Like apes, we breed, sleep, and die. Yet like God we say, "I am." We are ontological oxymorons.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the complex nature of human existence, contrasting our biological aspects with our conscious identity.
In this quote, Peter Kreeft highlights the paradoxical nature of humanity. On one hand, we share basic biological functions with animals, such as breeding and dying; on the other hand, we possess a self-awareness and a unique ability to assert our existence, which distinguishes us from other creatures. This duality presents us as 'ontological oxymorons,' beings that embody contradictory characteristics, emphasizing the profound nature of human existence.
In practice
This quote can be used in a philosophical discussion about what it means to be human.
Trusting God's grace means trusting God's love for us rather than our love for God. [...] Therefore our prayers should consist mainly of rousing our awareness of God's love for us rather than trying to rouse God's awareness of our love for him, like the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:26-29).
Remembering the facts of death and Heaven gives us an even more pressing reason to learn to pray: We do not have an infinite amount of time. We are one day nearer Home today than we ever were before. I guarantee you that after you die you will not say 'I spent too much time praying; I wish I had watched more TV instead.'
The modern mind always tends to reduce the greater to the lesser rather than seeing the lesser as reflecting the greater.
Our soul, like Mary's body, is to receive God Himself if only we, like her, believe, consent and receive; if only we speak her truly magic word fiat, "let it be." It is the creative word, the word God used to create the universe.
Protestants believe that the sacraments are like ladders that God gave to us by which we can climb up to Him. Catholics believe that they are like ladders that God gave to Himself by which He climbs down to us.
One of the few things in life that cannot possibly do harm in the end is the honest pursuit of the truth.
Asking who won a given war, someone has said, is like asking who won the San Francisco earthquake. That in war there is no victory but only varying degrees of defeat is a proposition that has gained increasing acceptance in the twentieth century.
I am a prisoner of a gaudy and unlivable present, where all forms of human society have reached an extreme of their cycle and there is no imagining what new forms they may assume.
The impact of all these restrictions is on poor women, because women who have means, if their state doesn't provide access, another state does. ... It makes no sense as a national policy to promote birth only among poor people.
The questioners had that beautiful detachment and devotion to stern justice of men dealing in death without being in any danger of it.
The history of thought may be summed up in these words: it is absurd by what it seeks and great by what it finds.
None of us can think we are exempt from concerns for the poor and for social justice.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.