Man adapts himself to everything, to the best and the worst.
Jose Ortega Y GassetRead
If the human intellect functions, it is actually in order to solve the problems which the man's inner destiny sets it.
Interpretation
The human intellect exists to address and solve the challenges posed by our inner purpose.
This quote by Jose Ortega Y Gasset suggests that our intellectual capabilities are not merely for academic pursuits or abstract reasoning, but are fundamentally aimed at tackling the issues and dilemmas that arise from our personal journeys and intrinsic goals. It emphasizes the connection between our thinking and the deeper aspects of what it means to be human, asserting that understanding and solving these challenges is a vital part of our existence.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a philosophy class to illustrate the purpose of human intellect.
Man adapts himself to everything, to the best and the worst.
"Natural" man is always there, under the changeable historical man. We call him and he comes-a little sleepy, benumbed, without his lost form of instinctive hunter, but, after all, still alive. Natural man is first prehistoric man-the hunter.
We have not reached ethical perfection in hunting. One never achieves perfection in anything, and perhaps it exists precisely so that one can never achieve it. Its purpose is to orient our conduct and to allow us to measure the progress accomplished. In this sense, the advancement achieved in the ethics of hunting is undeniable.
I am myself and what is around me, and if I do not save it, it shall not save me.
We fall in love when our imagination projects nonexistent perfection upon another person. One day, the fantasy evaporates and with it, love dies.
Life is a terrible conflict, a grandiose and atrocious confluence. Hunting submerges man deliberately in that formidable mystery and therefore contains something of religious rite and emotion in which homage is paid to what is divine, transcendent, and in the laws of Nature.
CERBERUS, n. The watch-dog of Hades, whose duty it was to guard the entrance - against whom or what does not clearly appear; everybody, sooner or later, had to go there, and nobody wanted to carry off the entrance.
Time starts out as a notion. But after you turn fifty, time is not a notion anymore but a fact that you start feeling clearly, and in a way, it pushes you to become present in the present.
ATHENA: There are two sides to this dispute. I've heard only one half the argument. (...) So you two parties, summon your witnesses, set out your proofs, with sworn evidence to back your stories. Once I've picked the finest men in Athens, I'll return. They'll rule fairly in this case, bound by a sworn oath to act with justice.
Modern biblical scholars have established that the bible is a wiki. It was compiled over half a millennium from writers with different styles, dialects, character names, and conceptions of God and was subjected to haphazard editing that left it with many contradictions, duplications and non-sequiturs.
But all fairytales have rules, and perhaps itβs their rules that actually distinguish one fairytale from the other. These rules never need to be understood. They only need to be followed. If not, what they promise wonβt come true.
I see now more clearly than ever before that even our greatest troubles spring from something that is [as] admirable and sound as it is dangerous β from our impatience to better the lot of our fellows.
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