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Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 1 week ago
There is a sort of gratification...

There is a sort of gratification in doing good which makes us rejoice in ourselves.

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Book III, Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 weeks 6 days ago
Sound knowledge respecting the habits and...

Sound knowledge respecting the habits and mode of life of the man-like Apes has been even more difficult of attainment than correct information regarding their structure.

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Ch.1, p. 36
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 3 days ago
Life has no meaning a priori...

Life has no meaning a priori ... It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.

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p. 58
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 4 days ago
The most violent revolutions in an...

The most violent revolutions in an individual's beliefs leave most of his old order standing. Time and space, cause and effect, nature and history, and one's own biography remain untouched. New truth is always a go-between, a smoother-over of transitions. It marries old opinion to new fact so as ever to show a minimum of jolt, a maximum of continuity.

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"What Pragmatism Means," Pragmatism, pp. 60-61 (1931); lectures delivered at the Lowell Institute, Boston, Massachusetts
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
3 months 5 days ago
We assert then that nothing has...

We assert then that nothing has been accomplished without interest on the part of the actors; and - if interest be called passion, inasmuch as the whole individuality, to the neglect of all other actual or possible interests and claims, is devoted to an object with every fibre of volition, concentrating all its desires and powers upon it - we may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion. Often abbreviated to: Nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion. Variant translation: We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without enthusiasm.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
5 months 3 days ago
Kalokagathia...
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Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month ago
It would be deeply depressing if...

It would be deeply depressing if the only way children could get moral values was from religion. Either from scripture, and God knows we don't want them to get it from scripture, I mean, just look at scripture. Or, from being afraid of God, being intimidated by God. Anybody who is good for only those two reasons is not really being good at all. Why not teach children things like the Golden Rule, do as you would be done by, how would you like it if other children did that to you, so why do you do it to them... I think it's depressing that anybody should suggest that you actually need God in order to be moral. I would hope that our morals come from a better source than that, and therefore they are genuinely moral rather than based on outmoded scripture, or based on fear.

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BBC,
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 3 weeks ago
Blessed are the poor in spirit,...

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

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5:1 12 (NIV) Often referred to as "The Beatitudes" this is the start of "The Sermon on the Mount".
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 months 4 days ago
The primary use of knowledge is...

The primary use of knowledge is for such guidance of conduct under all circumstances as shall make living complete. All other uses of knowledge are secondary.

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Vol. 3, Ch. XV, The Americans
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 4 days ago
How will one part of the...

How will one part of the infinite be above, and another below? Or how will it have extremes or a middle? Further still, every sensible body is in place; but the species and differences of place are upward and downward, before and behind, to the right hand and to the left: and these things not only thus subsist with relation to us, and by position, but have a definite subsistence in the universe itself. But it is impossible that these things should be in the infinite: and... that there should be an infinite place. But every body is in place; and therefore it is also impossible that there should be an infinite body. ...Therefore ...there is not an infinite body in energy.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 3 days ago
But the man is a humbug...

But the man is a humbug - a vulgar, shallow, self-satisfied mind, absolutely inaccessible to the complexities and delicacies of the real world. He has the journalist's air of being a specialist in everything, of taking in all points of view and being always on the side of the angels: he merely annoys a reader who has the least experience of knowing things, of what knowing is like. There is not two pence worth of real thought or real nobility in him. But he isn't dull.

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Part of a diary entry dated "Wednesday-Wednesday 9-16 July", 1924, regarding Thomas Babington Macaulay
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months ago
It is trifling to believe in...

It is trifling to believe in what you do or in what others do. You should avoid simulacra and even "realities"; you should take up a position external to everything and everyone, drive off or grind down your appetites, live, according to a Hindu adage, with as few desires as a "solitary elephant.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 month 3 weeks ago
Eternal vigilance is the price of...

Eternal vigilance is the price of knowledge.

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p. 58
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 4 days ago
The vices respectively fall short of...

The vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
1 week 4 days ago
The true goal of the bourgeois...

The true goal of the bourgeois life, in other words, is not self-enactment, but diversion. Most people need the organised distraction of work (if they can find it). Idleness - the life of the playboy who doesn't answer the phone - is simply too demanding. "

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A difficult business," New Statesman
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 1 week ago
To call out for the hand...

To call out for the hand of the enemy is a rather extreme measure, yet a better one, I think, than to remain in continual fever over an accident that has no remedy. But since all the precautions that a man can take are full of uneasiness and uncertainty, it is better to prepare with fine assurance for the worst that can happen, and derive some consolation from the fact that we are not sure that it will happen.

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Ch. 25
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
1 month 2 weeks ago
Objectification is above all exteriorization, the...

Objectification is above all exteriorization, the alienation of spirit from itself.

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p. 63
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 month 4 weeks ago
The proletariat is that class in...

The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor - hence, on the changing state of business, on the vagaries of unbridled competition.

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Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
2 months 1 day ago
Fate and temperament are the names...

Fate and temperament are the names of a concept.

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As quoted in Demian (1972) by Hermann Hesse, trans. W.J. Strachan
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months ago
There is no false sensation.

There is no false sensation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months ago
Since the Devil is the adversary...

Since the Devil is the adversary of Christ he should occupy a position equivalent to his and be the Son of God as well. Satan would be the first Son of God and Christ the second.

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Paris, 1991, p. 207. As quoted in Curzio Nitoglia
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 2 weeks ago
Do not all theists insist that...

Do not all theists insist that there can be no morality, no justice, honesty or fidelity without the belief in a Divine Power? Based upon fear and hope, such morality has always been a vile product, imbued partly with self-righteousness, partly with hypocrisy. As to truth, justice, and fidelity, who have been their brave exponents and daring proclaimers? Nearly always the godless ones: the Atheists; they lived, fought, and died for them. They knew that justice, truth, and fidelity are not conditioned in heaven, but that they are related to and interwoven with the tremendous changes going on in the social and material life of the human race; not fixed and eternal, but fluctuating, even as life itself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 1 day ago
Predicting the future is a hopeless,...

Predicting the future is a hopeless, thankless task, with ridicule to begin with and, all too often, scorn to end with.

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Philosophical Maxims
Parmenides
Parmenides
2 months 3 weeks ago
Do not let habit, born from...

Do not let habit, born from experience, force you along this road, directing aimless eye and echoing ear and tongue; but judge by reason the much contested proof which I have spoken.

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Frag. B 7.3-8.1, quoted by Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians, vii. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 2 weeks ago
Regardless of the present trend toward...

Regardless of the present trend toward the strong-armed man, the totalitarian states, or the dictatorship from the left, my ideas have remained unshaken. In fact, they have been strengthened by my personal experience and the world events through the years. I see no reason to change, as I do not believe that the tendency of dictatorship can ever successfully solve our social problems. As in the past, so I do now insist that freedom is the soul of progress and essential to every phase of life. I consider this as near a law of social evolution as anything we can postulate. My faith is in the individual and in the capacity of free individuals for united endeavor.

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Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
2 months 3 weeks ago
There are many who know many...

There are many who know many things, yet are lacking in wisdom.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 1 week ago
When you see a person squirming...

When you see a person squirming in the clutches of the Law, say to him: "Brother, get things straight. You let the Law talk to your conscience. Make it talk to your flesh.

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Chapter 2, Verse 19
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
3 months 5 days ago
No greater mistake can be made...

No greater mistake can be made than to imagine that what has been written latest is always the more correct; that what is written later on is an improvement on what was written previously; and that every change means progress. Men who think and have correct judgment, and people who treat their subject earnestly, are all exceptions only. Vermin is the rule everywhere in the world: it is always at hand and busily engaged in trying to improve in its own way upon the mature deliberations of the thinkers.

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Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
1 month 6 days ago
Literature is idiosyncratic arrangements in horizontal...

Literature is idiosyncratic arrangements in horizontal lines in only twenty-six symbols, ten arabic numbers, and about eight punctuation marks.

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Public conversation with Lee Stringer, in Like Shaking Hands With God
Philosophical Maxims
René Descartes
René Descartes
3 months 1 week ago
So blind is the curiosity by...

So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, but merely being willing to risk the experiment of finding whether the truth they seek lies there.

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Rules for the Direction of the Mind: IV
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
3 months 3 days ago
Man's urge for change and his...

Man's urge for change and his need for stability have always balanced and checked each other, and our current vocabulary, which distinguishes between two factions, the progressives and the conservatives, indicates a state of affairs in which this balance has been thrown out of order. No civilization - the man-made artifact to house successive generations - would ever have been possible without a framework of stability, to provide the wherein for the flux of change. Foremost among the stabilizing factors, more enduring than customs, manners and traditions, are the legal systems that regulate our life in the world and our daily affairs with each other.

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"Civil Disobedience"
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 1 week ago
If you punish a child for...

If you punish a child for being naughty, and reward him for being good, he will do right merely for the sake of the reward; and when he goes out into the world and finds that goodness is not always rewarded, nor wickedness always punished, he will grow into a man who only thinks about how he may get on in the world, and does right or wrong according as he finds either of advantage to himself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
3 months 1 week ago
When evening comes, I return home...

When evening comes, I return home and enter my study; on the threshold I take off my workday clothes, covered with mud and dirt, and put on the garments of court and palace. Fitted out appropriately, I step inside the venerable courts of the ancients, where, solicitously received by them, I nourish myself on that food that alone is mine and for which I was born; where I am unashamed to converse with them and to question them about the motives for their actions, and they, out of their human kindness, answer me. And for four hours at a time I feel no boredom, I forget all my troubles, I do not dread poverty, and I am not terrified by death. I absorb myself into them completely.

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Letter to Francesco Vettori (10 December 1513), as translated by James Atkinson, in Prince Machiavelli (1976), p. 19
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 5 days ago
I do not know, my listener,...

I do not know, my listener, what your crime, your guilt, your sins are, but surely we are all more or less of the guilt of loving only little. Take comfort, then, in these words just as I take comfort in them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 2 days ago
All media of communications are cliches...

All media of communications are cliches serving to enlarge man's scope of action, his patterns of associations and awareness. These media create environments that numb our powers of attention by sheer pervasiveness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
3 months 1 week ago
It might be wiser for me...

It might be wiser for me to avoid Camarina and say nothing of theologians. They are a proud, susceptible race. They will smother me under six hundred dogmas. They will call me heretic and bring thunderbolts out of their arsenals, where they keep whole magazines of them for their enemies. Still they are Folly's servants, though they disown their mistress. They live in the third heaven, adoring their own persons and disdaining the poor crawlers upon earth. They are surrounded with a bodyguard of definitions, conclusions, corollaries, propositions explicit, and propositions implicit. ...They will tell you how the world was created. They will show you the crack where Sin crept in and corrupted mankind.

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as quoted by James Anthony Froude, Life and Letters of Erasmus: Lectures Delivered at Oxford 1893-4
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
1 month 2 weeks ago
I believe that the unity of...

I believe that the unity of man as opposed to other living things derives from the fact that man is the conscious life of himself. Man is conscious of himself, of his future, which is death, of his smallness, of his impotence; he is aware of others as others; man is in nature, subject to its laws even if he transcends it with his thought.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 3 weeks ago
I feel that I have within...

I feel that I have within me a medieval soul, and I believe that the soul of my country is medieval, that it has perforce passed through the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Revolution - learning from them, yes, but without allowing them to touch the soul, preserving the spiritual inheritance which has come down from what are called the Dark Ages. And Quixotism is simply the most desperate phase of the struggle between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, which was the offering of the Middle Ages.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 1 week ago
...so it is with human reason,...

...so it is with human reason, which strives not against faith, when enlightened, but rather furthers and advances it.

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On Justification CCXCIV
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
3 months 2 days ago
To each according to his threat...

To each according to his threat advantage does not count as a principle of justice.

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Chapter III, Section 24, pg. 141
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 5 days ago
At the present stage in the...

At the present stage in the development of the art of war, there is only way of coping with them, and that is to keep out of war. In all the densely populated countries of Western Europe, it seems almost certain that, within a few days of the outbreak of war, panic will seize the surviving inhabitants of the capitals and the industrial areas, leading to anarchy, starvation, and paralysis of all warlike effort. The only sensible course, therefore, is to prevent war if possible, and to remain neutral if war occurs.

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Letter to The New Statesman and Nation (10 August 1935)
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 4 weeks ago
It seems to me that, in...

It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed Wisdom. And then I know exactly what is going to follow: Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

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Conversation of 1934
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
3 weeks 6 days ago
Eight hours daily labour is enough...

Eight hours daily labour is enough for any human being, and under proper arrangements sufficient to afford an ample supply of food, raiment and shelter, or the necessaries and comforts of life, and for the remainder of his time, every person is entitled to education, recreation and sleep.

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"Foundation Axioms" of Society for Promoting National Regeneration
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
1 month 3 weeks ago
And though this may seem to...

And though this may seem to subtile a deduction of the Lawes of Nature, to be taken notice of by all men;whereof the most part are too busie in getting food, and the rest too negligent to understand; yet to leave all men unexcusable, they have been contracted into one easie sum, intelligble, even to the meanest capacity; and that is, Do not that to another, which thou wouldest not have done to thyselfe; which sheweth him, that he has no more to do in learning the Lawes of Nature, but, when weighing the actions of other men with his own, they seem too heavy, to put them into the other part of the balance, and his own into their place, that his own passions, and selfe love, may adde nothing to the weight; and then there is none of these Laws of Nature that will not appear unto him very reasonable.

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The First Part, Chapter 15, p. 79
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 4 days ago
May it not be the fact...

May it not be the fact that mankind, who after all are made up of single human beings, obtain a greater sum of happiness when each pursues his own, under the rules and conditions required by the good of the rest, than when each makes the good of the rest his only object, and allows himself no personal pleasures not indispensable to the preservation of his faculties? The regimen of a blockaded town should be cheerfully submitted to when high purposes require it, but is it the ideal perfection of human existence?

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Auguste Comte and Positivism, p. 142
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
4 months 6 days ago
When someone hides something behind a...
When someone hides something behind a bush and looks for it again in the same place and finds it there as well, there is not much to praise in such seeking and finding. Yet this is how matters stand regarding seeking and finding "truth" within the realm of reason. If I make up the definition of a mammal, and then, after inspecting a camel, declare "look, a mammal' I have indeed brought a truth to light in this way, but it is a truth of limited value. That is to say, it is a thoroughly anthropomorphic truth which contains not a single point which would be "true in itself" or really and universally valid apart from man. At bottom, what the investigator of such truths is seeking is only the metamorphosis of the world into man.
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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 4 weeks ago
A philosopher is a man who...

A philosopher is a man who has to cure many intellectual diseases in himself before he can arrive at the notions of common sense.

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p. 44e
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months ago
This was her finest role and...

This was her finest role and the hardest one to play. Choosing between heaven and a ridiculous fidelity, preferring oneself to eternity or losing oneself in God is the age-old tragedy in which each must play his part.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 2 weeks ago
The dominion of bad men is...

The dominion of bad men is hurtful chiefly to themselves who rule, for they destroy their own souls by greater license in wickedness; while those who are put under them in service are not hurt except by their own iniquity. For to the just all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers are not the punishment of crime, but the test of virtue. Therefore the good man, although he is a slave, is free; but the bad man, even if he reigns, is a slave, and that not of one man, but, what is far more grievous, of as many masters as he has vices; of which vices when the divine Scripture treats, it says, For of whom any man is overcome, to the same he is also the bond-slave.

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IV, 3 Variant translation: The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave, and not the slave of a single man, but — what is worse — the slave of as many masters as he has vices.
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 4 days ago
The conception of Rights involves that...

The conception of Rights involves that when men are to live in a community, each must so restrict his freedom as to permit the coexistence of the freedom of all others. But it does not involve that this particular person, A, is to restrict his freedom by the freedom of those particular persons, B, C, and D. That it has happened so that I, A, must conform myself particularly to the freedom of these, B, C, and D, of all other men, is purely the result of my living together with them; and I so live with them, simply by my free-will, not because there is an obligation for me to do so.

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P. 23-24
Philosophical Maxims
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