A major danger in using highly abstractive methods in political philosophy is that one will succeed merely in generalizing one's own local prejudices and repackaging them as demands of reason. The study of history can help to counteract this natural… — Raymond Geuss Copy Share Image
Can one understand politics without understanding history, especially the history of political thought, and will this distinguish political philosophy from some other kinds of philosophy (such as, perhaps, logic) to which the study of history is not integral? — Raymond Geuss Copy Share Image
It would be a mistake to believe that one could come to any substantive understanding of politics by discussing abstractly the good, the right, the true, or the rational in complete abstraction from the way in which these items figure in the motivationally active parts of the human psyche, and particularly in abstraction from the way in which they impinge,… — Raymond Geuss Copy Share
In some central and important cases, ... the existence of specific power relations in the society will produce an appearance of a particular kind. Certain features of the society that are merely local and contingent, and maintained in existence only by the continual exercise of power, will come to seem as if they were universal, necessary, invariant, or natural features… — Raymond Geuss Copy Share
Monotheistic religions in the West have tended to conflate having a general orientation in life, having a specific theory of the world, having a sense of the positive meaningfulness of one's existence, and having a fixed set of rules for behavior, but these elements are in principle separable. ... The "metaphysical need," ... both Marx and Nietzsche held, is a… — Raymond Geuss Copy Share
We do not wish to "judge" or assess out surrounding merely as a kind of expressive activity carelessly projected onto the world, but we… — Raymond Geuss Copy Share Image
Neither the good nor the true is self-realizing, so it is not generally a sufficient explanation of why people believe that X is true,… — Raymond Geuss Copy Share Image
The idea that all problems either have a solution or can be shown to be pseudo-problems is not one I share. — Raymond Geuss Copy Share Image
Humans in modern societies are driven by a perhaps desperate hope that they might find some way of mobilizing their theoretical and empirical knowledge… — Raymond Geuss Copy Share Image
When Catullus expresses his love and hate for Lesbia, he is not obviously voicing a wish to rid himself of one or the other… — Raymond Geuss Copy Share Image
Nietzsche seems sometimes to replace the "transcendence" which stands at the center of traditional accounts the existence of a transcendent God, or, failing that,… — Raymond Geuss Copy Share Image
Asking what the question is, and why the question is asked, is always asking a pertinent question. — Raymond Geuss Copy Share Image
It is an assumption that there is always one single dimension for assessing persons and their actions that has canonical priority. This is the… — Raymond Geuss Copy Share Image
The Kantian philosophy is no more than at best a half-secularized version of such a theocratic ethics, with "Reason" in the place of God.… — Raymond Geuss Copy Share Image
