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R. W. K. Paterson Quotes
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We cannot find out what a home is by looking at actual instances of homes, since we cannot even begin to pick these out as putatively instances of 'homes' unless we have somewhere in our minds an idea of what a 'home' is truly supposed to be. We can only recognize the false if we can compare it mentally with the true. Thus the average home cannot possibly be taken as a standard measure of what a home should be.
R. W. K. Paterson
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Ultimately, instead of inspecting life to see what we can find to suit us, we inspect ourselves to see what we can find that fits us to receive the standardized packages in which our life-experience is going to arrive.
R. W. K. Paterson
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When we entrust the domain of values to those whose intellectual concerns are essentially centred on empirical facts, and whose conceptual frameworks are inevitably constructed around sets of empirical facts, we need not be surprised if the result is moral confusion.
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There are hells into which we can fall, as well as heavens to which we can climb, when we take with absolute seriousness the invitations and avowals which are wafted to us across the paraconscious. And so the plebeian of soul, fearing what may befall him if he hearkens too closely, stops his ears to these siren enchanters calling through the mist. He might hear heavenly music, but he might be summoned to his death. Neither does Ulysses desire destruction, and he takes steps to guard against the entire bewitchment of his intelligence by the magic voices which are singing their song to him. We must preserve our critical faculties when we listen to the call of our dreams.
R. W. K. Paterson
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On the one hand, the existentialism seeks to remain true to his original vision of the meaninglessness and futility of everything, since this fundamental cosmic honesty must be the basis of any attempt to live authentically; on the other hand, his stark personal reality is that he finds himself unable to appropriate the truth of nihilism existentially, unable to affirm it as his personal truth, the truth within which he will henceforth live: and it is at this point that he clutches at the artifice of commitment, hoping to save himself from nihilistic despair by a desperate leap towards a faith that will restore purpose and meaning to his shattered world.
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There are individuals who are haunted by self-doubt, whose attitude to life is negative and distrustful, or who exist in a state of confusion about what they are and what they can become. … Unlike physical deprivation or obvious social injustice, evils like these strike at the very roots of human life. When men can no longer picture themselves as worthy of existing, it scarcely matters whether they have the means of existing.
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It is nether fortune, status, nor power, nor even intellect, which marks out the Patrician, but intensity of consciousness and the resolve to pursue only what is truly worth pursuing.
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The history of the plebeians' 'struggles' … is largely a record of mankind's struggle to obtain plebeian things. Better food and housing, better physical health, greater economic security— … none of this forms any part of real human living, but at most merely the means to real living, the inglorious subsoil, not meant to be seen, which we tolerate and accept as an unexciting necessity if worthwhile activities and modes of expression are to grow and blossom. … The patrician mind does not deny such necessities. What distinguishes the plebeian mentality is that it treats necessary things as if they were sufficient and treats means as if they were ends.
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There are individuals … who propagate lessons inviting self-abasement, bitterness, self-waste, and cynicism; there are those who high pride, like that of Lucifer, is to dethrone everything they perceive as superior and summoning men to what lies above them.
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The less familiar and more complex something is, the less we can rely on our immediate feelings, and the greater the risk of error in our ultimate moral judgements. … But equally the more remote or unusual some physical event, the less we can rely on our unaided senses. … The arguments which supposedly show that values are in some vitiating sense 'subjective' would also show that the physical world itself is essentially subjective.
R. W. K. Paterson
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Yet would we die as some have done: Beating a way for the rising sun.
Arna Bontemps
R. W. K. Paterson
Bio:
Ronald William Keith Paterson served as a senior lecturer in philosophy in the department of adult education and the department of philosophy at University of Hull.
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