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.
The great soul of power extends far beyond states, to every domain of life, from families to international affairs. And throughout, every form of authority and domination bears a severe burden of proof. It is not self-legitimizing. And when it cannot bear the burden, as is commonly the case, it should be dismantled.
I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself
Words don't change their shape, they change their meaning, their function...They don't have a meaning of their own any more, they refer to other words that you don't know, that you've never read or heard...you've never seen their shape, but you feel...you suspect...they correspond to...an empty space inside you...or in the universe.
We're constantly morphing into different outward manifestations of ourselves. That's what I find curious about people.
People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws.
Feminism began to dawn on my brain belatedly in life.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.