To philosophize with open eyes is to philosophize in the dark. Only the blind can look straight at the sun.
Interpretation
Philosophy requires awareness and critical thinking; blindly accepting ideas leads to ignorance.
In this quote, Louis Althusser emphasizes the importance of conscious thought in philosophical inquiry. He warns against the dangers of naively accepting ideas without critical examination, suggesting that true understanding involves both awareness and the courage to confront challenging truths, much like the inability to directly look at the sun without impairing oneβs vision.
In practice
In a philosophical debate, one might use this quote to underline the necessity of questioning assumptions.
Occasionally, the whole class struggle may be summed up in the struggle for one word against another word. Certain words struggle amongst themselves as enemies. Other words are the site of an ambiguity: the stake in a decisive but undecided battle
It is characteristic of ideology to impose self-evident facts as self-evident facts.
Relations of production are first reproduced by the materiality of the processes of production and circulation. But it should not be forgotten that ideological relations are immediately present in these same processes.
Philosophy is, in the last instance, class struggle in the field of theory.
Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.
I have a deep sympathy with war; it so apes the gait and bearing of the soul.
A real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation [...] He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribed in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.
I'm interested in non-fiction, but a form of it which is very badly behaved, which doesn't define itself as straight-ahead journalism or memoir. It blurs boundaries, plays fast and loose with the truth - not to be silly, whimsical or lazy, but to get greater purchase on what it feels like to be alive.
Buddhism teaches us not to try to run away from suffering. You have to confront suffering. You have to look deeply into the nature of suffering in order to recognize its cause, the making of the suffering.
Slavery discourages arts and manufacturing ...[and] every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant.
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