For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of listening and understanding the world through sound rather than merely observing it.
Jacques Attali's quote reflects a deep philosophical viewpoint that challenges traditional notions of knowledge and perception. It suggests that Western thought has often been focused on visual observation, ignoring the vital role that sound and listening play in our understanding of the world. By stating that the world is 'not for the beholding, but for hearing,' Attali invites us to consider a more holistic approach to knowledge that encompasses auditory experiences and the complexities they bring.
In practice
In a discussion on the role of different senses in learning, this quote can highlight the significance of auditory experience.
What is called music today is all too often only a disguise for the monologue of power. However, and this is the supreme irony of it all, never before have musicians tried so hard to communicate with their audience, and never before has that communication been so deceiving. Music now seems hardly more than a somewhat clumsy excuse for the self-glorification of musicians and the growth of a new industrial sector.
I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens.
Ideal society is a drama enacted exclusively in the imagination.
He saw something that makes a man doubtful of the constancy of the realities outside himself. It was the shocking discovery that makes a man wonder if I've missed this, what else have I failed to see?
Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.
It doesn't matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I'm a woman or a man.
To renounce freedom is to renounce one's humanity, one's rights as a man and equally one's duties.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.