Spectator Philosophy Quotes

It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I'd been happy, and that I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.

Philosophy is not a spectator sport.

I think true freedom is being yourself no matter what. True freedom is living authentically. As if there are no spectators. You are the subject, and you are the object under observation. Only you exist. Only you! And no one else. You live the way you live when you are alone in your room. You behave the way you behave when you are alone in your room. You are under the spotlight. It is you who switched it on. And it is you who is focusing the same on yourself.

I’ve never thought of writing as the mere arrangement of words on the page but the attempted embodiment of a vision; a complex of emotions; raw experience. The effort of memorable art is to evoke in the reader or spectator emotions appropriate to that effort.

All great discoveries and inventions spring from the delight of strong men in victory. They are expressions of personality and not of the utilitarian thinking of the masses, who are merely spectators of the event, but must take its consequences whatever they may be.

Volume II, Chapter 4 "How unwise had the wanderers been, who had deserted its shelter, entangled themselves in the web of society, and entered on what men of the world call "life,"—that labyrinth of evil, that scheme of mutual torture. To live, according to this sense of the word, we must not only observe and learn, we must also feel; we must not be mere spectators of action, we must act; we must not describe, but be subjects of description. Deep sorrow must have been the inmate of our bosoms; fraud must have lain in wait for us; the artful must have deceived us; sickening doubt and false hope must have chequered our days; hilarity and joy, that lap the soul in ecstasy, must at times have possessed us. Who that knows what "life" is, would pine for this feverish species of existence? I have lived. I have spent days and nights of festivity; I have joined in ambitious hopes, and exulted in victory: now,—shut the door on the world, and build high the wall that is to separate me from the troubled scene enacted within its precincts. Let us live for each other and for happiness; let us seek peace in our dear home, near the inland murmur of streams, and the gracious waving of trees, the beauteous vesture of earth, and sublime pageantry of the skies. Let us leave "life," that we may live.

The Story of the Rabbit and the Eggplant Once there was a race between a rabbit and an eggplant. Now, the eggplant, as you know, is a member of the vegetable kingdom, and the rabbit is a very fast animal. Everybody bet lots of money on the eggplant, thinking that if a vegetable challenges a live animal with four legs to a race, then it must be that the vegetable knows something. People expected the eggplant to win the race by some clever trick of philosophy. The race was started, and there was a lot of cheering. The rabbit streaked out of sight. The eggplant just sat there at the starting line. Everybody knew that in some surprising way the eggplant would wind up winning the race. Nothing of the sort happened. Eventually, the rabbit crossed the finish line and the eggplant hadn’t moved an inch. The spectators ate the eggplant. Moral: Never bet on an eggplant.

Ignorance is the world's oldest prison, fear is the world's oldest slave master, envy is the world's oldest poison, desire is the world's oldest fuel, curiosity is the world's oldest scholar, conscience is the world's oldest preacher, karma is the world's oldest judge, time is the world's oldest healer, destiny is the world's oldest prophet, truth is the world's oldest sage, courage is the world's oldest warrior, love is the world's oldest angel, joy is the world's oldest medicine, intelligence is the world's oldest professor, light is the world's oldest mirror, eternity is the world's oldest vault, knowledge is the world's oldest tree, wisdom is the world's oldest fountain, nature is the world's oldest clock, reality is the world's oldest portrait, darkness is the world's oldest curtain, stars are the world's oldest lamps, the sky is the world's oldest blanket, the Earth is the world's oldest bedroom, life is the world's oldest theatre, fate is the world's oldest conductor, people are the world's oldest actors, angels are the world's oldest spectators, and God is the world's oldest theatre owner.

It is more important to win over the heart of the spectator, than to win the argument itself.

Life itself moves so fast and is so mystical we often easily slip into a force-fed trance that enables us to do only a couple of basic actions, which is essentially to survive and spectate.

He does not admire the merely contemplative life; like Goethe he scorns knowledge that does not lead to action: "men ought to know that in the theatre of human life it is only for Gods and angels to be spectators.

It’s weird,” she said, “the way sometimes you’re in your life, but other times you’re looking back at it like a spectator. It kind of goes back and forth, back and forth.” “And then you die.” She laughed a little. “Yes. And then you die.

There is a Hindu school of philosophy that says that we are not the actors in our lives, but rather the spectators, and this is illustrated using the metaphor of a dancer. These days, maybe it would be better to say an actor. A spectator sees a dancer or an actor, or, if you prefer, reads a novel, and ends up identifying with one of the characters who is there in front of him. This is what those Hindu thinkers before the fifth century said. And the same thing happens with us. I, for example, was born the same day as Jorge Luis Borges, exactly the same day. I have seen him be ridiculous in some situations, pathetic in others. And, as I have always had him in front of me, I have ended up identifying with him.

Givers are worth more than takers. Earners are worth more than beggars. Sharers are worth more than hoarders. Lovers are worth more than haters. Builders are worth more than destroyers. Creators are worth more than imitators. Leaders are worth more than followers. Learners are worth more than teachers. Doers are worth more than talkers. Dreamers are worth more than doubters. Winners are worth more than losers. Encouragers are worth more than detractors. Defenders are worth more than aggressors. Liberators are worth more than jailers. Soldiers are worth more than murderers. Angels are worth more than monsters. Protectors are worth more than attackers. Originators are worth more than copiers. Achievers are worth more than quitters. Victors are worth more than failures. Conquerors are worth more than warriors. Contenders are worth more than spectators. Producers are worth more than users. Motivators are worth more than discouragers. Masters are worth more than amateurs. Intercessors are worth more than accusers. Emancipators are worth more than backstabbers. Sympathizers are worth more than provokers. Healers are worth more than killers. Peacemakers are worth more than instigators. Deliverers are worth more than collaborators. Saviors are worth more than invaders. Believers are worth more than sinners.

Some guns were fired to give notice that the departure of the balloon was near. ... Means were used, I am told, to prevent the great balloon's rising so high as might endanger its bursting. Several bags of sand were taken on board before the cord that held it down was cut, and the whole weight being then too much to be lifted, such a quantity was discharged as would permit its rising slowly. Thus it would sooner arrive at that region where it would be in equilibrio with the surrounding air, and by discharging more sand afterwards, it might go higher if desired. Between one and two o'clock, all eyes were gratified with seeing it rise majestically from above the trees, and ascend gradually above the buildings, a most beautiful spectacle. When it was about two hundred feet high, the brave adventurers held out and waved a little white pennant, on both sides of their car, to salute the spectators, who returned loud claps of applause. The wind was very little, so that the object though moving to the northward, continued long in view; and it was a great while before the admiring people began to disperse. The persons embarked were Mr. Charles, professor of experimental philosophy, and a zealous promoter of that science; and one of the Messrs Robert, the very ingenious constructors of the machine. {While U.S. ambassador to France, writing about witnessing, from his carriage outside the garden of Tuileries, Paris, the first manned balloon ascent using hydrogen gas by Jacques Charles on the afternoon of 1 Dec 1783. A few days earlier, he had watched the first manned ascent in Montgolfier's hot-air balloon, on 21 Nov 1783.}

The notion that capital – as an infinitely ramified system of exploitation, an abstract, intangible but overpowering logic, a process without a subject or a subject without a face – poses formidable obstacles to its representation has often been taken in a sublime or tragic key. *Vast*, beyond the powers of individual or collective cognition; *invisible*, in its fundamental forms; *overwhelming*, in its capacity to reshape space, time and matter – but unlike the sublime, or indeed the tragic, in its propensity to thwart any reaffirmation of the uniqueness and interiority of a subject. Not a shipwreck *with* a spectator, but a shipwreck *of* the spectator.

Zen master is not trying to give you ideas about life; he is trying to give you life itself, to make you realize life in and around you, to make you live it instead of being a mere spectator, a mere pedant absorbed in the dry bones of something which the life has long deserted. A symphony is not explained by a mathematical analysis of its notes; the mystery of a woman’s beauty is not revealed by a postmortem dissection; and no one ever understood the wonder of a bird on the wing by stuffing it and putting it in a glass case. To understand these things, you must live and move with them as they are alive. The same is true of the universe: no amount of intellectual analysis will explain it, for philosophy and science can only reveal its mechanism, never its meaning or, as the Chinese say, its Tao. “What is the Tao?” A Zen master answers, “Usual life is the very Tao.” “How does one bring oneself into accord with it?” “If you try to accord with it, you will get away from it.” For to imagine that there is a “you” separate from life which somehow has to accord with life is to fall straight into the trap.

now I want to speak about the word ‘theory’. This was originally an Orphic word, which Cornford interprets as ‘passionate sympathetic contemplation’. In this state, he says, ‘The spectator is identified with the suffering God, dies in his death, and rises again in his new birth.’ for Pythagoras, the ‘passionate sympathetic contemplation’ was intellectual, and issued in mathematical knowledge. In this way, through Pythagoreanism, ‘theory’ gradually acquired its modern meaning; but for all who were inspired by Pythagoras it retained an element of ecstatic revelation. To those who have reluctantly learnt a little mathematics in school this may seem strange; but to those who have experienced the intoxicating delight of sudden understanding that mathematics gives, from time to time, to those who love it, the Pythagorean view will seem completely natural even if untrue.

theory'. This was originally an Orphic word, which Cornford interprets as 'passionate sympathetic contemplation'. In this state, he says, 'The spectator is identified with the suffering God, dies in his death, and rises again in his new birth.' For Pythagoras, the 'passionate sympathetic contemplation' was intellectual, and issued in mathematical knowledge. In this way, through Pythagoreanism, 'theory' gradually acquired its modern meaning; but for all who were inspired by Pythagoras it retained an element of ecstatic revelation.

I too felt ready to start life all over again. As if this great release of anger had purged me of evil, emptied me of hope; and standing before this symbolic night bursting with stars, I opened myself for the first time to tender indifference of the world. To feel it so like me, so like a brother, in fact, I understood that I had been happy, and I was still happy. So that it might be finished, so that I might feel less alone, I could only hope there would be many, many spectators on the day of my execution and that they would greet me with cries of hatred.

Have you ever witnessed the anger of the good shopkeeper, James Goodfellow, when his careless son has happened to break a pane of glass? If you have been present at such a scene, you will most assuredly bear witness to the fact that every one of the spectators, were there even thirty of them, by common consent apparently, offered the unfortunate owner this invariable consolation – "It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Everybody must live, and what would become of the glaziers if panes of glass were never broken?" Now, this form of condolence contains an entire theory, which it will be well to show up in this simple case, seeing that it is precisely the same as that which, unhappily, regulates the greater part of our economical institutions. Suppose it cost six francs to repair the damage, and you say that the accident brings six francs to the glazier's trade – that it encourages that trade to the amount of six francs – I grant it; I have not a word to say against it; you reason justly. The glazier comes, performs his task, receives his six francs, rubs his hands, and, in his heart, blesses the careless child. All this is that which is seen. But if, on the other hand, you come to the conclusion, as is too often the case, that it is a good thing to break windows, that it causes money to circulate, and that the encouragement of industry in general will be the result of it, you will oblige me to call out, "Stop there! Your theory is confined to that which is seen; it takes no account of that which is not seen." It is not seen that as our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he cannot spend them upon another. It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another book to his library. In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way, which this accident has prevented.

Lippmann was a major figure in many domains, including political theory. The main collection of his political essays is called “political philosophy for liberal democracy.” In these essays he explains that the “public must be put in its place” so that “the intelligent minorities” may live free of “the trampling and roar of the bewildered herd,” the public. Members of the bewildered herd are supposed to be “spectators of action,” not “participants.” They do have a function, however. Their function is to show up periodically to push a button to vote for a selected member of the leadership class. Then they are to go away and leave us alone. That’s progressive democratic theory. I

The rats at the door had gone away. I drank another bottle of wine. To think I was once rich. I once had money. I had everything but something. I used to think that all people desire to be cared for; some are so used to it that they take it for granted, others, who never feel it, desire it so much that they constantly need it. So much in fact, that when they don’t receive it they have outbursts, and in the end they wind up pushing away those people who in the end would have cared for them as their heart desired within its innermost depths. So they are always alone, always on the edge of society, within it, but at the same time, apart from it. They are like spectators watching with envy the dance of mankind, wishing for that one feeling that only another’s love can bring. A whisper that speaks to one and only one and says: “You truly are worth something.” They never know that feeling that shines on some. So they cease to expect and begin looking elsewhere for that…wonderful whisper of… War. Love almost seems like war. The ancient Greeks used to say, ‘Love as if you will one day hate.’ I used to think that meant something very pessimistic, that love was not real. But really, man is just an animal anyway. It’s not just about that though, the Greeks meant more. It’s like, ‘Live as if you will one day die.’ Do not take for granted life, and for the Greeks, do not take for granted your love. After all, it really is something special. Even if it doesn’t last, it’s the moment that matters. How cliché, but the problem with most men is that they learn words, rather than the concepts that the words signify. And life, death, love, are these not the most important things, those which a man should learn before all else. And the moment…what of this, even in misery it still matters. But all we learn are words and a way to be. God I love wine.

The civilized man is distinguished from the savage mainly by prudence, or, to use a slightly wider term, forethought. He is willing to endure present pains for the sake of future pleasures, even if the future pleasures are rather distant. This habit began to be important with the rise of agriculture; no animal and no savage would work in the spring in order to have food next winter, except for a few purely instinctive forms of action, such as bees making honey or squirrels burying nuts. In these cases, there is no forethought; there is a direct impulse to an act which, to the human spectator, is obviously going to prove useful later on. True forethought only arises when a man does something towards which no impulse urges him, because his reason tells him that he will profit by it at some future date. Hunting requires no forethought, because it is pleasurable; but tilling the soil is labour, and cannot be done from spontaneous impulse. Civilization checks impulse not only through forethought, which is a self-administered check, but also through law, custom, and religion. This check it inherits from barbarism, but it makes it less instinctive and more systematic. Certain acts are labelled criminal, and are punished; certain others, though not punished by law, are labelled wicked, and expose those who are guilty of them to social disapproval. The institution of private property brings with it the subjection of women, and usually the creation of a slave class. On the one hand the purposes of the community are enforced upon the individual, and, on the other hand the individual, having acquired the habit of viewing his life as a whole, increasingly sacrifices his present to his future. It is evident that this process can be carried too far, as it is, for instance, by the miser. But without going to such extremes, prudence may easily involve the loss of some of the best things in life.

The legendary inscription above the Academy's door speaks loudly about Plato's attitude toward mathematics. In fact, most of the significant mathematical research of the fourth century BC was carried out by people associated in one way or another with the Academy. Yet Plato himself was not a mathematician of great technical dexterity, and his direct contributions to mathematical knowledge were probably minimal. Rather, he was an enthusiastic spectator, a motivating source of challenge, an intelligent critic, an an inspiring guide. The first century philosopher and historian Philodemus paints a clear picture: "At that time great progress was seen in mathematics, with Plato serving as the general architect setting out problems, and the mathematicians investigating them earnestly." To which the Neoplatonic philosopher and mathematician Proclus adds: "Plato...greatly advanced mathematics in general and geometry in particular because of his zeal for these studies. It is well known that his writings are thickly sprinkled with mathematical terms and that he everywhere tries to arouse admiration for mathematics among students of philosophy." In other words, Plato, whose mathematical knowledge was broadly up to date, could converse with the mathematicians as an equal and as a problem presenter, even though his personal mathematical achievements were not significant.

This something, I believe, is simply the presupposition that theatre is in and of itself communitarian. This presupposition continues to precede theatrical performances and anticipate its effects. But in a theatre, in front of a performance, just as in a museum, school or street, there are only ever individuals plotting their own paths in the forest of things, acts and signs that confront or surround them. The collective power shared by spectators does not stem from the fact that they are members of a collective body or from some specific form of interactivity. It is the power each of them has to translate what she perceives in her own way, to link it to the unique intellectual adventure that makes her similar to all the rest in as much as this adventure is not like any other. This shared power of the equality of intelligence links individuals, makes them exchange their intellectual adventures, in so far as it keeps them separate from one another, equally capable of using the power everyone has to plot her own path. What our performances — be they teaching or playing, speaking, writing, making art or looking at it — verify is not our participation in a power embodied in the community. It is the capacity of anonymous people, the capacity that makes everyone equal to everyone else. This capacity is exercised through irreducible distances; it is exercised by an unpredictable interplay of associations and dissociations.

Pagans were not impressed by the torture of Christians merely because it showed that they honestly held their opinion; they knew that millions of people honestly held all sorts of opinions. The point of such extreme martyrdom is much more subtle. It is that it gives an appearance of a man having something quite specially strong to back him up, of his drawing upon some power. And this can only be proved when all his physical contentment is destroyed; when all the current of his bodily being is reversed and turned to pain. If a man is seen to be roaring with laughter all the time that he is skinned alive, it would not be unreasonable to deduce that somewhere in the recesses of his mind he had thought of a rather good joke. Similarly, if men smiled and sang (as they did) while they were being boiled or torn in pieces, the spectators felt the presence of something more than mere mental honesty: they felt the presence of some new and unintelligible kind of pleasure, which, presumably, came from somewhere. It might be a strength of madness, or a lying spirit from Hell; but it was something quite positive and extraordinary; as positive as brandy and as extraordinary as conjuring. The Pagan said to himself: "If Christianity makes a man happy while his legs are being eaten by a lion, might it not make me happy while my legs are still attached to me and walking down the street?" The Secularists laboriously explain that martyrdoms do not prove a faith to be true, as if anybody was ever such a fool as to suppose that they did. What they did prove, or, rather, strongly suggest, was that something had entered human psychology which was stronger than strong pain. If a young girl, scourged and bleeding to death, saw nothing but a crown descending on her from God, the first mental step was not that her philosophy was correct, but that she was certainly feeding on something.

The religion of this 'I', the poetry of this 'I', and the philosophy of the same 'I' that from Poggio and Felelfo to Byron and Goethe produced a number of works astonishing for their profundity and brilliance have finally exhausted its content; and in the poetry of Decadence we see the rapid falling away of the empty shell of this 'I'. We remarked previously about the exaggeration without the exaggerated object, and about the precious style without the subject of this preciosity, which characterize this poetry — this is so in regard to its form; in regard to its content Decadence is above all hopeless egoism. The world, as an object of love, of interest, even as the object of indignation or contempt, has disappeared from this "poetry”; the world has disappeared, not only as an object exciting some reaction in this vapid 'I', but also as a spectator and possible judge of this 'I'; it is not even present. ("On Symbolists And Decadence")

For the spectator does not see space, he sees the objects and events; he does not perceive the coordinates with the same cyclopean eye of the camera. With his entire body, desires, and fantasies, he perceives the existential dimensions by which the world is organized.

Well, of course, I agree as far as the facts will allow. Wherever the option between losing truth and gaining it is not momentous, we can throw the chance of gaining truth away, and at any rate save ourselves from any chance of believing falsehood, by not making up our minds at all till objective evidence has come. In scientific questions, this is almost always the case; and even in human affairs in general, the need of acting is seldom so urgent that a false belief to act on is better than no belief at all. Law courts, indeed, have to decide on the best evidence attainable for the moment, because a judge's duty is to make law as well as to ascertain it, and (as a learned judge once said to me) few cases are worth spending much time over: the great thing is to have them decided on any acceptable principle, and got out of the way. But in our dealings with objective nature we obviously are recorders, not makers, of the truth; and decisions for the mere sake of deciding promptly and getting on to the next business would be wholly out of place. Throughout the breadth of physical nature facts are what they are quite independently of us, and seldom is there any such hurry about them that the risks of being duped by believing a premature theory need be faced. The questions here are always trivial options, the hypotheses are hardly living (at any rate not living for us spectators), the choice between believing truth or falsehood is seldom forced. The attitude of skeptical balance is therefore the absolutely wise one if we would escape mistakes. What difference, indeed, does it make to most of us whether we have or have not a theory of the Röntgen rays, whether we believe or not in mind-stuff, or have a conviction about the causality of conscious states? It makes no difference. Such options are not forced on us. On every account it is better not to make them, but still keep weighing reasons pro et contra with an indifferent hand.

There is a "singular nature" of the durée which makes it at once my manner of being and a universal dimension for other beings in such a way that what is "superior" and "inferior" to us still remains "in a certain sense, interior to us." What I observe is a concordance and a discordance of things with my durée; these are the things with me in a lateral relationship of coexistence. I have the idea of a durée of the universe distinct from mine only because it extends the whole length of mine and because it is necessary that something in the melting sugar respond to my waiting for a glass of sugar water. When we are at the source of the durée, we are also at the heart of things because they are the adversity which makes us wait. The relation of the philosopher to being is not the frontal relation of the spectator to the spectacle; it is a kind of complicity, an oblique and clandestine relationship. We understand now how Bergson can say that the absolute is "very close to us and, in a certain measure, in us." It is in the way in which things modulate our durée.

Lippmann was a major figure in many domains, including political theory. The main collection of his political essays is called “political philosophy for liberal democracy.” In these essays he explains that the “public must be put in its place” so that “the intelligent minorities” may live free of “the trampling and roar of the bewildered herd,” the public. Members of the bewildered herd are supposed to be “spectators of action,” not “participants.” They do have a function, however. Their function is to show up periodically to push a button to vote for a selected member of the leadership class. Then they are to go away and leave us alone. That’s progressive democratic theory.

To create the magic of life is your own responsibility, Because People are just spectators who create problems.

The ethical autonomy the impartial spectator offers us is a deception that has the function of rendering us more profoundly sociable than we were when we were in a state of ethical childhood and dependency. Rousseau once famously remarked that while men were born free, everywhere they were in chains. In Smith’s view the chains were those of the imagination, chains that could be loosened by a common-sense, sceptical awareness of the processes by which the moral personality was formed, but never altogether thrown off. And while Smith’s account of the life of virtue lived under the direction of the impartial spectator might seem to be nothing more than a subtle deception to a Rousseaunian or a Christian, and while this fabric of deception was to trouble him at the end of his life, Smith was to argue that the satisfaction of being able to live sociably under the direction of the impartial spectator was enough for humankind, and enough to encourage the improvement of society and the progress of civilization from the self-evidently wretched condition in which it had hitherto existed.

Only emotion differs in nature from both intelligence and instinct, from both intelligent individual egoism and quasi-instinctive social pressure. Obviously no one denies that egoism produces emotions; and even more so social pressure, with all the fantasies of the story-telling function. But in both these cases, emotion is always connected to a representation on which it is supposed to depend. We are then placed in a composite of emotion and of representation, without noticing that it is potential, the nature of emotion as pure element. The latter in fact precedes all representation, itself generating new ideas. It does not have, strictly speaking, an object, but merely an essence that spreads itself over various objects, animals, plants and the whole of nature. "Imagine a piece of music which expresses love. It is not love for a particular person.... The quality of love will depend upon its essence and not upon its object." Although personal, it is not individual; transcendent, it is like the God in us. "When music cries, it is humanity, it is the whole of nature which cries with it. Truly speaking, it does not introduce these feelings in us; it introduces us rather into them, like the passers-by that might be nudged in a dance". In short, emotion is creative (first because it expresses the whole of creation, then because it creates the work in which it is expressed; and finally, because it communicates a little of this creativity to spectators or hearers).

Christians who are primarily spectators, or whose service has not gotten beyond helping with the chores around the home church, have little demand for putting truth to the test. This leaves them especially vulnerable to the prevailing winds of philosophy that are blowing across the nation.

A crucial question for them, indeed, one challenging their humanity, is the question addressed to the spectator at the scene of evil. How continue life as normal after having seen that? How, if you are not a stone or a pile of dead wood or a cadaver? How, in other terms, without disappearing into the insentient natural cosmos? The victim and survivor of the Holocaust thus puts his question, embodied in literary form, so to say, of a prayer. To be indifferent is to stand condemned.

right man to prepare the citizens of his country, who were facing disempowerment, for the benefits of the vita contemplativa. The transition to reflective existence was worth an error in reasoning: Cicero unhesitatingly created a lofty nimbus for the future Roman spectator by portraying Pythagoras making the many in the stadium into the few in study.

Sometimes to observe what's going on in your life you have to sit back and become a spectator of your own life.

men ought to know that in the theatre of human life it is only for Gods and angels to be spectators.

The inescapable conclusion is that instrumentalism is not the result of a scholarly analysis but rests on a personal choice. It buys practical relevance and popularity at the expense of a thorough explication, examination, and justification of the foundations of its teachings. Like so many programs which are impatient with the exacting and hard issues of traditional epistemology, pragmatism under the guise of down-to-earth practicality and progress, promotes a thoughtless dogma. Dewey was not doing philosophy, he was writing a creed. But upon reflection this should not surprise us. At the beginning we noted that pragmatism set forth the view that truth is what which 'works.' At that point, we could have asked whether the pragmatic theory claims to be true in the older sense of a current description of what is the case. If it does not (and it could not, given Dewey's disdain for a spectator approach to truth), then what could pragmatism be? It could only be a recommendation. And as such (prescriptive, rather than descriptive), we are free to reject it.

In the world of greatness, never be a spectator; become a noble contributor. Seek new opportunities, work on your novel ideas and maximize your potential, then watch the story of your life become spectacular.

In the world of greatness, never be a spectator, become a noble contributor. Seek new opportunities, work on your novel ideas and maximize your potential, then watch the story of your life become spectacular.