Yquotes.com

 

Philosophy is in history, and is never independent of historical discourse. But for the tacit symbolism of life it substitutes, in principle, a conscious symbolism; for a latent meaning, one that is manifest. It is never content to accept its historical situation. It changes this situation by revealing it to itself.
--
p. 57

 

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

» Maurice Merleau-Ponty - all quotes »

Similar quotes

 

In order to be transmuted into knowledge, every perception is and must be ordered and organized into categories. The extent, however, to which we can organize and express our experience in such conceptual forms is, in turn, dependent upon the frames of reference which happen to be available at a given historical moment. The concepts which we have and the universe of discourse in which we move, together with the directions in which they tend to elaborate themselves, are dependent largely upon the historical-social situation of the intellectually active and responsible members of the group.

 

Karl Mannheim

 

Where speculation ends — in real life — there real, positive science begins: the representation of the practical activity, of the practical process of development of men. Empty talk about consciousness ceases, and real knowledge has to take place. When reality is depicted, philosophy as an independent branch of activity loses its medium of existence. At the best its place can only be taken by a summing-up of the most general results, abstractions which arise from the observation of the historical development of men. Viewed apart from real history, these abstractions have in themselves no value whatsoever. They can only serve to facilitate the arrangement of historical material, to indicate the sequence of its seperate strata. But they by no means afford a recipe or schema, as does philosophy, for neatly trimming the epochs of history. On the contrary, our difficulties begin only when we set about the observation and the arrangement — the real depiction — of our historical material, whether of a past epoch or of the present.

 

Karl Marx

 

This first non-evaluative insight into history does not inevitably lead to relativism, but rather to relationism. Knowledge, as seen in the light of the total conception of ideology, is by no means an illusory experience, for ideology in its relational concept is not at all identical with illusion. Knowledge arising out of our experience in actual life situations, though not absolute, is knowledge none the less. The norms arising out of such actual life situations do not exist in a social vacuum, but are effective as real sanctions for conduct. Relationism signifies merely that all of the elements of meaning in a given situation have reference to one another and derive their significance from this reciprocal interrelationship in a given frame of thought. Such a system of meanings is possible and valid only in a given type of historical existence, to which, for a time, it furnishes appropriate expression. When the social situation changes, the system of norms to which it had previously given birth ceases to be in harmony with it. The same estrangement goes on with reference to knowledge and to the historical perspective. All knowledge is oriented toward some object and is influenced in its approach by the nature of the object with which it is pre-occupied. But the mode of approach to the object to be known is dependent upon the nature of the knower.

 

Karl Mannheim

 

Since Christ is the absolute it is easy to see that in relation to him there is only one situation-the situation of contemporaneity. Christ is revealed only to faith. … The qualification that is lacking-which is the qualification of truth (as inwardness) and of all religiousness is-for you. The past is not actuality-for me. Only the contemporary is actuality for me. That with which you are living simultaneously is actuality-for you. Thus, every human being is able to become contemporary only with the time in which he is living-and then with one more, with Christ’s life upon earth, for Christ’s life upon earth, the sacred history, stands alone by itself, outside history. History you can read and hear about as about the past; here you can if it so pleases you, judge by the outcome. But Christ’s life on earth is not a past; it did not wait at the time, eighteen hundred years ago, and does not wait now for the assistance of the outcome. A historical Christianity is nonsense and un-Christian muddled thinking, because whatever true Christians there are in any generation are contemporary with Christ, have nothing to do with Christians in past generations but everything to do with the contemporary Christ. Christ’s life on earth has an eternal contemporaneity. … If you cannot prevail upon yourself to become a Christian in the situation of contemporaneity with him, or if he cannot move you to draw you to himself in the situation of contemporaneity, then you will never become a Christian.

 

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

 

"A deepened consciousness of their situation leads people to apprehend that situation as an historical reality susceptible of transformation."

 

Paulo Freire