The Philosopher’s Pupil Quotes

Since Pawlow and his pupils have succeeded in causing the secretion of saliva in the dog by means of optic and acoustic signals, it no longer seems strange to us that what the philosopher terms an 'idea' is a process which can cause chemical changes in the body.

The letter is only an aid to philosophical communication, the actual essence of which consists in arousing a particular train of thought. Someone speaking thinks and produces—someone listening reflects—and reproduces. Words are a deceptive medium for what is already though—unreliable vehicles of a particular, specific stimulus. The true teacher is a guide. If the pupil genuinely desires truth it requires only a hint to show him how to find what he is seeking. Accordingly the representation of philosophy consists purely of themes—of initial propositions—principles. It exists only for autonomous lovers of truth. The analytical exposition of the theme is only for those who are sluggish or unpracticed. The latter must learn thereby how to fly and keep themselves moving in a particular direction. Attentiveness is a centripetal force. The effective relation between that which is directed and the object of direction begins with the given direction. If we hold fast to this direction we are apodictically certain of reaching the goal that has been set. True collaboration in philosophy then is a common movement toward a beloved world—whereby we relieve each other in the most advanced outpost, a movement that demands the greatest effort against the resisting element within which we are flying.

The modern philosopher claims, like a sort of confident man, that if we will grant him this, the rest will be easy; he will straighten out the world, if he is allowed to give this one twist to the mind... Against all this the philosophy of St. Thomas stands founded on the universal common conviction that eggs are eggs. The Hegelian may say that an egg is really a hen, because it is a part of an endless process of Becoming; the Berkelian may hold that poached eggs only exist as a dream exists, since it is quite as easy to call the dream the cause of the eggs as the eggs the cause of the dream; the Pragmatist may believe that we get the best out of scrambled eggs by forgetting that they ever were eggs, and only remembering the scramble. But no pupil of St. Thomas needs to addle his brains in order adequately to addle his eggs; to put his head at any peculiar angle in looking at eggs, or squinting at eggs, or winking the other eye in order to see a new simplification of eggs. The Thomist stands in the broad daylight of the brotherhood of men, in their common consciousness that eggs are not hens or dreams or mere practical assumptions; but things attested by the Authority of the Senses, which is from God.

It had been his fate not to be interested in anything except everything.

noumenal,

You needle me all the time with your beastly calm superiority, nothing touches you, nothing, you never cry like a real woman.

It had been his fate not to be interested in anything except everything

Jesus had no money, but was the richest of all time; had no education, but was the smartest of all time; had no titles, but was the noblest of all time; had no pedigree, but was the finest of all time; and had no power, but was the strongest of all time. He had no wife, but was the meekest husband of all time; had no children, but was the gentlest father of all time; had no teacher, but was the humblest pupil of all time; had no schooling, but was the wisest teacher of all time; and had no temple, but was the godliest rabbi of all time. He had no sword, but was the bravest warrior of all time; had no boat, but was the shrewdest fisherman of all time; had no winery, but was the aptest winemaker of all time; had no mentor, but was the nicest counselor of all time; and had no pen, but was the greatest author of all time. He had no seminary, but was the sharpest theologian of all time; had no university, but was the brightest professor of all time; had no degree, but was the ablest doctor of all time; had no wealth, but was the biggest philanthropist of all time; and had no stage, but was the grandest entertainer of all time.

An even more important philosophical contact was with the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who began as my pupil and ended as my supplanter at both Oxford and Cambridge. He had intended to become an engineer and had gone to Manchester for that purpose. The training for an engineer required mathematics, and he was thus led to interest in the foundations of mathematics. He inquired at Manchester whether there was such a subject and whether anybody worked at it. They told him about me, and so he came to Cambridge. He was queer, and his notions seemed to me odd, so that for a whole term I could not make up my mind whether he was a man of genius or merely an eccentric. At the end of his first term at Cambridge he came to me and said: “Will you please tell me whether I am a complete idiot or not?” I replied, “My dear fellow, I don’t know. Why are you asking me?” He said, “Because, if I am a complete idiot, I shall become an aeronaut; but, if not, I shall become a philosopher.” I told him to write me something during the vacation on some philosophical subject and I would then tell him whether he was complete idiot or not. At the beginning of the following term he brought me the fulfillment of this suggestion. After reading only one sentence, I said to him: “No, you must not become an aeronaut.” And he didn’t. The collected papers of Bertrand Russell: Last Philosophical Testament

We don't learn anything there [school]. The difference between schoolteachers and philosophers us that school-teachers think they know a lot of stuff that they try to force down our throats. Philosophers try to figure things out together with the pupils

Thales of Miletus, the first philosopher-scientist. His theory that the world had developed from one element (water) was just the beginning. This idea, once conceived, was quickly developed by Thales’ pupils in Miletus – the philosophers known as the Milesian school. One of these was Anaximenes,

Let a simple philosopher introduce these new pupils to the inscrutable but wonderful sublimities of Nature; let him prove to them that awareness of a god, often highly dangerous to men, never contributed to their happiness, and that they will not be happier for acknowledging as a cause of what they do not understand, something they well understand even less; that it is far less essential to inquire into the workings of Nature than to enjoy her and obey her laws; that these laws are as wise as they are simple; that they are written in the hearts of all men; and that it is but necessary to interrogate that heart to discern its impulse. If they wish absolutely that you speak to them of a creator, answer that things always having been what now they are, never having had a beginning and never going to have an end, it thus becomes as useless as impossible for man to be able to trace things back to an imaginary origin which would explain nothing and do not a jot of good. Tell them that men are incapable of obtaining true notions of a being who does not make his influence felt on one of our senses.

War and battle' are the opening words of the Gorgias, and the declaration of war against the corrupt society is its content. Gorgias, the famous teacher of rhetoric, is in Athens as the guest of Callicles, an enlightened politician. It is a day of audience. Gorgias receives visitors and is ready to answer all questions addressed to him. Socrates, with his pupil Chaerephon, calls at Callicles’ house in order to see the great man. The ultimate motif of the battle is not statedexplicitly but indicated, as so frequently with Plato, through the form of the dialogue. Gorgias is somewhat exhausted by the stream of visitors and the hours of conversation, and he lets his follower Polus open the discussion; Socrates leaves the opening game to Chaerephon. The battle is engaged in as a struggle for the soul of the younger generation. Who will form the future leaders of the polity: the rhetor who teaches the tricks of political success, or the philosopher who creates the substance in soul and society? The substance of man is at stake, not a philosophical problem in the modern sense. Socrates suggests to Chaerephon the first question: Ask him “Who he is” (447d).

Aristotle was the son of Nicomachus and Phæstias, a citizen of Stagira; and Nicomachus was descended from Nicomachus, the son of Machaon, the son of Æsculapius, as Hermippus tells us in his treatise on Aristotle; and he lived with Amyntas, the king of the Macedonians, as both a physician and a friend. II. He was the most eminent of all the pupils of Plato; he had a lisping voice, as is asserted by Timotheus the Athenian, in his work on Lives. He had also very thin legs, they say, and small eyes; but he used to indulge in very conspicuous dress, and rings, and used to dress his hair carefully.

Hegel did not deceive himself about the revolutionary character of his dialectic, and was even afraid that his Philosophy of Right would be banned. Nor was the Prussian state entirely easy in its mind for all its idealization. Proudly leaning on its police truncheon, it did not want to have its reality justified merely by its reason. Even the dull-witted King saw the serpent lurking beneath the rose: when a distant rumor of his state philosopher's teachings reached him he asked suspiciously: but what if I don't dot the I's or cross the T's? The Prussian bureaucracy meanwhile was grateful for the laurel wreath that had been so generously plaited for it, especially since the strict Hegelians clarified their master's obscure words for the understanding of the common subjects, and one of them wrote a history of Prussian law and the Prussian state, where the Prussian state was proved to be a gigantic harp strung in God's garden to lead the universal anthem. Despite its sinister secrets Hegel's philosophy was declared to be the Prussian state philosophy, surely one of the wittiest ironies of world history. Hegel had brought together the rich culture of German Idealism in one mighty system, he had led all the springs and streams of our classical age into one bed, where they now froze in the icy air of reaction. but the rash fools who imagined they were safely hidden behind this mass of ice, who presumptuously rejoiced who bold attackers fell from its steep and slippery slopes, little suspected that with the storms of spring the frozen waters would melt and engulf them. Hegel himself experienced the first breath of these storms. He rejected the July revolution of 1830, he railed at the first draft of the English Reform Bill as a stab in the 'noble vitals' of the British Constitution. Thereupon his audience left him in hordes and turned to his pupil Eduard Gans, who lectured on his master's Philosophy of Right but emphasized its revolutionary side and polemicized sharply against the Historical School of Law. At the time it was said in Berlin that the great thinker died from this painful experience, and not of the cholera.

Dave does extra-mural work for the University, and collects about him many youths who have a part-time interest in truth. Dave’s pupils adore him, but there is a permanent fight on between him and them. They aspire like sunflowers. They are all natural metaphysicians, or so Dave says in a tone of disgust. This seems to me a wonderful thing to be, but it inspires in Dave a passion of opposition. To Dave’s pupils the world is a mystery; a mystery to which it should be reasonably possible to discover a key. The key would be something of the sort that could be contained in a book of some eight hundred pages. To find the key would not necessarily be a simple matter, but Dave’s pupils feel sure that the dedication of between four and ten hours a week, excluding University vacations, should suffice to find it. They do not conceive that the matter should be either more simple or more complex than that. They are prepared within certain limits to alter their views. Many of them arrive as theosophists and depart as Critical Realists or Bradeians. It is remarkable how Dave’s criticism seems os often to be purely catalytic in its action. He blazes upon them with the destructive fury of the sun, but instead of shrivelling up their metaphysical pretensions, achieves merely their metamorphosis from one rich stage into another. This curious fact makes me think that perhaps after all Dave is, in spite of himself, a good teacher. Occasionally he succeeds in converting some peculiarly receptive youth to his own brand of linguistics analysis; after which as often as not the youth loses interest in philosophy altogether. To watch Dave at work on these young men is like watching someone prune a rose bush. It is all the strongest and most luxuriant shoots which have to come off. Then later perhaps there will be blossoms; but not philosophical ones, Dave trusts. His great aim is to dissuade the young from philosophy. He always warns me off it with particular earnestness.

Mir Dimad (d. 1631) and his pupil Mulla Sadra (d. 1640) founded a school of mystical philosophy at Isfahan, which Majlisi did his best to suppress. They continued the tradition of Suhrawardi, linking philosophy and spirituality, and training their disciples in mystical disciplines which enabled them to acquire a sense of the alam al-mithal and the spiritual world. Both insisted that a philosopher must be as rational and scientific as Aristotle, but that he must also cultivate the imaginative, intuitive approach to truth. Both were utterly opposed to the new intolerance of some of the ulama, which they regarded as a perversion of religion. Truth could not be imposed by force and intellectual conformism was incompatible with true faith. Mulla Sadra also saw political reform as inseparable from spirituality. In his masterpiece Al-Afsan al-Arbaah (The Fourfold Journey), he described the mystical training that a leader must undergo before he could start to transform the mundane world. He must first divest himself of ego, and receive divine illumination and mystical apprehension of God. It was a path that could bring him to the same kind of spiritual insight as the Shii imams, though not, of course, on the same level as they.

Is this Valéry guy French?” “That’s right. He’s a first-rate cultural philosopher.” “If he’s French, then I’m not interested.” “Why not?” “Because they’re losing the war.” The boy’s big eyes betrayed no sign of tears. Dark pupils cool with laughter. “French is the language of a ruined nation,” he explained. “Your problem is that you’re too nice, know that? I mean, whatever kind of order this guy Valéry is talking about, it isn’t universal anymore. He’s clinging to an antiquated notion. Way too proud of being French. That’s why they’re going to lose.” “Come on,” I said, shifting in my seat. “That’s hardly fair.” “Order, of the right kind, though, is a beautiful thing.” Ignoring my objections, Saeki spoke with gravitas and a twinkle in his eye, holding the donburi in one hand. “I can’t trust the order of a Frenchman,” the boy said. “But I can trust the order of a mighty army. What I want is an order verging on brutality. Like having someone tie you to a post. That’s why everyone I know can’t wait to go to war. Who wants a lukewarm independence? Not much different from a leash. I’m telling you, we’re under lock and key. Too much more of this and I’m gonna lose my mind. Being stuck here, on the home front, messes with your head. It’s tough.” “Listen to you! You’ll stop at nothing to avoid a hard day’s work. A moment of patience is worth a thousand boasts.” “More like a single deed is worth a thousand words.

The critic must therefore work from within. His negative position is based on his positive: his primary work is to supplement his author's partial account of some matter by adding certain aspects which the author has overlooked ; but, since the parts of a philosophical theory never stand to one another in a relation of mere juxtaposition, the omission of one part will upset the balance of the whole and distort the remaining parts; so his additions will entail some correction even of those elements which he accepts as substantially true. 20. Criticism, when these two aspects of it are considered together, may be regarded as a single operation: the bringing to completeness of a theory which its author has left incomplete. So understood, the function of the critic is to develop and continue the thought of the writer criticized. Theoretically, the relation between the philosophy criticized and the philosophy that criticizes it is the relation between two adjacent terms in a scale of forms, the forms of a single philosophy in its historical development; and in practice, it is well known that a man's best critics are his pupils, and his best pupils the most critical.

Alexander the Great, conqueror of the Mediterranean basin and the Middle East through to India, had had the great Aristotle as his tutor and mentor, and throughout his short life he remained devoted to philosophy and his master’s teachings. He once complained to Aristotle that during his long campaigns he had no one with whom he could discuss philosophical matters. Aristotle responded by suggesting that he take Callisthenes, a former pupil of Aristotle’s and a promising philosopher in his own right, along on the next campaign. Aristotle had schooled Callisthenes in the skills of being a courtier, but the young man secretly scoffed at them. He believed in pure philosophy, in unadorned words, in speaking the naked truth. If Alexander loved learning so much, Callisthenes thought, he could not object to one who spoke his mind. During one of Alexander’s major campaigns, Callisthenes spoke his mind one too many times and Alexander had him put to death.

Charlemagne was intimately involved in the new interest in philosophy in his court. One of the earliest, in-part philosophical texts was issued as if it were by Charlemagne himself, no less: the Work of King Charles against the Synod (known also as the Libri Carolini) – the Latin response to the Greek position on image worship.2 Charlemagne’s leading court intellectual, Alcuin, depicts the king as his pupil, being instructed in logic and rhetoric in two of Alcuin’s didactic dialogues. One of these, On Dialectic, is the first medieval logical textbook. Of course, Charlemagne’s authorship and participation in classroom instruction represent not realities, but an ideology: that of royal approval for logic especially, both as a tool for understanding Christian doctrine and as a weapon in religious controversy

HOGWARTS SCHOOL OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY Uniform First-year students will require: 1. Three sets of plain work robes (black) 2. One plain pointed hat (black) for day wear 3. One pair of protective gloves (dragon hide or similar) 4. One winter cloak (black, silver fastenings) Please note that all pupils’ clothes should carry name tags Set Books All students should have a copy of each of the following: The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1) by Miranda Goshawk A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot Magical Theory by Adalbert Waffling A Beginner’s Guide to Transfiguration by Emeric Switch One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi by Phyllida Spore Magical Drafts and Potions by Arsenius Jigger Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection by Quentin Trimble Other Equipment 1 wand 1 cauldron (pewter, standard size 2) 1 set glass or crystal phials 1 telescope 1 set brass scales Students may also bring an owl OR a cat OR a toad PARENTS ARE REMINDED THAT FIRST-YEARS ARE NOT ALLOWED THEIR OWN BROOMSTICKS

Early education,” says President Thwing, “occupies itself with description (geometry, space, arithmetic, time, science, the world of nature). Later education with comparison and relations.” If one asks, “Why not both together? Why learn facts at one time and their relations at another? Is it not the most vital possible way to learn facts to learn them in their relations?”—the answer that would be generally made reveals that most teachers are pessimists, that they have very small faith in what can be expected of the youngest pupils. The theory is that interpretative minds must not be expected of them. Some of us find it very hard to believe as little as this, in any child. Most children have such an incorrigible tendency for putting things together that they even put them together wrong rather than not put them together at all. Under existing educational conditions a child is more of a philosopher at six than he is at twenty-six. The third stage of education for which Dr. Thwing partitions off the human mind is the “stage in which a pupil becomes capable of original research, a discoverer of facts and relations” himself. In theory this means that when a man is thirty years old and all possible habits of originality have been trained out of him, he should be allowed to be original. In practice it means removing a man’s brain for thirty years and then telling him he can think.

Early education,” says President Thwing, “occupies itself with description (geometry, space, arithmetic, time, science, the world of nature). Later education with comparison and relations.” If one asks, “Why not both together? Why learn facts at one time and their relations at another? Is it not the most vital possible way to learn facts to learn them in their relations?”—the answer that would be generally made reveals that most teachers are pessimists, that they have very small faith in what can be expected of the youngest pupils. The theory is that interpretative minds must not be expected of them. Some of us find it very hard to believe as little as this, in any child. Most children have such an incorrigible tendency for putting things together that they even put them together wrong rather than not put them together at all. Under existing educational conditions a child is more of a philosopher at six than he is at twenty-six.

Then, at Miletus, at the beginning of the fifth century before our era, Thales, his pupil Anaximander, Hecataeus and their school find a different way of looking for answers. This immense revolution in thought inaugurates a new mode of knowledge and understanding, and signals the first dawn of scientific thought. The Milesians understand that by shrewdly using observation and reason, rather than searching for answers in fantasy, ancient myths or religion – and, above all, by using critical thought in a discriminating way – it is possible to repeatedly correct our world view, and to discover new aspects of reality which are hidden to the common view. It is possible to discover the new. Perhaps the decisive discovery is that of a different style of thinking, where the disciple is no longer obliged to respect and share the ideas of the master but is free to build on those ideas without being afraid to discard or criticize the part that can be improved. This is a novel middle way, placed between full adherence to a school and generic deprecation of ideas. It is the key to the subsequent development of philosophical and scientific thinking: from this moment onwards, knowledge begins to grow at a vertiginous pace, nourished by past knowledge but at the same time by the possibility of criticism, and therefore of improving knowledge and understanding. The dazzling incipit of Hecataeus’s book of history goes to the heart of this critical thinking, including as it does the awareness of our own fallibility: ‘I wrote things which seem true to me, because the accounts of the Greeks seem to be full of contradictory and ridiculous things.’ According to legend, Heracles descended to Hades from Cape Tenaro. Hecataeus visits Cape Tenaro, and determines that there is in fact no subterranean passage or other access to Hades there – and therefore judges the legend to be false. This marks the dawn of a new era. This new approach to knowledge works quickly and impressively. Within a matter of a few years, Anaximander understands that the Earth floats in the sky and the sky continues beneath the Earth; that rainwater comes from the evaporation of water on Earth; that the variety of substances in the world must be susceptible to being understood in terms of a single, unitary and simple constituent, which he calls apeiron, the indistinct; that the animals and plants evolve and adapt to changes in the environment, and that man must have evolved from other animals. Thus, gradually, was founded the basis of a grammar for understanding the world which is substantially still our own today.

If Plato was the first great philosophical writer, Socrates, his teacher, was the first great philosopher. Plato was to Socrates what Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul were to Jesus. (Socrates, like Jesus and Buddha, wrote nothing. He was too busy doing it to publish it.) And Aristotle, Plato’s prime pupil, is to the West what Confucius is to China: the archetype of common sense, the one whom subsequent thinkers either build on as a primary foundation or attack as a primary opponent

In Emile the child was to be kept from books-except one, Robinson Crusoe, which Rousseau called "the happiest treatise of natural education." "Children begin by being helped, end by being served," he warned. They become masters, using their tears as prayers. The teacher must guide without seeming to, must never use corporal punishment, but must provide situations in which the child can learn for himself. The teacher, too, must know the stages of a child's development and introduce subjects only when the child is emotionally prepared. At the age of twelve the pupil must learn a useful trade. "Emile must work like a peasant and think like a philosopher in order not to be as lazy as a savage." Not until the age of eighteen should Emile turn to moral science and religion, and then he can choose his religion. For "at an age when all is mystery there can be no mysteries properly speaking." The child must have compassion, "love those who have it, but fly from the pious believers." But also shun the philosophers ("angry wolves"), who are "ardent missionaries of atheism and very imperious dogmatics who will not endure without fury that one might think differently from them.

He used to say that virtue could make herself devoted friends, but she did not take pupils:

Be humble as you learn, confident as you teach, and modest when you have mastered both.

« Reason, l’esprit, the intellect of the writing and reasoning nation, is constantly fighting against the darkness of « illiteracy ». You must know how to read and write to be a real member of a civilized nation.(…) In clearing up the underbrush of the privilege and prejudice, liberalism or rationalism was convinced that it held in its hand the naked truth, undisguised, unstained by dogma or tradition. Reason discovering nature can test everything by experiment. There is no room for traditional habits: Fashion takes the place of habit. But it is precisly Fashion which enslave Reason. The Philosophizing mind had its prison of sensuality and drudgery exactly like a pupil of the Jesuits or a child in a backwoods village. Its fairy-tale and its prejudice are not dependent upon miracles or dogmas or incenses or witchcraft, but the apparatus of Reason is subject to the same laws of sensuous disguise as any other part of the human soul. Superstition sends us to the medicine man, physical pain to the physician. We have a native sense that urges us on toward Reason and Philosophy: this sense is curiosity. Without a sense for novelty, no thinker can succeed or affect the life of the community. The self-indulgence of Reason is its predilection for the new. »

Come, hold my hand, let's unfold the possibilities together, not as teacher and pupil, but as mind and mind.

Let’s look at some fundamental beliefs of Stoicism. The Stoics of ancient times observed that from the human perspective two categories can be distinguished: things that we do not control and things we do control. A most basic and clear explanation of this dichotomy of control can be found in the Enchiridion, which is a compilation of sayings by Epictetus that were written down by his pupil Arrian. Epictetus was another significant Stoic philosopher that presents us with a fundamental tenet of Stoicism, which is that most things are simply not up to us. Think about exterior things like our friends, our colleagues, our intimate partners, the economy, the number of likes on Facebook, things that politicians say, or the deterioration of our bodies. Do we actually control these things? Yes, we can influence them. But, even if we do everything right, the economy can still collapse, our money can be taken from us, and our intimate partners can cheat on us or die.

The difference between school-teachers and philosophers is that schoolteachers think they know a lot of stuff that they try to force down our throats. Philosophers try to figure things out together with the pupils.

I quit and joined him and went on strike,” said Hugh Akston, “because I could not share my profession with men who claim that the qualification of an intellectual consists of denying the existence of the intellect. People would not employ a plumber who’d attempt to prove his professional excellence by asserting that there’s no such thing as plumbing—but, apparently, the same standards of caution are not considered necessary in regard to philosophers. I learned from my own pupil, however, that it was I who made this possible. When thinkers accept those who deny the existence of thinking, as fellow thinkers of a different school of thought—it is they who achieve the destruction of the mind. They grant the enemy’s basic premise, thus granting the sanction of reason to formal dementia. A basic premise is an absolute that permits no co-operation with its antithesis and tolerates no tolerance. In the same manner and for the same reason as a banker may not accept and pass counterfeit money, granting it the sanction, honor and prestige of his bank, just as he may not grant the counterfeiter’s demand for tolerance of a mere difference of opinion—so I may not grant the title of philosopher to Dr. Simon Pritchett or compete with him for the minds of men. Dr. Pritchett has nothing to deposit to the account of philosophy, except his declared intention to destroy it. He seeks to cash in—by means of denying it—on the power of reason among men. He seeks to stamp the mint-mark of reason upon the plans of his looting masters. He seeks to use the prestige of philosophy to purchase the enslavement of thought. But that prestige is an account which can exist only so long as I am there to sign the checks. Let him do it without me. Let him—and those who entrust to him their children’s minds—have exactly that which they demand: a world of intellectuals without intellect and of thinkers who proclaim that they cannot think. I am conceding it. I am complying. And when they see the absolute reality of their non-absolute world, I will not be there and it will not be I who will pay the price of their contradictions.

Epictetus, Greek Stoic philosopher, was born into slavery at Hierapolis, Phrygia and lived in Rome until his banishment, when he went to Nicopolis in north-western Greece for the rest of his life. He is reputed to have said: “In the long run, every man will pay the penalty for his own misdeeds. The man who remembers this will be angry with no one, indignant with no one, revile no one, blame no one, offend no one, hate no one.” His teachings were written down and published by his pupil Arrian in his Discourses and Enchiridion. The message from Epictetus, who departed this Earth in 135 AD, is that taking personal responsibility seriously was just as relevant then as it is now!

Noica had three qualities that would have made him an ideal philosophy professor. Firstly, he had the quality of availability, the rare ability to enter into the needs, aspirations, and troubles of the other, and each time to propose solutions for their cultural transfiguration. In the second place, he had a huge didactic vocation, the gift of being able to make the inaccessible become friendly and to convince the other that what he ‘had to learn’ concerned him directly, that what was at stake this learning was his life itself, and not some abstract book-knowledge. And finally, Noica possessed the ‘magic’ quality of investing the philosophers’ thought with his own thought, of appropriating them for himself, teaching you the technique of becoming you at the end of your journey through the others and how, ultimately, you could take possession of the world by your own one idea. At the end of Noica’s didactic method, the system was lying in wait, and each of his pupils was ‘prepared’ to end up a philosopher in his own right.

Truth is no pupil. Awareness is no professor. Intuition is no amateur. Existence is no master. Proof is no disciple. Conviction is no graduate. Certainty is no intellectual. Reality is no philosopher. Time is no student. Life is no scholar. Fate is no saint. Eternity is no sage.

Truth is God’s mind, light is God’s heart, time is God’s body, and life is God’s soul. Light is His student, time is His scholar, truth is His pupil, and life is His graduate.

Truth is God’s mind, light is God’s heart, time is God’s body, and life is God’s soul. Light is God’s student, time is God’s scholar, truth is God’s pupil, and life is God’s graduate.

Thamus, as Socrates told the tale, saw a threat to the very nature of philosophical discourse. Here is what the Egyptian king supposedly told the clever god: Theuth, my paragon of inventors, the discoverer of an art is not the best judge of the good or harm which will accrue to those who practice it. So it is in this; you, who are the father of writing, have out of fondness for your off-spring attributed to it quite the opposite of its real function. Those who acquire it will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on writing to bring things to their remembrance by external signs instead of by their own internal resources. What you have discovered is a recipe for recollection, not for memory. And as for wisdom, your pupils will have the reputation for it without the reality. They will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction, and in consequence be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant. And because they are filled with conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom they will be a burden to society.