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The real problems do not change, and no solution is found. The duty of philosophy is to say: this solution is invalid, here is the problem again.
The honest philosopher is the one who does not let his craft think for him.
When the solutions proposed by a philosopher seem confusing to us, in order to understand them, we must strive to understand fully the particular problem the philosopher wanted to solve in the first place.
To the modern proclamation; “if a philosophy is not scientific, it is nothing,” let us answer that, on the contrary: if a philosophy is concerned with being scientific, it is nothing.
All metaphysics must work with metaphors, and almost all end up only working on metaphors.
Heavy digestion recreates the universe of Maine de Biran’s journal.
That philosophy may seem to be a purely intellectual discipline, a system of knowledge, a research project, is a singular misunderstanding.
Philosophy is a life. It is a way of life intimately shot through with intelligence and reason, fully lucid and ordered toward the purposes of the spirit.
They have buried metaphysics so many times that it must be considered immortal.
Modern philosophy is nothing more than a series of appendices to Kantian thought.
In refuting the ideas of some philosopher, what is generally actually refuted are the ideas that history has come to associate with the terms of the philosopher.
In other words, what is being refuted are today’s ideas.
The philosophical ideas of scientists are almost always childish, while the ideas philosophers have regarding the sciences are never childish even if they may be wrong.
All authentic philosophy is built to in the face of skepticism, and moves through it. The idea born as an illumination and whose evidence refutes all doubt lacks philosophical importance. Its authenticity can only be affirmed when its evidence meets a challenging interrogation, and when it nevertheless manages to assimilate. Any evidence that does not reveal a secret wound and a kind of human fragility is just an impertinent statement.
Injustice with ideas is, in philosophy, like injustice in politics: the condition of success.
Philosophy can no longer concern itself with the world as man desires it to be, much less attempt to transform it into the world they preach of. Philosophy can only build shelters to protect man from the strange harshness of the times.
The fool is scandalized and laughs when he notices philosophers contradict one another.
It is difficult to make the fool understand that philosophy is precisely that: that art of mutually contradicting one another without canceling each other out.
In philosophy, only the excessive, the extreme, matters.
The truth seems to be found in an absurd but vehement statement, rather than in a rich proposition of nuanced and prudent concessions.
He who fears the absurd lacks philosophical genius.
In the universities, philosophy merely hibernates.
In order to understand the philosopher, it is not necessary to thoroughly investigate his ideas, but to identify the angel against whom he fights.
Nietzsche is only spoiled; Hegel is blasphemous.
Philosophy, in our time, is an instrument of man’s liberation. Escaping the rigid coordinates of science, the oppression of a collective myth, is the current task of the spirit. We long for something to return us to our nakedness before God.
The difference between the man of science and the philosopher is that the former advances from triumph to triumph, collecting only worthless ashes from each victory, while the latter from defeat to defeat, enriching his soul with the substance of each failure.
Treatises on metaphysics are the favorite amusement of angels. When a minor angel brings them a new book on the topic, the cherubs gleefully flap their Assyrian monster wings.
The philosopher does not demonstrate, he reveals. He says nothing to someone who does not see.
The terms which the philosopher invents to express himself, and which the people eventually use as worn metaphors, pass through an intermediate stage when the semi-educated employ them, with pedantic emphasis, in order to feign thoughts they do not have.
The philosopher is not a spokesman of his age, but an angel captive in time.
Everything is trivial if the universe is not engaged in a metaphysical adventure.
Philosophy is the art of lucidly formulating problems.
Inventing solutions is not an occupation of serious intellects.
I wish the philosophers of the 18th century could return with their wit, their sarcasm, their audacity, so that they could undermine, dismantle, and demolish the “prejudices” of this century. The prejudices they bequeathed to us.
To philosophize is not to solve problems but to live them at a certain level.
I only trust the philosophy that confirms the most basic religious instinct.
For the teaching of philosophy, what is necessary is a systematic doctrine. It doesn’t matter if it’s stupid, only that it’s complete.
In philosophy, a single naive question is sometimes enough to make an entire system collapse.
The whole of philosophy is marginal commentary on the Platonic dialogues.
Philosophers tend to be more influential due to what they seem to have said rather than what they’ve actually said.
To grasp any philosophical system, one must provisionally accept the author’s postulates.
Common sense is the paternal home to which philosophy eventually and regularly returns, feeble and emaciated.
Philosophies begin in philosophy and end in rhetoric.
The only goals a philosopher has ever come up with regarding human achievement in history have been tedious or sinister.
Since philosophy is a dialogue, there is no reason to suppose that the last one to give his opinion is the one who is right.
The only thing that should not be forgiven a philosopher is if the sciences impress him and technology dazzles him.
To philosophize is to guess, without ever being able to know whether we are right.
The study of philosophy, like science, can become an occasion to entertain oneself and, thus, to forget our authentic task of thinking.
Solutions in philosophy are the disguise of new problems.
Those who deal with philosophy would not take it so seriously, if they didn’t usually make a living professing it.
The difficult thing in philosophy is not to write for the expert but for the layman.
The philosopher becomes unbalanced easily;
only the moralist tends not to lose his mind.
In every philosophical system there is a secret place where the solid reasoning falls apart, where the continuity of thought is broken.
The philosopher’s intuitions sometimes dazzle us, but his ratiocinations make us bristle with objections.
The notion of determinism has had a corrupting and terrorizing influence on the work of philosophy.
Philosophy resigns when it stops asking simple questions.
What is “difficult” about a difficult philosopher is more often his language than his philosophy.
I have seen philosophy gradually fade away between my skepticism and my faith.
Philosophical systems differ from each-other less in their ways of solving than of hiding problems.
Note: Dávila was a Colombian political philosopher and in the Latin church. His aphorisms are presented here for the purposes of enjoyment, study, and historical record, but do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this writer. For more information on Dávila, see this introductory post. For information on how to live your life, go to church and read the Church Fathers/Saints.
Featured image: Dávila in his library.
