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Robert C. Solomon

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Famous Robert C. Solomon Quotes

“Nietzsche says very clearly all the way through his career that if you want to define human nature the first thing you must say is that human beings insist on value--we see the world through value colored eyes. We do not know how to look at things neutrally, value-free. So, it's not a question of giving up all values, it's simply a question of which values.”

PhilosophyValuesExistentialismNihilismNietzsche
Book:Will to Power: The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
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“Each person would like to be certain of the approval of the other, but to be certain of the other is already to lose that sense of the other as an independent judge. I want you to say 'I love you', but the last thing I would want to do is to ask you, much less force you, to say it. I want you to say it freely, and not because I want you to or expect you to. But then, you know that I do want you to say it, and I know that you know that I want you to say it. So you say it; I don't really believe you. Did you say it because you mean it? Or in order not to hurt my feelings? And so I get testy, more demanding, to which your response is, quite reasonably, to become angry or defensive, until finally I provoke precisely what I feared all along, - an outburst of abuse. But then, I fell righteously hurt; you get apologetic. You seek forgiveness; I hesitate. You aren't sure whether I will say it or not: I'm not sure whether you mean it or not, but I say, 'I forgive you'. You wonder whether I'm really forgiving you or just trying to keep from hurting your feelings, and so you become anxious, testy, and so on.”

LoveRelationshipCertaintyMutability
Book:In the Spirit of Hegel
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“We choose our friends on the basis of, among other things, our conception of ourselves. That's not to say that friendship is narcissistic, it doesn't follow that we choose people 'like ourselves'; in fact we might choose people very different than ourselves. For example, if I'm not very intelligent, and I'm concerned about my lack of intelligence, I might take up with an extremely intelligent woman, precisely in order to have her intelligence, in some sense, radiate onto me. The idea is that in friendship what we do is we pick people who are going to reinforce, in some sense, our own conception of ourselves. So if I think of myself as intelligent, or I want to think of myself as intelligent, whether or not I pick a partner who is also intelligent, what is going to be essential is that it's going to be a partner who somehow expands my notion of my own intelligence, either by telling me all the time, perhaps, how intelligent I am, or maybe by always contradicting me in such a way that I can prove my intelligence with her or him.”

PhilosophyFriendshipFriendsSartre Existentialism
Book:No Excuses: Existentialism And The Meaning Of Life
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“Sexuality is primarily a means of communicating with other people, a way of talking to them, of expressing our feelings about ourselves and them. It is essentially a language, a body language, in which one can express gentleness and affection, anger and resentment, superiority and dependence far more succinctly than would be possible verbally, where expressions are unavoidably abstract and often clumsy.”

PeopleWayMeanFeelingsBodyWould BeLanguageSexTalkingExpressionAffectionCommunicateSexualityAbstractResentmentSuperiorityDependenceGentlenessClumsyBody LanguageAnger And ResentmentWay Of TalkingCommunicating With Others
Book:From Hegel to Existentialism
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“High-class kitsch may well be "perfect" in its form and and composition: the academic painters were often masters of their craft. Thus, the accusation that a work of kitsch is based not on lack of for or aesthetic merit but on the presence of a particularly provocative emotional content. (The best art, by contrast, eschews emotional content altogether.)”

WellsMayArtFormPerfectClassEmotionalMastersPainterCraftsMeritAestheticAcademicContrastCompositionProvocativeAccusationKitschBest ArtHigh Class
Book:Entertaining Ideas: Popular Philosophical Essays, 1970-1990
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“For all of the advice in the magazines on "How to Keep your Love Alive," the salvation of love is not the prolongation of sexual desire but the shared lifelong cultivation of a romantic lightheartedness that softens conflicts and anxieties and focuses serious attention even as it undermines seriousness as such. It's hard to fall out of love so long as you're laughing together.”

LongHardTogetherDesireFallLove IsAttentionLaughingAliveAdviceSeriousConflictAnxietySalvationFalling In LoveMagazinesSeriousnessLifelongCultivationSexual DesireLaughing TogetherLightheartedness
Book:About Love: Reinventing Romance for Our Times
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“What gives life meaning is a form of rebellion, rebellion against reason, an insistence on believing passionately what we cannot believe rationally. The meaning of life is to be found in passion—romantic passion, religious passion, passion for work and for play, passionate commitments in the face of what reason knows to be meaningless.”

KnowsGivingBelieveReasonPlayFacesFormLife IsPassionFoundReligiousCommitmentPassionateMeaning Of LifeRebellionMeaninglessInsistenceLife MeansPassion For WorkRomantic Passion
Book:Spirituality for the Skeptic: The Thoughtful Love of Life
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“Whether one sees the world as God's creation or as a secular mystery that science is on the way to figuring out, there is no denying the beauty and majesty of everything from mountain ranges, deserts, and rain forests to the exquisite details in the design of an ordinary mosquito.”

WorldWayMysteryDesignCreationMountainSelf ImprovementOrdinaryRainDetailsImprovementForestsDesertRangeSecularMajestyExquisiteMosquitoesGod's CreationMountain Ranges
Book:Spirituality for the Skeptic: The Thoughtful Love of Life
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