Browsing Quotes By Steven Johnston
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Take what you do seriously, but don’t take yourself seriously.
Speaker: Steven JohnstonPosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 1:44 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment!
Take what you do seriously, but don’t take yourself seriously.
You do not take up philosophy the way you enter the seminary, with a credo as your sword and a single path as your destiny. Should you study Plato. Epicurus, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel or even Husserl? Esthetics, politics, morality, epistemology, metaphysics? Should you devote your time to teaching, to producing a body of work, to research, to Culture? It makes no difference. The only thing that matters is your intention: are you elevating thought and contributing to the common good, or rather joining the ranks in a field of study whose only purpose is its own perpetuation, and only function the self-reproduction of a sterile elite – for this turns the university into a sect.