Philosophy Quote by Cristiane Serruya — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“في سفر التكوين، عهد الله إلى الإنسان بالسيادة على الحيوانات. وبإمكاننا أن نفسر ذلك قائلين إن الله قد أعار هذه السلطة له. الإنسان ليس مالك الكوكب بل وكيله وعليه ذات يوم أن يقدم كشفاً لحسابه. ديكارت ذهب أبعد من ذلك في هذا المنحى: جعل الإنسان «سيد الطبيعة ومالكها». وهو منطقي جداً بالتأكيد فيما يتعلق بنفيه لوجود الروح عند الحيوانات. فحسب ما يقول ديكارت، الإنسان هو المالك والسيد فيما الحيوان ليس إلا مسيّراً وآلة حية، أو ما يمسيه بال «ماشينا-أنيماتا». عندما يئن الحيوان فالأمر لا يتعلق بشكوى بل بصرير تطلقه آلة تسير بشكل سيئ. فحين تئز عجلة عربة فهذا لا يعني أن العربة تتألم بل لأنها تحتاج إلى تشحيم. وبالطريقة ذاتها يجب أن يُفسّر نحيب الحيوان. ويجب ألا نشفق على كلب يُشرَّح وهو حيّ في مختبر.”

“Że też w tym kraju każdy kelner jest filozofem i każdy filozof kelnerem.”

“Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.”

“Let us, in our character of knowers, not be ungrateful towards such determined reversals of the ordinary perspectives and values, with which the mind had for too long raged against itself with an apparently futile sacrilege! In the same way the very seeing of another vista, the very wishing to see another vista, is no little training and preparation of the intellect for its eternal "Objectivity" — objectivity being understood not as "contemplation without interest" (for that is inconceivable and nonsensical), but as the ability to have the pros and cons in one's power and to switch them on and off, so as to get to know how to utilise, for the advancement of knowledge, the difference in the perspective and in the emotional interpretations. But let us, forsooth, my philosophic colleagues, henceforward guard ourselves more carefully against this mythology of dangerous ancient ideas, which has set up a "pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge"; let us guard ourselves from the tentacles of such contradictory ideas as "pure reason," "absolute spirituality," "knowledge-in-itself": — in these theories an eye that cannot be thought of is required to think, an eye which ex hypothesi has no direction at all, an eye in which the active and interpreting functions are cramped, are absent; those functions, I say, by means of which "abstract" seeing first became seeing something; in these theories consequently the absurd and the nonsensical is always demanded of the eye. There is only a seeing from a perspective, only a "knowing" from a perspective, and the more emotions we express over a thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we train on the same thing, the more complete will be our "idea" of that thing, our "objectivity." But the elimination of the will altogether, the switching off of the emotions all and sundry, granted that we could do so, what! would not that be called intellectual castration?”