나을 -- 수 있다. ([H]서문에서)

This task -- achieving understanding -- is par excellence the task of philosophy. There are many resources people can use to attain understanding, but three are of special value to philosophy, because they supply the best materials for reflection. They are science, history, and arts. ... the world of nature, the nature of humanity, and the value in both. ([M] 서문에서)

Philosophy was once the possession of all educated people, before academic professionalization abducted from them. ([M] p 3)

'Prejudiced pride  in the past is not a sorry consequence of heritage,' he[David Lowenthal] writes, 'it is its essential purpose.' ([M] p 107)

Between Hitler's assumption of power in1933 and his suicide in 1945, 3 million Germans spent time in prison or concentration camps on political grounds or for resistance activities. ... These facts speak for themselves. They bear witness that there was honour in Germany in those terrible years, when to go along with the criminal regime's excesses was easier by far than to dissent. ([M] p 117)

[W]e have to keep working hard at severing the  Hydra's heads of racism, ethnic nationalism, and cultural and religious bitterness, which everywhere relentlessly threaten. ([M] p 134)

The perennial ideas that grip the human philosophical imagination ... can be summarized as two: the idea of meaning or value in universe, and the idea that reality has an ultimate nature. ... The second idea might seem now to be the possession of philosophy's daughters, the natural sciences; but these latter ... so far have made slow progress with such puzzles as, for example, the nature of mind. The idea of reality prompts questions about knowledge, thruth, and meaning -- in short; the relation of mind to the world. (M, p 150)

The branches that especially interest me are fundamental physics, cosmology, and the biological sciences as they affect human individuals and society. ([M] p 155)

Endlessly rich in fascinations, full of significance and illumination, it[science] is mankind's greatest intellectual achievement, and an immensely consequential one; for it is the march towards an understanding of our world, and towards truth. ([M] p 156)

[H]e[Antonio Damasio] is saying that emotion lies at the basis of thought and personal identy. ([M] p 200)

... open-minded curiosity might eventually defeat the superstitions that still oppress many. Voltaire once remarked that he loved the man who seeks truth, but hated the man who claims to have found it. There are no prizes for guessing which was the scientist, which the priest. ([M] p 221)

We are essentially -- crucially, inescapably -- social creatures, which means that the good life for any individual is one that in significant part has to be connected to a community effort to create the good society -- the society where individual good lives can flourish. ([H] 서문에서)

[C]losing a mind by schooling it thoroughly and early into a particular world-view, and thereafter limiting access to alternative views and inconvenient facts, is an excellent way to impose automatic and permanent censorship over that mind. ([H] p 109) [우리 나라에서 한 가지 신문만 읽는 사람들 중에도 이런 경우에 해당되는 사람들이 상당히 많을 것 같다.]

As simplifications go, the following contain some truth. Right-wingers are in politics to protect their own interests, left-wingers are in politics out of concern for others. ([H] p128)

The truly just war would be the war of ideas which ended by rooting out the greed, stupidity, superstition and ignorance which lie at the ultimate roots of all human conflicts. ([H] p142)

[S]uch writers otherwise as various as David Hume, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke and William Hazlitt, ... they all refused to allow the particular to be so subordinated to the general that it vanished from view. By this I mean that they saw, in true Enlightenment spirit, that the good life is an individual thing, even though it is lived in community. ([H] p 159)

Cicero saw any form of autocracy as equivalent to slavery. ... He viewed all men as brothers. ([H] p250)

For two and a half thousand years Western civilisation has produced a succession of great thinkers who dedicated themselves to enquiring into what matters most in human existence. They sought, and offered answers to such questions as: What is truly valuable? How should one live? What is the nature of the good? ... how should we live according to that understanding? ([H] p 264)

[그런데 위 구절에서 '그들'의 생각이 여느 '생각하는 사람'의 생각과 실상 별다르지 않다. [H]에 실린, 좋은 삶과 좋은 사회에 관한, 행복, 좋은 삶, 부유함 등 50개가 넘는 제목의 짤막한 에세이들에서 보여주는 철학자 Grayling 의 생각도 마찬가지다. [H]에서 결론처럼, 아래와 같이, 칸트를 인용한 점이 맘에 든다. Grayling 이 생각하는 철학을 본다.]

Kant wrote, '... "Have courage to use your own understanding!" -- that is the motto of enlightenment.' ([H] p266)