Ученик философа

Non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa. What a dreadful thing to say, how cruel Dante was and yet he was granted a vision of paradise. Pretty boring place, actually.

‘Strong probabilities amount to proof.’
‘Perhaps they do in philosophy, but I prefer to believe what I see clearly.’

Tom was experiencing for the first time in his life (and no doubt he was lucky to have escaped it so long) that blackening and poisoning of the imagination which is one of the worst, as well as one of the commonest, forms of human misery.

Isn’t that worth thinking about?’
‘You are not thinking,’ said John Robert. ‘You are simply suffering from a nervous craving of the will.

‘You said it’s not philosophy unless it makes you tremble. You are an incurable teacher. I am trembling now. Teach me.’
‘Why do you go on worrying about philosophy? It doesn’t matter.’

Kant cared about his pupils. Not like Schlick. Kant looked after his pupils years later — ’
‘You know nothing about Schlick.’
‘You destroyed my belief in good and evil, you were Mephistopheles to my Faust.’
‘You flatter yourself.’

He had lived for so long among the problems with which the greatest minds of the past had fumbled like children. He had contemplated, almost indeed become, the images of the great metaphysicians, spawning his own imagery with a foaming spontaneity worthy of any madhouse.

Who could fathom Plato’s mind? Unless one is a genius, philosophy is a mug’s game.

Now every morning as he assumed the burden of consciousness he reflected upon its strangeness: the mystery of mind, so general and so particular. Why do thoughts not lose their owners? How does the individual stay together and not stray away like racing water-drops? How does consciousness continue, how can it? Could the curse of memory not end, and why did it not end?

George had kept the tally against fate. He knew what he was owed: something great, little less than salvation.