Paul Strathern > Quotes

“I'd like to hear your opinion on this piece of Beethoven. And remember, it is not Beethoven who is being examined here.”
― Paul Strathern, Wittgenstein in 90 Minutes

“The myth persists in Egypt to this day that Napoleon’s soldiers actually disfigured some of these ruins, and are even said to have used the Sphinx as target practice for their cannons, shooting off its nose. This last is a calumny: it is known that the Sphinx was defaced as early as the eighth century by the Sufi iconoclast Saim-ed-Dahr,28 and was further damaged in 1380 by fanatical Muslims prompted by the Koran’s strictures against images. During these early times the Sphinx was not regarded as a precious historical object, but instead inspired fear: through the centuries it became known to the Egyptians as Abul-Hol (Father of Terrors), and would only begin to be regarded more favorably when it became a tourist attraction in the later nineteenth century.”
― Paul Strathern, Napoleon in Egypt

“Ultimately Russell himself admitted that he made his greatest efforts in the field of traditional philosophy – in epistemology, the search for the ultimate grounds of our knowledge about the world. How can we be certain that what we claim to know is true? Where lies the certainty in our experience of the world? Can even the most precise knowledge – such as mathematics – be said to rest on any sure logical foundation? These were the questions that Russell sought to answer during the periods of his most profound philosophical thinking. They have remained the perennial questions of philosophy from Plato and Aristotle through Descartes, Hume, and Kant, to Russell and Wittgenstein.”
― Paul Strathern, Bertrand Russell: Philosophy in an Hour

“Kendimi yeterince sevmediğim için daha sonraya kaçıyorum hep ve bunun sonucu da şu oluyor: Kendimi daha az seviyorum; bu amansız ilerleyiş, kendimi kendi gözümde küçük düşürüyor.”
― Paul Strathern, Sartre in 90 Minutes

“As the invasion fleet sailed east across the Mediterranean, Napoleon would lie in bed reading and dictating to Bourrienne. His principal reading was from the Koran. Like Alexander the Great before him, he intended to absorb the religion of the people over whom he would rule. He insisted that, if necessary, he himself was willing to become a Muslim—an intention that, at least initially, he would show every sign of wishing to fulfill. However, it should also be noted that in Napoleon’s shipboard library the Koran was shelved under “Politics.” At the same time, he also busied himself with dictating his “proclamation” to the Egyptian people.”
― Paul Strathern, Napoleon in Egypt

“Whilst in the process of losing all his money, Cardano noticed that his opponent had marked the cards. Whereupon he leapt up, slashed his opponent across the face with his dagger and grabbed the money. Outwitting his host's spear-wielding servants, he fled into the night-shrouded maze of the streets, eventually falling into a canal. [Footnote: It is interesting to note that Cardano may well have been rector of the University of Padua at the time.]”
― Paul Strathern, The Venetians

“the Egyptian expedition would later attempt to explore the inside of the Great Pyramid, which had only been opened up again a few years previously. The French traveler Savary was one of the first to penetrate the interior, and most vividly evokes the atmosphere inside the pyramid at this time: We left our coats at the entrance to the passage which led into the interior, and began to descend, each holding a burning torch. Towards the bottom, we had to wriggle on our bellies like snakes in order to gain access to the inner passageway. . . . We scrambled up this on our knees, at the same time pressing our hands against the sides. Had we not done this, we risked slipping backwards, and the slight grooves on its surface would not have been able to stop us from sliding all the way down to the bottom. About halfway up we fired a pistol shot whose deafening noise echoed away forever through all the distant recesses of the immense edifice. This awakened thousands of bats, which hurtled down, striking us on our hands and face and extinguishing several of our torches.27”
― Paul Strathern, Napoleon in Egypt

“Are there any circumstances in which philosophy is not a power game, albeit one that it is conducted according to the most rigid rules, which are intended to direct us toward the truth? Anyone who feels confident enough to answer this question should ponder the words of Xenophanes: ‘No one knows, or will ever know, the truth about the gods and everything; for if one chanced to say the whole truth, nevertheless one would never know it.’ This accords with much twentieth-century philosophy, as it did with certain elements of Greek philosophy, and has done with skeptical philosophy through the centuries between. Yet if we cannot know the truth, the psychological argument becomes all but irresistible – he who musters the best argument wins. Fortunately we now recognise that philosophy is as much about the rules of this argument as it is about who wins.”
― Paul Strathern, St Augustine: Philosophy in an Hour

“As Napoleon later put it, when describing his feelings at this time: “I saw the way to achieve all my dreams. . . . I would found a religion, I saw myself marching on the way to Asia, mounted on an elephant, a turban on my head, and in my hand a new Koran that I would have composed to suit my needs. In my enterprises I would have combined the experiences of the two worlds, exploiting the realm of all history for my own profit.”7”
― Paul Strathern, Napoleon in Egypt

“Plotinus had been born in Alexandria at the beginning of the third century A.D. Like many brilliant critics, he thought he understood what he had read better than the author himself.”
― Paul Strathern, St Augustine: Philosophy in an Hour

“for. As Napoleon continued, the full extent of his intentions gradually became clearer: having conquered Egypt, he would then mount an expedition to India, where he would attack the British. This force would require 60,000 men, 30,000 of whom would be recruited and trained from amongst the Egyptians; it would take 10,000 horses and 50,000 camels, sufficient to carry supplies for sixty days and water for six. Other provisions would be sequestered on the march, which would take four months to reach the Indus. In India he would link up with the forces of Tippoo Sahib, the ruler of Mysore who had risen against the British and sworn allegiance to French revolutionary ideals. Napoleon concluded by announcing that the entire expedition would cost between eight and nine million francs.”
― Paul Strathern, Napoleon in Egypt

“At the higher realms of rationality, even reason can begin to appear irrational.”
― Paul Strathern, Leibniz: Philosophy in an Hour

“Less than two centuries later, the Macedonian Greek Alexander the Great conquered Egypt, completing this task in a matter of months, but remaining long enough to found the city of Alexandria, whose site he selected in 331 BC at what was then the western mouth of the Nile delta. After this, in what appeared to be a characteristic act of hubris, but was in fact an attempt to win over the local priesthood, Alexander sacrificed to the sacred bull Apis and had himself crowned pharaoh.”
― Paul Strathern, Napoleon in Egypt

“In its early years, Islam encouraged philosophical and scientific speculation: to know how the world worked was to know the mind of God.”
― Paul Strathern, The Medici

“As a consequence of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, the questions once asked by philosophy have now passed into the realms of poetry. The way poetry is going, it looks as if they won’t be asked much longer here either. We have learned to do without God, and it looks as if we will learn to do without philosophy. It will now, alas, join the ranks of subjects which are completed (and have become completely spurious), such as alchemy, astrology, platonic love, and stylitism.”
― Paul Strathern, Wittgenstein: Philosophy in an Hour

“A particular episteme is bound to give rise to a particular form of knowledge. Foucault called the latter a discourse, by which he meant the accumulation of concepts, practices, statements, and beliefs that were produced by a particular episteme.”
― Paul Strathern, Foucault: Philosophy in an Hour

“philosophers, poets, rhetoricians and historians – and these caused some to understand that there had once been an age that far outshone their own, one that emphasised the humanity of humankind, rather than its spirituality.”
― Paul Strathern, The Medici

“German philosopher Hegel, whose philosophy insisted on the coherence and meaning of history. The”
― Paul Strathern, Foucault: Philosophy in an Hour

“Knowledge was always purposive: it was characterised by a will to dominate or appropriate.”
― Paul Strathern, Foucault: Philosophy in an Hour

“Bulmasaydın, aramazdın beni.”
― Paul Strathern, Sartre in 90 Minutes

“And the nitrogen group of elements, nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), arsenic (As) and antinomy (Sb), were just as disparate when it came to their atomic weights: ”
― Paul Strathern, Mendeleyev's Dream: The Quest for the Elements

“earlier, the French positivist philosopher Auguste Comte had pronounced that certain kinds of knowledge would remain forever beyond the reach of science. For instance, it would never be possible to discover precisely what the stars were made of. Comte”
― Paul Strathern, Mendeleyev's Dream: The Quest for the Elements

“As our knowledge of DNA expands, and our expertise in genetic manipulation increases, the concept of humanity may well become redundant.”
― Paul Strathern, Foucault: Philosophy in an Hour

“What Mendeleyev discovered on 17 February 1869 was the culmination of a two-and-a-half-thousand-year epic: a wayward parable of human aspiration. In 1955 element 101 was discovered and duly took its place in the Periodic Table. It was named mendelevium, in recognition of Mendeleyev’s supreme achievement. Appropriately, it is an unstable element, liable to spontaneous nuclear fission.”
― Paul Strathern, Mendeleyev's Dream: The Quest for the Elements

“Empedocles was to die when he leapt into the crater of Mount Etna, in an attempt to prove to his followers that he was immortal. Opinion remained divided at the time, but over the years his lack of reappearance went against him.”
― Paul Strathern, Mendeleyev's Dream: The Quest for the Elements

“Aslında, teorileri, olan teorileri bir bir çürütmeyle ilgiliydi. Descartes yanlıştı, Kant yetersiz ve Hegel bir burjuvaydı. Geleneksel filozofların hiçbiri 20.yüzyılda yaşamak için yeterli değildi. İç dünyasıyla yoğun ilgilenişi, psikolojik haritasını anlamasına yol açtı ve Freud onu büyülemişti. Fakat sonunda Freud'un da yeterli olmadığını fark etti : Psikanaliz, zihnin özerkliğini reddediyordu. Entelektüel devlerin bir bir dökülmesiyle geriye kalan ''bireyin özgürlüğü'' idi.”
― Paul Strathern, Sartre in 90 Minutes

“Saygınlık iyiliğin işareti, ikiyüzlülük ise kötülüğün işaretiydi.İnsanlar kuralları bozdular fakat toplum olarak değil. Sartre ve Beauvoir kuralın dışına çıkmışlardı. Bu, o zamanlar Fransa'da yapılacak en küstahça şeydi. Fakat onların bu davranışı daha sonraları tüm dünyadaki entelektüellere ilham kaynağı oldu”
― Paul Strathern, Sartre in 90 Minutes

“The holiness of madness was transformed into the more humanist concept of ‘wisdom’.”
― Paul Strathern, Foucault: Philosophy in an Hour

“How do I know anything about the world around me? By the use of my senses. But I can be deceived by my senses, A straight stick looks bent when it is dipped into water. How do I even know that I am awake, that the whole of reality is not a dream? How can I tell it is not a fabric of delusion woven by some malicious cunning demon simply to deceive me? By a process of persistent and comprehensive questioning it is possible to place in doubt the entire fabric of my existence and the world around me, Nothing remains certain. But in the midst of all this there is nevertheless one thing which does remain certain. No matter how deluded I may be in my thoughts about myself and the world, I still know that I am thinking, This alone proves me my existence, In the most famous remark in philosophy, Descartes concludes: 'Cogito ergo sum'-'I think, therefore I am.”
― Paul Strathern

“Su Dios impersonal y panteísta no guarda relación con el Jehová de la Biblia, y su teoría de que cuando hacemos daño a otros nos perjudicamos a nosotros mismos no concordaba ni con las actitudes religiosas contemporáneas (hacia herejes y no creyentes) ni con las actitudes morales (hacia casi todos). Y era poco probable que consiguiera muchas reseñas entusiastas en las publicaciones religiosas de la época su opinión de que los milagros de la Biblia eran simplemente acontecimientos naturales deliberadamente mal interpretados para propósitos de propaganda religiosa.”
― Paul Strathern, Spinoza en 90 minutos