philosophers-from-the-netherlands

"When his career was ended in 1864 he had the mortification of witnessing the ruin of a teaching to which he had devoted forty years of his life."

"I propose an idealist ontology that makes sense of reality in a more parsimonious and empirically rigorous manner than mainstream physicalism, bottom-up panpsychism, and cosmopsychism. The proposed ontology also offers more explanatory power than these three alternatives, in that it does not fall prey to the hard problem of consciousness, the combination problem, or the decombination problem, respectively. It can be summarized as follows: there is only cosmic consciousness. We, as well as all other living organisms, are but dissociated alters of cosmic consciousness, surrounded by its thoughts. The inanimate world we see around us is the extrinsic appearance of these thoughts. The living organisms we share the world with are the extrinsic appearances of other dissociated alters."

"The brain isn't the cause of experience for the same reason that lightning isn't the cause of atmospheric electric discharge, or that flames aren't the cause of combustion. Just as flames are but the image of the process of combustion, the body-brain system is but the image of localized experience in the stream of universal consciousness."

"I claim that the success of current scientific theories is no miracle. It is not even surprising to the scientific (Darwinist) mind. For any scientific theory is born into a life of fierce competition, a jungle red in tooth and claw. Only the successful theories survive—the ones which in fact latched onto the actual regularities in nature."

"[T]he idea that by... such linguistic structures we can obtain knowledge of mathematics apart from that... constructed by direct intuition, is mistaken. And more so is the idea that we can lay in this way the foundations of mathematics."

"The words of... mathematical demonstration merely accompany a mathematical construction that is effected without words. At the point where you enounce... contradiction ...the construction no longer goes ...the required structure cannot be embedded in the given basic structure. ...[T]his observation, I do not think of as a principium contradictionis [principle of contradiction]."

"[T]here exist no other sets than finite and denumerably infinite sets and continua... [I]n mathematics we can create only finite sequences, further by means of... 'and so on' the order type ω, but only consisting of equal elements... but no other sets."

"[T]he proposition: A function is either differentiable or not differentiable. says nothing; it expresses the same as... If a function is not differentiable, then it is not differentiable. But the logician... projects a mathematical system, and calls such... an application of the tertium non datur."

"In 1908 Brouwer introduced for the first time "weak counterexamples", for the purpose of showing that certain classically acceptable statements are constructively unacceptable (Brouwer 1908). Too much emphasis on these examples has sometimes created the false impression that refuting claims of classical mathematics is the principle aim of intuitionism."

"Cantor and his disciples... think they have knowledge of all sorts of further sets; their fundamental principle... comes to about the same as the axiomaticians. ...[T]his principle is unjustified and... we assert that the several paradoxes of the 'Mengenlehre' [Set theory]... have no right to exist... [I]t would have been the duty of Cantorians, immediately to reject a notion which gives rise to contradictions, because it is... not built... mathematically."

"[I]t is easily conceivable that, given the same organization of the human intellect and... the same mathematics, a different language would have been formed, into which the language of logical reasoning... would not fit. Probably there are still peoples... isolated... for which this is... the case. And no more is it excluded that in a later... development the logical reasonings will lose their present position in the languages of the cultured peoples."

"[W]heresoever in logic the word all or every is used mathematics... tacitly involves the restriction: insofar as belonging to a mathematical structure which is supposed to be constructed beforehand."

"The viewpoint of the formalist must lead to the conviction that if other symbolic formulas should be substituted for the ones that now represent the fundamental mathematical relations and the mathematical-logical laws, the absence of the sensation of delight, called "consciousness of legitimacy," which might be the result of such substitution would not in the least invalidate its mathematical exactness. To the philosopher or to the anthropologist, but not to the mathematician, belongs the task of investigating why certain systems of symbolic logic rather than others may be effectively projected upon nature. Not to the mathematician, but to the psychologist, belongs the task of explaining why we believe in certain systems of symbolic logic and not in others, in particular why we are averse to the so-called contradictory systems in which the negative as well as the positive of certain propositions are valid."

"[S]uppose... we have proved... that the logical system, built... of... linguistic axioms... is consistent [and] we find a mathematical interpretation... [D]oes it follow... that such a mathematical system exists? Such... has never been proved... Thus... it is nowhere proved that a finite number, subjected to a provably consistent system of conditions, must always exist."

"Life is a magic garden. With wondrous softly shining flowers, but between the flowers there are the little gnomes, they frighten me so much, they stand on their heads, and the worst is, they call out to me that I should also stand on my head, every once in a while I try, and I die of embarrassment; but sometimes the gnomes shout that I am doing very well, and that I’m indeed a real gnome myself after all. But on no account I will ever fall for that."

"[M]odern axiomaticians... have only built... linguistic systems... suitable to accompany constructible mathematical systems."

"Mathematics is independent of logic. ...Where mathematical objects are given by their relations to the ...parts of a mathematical structure, we transform these ...by a sequence of tautologies and thus proceed to the relations of the object to other components of the structure. ...The fact that ...a theorem is ...only understood after a chain of tautologies, proves merely that we build our structures too complicated to be comprehended in one view."

"With which mathematical notions a spoken or written symbol will be made to correspond... will... differ according to the milieu. ...[W]hich domains of mathematics will be accompanied by a language ...will depend ...upon ...which domains ...have found most applications to the guidance of action or as a means of understanding about action."

"Logic depends upon mathematics. ...[I]ntuitive logical reasoning ...remains if ...one restricts oneself to relations of whole and part; the mathematical structures ...do not justify any priority of logical reasoning over ordinary mathematical reasoning."

"Man, inclined to... a mathematical view.., has... applied this bias to mathematical language, and in former centuries exclusively to the language of logical reasonings: the science arising from this... is theoretical logic."

"Riemann was the first to show the right way for research on the by starting from the idea that space is a Zahlenmannigfaltigkeit, thus a system built... by ourselves. ...Pasch, Hilbert and others, because they considered ...[t]his hypothesis as arbitrary, resumed the logical foundation ...trying to better Euclid by constructing ...linguistic structures ...solely by ...logical principles. ...Such disturbing consequences follow when language, ...a means ...for the communication of mathematics, but which has nothing to do with mathematics ...except as an accompaniment, is considered essential, and when the laws governing the succession of sentences ...are seen as directives for acts of mathematical construction."

"It may seem strange that on the 70th birthday of a philosopher of such pronounced religious and political persuasion as Dooyeweerd, tribute is paid by a jurist with an entirely different world-view and political persuasion. However, there is every reason to put the question what the significance of this philosopher is for Dutch philosophy of whatever persuasion, or even for philosophy in general, without any restriction of nationality. For without any exaggeration Dooyeweerd can be called the most original philosopher Holland has ever produced, Spinoza himself not excepted."

"This universal character of referring and expressing, which is proper to our entire created cosmos, stamps created reality as meaning, in accordance with its dependent non-self-sufficient nature. Meaning is the being of all that has been created and the nature even of our selfhood. It has a religious root and a divine origin."

"To be sure, Dooyeweerd’s A New Critique of Theoretical Thought was translated into English in the fifties. But did the availability of that major work contribute significantly to an appreciation and understanding of Dooyeweerd’s christian philosophical endeavors? I doubt it. For one thing, it was poorly translated, both in terms of language and ideas. But the point I wish to make concerns something else. A New Critique give plenty of text, two thousand pages of it, but it does not give the context of this undertaking. And an understanding of the context is required for an understanding of the text. This big book by itself is like an oak tree in a desert, uprooted from its natural surroundings and transplanted in an environment that is foreign and at times hostile to it. This book is the top of an iceberg, one of the major intellectual achievements – alongside those of Kuyper, Bavinck, Schilder, Berkouwer and Vollenhoven – of a christian community which at least until recently found its cohesion in a common christian calling and a concomitant walk of life. Anyone who wants to see what that christian calling, that walk of life, and its philosophical outgrowth are all about will have to learn the language and the ways of the people that responded to that calling and walked that path of life. anyone who wants to understand a philosophical movement will have to learn the language of that movement, to recognize both its contributions and its failures. This is true of Husserl’s phenomenology, of the Frankfurter school; it is also true of the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea."

"Da Costa’s ban was harsher than most. When he was banned in 1633, the possibility of atonement was left open, but it was atonement by flagellation that was required. Da Costa refused, but by 1640, after enduring years of isolation, he agreed to go through with the punishment during which he was not only whipped in the synagogue, but, after the display, was forced to lie down at the threshold of the synagogue. Those who exited then stepped on his body on their way out. Unable to bear this humiliation, da Costa shot himself several days later."

"Whitman’s masterpiece, his whole vision, is exactly about this: life as a quest for truth, love, beauty, goodness, and freedom; life as the art of becoming human through the cultivation of the human soul."

"Someone who wants to go back to the good old days, but with that also wants to go back to the times when he himself would not have been possible. He wanted to return to the old standards of decency and neatness, but at the same time he was the most flamboyant poof, with his two lapdogs. He yelled for Moroccans to behave, but meanwhile he wanted to be blown by those same Moroccans. Back to the fifties, but in those same fifties he himself would never have been able to come out for his flamboyant homosexuality. It's just a huge paradox and in a very different, I hope less perverse way, I do recognize it in myself. Rules have to be there, for others."

"If you try to discuss multiculturalism in the UK you're labelled a racist. But here we're still free to talk, and I say multicultural society doesn't work. We're not living closer, we're living apart."

"If you could see what I get in my mailbox every now and then, regarding threats, and so on, well that doesn't exactly cheer you up, and the Dutch government – and I think it's a 'bloody shame' – helps create a climate demonizing me personally. And if something were to happen to me – and I'm glad that you're giving me the chance (to say this) – if something were to happen to me, then they will be partly responsible, and they can't just walk away saying "I'm not the one who committed the attack." They helped to create this climate (this atmosphere), and it needs to stop."

"I don't hate Islam. I consider it a retarded culture. I have travelled much in the world. And wherever Islam rules, it's just terrible. All the hypocrisy. It's a bit like those old reformed protestants. The Reformed lie all the time. And why is that? Because they have standards and values that are so high that you can't humanly maintain them. You also see that in that Muslim culture. Then look at the Netherlands. In what country could an electoral leader of such a large movement as mine be openly homosexual? How wonderful that that's possible. That's something that one can be proud of. And I'd like to keep it that way, thank you very much."

"I will not change my opinion, dear people, it is 5 minutes before twelve. Not just here in Holland. but in the whole of Europe. And is that what you want? I take my stand for this country, that which has been build up in the last five or six centuries. Damn it, we have a fifth column... Okay, let me tell you now straight the way it is! A fifth column of people who want to destroy this country! I will not go for that, and I say, "you can stay here, but you must adapt." I must hear "Allah is great", that I am a "dirty pig"… you are a "Christian dog". That is what they say, and you think that is okay... And I have so far been very reserved. I have never repeated that... but you accept being walked over, and I will not let that happen anymore. And that's where I get all those seats from (in the polls). Because this country is fed up! … C'est ça! That is what I stand for. And if I must express that otherwise, well, fine... but it is about your children, your grandchildren. For what else is this about? Must I explain more here? I can not do it any other way, and will not do it any other way. Then I would rather be finished off. Okay, fine... but the problem sir, will remain. That will remain. People have had more than enough of it. Damn it, in my city, Moroccan boys, Turkish boys... who do not rob the Turks, the Moroccans, but rob you and me and little old ladies. And the police? What they do? Damn it... nothing. They tell you: "If you say that, you discriminate". And that is what I express from the Dutch people. And I stand for it, I stand for it. Is that not allowed? Okay, I respect that. C'est ça [That’s all]."

"I'm not anti-Muslim, I'm not anti-immigration; I'm saying we've got big problems in our cities. It's not very smart to make the problem bigger by letting in millions more immigrants from rural Muslim cultures that don't assimilate."

"Ik ben een driftkop, wat is daar mis mee?"

"Muslims have a very bad attitude to homosexuality, they're very intolerant … And women. For them women are second class citizens. What we are witnessing now is a clash of civilisations, not just between states but within them."

"I do not intend to pitch my claim on behalf of Mandeville higher than to say that he made Hume possible. It is indeed my estimate of Hume as perhaps the greatest of all modern students of mind and society which makes Mandeville appear to me so important. It is only in Hume's work that the significance of Mandeville's efforts becomes wholly clear, and it was through Hume that he exercised his most lasting influence. Yet to have given Hume some of his leading conceptions seems to me sufficient title for Mandeville to qualify as a master mind."

"That we do not know why we do what we do, and that the consequences of our decisions are often very different from what we imagine them to be, are the two foundations of that satire on the conceits of a rationalist age which was his initial aim... [T]he speculations to which that je d'esprit led him mark the definite breakthrough in modern thought of the twin ideas of evolution and of the spontaneous formation of an order... Though Mandeville may have contributed little to the answers of particular questions of social and economic theory, he did, by asking the right questions, show that there was an object for a theory in this field. Perhaps in no case did he precisely show how an order formed itself without design, but he made it abundantly clear that it did, and thereby raised the questions to which theoretical analysis, first in the social sciences and later in biology, could address itself."

"How much Mandeville's contribution meant we recognise when we look at the further development of those conceptions which Hume was the first and greatest to take up and elaborate. This development includes...the great Scottish moral philosophers of the second half of the century, above all Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson, the latter of whom, with his phrase about the "results of human action but not of human design", has provided not only the best brief statement of Mandeville's central problem but also the best definition of the task of all social theory... [T]he tradition which Mandeville started includes Edmund Burke, and, largely through Burke, all those "historical schools" which, chiefly on the Continent, and through men like Herder and Savigny, made the idea of evolution a commonplace in the social sciences of the nineteenth century long before Darwin. And it was in this atmosphere of evolutionary thought in the study of society, where "Darwinians before Darwin" had long thought in terms of the prevailing of more effective habits and practices, that Charles Darwin at last applied the idea systemically to biological organisms. I do not, of course, mean to suggest that Mandeville had any direct influence on Darwin (though David Hume probably had). But it seems to me that in many respects Darwin is the culmination of a development which Mandeville more than any other single man has started."

"Read Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, and his Enquiry into the Origin of Virtue. In the latter, he ascribes entirely to the policy of Lawgivers, the infusion of that controlling principle which results from the constitution of our nature; and nicknames its operation, Pride and Shame. With respect to his capital and offensive paradox, that private vices are public benefits, Mandeville's whole art consists, in denominating our passions by the appellation assigned to their vicious excess; and then proving them, under this denomination, useful to society. There is a lively force, and caustic though coarse wit, in his performance, which occasionally reminds one of Paine."

"My pamphlet by some means falling into the hands of one Lyons, a surgeon, author of a book entitled "The Infallibility of Human Judgment," it occasioned an acquaintance between us; he took great notice of me, called on me often to converse on those subjects, carried me to the Horns, a pale alehouse in —— lane, Cheapside, and introduced me to Dr. Mandeville, author of the Fable of the Bees, who had a club there, of which he was the soul, being a most facetious, entertaining companion."

"La doctrine économique d'Adam Smith, c'est la doctrine de Mandeville, exposée sous une forme non plus paradoxale et littéraire, mais rationnelle et scientifique."

"Mandeville's essay [The Fable of the Bees] was a clever and cynical defence of licence and selfishness."

"Private Vices by the dextrous Management of a skilful Politician may be turned into Publick Benefits."

"I flatter my self to have demonstrated that, neither the Friendly Qualities and kind Affections that are natural to Man, nor the real Virtues he is capable of acquiring by Reason and Self-Denial, are the Foundation of Society; but that what we call Evil in this World, Moral as well as Natural, is the grand Principle that makes us sociable Creatures, the solid Basis, the Life and Support of all Trades and Employments without Exception: That there we must look for the true Origin of all Arts and Sciences, and that the Moment Evil ceases, the Society must be spoiled, if not totally dissolved."

"Mandeville examined not what human nature ought to be, but what it really is. In contrast, therefore, to the moralists that distinguish between a higher and a lower in our nature, attributing to the higher everything good and noble, while the lower ought to be persecuted and despised, Mandeville declares the fancied higher parts to be the region of vanity and imposture, while the renowned deeds of men, and the greatness of kingdoms, really arise from the passions usually reckoned base and sensual."

"There is no Intrinsick Worth in Money but what is alterable with the Times, and whether a Guinea goes for Twenty Pounds or for a Shilling, it is … the Labour of the Poor, and not the high and low value that is set on Gold or Silver, which all the Comforts of Life must arise from."

"Pride and Vanity have built more Hospitals than all the Virtues together."

"We seldom call any body lazy, but such as we reckon inferior to us, and of whom we expect some Service."

"No Habit or Quality is more easily acquir'd than Hypocrisy, nor any thing sooner learn'd than to deny the Sentiments of our Hearts and the Principle we act from: But the Seeds of every Passion are innate to us, and no body comes into the World without them."

"Knowledge both enlarges and multiplies our Desires, and the fewer things a Man wishes for, the more easily his Necessities may be supply'd."

"What a vast Traffick is drove, what a variety of Labour is performed in the World to the Maintenance of Thousands of Families that altogether depend on two silly if not odious Customs; the taking of Snuff and smoking of Tobacco; both which it is certain do infinitely more hurt than good to those that are addicted to them!"