Philosophy Now Forum

Dreams deny space and time; we can fly around in dreams. Descartes believed everything that ever entered into mind is no truer than dreams. He thought that when asleep our eyes open, heads shake, arms, and hands extend, but are false delusions.

"Since the utmost limit of being is perfect, it resembles on every side the form of a well rounded sphere, which from its centre extends in all directions equally, for it can be neither larger or smaller in one part or another. There is no non-being which prevents it from attaining to the like." said Parmenides.

A dream from reality we can neither put the reality in place of dreams, nor dreams in place of reality, am I dreaming, or am I awake? Things that are represented to us in sleep are like painted representations that can only have been formed as the counterparts of something real and true i.e. eyes, a head, hands, and a whole body, are not imaginary things, but things existent.

Painters, even when they study with the greatest skill, represent temptress and lewd forms the most strange and extraordinary, cannot give them natures which are entirely new, but merely paints a certain medley of the members of different animals; or if their imagination is extravagant enough to invent something so novel that nothing similar has ever before been seen, and that then their work represents a thing purely absolutely false.

Socrates believed in order to see perfect beauty we must take a longer and more circuitous road and at the end would appear nothing short of the most finished picture should satisfy us.

Little things elaborated how ridiculous we should thinkof the highest truths worthy of attaining the highest accuracy that may appear in their full beauty and utmost clearness.

What is this highest knowledge? The idea of good the highest knowledge, and that all other things become useful and advantageous only by any one’s use of this. Every soul pursues it and makes the end of all their action. The mind is like the eye: when resting upon that on which truth and being shine, mind perceives and understands and is radiant with intelligence; light and sight may be truly said to be like the sun, and yet not to be the sun, so in this other sphere, science and truth may be deemed to be like the good, but not the good; the good has a place of honor yet higher.

What is the whole course of time, what is only a moment? What endures in time has higher value than what perishes. Ideas, the visible representation of a conception and the vital spirit of life are transcending eternal not dragged into the time is without prophecy; merely pure ideality, implicit thought within self, yet actual pure truth and conversely our inner ego.

Here is ego it can’t be felt, seen nor tasted it is simply undifferentiated, pure unified self-conscious ideality. The ego cannot stand by itself because it has no support, is simply ideality.

We ought to follow the paths beaten by great philosophers and imitate those who have been supreme to at least be able to hit the mark.

Such deep philosophy reigned in earlier times. Look back to the epoch of philosophy that took place years ago. There is generation of philosophers the same as there are generations of plants and in anything that there is opposition generated out of opposition. I mean to say opposites such as just and unjust, good and evil, and the innumerable other opposites that generated out of opposites.

If curiosity makes a philosopher you will find many will have the name but know not absolute philosophy and if led to the true knowledge of philosophy are unable to follow. Turn your eyes t look at absolute and again at the human copy; mingle and temper the various elements of life into the image of you; and thus you will conceive according to that other image, what Homer calls the form and likeness of God.

There is another kind of probation to see whether the soul will be able to endure the highest of all, will faint under them, as in any other studies and exercises. It takes labor in attaining this stage takes magnificence, concord, beauty, and good they are pulse of the philosopher.

Knowledge is a most effective instrument in the mind of a philosopher finds their way imparting grace. Socrates believed music is just as knowledge, to be everywhere eager to make them known. Only when we know the notes exactly can we ever become musical and know the essential forms of temperance, courage, liberality, and magnificence. When mind is harmonized with the fairest of sights those who have an eye to see it.

These curious minds are welcome to any knowledge, which they may have and we philosophers rejoice at them. Those who listen to sweet sounds and gaze upon fair colors, but would not tolerate the existence of absolute knowledge are lovers of opinion not lovers of wisdom. Philosophers alone are able to grasp the eternal and unchangeable. The philosophical mind always love knowledge of a sort, which shows them the eternal nature not varying from generation and corruption.

To awaken science mosey into the region of truth mind always loves eternal truth not the varying from generation and corruption. Philosophers love true being too from their earliest youth drawn off into another channel towards knowledge, absorbed in the pleasures of knowledge in all form, that is if we are true philosophers and not shams

We philosophers must look in self at what is truth. What is truth but the assurance of being not just belief of self but purpose? Self is the supreme ruler, autonomous, self-determining, feeling, perceiving, and reasoning, willing a reflective system that determines logically our relationship with people kind.

Hard driven we are by life oppressed, entangled in material gain and pleasure some gets lost but can be re-illuminated. Reconciliation always follows destruction history shows this, a successions of noble thinkers and the spirit of the people have labored out of apathy.

Knowledge that is requisite above all to establish philosophy. Consider also this endeavor is important cultivating reason, and advancing in truth. Little by little, rise to everything that gives knowledge, in the unconscious mind there is immediate reflection into self; this is the sphere of feeling;

Truth, framed by the mind tested by the senses, has a beginning and an end, but mind can neither be destroyed nor begotten. We must quit the senses in order to behold truth in company with the senses therefore unfortunately we cannot have pure knowledge. The immediate reflective approach to world is a theoretical one called the mechanical sphere of feeling. The theoretical process determines logically a way of distinguishing its relationship with the world.

That the sun is only the author of all visible things. Well then, in like manner, the good may be said to be the author of knowledge to all things known and yet the good is not essence, but far exceeds essence in dignity and power. You have to imagine that there are two ruling powers and that one of them is set over the intellectual world, the other over the visible. Now take a line which has been cut into two unequal parts, and divide each of them again in the same proportion, and suppose the two main divisions to answer, one to the visible and the other to the intelligible, and then compare the subdivisions in respect of their clearness and want of clearness, and you will find that the first section in the sphere of the visible consists of images. I mean, shadows, in the first place, and in the second place, and in solid, smooth, and polished bodies and like reflections in water.

There is something in me that am demanding from me a higher understanding.

1986 I sat in my yard gathering the strength to call Oxford University Press. I finally called and actually got in touch with an editor. Outside the wind was blowing hard I could hardly hear the sound of the freight train passing. I was in fear that she would hang up. I talked real fast I asked her if she would look at my manuscript and tell me what I am doing. I told her I was alone isolated in my little room writing. She actually said send it, “I’ll look at it but cannot promise you anything. “

She wrote back that no publisher would accept it, because I did not translate from the original German language. I had only copied the English translation.

Knowledge, which has the two aspects, duty and actuality, pure knowledge, is merely thinking, not doing, thinking not producing. Consequently does not yet actual conscious self; it is merely thought, and its opposition is activity to which belongs being, existing consciousness; the character.

Self is just thinking. When I say thought, I mean simple determinateness; by means of thinking from another or is self on its own account, I mean subsists within self-simple characteristic.

All thinking is reflection into its own special way is self-certainty;or oneness with self the principle of thought: thinking is not an activity which self treats as something alien and external; it is not reflection into self.


But we are sunk into the material world following the course that such materials take us away from true knowledge returning back to self before knowledge fullness is taken I reduced to being a determinate characteristic, drops to the level of being lost. The absolute characteristic feature of people is self, constitutes sensation is the supreme wealth of being because everything is reduced to it. In seeing and hearing is simply in communion with self-are only a form of my pure transparency and clarity.

Thought is in fact self-determination. In other words, real no matter how abstract it may seem is genuine. Philosophy deals in abstractions, insofar as it has to do with factual. The idea is the thought insofar as it is realized. To be realized self must determine. Thus, thought is self has infinite relation to self, only from self-does determination come.

Thought is as the seed, the inclination, something simple, something, which, contains in itself multiple qualities.

Hegel gives an example of the seed. The seed is simple, almost a point; even through a microscope it can scarcely be seen. This simple thing, however, is pregnant with all the qualities of the tree. In the seed is contained the whole tree, its trunk, branches, leaves, its color, odor, taste, etc. does not yet exist.

Another example, when Hegel says thought is self means the simple abstract universal “I,” common to all, for everyone is I. Still, the "I" which each one is the most diverse a wealth of ideas, drives, desires, inclinations, thoughts, etc. "I" all is contained a concept of all that humankind develops out of self. For I develop means to enter into existence, means to be something distinct. Without I, knowledge reason is nothing, nor is freedom.

Here then introduces the enormous difference into historic situation, whether I am free merely in self or whether I know that it is concept, vocation, and nature, to be free individual. All these individual moments, consciousness, self-consciousness, reason, is the process of belief generally “spirit in its totality”.



"I" the independent self-subsistence, which belongs to each individually.
Believes in self pervades and permeates all aspects of its actual being. Self within self; it does not get isolated, and become one with itself: rather spirit collects all these moments into its own content, keeps them together, and advances within this total wealth of its concrete actual spirit within self and receive together in common the like determinate character of oneself. This I certain of itself and the process it goes through this is their true reality.

“Spirit in its totality” the embodiment adopted by its own consciousness, remains filled by the certainty of “I”, negates self-consciousness, and disappears. The immediate unity of “I” with self is the fundamental basis, or pure consciousness, shut up within its pure self-consciousness does not exist in religion as the creator of a nature in general; rather what it produces in the course of this process are its shapes “I”, which together constitute all that it can reveal when it is completely revealed. And this process itself is the development of its perfect and complete actuality through the individual aspects.

Socrates said, the ignorant do not know are too busy looking down and their heads stooping to the earth, their pleasures are mixed with pains -- mere shadows and pictures of being; and fight about the shadow of Helen at Troy in ignorance of the truth.”

An ethical order is regulated by words and self-control of things like beauty, harmony, grace, and good rhythm they depend on an ordered mind. Thus ethical actions is work our grace and our harmony as effective instrument of the mind, because rhythm and harmony find their way imparting grace, and good when reason comes we will recognize and salute it.

Wisdom controls just and good action. A wise person theoretical runs the challenge of all objections, and is ready to refute them, not by opinion, but truth, never stumbling at any step of the argument to define rationally the idea of good,

"Know Thy self" look in self and you will know truth. A mirror image of self comes truth and compassion therefore through reflection comes truth and with it compassion for others.

The ego is truth of pure inner self, which lays feelings? Therefore, truth falls into a contradiction has a twofold nature, which consist of idealism and reality,

Know thy self is actual truth, ascends the very process of seeking declares that it is utterly impossible to have the satisfaction of finding all reality. When truth is captain self-control follows and is most good. Through a mirror image of self comes truth and compassion of others Truth reveals the path of purpose. What is truth but objective reality, in other words, the assurance of being? Purpose the bare and simple truth when self comes forward asserts not just certainty of self but purpose

Feelings prevail over purpose like the struggle of division or like watching an archer pushing and pulling the bow at the same time, one hand pushes and the other pulls. Purpose and feelings one bids and the other forbid, the forbidding and bidding one.

In order to behold knowledge it is best when sounds, sights, feelings quit. Senses only hinder the acquisition of knowledge.

The pathway of knowledge is nothing less than the whole realm of the truth and in such that truth is set forth not as abstract, but as consciousness or more so virtuous consciousness.

The mind may be truly said to be like the sun, and yet not the sun, knowledge and truth deem to be like good, but not the good; the good has a higher tribute.

In the world of knowledge the idea of good only makes its appearance at a time when the mind has worked its way out of apathy and insensitiveness into consciousness and stands in contrast to indifference.

Reason is split up into distinct elemental forms light and truth and rises out into a conscious mind. We cannot have pure reason, but we can make the nearest approach to it when we have the least possible interest in truth and are not flooded with the bodily characteristics, and remain pure until the hour when good arrives.

Reason rises out into a conscious mind. We certainly cannot have pure reason, but we can make the nearest approach to it and remain pure until the hour when good arrives.

Hegel believed this well being is having a moral justification. Not like happiness or good fortune are distinguished from well being. Happiness implies no more than some sort of immediate existence whereas well being is abstract and as appertaining to a single particular action.

Purpose is the ruin and overthrow of our ego; the ego cannot to deliver itself over to the thoughts of others, because in the ego everything is for itself. Purpose is looked upon as a path, or more so properly speaking, the highway of anguish, doubts, and always sees nothing in the result, and abstracts from the fact that nothing is the result. Nothing is only in fact when taken as nothing; it is thus itself nothing, an empty nothing.

Learning is by natural inherent impulse it excludes everything that is not grasped conceptually. In all spheres of science and art it takes a considerable amount of time and discipline spent on reason As Plato’s charioteer drives a pair of winged horses into the sky, one of them is reason and the other not. The driving of them both gives a great deal of trouble to the charioteer and will fall down if fed upon ignorance and meanness but if fed on knowledge, beauty, and goodness soars upward.

Knowledge functions as a centrality midway between extremes. Then before we see, hear, or perceive we have knowledge. We must have beforehand any action or intention. The intention to move in pursuit of what interests them is reason.

Then no intemperance or madness should be allowed to approach here thry are deemed guilty of coarseness and bad taste because of lack of knowledge, which extends to lack of feeling. Reason is the absolute end of anything we cannot behold g what once was. Knowledge is termed recollection because it recalls things to mind in memory through the sight or touch, or of some other senses. I am not speaking only of knowledge beauty, goodness, justice, religiousness, all and stamped with the name of essence.

Always unthinking sluggish mind knowledge agitates it disturbs its laziness. Knowledge the instrument of reasons the bare path of empty intention. Knowledge comes on the scene and liberates the pathway to carry out purpose.

To seek knowledge it's best I quit feelings for the senses only hinder the acquisition. Knowledge is speculative thinking conceiving without conception, pure no division can be looked at the same as crystals passive transparency free from earthy flaw unrestricted is simply opaque.

If philosophy were mere opinion it would be a very tiresome study. Come rise out of the sea of change lay hold to philosophy not as amateurs who grapple with wrong opinion but with much facility in sifting out all the questions embraced in philosophy as science. .

Many people are persuaded there is difficulty in learning philosophy therefore they never raise mind above the senses, they are so accustomed to consider mere imagery that do not give any assurance. Seeing or hearing cannot ever assure anything if knowledge does not intervene.

Knowledge everyone pursues and makes it the end of all actions rests upon inner principles that carries out good. Whereas sight, hearing, or some other senses only feeling perceives things. This subdivision visible world is seen through feelings and the intellectual world rises out of the sea of change assures us that what I do is true, senses cannot ever assure anything if knowledge does not intervene and light up truth.