"How then does the Third Age acquire the kind of scoffing irony which serves it in place of Wit, and its measure of the Ridiculous! Thus:–it sets it down as indisputable that its Truth is the right Truth; and whatever is contrary to that must be false. Should anyone then take up the opposite position, he is of course in error, which is absurd: and hereupon it shows, in striking examples, how entirely different the opposite view is from its own, and that in no single point can they coalesce; which indeed may be true. This once laughed at, it readily finds those who will join the laugh, if it only apply to the right quarter. Assuming a scientific form, according to established custom, this principle of the Age is soon understood and dogmatically announced; and it now appears as an axiom to this effect, —that ‘Ridicule is the touchstone of truth, and consequently that anything may be at once recognised as false, without farther proof, if a jest can be raised at its expense, in the manner indicated above."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
p. 75
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Johann_Gottlieb_Fichte
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1762 – 1814
deutscher Philosoph
123 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Johann Gottlieb Fichte →
Related Quotes
"Humanity may endure the loss of everything: all its possessions may be torn away without infringing its true dignity;…"
"If you want to influence him at all, you must do more than merely talk to him ; you must fashion him, and fashion him…"
"Upon the progress of knowledge the whole progress of the human race is immediately dependent: he who retards that, hi…"
"What man is to be, he must become; and as he is to be a being for himself, must become through himself. Nature comple…"
"The correct relationship between the higher and lower classes, the appropriate mutual interaction between the two is,…"
"The new education must consist essentially in this, that it completely destroys freedom of will in the soil which it …"
"The infinitely smallest part of space is always a space, something endowed with continuity, not at all a mere point o…"
"“Whether there can be love without esteem?” Oh yes, thou dear, pure one! Love is of many kinds. Rousseau proves that …"
"Am I a free agent, or am I merely the manifestation of a foreign power? Neither appear sufficiently well founded.By t…"
"I posit myself as rational, that is, as free. In doing so I have the representation of freedom. In the same undivided…"