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Les Misérables

Victor Hugo's 'Les Misérables' is an epic narrative that delves into the lives of various characters, including Jean Valjean, a former convict seeking redemption, and Fantine, a woman struggling in poverty. The story is rich in historical detail and moral complexity, offering a profound examination of society's flaws and the resilience of the human spirit. more

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Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo, a French romantic poet, novelist, and playwright, was born on February 26, 1802, and died on May 22, 1885. He is considered one of the greatest writers in French literary history, known for his profound humanistic concerns and rich imagination. more

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“Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of our mind; the first is to receive representations (receptivity of impressions), the second is the faculty of knowing an object through these representations (spontaneity of concepts). Through the first an object is *given* to us, through the second the object is *thought* in relation to that representation (which is a mere determination of the mind). Intuition and concepts constitute, therefore, the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts can yield knowledge. Both are either pure or empirical. They are empirical when they contain sensation (sensation presupposes the actual presence of the object). They are *pure* when no sensation is mixed in with the representation. Sensation may be called the matter of sensible knowledge. Pure intuition, therefore, contains only the form under which something is intuited, and the pure concepts contains only the form of thinking an object in general. Pure intuitions and pure concepts alone are possible *a priori*, empirical intuitions and empirical concepts only *a posteriori*. We call *sensibility* the *receptivity* of our mind to receive representations insofar as it is in some wise affected, while the *understanding*, on the other hand, is our faculty of producing representations by ourselves, or the *spontaneity* of knowledge. We are so constituted that our intuition can never be other than *sensible*; that is, it contains only the mode in which we are affected by objects. The faculty, on the contrary, which enables us to *think* the object of sensible intuition is the *understanding*. Neither of these properties is to be preferred to the other. Without sensibility no object would be given to us, without understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. It is, therefore, just as necessary to make our concepts sensible (i.e., to add the object to them in intuition) as to make our intuitions understandable (i.e., to bring them under concepts). These two faculties or capacities cannot exchange their functions. The understanding cannot intuit anything, the senses cannot think anything. Only from their union can knowledge arise. But this is no reason for confounding their respective contributions; rather, it gives us a strong reason for carefully separating and distinguishing the one from the other. We therefore distinguish the science of the rules of sensibility in general, i.e., aesthetic, from the science of the rules of the understanding in general, i.e., logic." ―Transcendental Doctrine of Elements. Transcendental Logic: The Idea of a Transcendental Logic”

PhilosophyLogicEpistemologyOntology
Book:Critique of pure reason
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“For every relationship involves two related terms. Sometimes relationships are not real in either term, but arise from the way we think of the terms: we think identity, for example, by thinking one thing twice over and relating it to itself; and occasionally we relate what exists to what does not exist, or generate purely logical relations like that of genus to species. Sometimes relationships are real in both terms: grounded in the quantity of both, in the case of relationships like big/small or double/half, or in their activity and passivity, in the case of causal relationships, like mover-moved and father/son. Sometimes relationships are real in only one of the terms, with the other merely thought of as related [reciprocally] to that one; and this happens whenever the two terms exist at different levels. Thus seeing and understanding really relates us to things, but being seen and understood by us is not something real in the things; and similarly a pillar to the right of us does not itself have a left and a right.”

PhilosophyLogicOntology
Book:Summa Theologiae: A Concise Translation
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“*There is only one God*. Whatever exists is *ipso facto* individual; to be one it needs no extra property and calling it one merely denies that it is divided. Simple things are neither divided nor divisible; composite things do not exist when their parts are divided. So existence stands or falls with individuality, and things guard their unity as they do their existence. But what is simply speaking one can yet in certain respects be many: an individual thing, essentially undivided, can have many non-essential properties; and a single whole, actually undivided, can have potentially many parts. Only when one is used to count with does it presuppose in what it counts some extra property over and above existence, namely, quantity. The one we count with contrasts with the many it counts in the way a unity of measurement contrasts with what it measures; but the individual unity common to everything that exists contrasts with plurality simply by lacking it, as undividedness does division. A plurality is however *a* plurality: though simply speaking many, inasmuch as it exists, it is, incidentally, one. A continuum is homogeneous: its parts share the form of the whole (every bit of water is water); but a plurality is heterogeneous: its parts lack the form of the whole (no part of the house is a house). The parts of a plurality are unities and non-plural, though they compose the plurality not as non-plural but as existing; just as the parts of a house compose the house as material, not as not houses. Whereas we define plurality in terms of unity (many things are divided things to each of which is ascribed unity), we define unity in terms of division. For division precedes unity in our minds even if it doesn’t really do so, since we conceive simple things by denying compositeness of them, defining a point, for example, as lacking dimension. Division arises in the mind simply by negating existence. So the first thing we conceive is the existent, then―seeing that this existent is not that existent―we conceive division, thirdly unity, and fourthly plurality. There is only one God. Firstly, God and his nature are identical: to be God is to be this individual God. In the same way, if to be a man was to be Socrates there would only be one man, just as there was only one Socrates. Moreover, God’s perfection is unlimited, so what could differentiate one God from another? Any extra perfection in one would be lacking in the other and that would make him imperfect. And finally, the world is one, and plurality can only produce unity incidentally insofar as it too is somehow one: the primary and non-incidental source of unity in the universe must himself be one. The one we count with measures only material things, not God: like all objects of mathematics, though defined without reference to matter, it can exist only in matter. But the unity of individuality common to everything that exists is a metaphysical property applying both to non-material things and to God. But what in God is a perfection has to be conceived by us, with our way of understanding things, as a lack: that is why we talk of God as lacking a body, lacking limits and lacking division.”

PhilosophyLogicTheologyMereology
Book:Summa Theologiae: A Concise Translation
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“It will be seen how there can be the idea of a special science, the *critique of pure reason* as it may be called. For reason is the faculty which supplies the *principles* of *a priori* knowledge. Pure reason therefore is that which contains the principles of knowing something entirely *a priori*. An *organon* of pure reason would be the sum total of the principles by which all pure *a priori* knowledge can be acquired and actually established. Exhaustive application of such an organon would give us a system of pure reason. But as this would be a difficult task, and as at present it is still doubtful whether indeed an expansion of our knowledge is possible here at all, we may regard a science that merely judges pure reason, its sources and limits, as the *propaedeutic* to the system of pure reason. In general, it would have to be called only a *critique*, not a *doctrine* of pure reason. Its utility, in regard to speculation, would only be negative, for it would serve only to purge rather than to expand our reason, and, which after all is a considerable gain, would guard reason against errors. I call all knowledge *transcendental* which deals not so much with objects as with our manner of knowing objects insofar as this manner is to be possible *a priori*. A system of such concepts would be called *transcendental philosophy*. But this is still, as a beginning, too great an undertaking. For since such a science must contain completely both analytic and synthetic *a priori* knowledge, it is, as far as our present purpose is concerned, much too comprehensive. We will be satisfied to carry the analysis only so far as is indispensably necessary in order to understand in their whole range the principles of *a priori* synthesis, with which alone we are concerned. This investigation, which properly speaking should be called only a transcendental critique but not a doctrine, is all we are dealing with at present. It is not meant to expand our knowledge but only to correct it, and to become the touchstone of the value, or lack of value, of all *a priori* knowledge. Such a critique is therefore the preparation, as far as possible, for a new organon, or, if this should turn out not to be possible, for a canon at least, according to which, thereafter, the complete system of a philosophy of pure reason, whether it serve as an expansion or merely as a limitation of its knowledge, may be carried out both analytically and synthetically. That such a system is possible, indeed that it need not be so comprehensive as to cut us off from the hope of completing it, may already be gathered from the fact that it would have to deal not with the nature of things, which is inexhaustible, but with the understanding which makes judgments about the nature of things, and with this understanding again only as far as its *a priori* knowledge is concerned. The supply of this *a priori* knowledge cannot be hidden from us, as we need not look for it outside the understanding, and we may suppose this supply to prove sufficiently small for us to record completely, judge as to its value or lack of value and appraise correctly. Still less ought we to expect here a critique of books and systems of pure reason, but only the critique of the faculty of pure reason itself. Only once we are in possession of this critique do we have a reliable touchstone for estimating the philosophical value of old and new works on this subject. Otherwise, an unqualified historian and judge does nothing but pass judgments upon the groundless assertions of others by means of his own, which are equally groundless.”

PhilosophyLogicMetaphysicsEpistemologyOntologyKant
Book:Critique of pure reason
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