Raymond Geuss - Question Quotes

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An imagined threat might be an extremely powerful motivation to action; and an aspiration, even if built on fantasy, is not nothing, provided it really moves people to action. … Even illusions can have effects. The realist must take powerful illusions seriously as factors in the world that have whatever motivational power they in fact have for the population in question, that is, as something to be understood. This is compatible with seeing through them, and refusing steadfastly to make them part of the cognitive apparatus one employs oneself to try to make sense of the world.

Raymond Geuss

Asking what the question is, and why the question is asked, is always asking a pertinent question.

Raymond Geuss

The general point that a political theory is, among other things, a partisan intervention, is well taken. So question about the actual political implication of a theory cannot be excluded as, in principle, irrelevant.

Raymond Geuss