The blindness that opens the eye is not the one that darkens vision. Tears and not sight are the essence of the eye.
Jacques DerridaRead
Such a caring for death, an awakening that keeps vigil over death, a conscience that looks death in the face, is another name for freedom.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The acceptance of death can lead to a deeper sense of freedom and consciousness.
In this quote, Jacques Derrida suggests that an awareness and acknowledgment of death allows individuals to live more freely and authentically. By confronting mortality and embracing the inevitability of death, one gains a form of liberation from fear and societal constraints, fostering a more profound understanding of life and personal existence.
Themes
DeathFreedomConsciousnessLifePhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about embracing life experiences, one might quote Derrida to emphasize the importance of recognizing mortality.
More from Jacques Derrida
All quotes βEverything is arranged so that it be this way, this is what is called culture.
Jacques DerridaRead
No one gets angry at a mathematician or a physicist whom he or she doesn't understand, or at someone who speaks a foreign language, but rather at someone who tampers with your own language.
Jacques DerridaRead
Psychoanalysis has taught that the dead β a dead parent, for example β can be more alive for us, more powerful, more scary, than the living. It is the question of ghosts.
Jacques DerridaRead
The trace I leave to me means at once my death, to come or already come, and the hope that it will survive me. It is not an ambition of immortality; it is fundamental. I leave here a bit of paper, I leave, I die; it is impossible to exit this structure; it is the unchanging form of my life. Every time I let something go, I live my death in writing.
Jacques DerridaRead
Every discourse, even a poetic or oracular sentence, carries with it a system of rules for producing analogous things and thus an outline of methodology.
Jacques DerridaRead
Similar quotes
We all have the same God, we just serve him differently. Rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, oceans all have different names, but they all contain water. So do religions have different names, and they all contain truth, expressed in different ways forms and times. It doesn't matter whether you're a Muslim, a Christian, or a Jew. When you believe in God, you should believe that all people are part of one family. If you love God, you can't love only some of his children.
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Society's preservation against the unlimited violence of scandals lies in the mimetic coalition against the single victim and its ensuing limited violence. The violent death of Jesus is, humanly speaking, an example of this strange process.
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To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing, and who, if he succeeded, would end up a complete monster!
Denis DiderotRead
The Great Spirit will not make me suffer because I am ignorant. He will put me in a place where I shall be better off than in this world.
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We forget that the world is what we imagine it to be. We stop being the sun and become, instead, the pool of water reflecting it.
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The noblest of all studies is the study of what man is and of what life he should live.
PlatoRead