To philosophize with open eyes is to philosophize in the dark. Only the blind can look straight at the sun.
Interpretation
Philosophy requires awareness and critical thinking; blindly accepting ideas leads to ignorance.
In this quote, Louis Althusser emphasizes the importance of conscious thought in philosophical inquiry. He warns against the dangers of naively accepting ideas without critical examination, suggesting that true understanding involves both awareness and the courage to confront challenging truths, much like the inability to directly look at the sun without impairing oneβs vision.
In practice
In a philosophical debate, one might use this quote to underline the necessity of questioning assumptions.
Occasionally, the whole class struggle may be summed up in the struggle for one word against another word. Certain words struggle amongst themselves as enemies. Other words are the site of an ambiguity: the stake in a decisive but undecided battle
It is characteristic of ideology to impose self-evident facts as self-evident facts.
Relations of production are first reproduced by the materiality of the processes of production and circulation. But it should not be forgotten that ideological relations are immediately present in these same processes.
Philosophy is, in the last instance, class struggle in the field of theory.
I always had a philosophy which I got from my father. He used to say, 'Listen. God gave to you the gift to play football. This is your gift from God. If you take care of your health, if you are in good shape all the time, with your gift from God no one will stop you, but you must be prepared.'
Humanity's a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there.
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
If in a battle, I seize a bit of debatable land with a handful of soldiers, without having done anything to prevent an enemy bombardment of the position, would it ever occur to me to speak of a conquest of the terrain in question? Obviously not. Then why should I do so in chess?
I am better than my reputation
In place of a world, there is a city, a point, in which the whole life of broad regions is collecting while the rest dries up. In place of a type-true people, born of and grown on the soil, there is a new sort of nomad, cohering unstably in fluid masses, the parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, deeply contemptuous of the countryman and especially that highest form of countryman, the country gentleman.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.