Misfortunes, in fine, cannot be avoided; but they may be sweetened, if not overcome, and our lives made happy by philosophy.
There is not a philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, like different therapies.
Semiotics is a general theory of all existing languages... all forms of communication - visual, tactile, and so on... There is general semiotics, which is a philosophical approach to this field, and then there are many specific semiotics.
I don't really believe in dialogue; I am too Nietzschean for that. We need to have a warrior conception of philosophy.
Fundamentalist s live life with an exclamation point. I prefer to live my life with a question mark.
I do think you have sort of a general philosophical approach that you want from a justice, and I think a strict constructionist would be probably the way I'd describe it.
You read the pragmatists and all you know is: not Descartes, not Kant, not Plato. It's like aspirin. You can't use aspirin to give yourself power, you take it to get rid of headaches. In that way, pragmatism is a philosophical therapy. It helps you stop asking the unhelpful questions.
I can never give a 'yes' or a 'no.' I don't believe everything in life can be settled by a monosyllable.
We need to have the mind of a conservative and the heart of a liberal.
What's my philosophy? In a word, integral.
I was really grateful to have a chance to have some really in-depth study about the power of language using a philosopher who taught at the University of Chicago by the name of Paul Ricoeur. I'm really happy to be in Chicago because a lot of what I do is rooted in his approach to language.
Judaism is a way of thinking, more than anything else, that I think is entirely distinct, and the more you know of it, the more you can enter into that kind of thinking.
I am very Aristotelian in approach - not in detail - so I always find I'm saying things that get people frustrated like 'It's a matter of balance and judgement'. To a lot of philosophers these are terrible words because they're admitting of vagueness and uncertainty. The more I've done philosophy, the more I've become convinced that that is the way it is.
The integral vision embodies an attempt to take the best of both worlds, ancient and modern. But that demands a critical stance willing to reject unflinchingly the worst of both as well.
To judge therefore of Shakespeare by Aristotle's rule is like trying a man by the Laws of one Country who acted under those of another.
I don't really have a system or set of principles. It's kind of common sense mixed up with instinct.
Happy for us that when we find our constitutions defective and insufficient to secure the happiness of our people, we can assemble with all the coolness of philosophers and set it to rights, while every other nation on earth must have recourse to arms to amend or to restore their constitutions
Of course, it is the case that conservatism as I envisage it distances itself always from abstract conceptions and tries to find the concrete reality.
Philosophically, I am very different from normal politicians, and normal consultants found that very hard to deal with.
A man with no philosophy in him is the most inauspicious and unprofitable of all possible social mates.
In my view, we ought to replace the notion of analytic philosophy by that of synthetic philosophy.
Philosophers are in the habit of setting themselves before life and experience.
History is a pageant, not a philosophy.
I always went into an area that was in last place, with a philosophy, 'You can't fall off the floor.' And I was lucky, was at the right time and the right place, with the right ideas, and each one of these areas became number one.
Postmodernism is a freewheeling, unfettered, and unapologetic pursuit of style.
