Reality Quote by Étienne Gilson

“Pure sensism leads inevitably to universal doubt; if reality is in the end reducible to sensible appearance, then, since this is in a state of perpetual flux and self-contradiction, no kind of certitude will any longer be possible. [...] Truth is necessary and immutable; but in the sensible order…” quote by Étienne Gilson — Download Open image

““Pure sensism leads inevitably to universal doubt; if reality is in the end reducible to sensible appearance, then, since this is in a state of perpetual flux and self-contradiction, no kind of certitude will any longer be possible. [...] Truth is necessary and immutable; but in the sensible order nothing necessary or immutable is to be found; therefore sensible things will never yield us any truth.””

Étienne Gilson

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History is the only laboratory we have in which to test the consequences of thought.

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“Modern man, brought up on Kantian idealism, regards nature as being no more than an outcome of the laws of the mind. Losing all their independence as divine works, things gravitate henceforth round human thought, whence their laws are derived. What wonder, after that, is if criticism had resulted in the virtual disappearance of all metaphysics? [...] As soon as…

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Humans feel at home in a world of things, whose essences and laws it can grasp and define in terms of concepts; but shy…

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“When man subverted order he did a great deal more than merely fall away from the rationality of his nature, diminish his own humanity, which is all that he does in Aristostle's ethics, nor he did merely compromise his destiny by an error, as it happens in the Plathonic myths; he brought disorder into the divine order, and presents the…

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“Just as it is by His goodness that God gives being to beings, so also it is by His goodness that He makes causes to be causes, thus delegating to them a certain participation in His actuality. Or rather, since causality flows from actuality, let us say that He confers the one in conferring the other, so that to the…

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To minds tormented by the divine thirst, it is useless to offer the most certain knowledge of the laws of numbers and the arrangement…

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“As long as one makes some kind of conscious state, whether a “passive sensation” or an “apprehended”, come before reality, one will remain more or less in debt to the idealist method. The realist method pursues an exactly opposite course. Every given reality implies the thought which apprehends it. Therefore being is the condition of knowing; knowing is not the…

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Man is not a mind that thinks, but a being who knows other beings as true, who loves them as good and who enjoys…

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If our previous analyses are correct, they all point to the same conclusion, that metaphysical adventures are doomed to fail when their authors substitute…

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“But if one decides to start with Descartes and finish with Aristotle, and to employ an idealist method while shamelessly making use of a…

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