The reformist and revolutionary movements have a strong tendency to think of themselves as rationalistic, and rationalism works on the belief that if only people will divest themselves of prejudice, attend to the evidence and think clearly, they will arrive at the correct solutions to social problems; it implies that for each problem there can… read more »
The rationalists assume that every increase in knowledge and understanding is an advance, a step toward full mental freedom. But this clashes with experience. The people who show themselves, by their behaviour, to be enjoying the experience of freedom, both mental and physical, are not the wise but the ignorant. Those with lifetimes of learning… read more »
A book which has hovered in the background of philosophical discussion for several decades is Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic. According to the blurb on my Penguin copy it is “the original English manifesto of Logical Positivism. It remains the classic statement of this form of empiricist philosophy and still retains its interest after more… read more »
This is from Ouspensky, Tertium Organon, 2nd Edn., 1934: Our usual logic, by which we live, without which ‘the shoe-maker will not sew the boot,’ is deduced from the simple scheme formulated by Aristotle in those writings which were edited by his pupils under the common name of Organon, i.e. the Instrument (of thought). This… read more »
They laughed at Einstein, but he went right ahead and invented relatives. – – – In the paper recently issued, Dialectic of Demand, it is shown to be mainly in social affairs that paradox and dialectical contradiction are to be found. It seems the author of that paper was not the first to note this,… read more »
From The Tragedy of Leon Trotsky, by Leonard Sega1. 1979, p.161. On the 22nd October, 1917, Trotsky addressed a mass meeting. He began by describing the suffering in the trenches: A Soviet regime, he went on, would end that suffering, It would bring peace… And when Trotsky asked the thousands there to join, him in… read more »
A writer in the Ethical Record quotes, apparently without seeing anything odd about it, a statement once made to her: I never make negative statements. (Vol. 05, No. 10, p.16) from Ideological Commentary 8, November 1980.
We are all familiar with the famous passage from J. S. Mill’s essay On Liberty. Or if we are not then we ought to be, and IC makes no apology for reproducing its crucial sentences: The object of this essay is to assert one very simple principle… That principle is that the sole end for… read more »
Peter Shepherd, in a 1998 letter to Trevor Blake, describes this as “a letter from Harold Walsby to an Ipsden friend or aquaintance – not an Ipsden resident, as far as I know, but presumably a frequent participant in Braziers Park weekends.” Perhaps Seton Pollock the mathematician? My dear Seton, Many thanks for your most… read more »
Dialectics is a form of thought which goes back a long way. In the West, Heraclitus in Ancient Greece was aware of it, and in the East, there are a number of thinkers who practised it. The Tao-Te-Ching is a good example of dialectical writing. The first characteristic of dialectical thinking is that it places… read more »