Philosophers From The United States

"The … false ideal … [that is] tokenism—which is commonly guised as Equal Rights, and which yields token victories—deflects and shortcircuits gynergy, so that female power, galvanized under deceptive slogans of sisterhood, is swallowed by The Fraternity. This method of vampirizing the Female Self saps women by giving illusions of partial success while at the same time making Success appear to be a far-distant, extremely difficult to obtain "elusive objective." When the oppressed are worn out in the game of chasing the elusive shadow of Success, some "successes" are permitted to occur—"victories" which can easily be withdrawn when the victim's energies have been restored. Subsequently, women are lured into repeating efforts to regain the hard-won apparent gains.... [¶] Thus tokenism is insidiously destructive of sisterhood, for it distorts the warrior aspect of Amazon bonding both by magnifying it and by minimizing it. It magnifies the importance of "fighting back" to the extent of making it devour the transcendent be-ing of sisterhood, reducing it to a copy of comradeship. At the same time, it minimizes the Amazon warrior aspect by containing it, misdirecting and shortcircuiting the struggle."

"I hope that in its richness, as well as in its incompleteness, Gyn/Ecology will continue to be a Labrys enabling women to learn from our mistakes and our successes, and cast our Lives as far as we can go, Now, in the Be-Dazzling Nineties."

"The work of self-described "post-Christian" radical feminist theologian Mary Daly, author of the 1968 volume The Church and the Second Sex, convinced many Christian women's liberationists that they needed to separate from a hopelessly patriarchal church and create their own religious practices. Daly's 1973 Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation further influenced feminist spiritual seekers."

"Women discovering self-actualization in sisterhood in 1975 ... rarely talk of 'partnership' with men, since this term seems to imply ... as if we could glimpse nothing more desirable than an equal slice of the patriarchal pie." p. 41"

"Briefly, if God is male, then the male is God. p. 38"

"There is no small irony in the fact that during an age in which opinion of women was so low, some of them were, in fact, members of the hierarchy, whereas in a later and more enlightened age, when the Church itself is urging them to take a more active part in public life, they are completely excluded from the hierarchy. p. 90"

"Today, in the light of feminist philosophy of Be-ing, we are aware of the deep connection between women's becoming and the unfolding of cosmic process which some would still call 'God'. p. 18"

"The question that comes to my mind is, 'What sense does it make to assert that in Christ "There is neither male nor female"? ... But that is the point: it could not mean anything on earth, where there definitely were and are females and males and where that distinction has been overemphasized and distorted, especially in the church. p 22"

"If women's subordination were really so 'natural,' it would not be necessary to insist so strongly upon it. It would seem that people would not have to be told authoritatively to behave 'naturally. p. 116-117"

"It requires a kick in the imagination, a wrenching of tired words, to realize that feminism is the final and therefore the first cause, and that this movement is movement. Realization of this is already the beginning of a qualitative leap in be-ing. For the philosophers of senescence 'the final cause' is in technical reason; it is the Father's plan, an endless flow of Xerox copies of the past. But the final cause that is movement is in our imaginative-cerebral-emotional-active-creative be-ing. p. 190"

"Mary Daly gave us the origin of the words "hag" and "haggard," among many others: "hag" meaning harpy or witch, and "haggard" meaning originally "an intractable person, especially: a woman reluctant to wooing.""

"...that dream world which is precisely the 'metaphysical world of woman,' the ideal, static woman, who is so much less troublesome than the real article... For the celibate who prefers not to be tied down to a wife, or whose canonical situation forbids marriage, the 'Mary' of his imagination could appear to be the ideal spouse. p. 161"

"'God' can be used oppressively against women in a number of ways…[one way is by an] overt manner when theologians proclaim women's subordination to be God's will. The symbol of the Father God, spawned in the human imagination and sustained as plausible by patriarchy, has in turn rendered service to this type of society by making its mechanisms for the oppression of women appear right and fitting. If God in "his" heaven is a father ruling "his" people, then it is in the "nature" of things and according to divine plan and the order of the universe that society be male-dominated."

"The first step in the elevation of women under all systems of religion is to convince them that the great Spirit of the Universe is in no way responsible for any of these absurdities. (Stanton, quoted on p. 13)"

"The correspondence between the minds of Musing women and the intelligible structures of reality is rooted in our promise, that is, our potential and commitment to evolve, unfold 'together,' in harmony with each other and with all Elemental reality. p. 163"

"To be a Radical Feminist now is to do quantum leaping. That means to act with fantastic courage because you see real hope now, not lovely little lah-didah hope (a very contained hope), but really great Hope for participation in Quintessence, which is the harmony of the universe."

"(Women's Liberation) ... is an ontological, spiritual revolution, pointing beyond the idolatries of sexist society and sparking creative action in and toward transcendence. The becoming of women implies universal human becoming. It has everything to do with the search for ultimate meaning and reality which some would call God. p. 6"

"To exist humanly is to name the self, the world, and God. The 'method' of the evolving spiritual consciousness of women is nothing less than this beginning to speak humanly - a reclaiming of the right to name. p. 8"

"I suggest that the rejection of ontological final causality ... has often really been a kind of metaphysical rebellion, even on the part of those philosophers who have been most disdainful of metaphysics. It has been an effort to overthrow the tyranny of the allegedly 'supernatural end' that seemed to block the dynamics of thought and action. But this 'block' was often a shallow and reified conception of the final cause. When those doing the rejecting have had no deep awareness of the dynamism in being, that is of the ontological force of final causality, the reified Block has not wholly disappeared. It has tended to reappear in various ways. pp. 186-187"

"The 'self-transcending immanence,' the sense of giving birth to ourselves, the sense of power of being within, which is being affirmed by many women, does not seem to be denoted, imaged adequately pointed to, or perhaps even associated with the term 'God'. p. 208"

"The word ‘radical’ means ‘going to the roots’. It is derived from the Latin radix, meaning root. Radical Feminism goes to the root of oppression and the way out. And I define it as “way of being characterised by (a) an Awesome and Ecstatic sense of Otherness from patriarchal norms and values (b) conscious awareness of the sadosociety’s sanctions against Radical Feminists (c) moral outrage on behalf of women as women (d) commitment to the cause of women that persists, even against the current, when feminism is no longer ‘popular’; in other words, constancy."

"People have presuppositions, and they will live more consistently on the basis of these presuppositions than even they themselves may realize. By presuppositions we mean the basic way an individual looks at life, his basic world view, the grid through which he sees the world. Presuppositions rest upon that which a person considers to be the truth of what exists. People's presuppositions lay a grid for all they bring forth into the external world. Their presuppositions also provide the basis for their values and therefore the basis for their decisions."

"Now, not all the founding fathers were individually, personally, Christians. That certainly is true. But, nevertheless, they founded the country on the base that there is a God who is the Creator (now I come to the next central phrase) who gave the inalienable rights."

"History indicates that at a certain point of economic breakdown people cease being concerned with individual liberties and are ready to accept regimentation. The danger is obviously even greater when the two main values so many people have are personal peace and affluence."

"The direction in which science will move is set by the philosophic world view of the scientists."

"We must understand something very thoroughly. If society — if the state gives the rights, it can take them away — they're not inalienable. If the states give the rights, they can change them and manipulate them. But this was not the view of the founding fathers of this country. They believed, although not all of them were individual Christians, that there was a Creator and that this Creator gave the inalienable rights — this upon which our country was founded and which has given us the freedoms which we still have — even the freedoms which are being used now to destroy the freedoms."

"The reason that these freedoms were there is because they believed there was somebody who gave the inalienable rights. But if we have the view that the final reality is material or energy which has existed forever in some form, we must understand that this view never, never, never would have given the rights which we now know and which, unhappily, I say to you (those of you who are Christians) that too often you take all too much for granted."

"Cambridge historians who aren't Christians would tell you that if it wasn't for the Wesley revival and the social change that Wesley's revival had brought, England would have had its own form of the French Revolution. It was Wesley saying people must be treated correctly and dealing down into the social needs of the day that made it possible for England to have its bloodless revolution in contrast to France's bloody revolution."

"His death there on Calvary's cross is for us individually, but it's not egotistically individualistic. Our individual salvation will one day be a portion of the restoration of all things. It is our calling until He comes back again that happy day, to do all we can — while it won't be perfect as when He comes back — to see substantial healing in every area that He will then perfectly heal, and that Wesley did understand."

"Christianity is more than history; it is also a system of truths. Every event which its history records, either is a truth, or suggests a truth, or expresses a truth which man needs to assent to or to put into practice."

"Spencer "was incapable", our critic haughtily remarks, "of discerning the difference between a homogeneity in matter, necessarily and blindly tending toward a heterogeneity, , and such a law of organism [sic], progress, and growth as requires a spiritual intelligence to originate and maintain it." Perheps he was a poor man! or perhaps he thought he had better discern and formulate progress where he could do it to the best advantage, and leave the postulating of spiritual intelligences to those who had a greater talent than he for building in the region of the unverifiable."

"Do right! and thou hast naught to fear; Right hath a power that makes thee strong. The night is dark, but light is near; The grief is short, the joy is long."

"Seek and possess holiness, and consolation will follow, as assuredly as warmth follows the dispensation of the rays of the sun."

"As Adolf Berle, a fellow cold warrior, once remarked, 'Being vindicated by history is cold comfort.' For one thing, the political scars of those with whom one has polemicized seem more long-lasting and painful than their memories of the political issues that gave rise to them. And yet indifference to the political life of one's times I deem a flagrant expression of moral irresponsibility. Those who profess such indifference owe the intellectual and cultural freedoms in which they luxuriate to the commitment and sacrifices of others."

"I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature."

"Although Bertrand Russell suffered unpopularity in some quarters for his role as a political dissenter, he enjoyed that role immensely. There was more than a touch of exhibitionism in the riskless sit-downs of his last years when he made well-publicized gestures to 'Ban the Bomb' that were as futile as they were ill-advised. I once wondered aloud to him whether his temperamental bias toward nonconformity and dissent was an expression not so much of intellectual courage as of the aristocrat's disdain of the commoner and his desire to épater le bourgeois. He replied with disarming frankness: 'Hook, I think you have something there...'"

"Anti-Semitism was rife in almost all varieties of socialism."

"The United States was taxed with following a policy whose logic was "genocide" for helping South Vietnam deal with "a peasant-based insurrection led by Communists" while the genuinely genocidal practices of North Vietnam in liquidating whole categories of the population were not mentioned. On his visit to Hanoi, Chomsky publicly held North Vietnam up to the world as a model of social justice and freedom. Whenever Chomsky and those who repeated some of his absurd views were challenged, they often cited as their authority someone else who had uttered similar absurdities, as if this vindicated the point they were making."

"Although there was much to criticize in American domestic and foreign policy, what struck me was the one-sidedness, unfairness, and systematic use of the double standard in the attacks against the United States and South Vietnam. … He called upon the United States "to denazify itself," but not North Vietnam or China. What practices in the United States, compared to the barbarous practices of Cuba or of China or of North Vietnam, warrant such a characterization? In those countries how long would one survive who whispered the kind of criticisms Chomsky was perfectly free to broadcast in the United States and be rewarded for it?"

"To silence criticism is to silence freedom."

"The grim consequences of … Hanoi's victory are now incontestable. The record of the last decade has brought a realization to some, who had been of the same view as Chomsky, of what they helped to bring into being in Vietnam. Protests have been organized against the continued existence of concentration and re-education camps, and the systematic barbarities practiced against dissenters. But Chomsky is still unrepentant. He has refused to join any protest, on the ground that it would serve the interests of the United States. In short, he has followed the double standard to the last, for he never hesitated to utter the most extravagant criticism of the United States on the ground that it would serve the interests of the Soviet Union."

"I turned to Brecht and asked him why, if he felt the way he did about Jerome and the other American Communists, he kept on collaborating with them, particularly in view of their apparent approval or indifference to what was happening in the Soviet Union.[...] Brecht shrugged his shoulders and kept on making invidious remarks about the American Communist Party and asserted that only the Soviet Union and its Communist Party mattered. [...] But I argued...it was the Kremlin and above all Stalin himself who were responsible for the arrest and imprisonment of the opposition and their dependents. It was at this point that he said in words I have never forgotten, 'As for them, the more innocent they are, the more they deserve to be shot.' I was so taken aback that I thought I had misheard him. 'What are you saying?' I asked. He calmly repeated himself, 'The more innocent they are, the more they deserve to be shot.' [...] I was stunned by his words. 'Why? Why?' I exclaimed. All he did was smile at me in a nervous sort of way. I waited, but he said nothing after I repeated my question. I got up, went into the next room, and fetched his hat and coat. When I returned, he was still sitting in his chair, holding a drink in his hand. When he saw me with his hat and coat, he looked surprised. He put his glass down, rose, and with a sickly smile took his hat and coat and left. Neither of us said a word. I never saw him again."

"It is better to be a live jackal than a dead lion--for jackals, not men. Men who have the moral courage to fight intelligently for freedom have the best prospects of avoiding the fate of both live jackals and dead lions. Survival is not the be-all and end-all of a life worthy of man. Sometimes the worst we can know about a man is that he has survived. Those who say life is worth living at any price have already written for themselves an epitaph of infamy, for there is no cause and no person they will not betray to stay alive. Man's vocation should be the use of the arts of intelligence in behalf of human freedom."

"Herbert Marcuse made a lengthy, impassioned response. What good was the Voting Rights Act accomplishing, he said, since the blacks were pursuing the tawdry values as their white fellow citizens? They were accepting the same capitalist values and aping the life-restricting respectability of the middle class. At a prolonged pause in his reply, just as he was getting his second wind, I rose and asked him a simple question: 'Which do you prefer, a situation in which the blacks had no freedom to vote or one in which they had the freedom to vote but chose wrongly?' Marcuse's response surprised the audience--and subsequently perhaps Marcuse himself: 'Since I have gone so far out on a limb, I may as well go all the way. I would prefer that they did not have the freedom to vote if they are going to make the wrong use of their freedom.' For this and other reasons, I suspect, Marcuse never became the darling of the black American students."

"The Fulton Fish Market will be more of an odor than a landmark at this time of day, but it really swings out at four o'clock in the morning - another Timothy 'Speed' Levitch recommendation if you can't sleep and you like fish."

"If architecture is the history of all phallic emotion, the Empire State Building is utter catharsis, and we are sitting in its silhouette."

"I hope you can feel the omniscience of this moment, as we have been blocking this traffic as far as you can see on the left. Sense the grandeur of your power as we disrupt one life after another."

"I think of every double-decker loop as another loop towards my death. And that is why I've always thought of the double-decker loop as - each loop as a continuous and individualized search for perfection."

"The men who build and design this park are transcendentalists. To them, Central Park is a place to become one with nature, to focus on trees, to scintillate with grass, to stare into one anothers' eyes. No sweating allowed in the original Central Park, no perspiration of any kind. Anyone you see congregating for the baseball game on the left, bicycling, rollerblading, jogging, they are not historically accurate. Anyone you see lounging in the sun, having a picnic, or kissing; They are historically accurate."

"New York City is a living organism; It evolves, it devolves, it fluctuates as a living organism. So my relationship with New York City is as vitriolic as the relationship with myself and with any other human being which means that it changes every millisecond, that it's in constant fluctuation."