Tuesday, April 30, 2024 Text is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.

Robert M. Pirsig

« All quotes from this author
 

Once it's stated that "the dialectic comes before anything else," this statement itself becomes a dialectical entity, subject to dialectical question.
--
Ch. 30

 
Robert M. Pirsig

» Robert M. Pirsig - all quotes »



Tags: Robert M. Pirsig Quotes, Authors starting by P


Similar quotes

 

In his attempt to unite the Good and the True by making the Good the highest Idea of all, Plato is nevertheless usurping areté's place with dialectically determined truth. Once the Good has been contained as a dialectical idea it is no trouble for another philosopher to come along and show by dialectical methods that areté, the Good, can be more advantageously demoted to a lower position within a "true" order of things, more compatible with the inner workings of dialectic. Such a philosopher was not long in coming. His name was Aristotle.

 
Robert M. Pirsig
 

My reason for rejecting Hegel and monism in general is my belief that the dialectical argument against relations is wholly unsound. I think such a statement as 'A is west of B' can be exactly true. You will find that Bradley's arguments on this subject pre-suppose that every proposition must be of the subject-predicate form. I think this the fundamental error of monism.

 
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
 

The crisis at the heart of Parmenides' argument, "is or is not," rules out any candidate for an ultimate entity in an explanation of what there is that is subject to coming-to-be, passing-away, or alteration of any sort. Such an entity must be a whole, complete, unchanging unity: it must be a thing that is of a single kind ... But it does not follow from this that there can be only one such entity. Parmenides' arguments allow for a plurality of fundamental, predicationally unified entities that can be used to explain the world reported by the senses.

 
Parmenides
 

There are then, at least two dialectical truths. The first is that you and I are reasonable creatures; the second that you and I ought to be reasonable. Because of the second, we can say not merely that we cannot reasonably deny the first, but also that we ought not to deny it. If these dialectical propositions are errors, they are irrefutable errors: there is no way for men qua rational creatures to find out what is wrong with them, just as there is no way for men qua rational creatures to cast doubt on their truth.

 
Frank Van Dun
 

The progress that's made ... in any argument or in any discussion is by confrontation. That's a dialectical fact. People say "oh let's have less heat and more light," fatuously. There's only one source of light. It happens to be heat.

 
Christopher Hitchens
© 2009–2013Quotes Privacy Policy | Contact