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Quote by Athanasius of Alexandria

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On the Incarnation

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Athanasius of Alexandria
Athanasius of Alexandria

Athanasius of Alexandria, born in 296 and died on May 2, 373, was a prominent Christian saint. He is known as the protector of the Alexandrian Church and had a profound impact on the development of Christian doctrine and theology. more

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“What is gained by the transcendence of the object is the identifiability of the object in a plurality of acts and the identifiability of what is thought by several individuals. This identifiability is not restricted to ideal objects, which are generated according to a definite operational law and are therefore producible by everyone out of the same material of intuition which is given prior to any particular sense-experience. The identifiability obtains in precisely the same way for objects of myth and folklore, of belief and artistic fantasy. Goethe’s Faust, Apollo, and Little Red Riding Hood can be identified by several individuals and are the objects of common, universally valid statements. Indeed, exact identity of the nature of the object in question and evidential knowledge of this identity can occur *only* in the case of ideal objects. Our certainty that we all think the same number 3 in the strictest identity of its nature is much more evident than that we all think the same real object, a tree, for instance. In the case of real objects we can actually prove that it is impossible for the momentary content in which the object is represented and thought to be exactly the same in a plurality of acts and for many individuals. The only other contribution made by the fact of the consciousness of transcendence, so long overlooked in recent philosophy, to the problem of reality is this: the acts in which this consciousness is present can bring the givenness of reality, of which we shall speak later, into “objective” form, and can therefore elevate that which is given in this way as real to the status of a real “object.” But with this, the contribution of the consciousness of transcendence to the problem of reality is at an end. Although N. Hartmann made the same point with respect to Paul Linke’s otherwise shrewd and pertinent comments on his doctrine of reality, still we should emphasize that the transcendence of the object does not *exclude* the reality of the object, not even of the *same* object in the strict sense of “same.” ―from_Idealism and Realism_”

PhilosophyLogicMetaphysicsEpistemologyOntologyPhenomenology
Author:Max Scheler
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“It is very important to note that the transcendence of the object is by no means a primitive component necessarily ingredient in all knowledge. It is missing in all ecstatic knowledge. In ecstatic knowledge the known world is still not objectively given. Only when the (logically and genetically simultaneous) act furnishing ecstatic knowledge and the subject which performs this act become themselves the content of knowledge in the act of reflection does the character originally given in ecstatic knowledge become a mere reference pointing to the “object.” It is only here that the object or that which turns into an object remains from now on “transcendent” to consciousness. Therefore, whenever there is consciousness, objects transcendent to consciousness must also be given to consciousness. Their structural relationship is indissoluble. Whenever self-consciousness and consciousness of an object arise, they do so simultaneously and through the same process. The categorical form of an object is not first impressed in a judgment upon a nonobjective given, not even in a one-term, simple judgment, as some people have thought (e.g., Heinrich Maier in his book *Wahrheit und Wirklichkeit*). This is a pure construction. Consciousness of an object precedes all judgment and is not originally constituted by judgment. The same holds true of consciousness of states of affairs. The consciousness of an object and the intentional object are not the result of an active [tätige] “forming” or “imprinting” which we perform on the given through judgments or any other operations of thought. On the contrary, they are the result of a pulling back, the result, that is, of the re-flexive act, in which an originally ecstatic [*ekstatisch gebender*] act turns back knowingly onto itself and comes upon a central self as its starting point. This central self can be given at every level and degree of “concentration” and “collectedness” in “self-consciousness.” What we had hold of [*das Gehabte*] remains “as” object, while the act of reflection turns the knowing back into the knower, as the result of a turning away [*Abwendung*] and a pulling back, and not of an active turning to [*Zuwendung*]. From what has been said, one may very well imagine that the real world could be abolished without consciousness and the self being altered or abolished thereby. But this could in no way be the case with the world of objects that transcend consciousness. Descartes as well as Lotze misunderstood this. Where a *cogito* exists, there must also be a *cogitatur* in which a transcendent object is thought. Only a being capable of reflection (*reflexio*) and self-consciousness *can* have objects. Charlotte Bühler has recently made it seem probable that the infant does not yet possess objective consciousness. In waking from the effects of a drug we can follow the process by which the givenness of the surrounding world becomes objective again. There is one last point of contact between the problem of reality and the consciousness of transcendence. The consciousness of transcendence, as already indicated, shows how the mere ecstatic possession of reality on the level of the immediately experienced resistance of an X to the central drives of life passes over into a reflexive and thus objective possession of reality. And we find similar transitions between ecstatic remembering which is merged in the being of what is past and reflexive remembering, between ecstatic drive activities and recurrent deliberation [*Besinnung*], between ecstatic surrender to a value and objectification of a value, between identifying with an alter ego and “understanding” [*Verstehen*] another, however slightly.” ―from_Idealism and Realism_”

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Author:Max Scheler
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“The third preliminary problem for every theory of reality is that of the experience of transcendence. We saw in the case of Berkeley that his erroneous principle *percipi est esse*, and his assertion that any being which we think, just for the reason that it is thought, cannot at the same time be regarded as subsisting independently of thinking, incorporate a failure to recognize the consciousness of transcendence peculiar to all intentional acts. This is an instance of the failure to recognize that not only all thinking in the narrower sense, in the sense of grasping an object on the basis of “meanings” and grasping a state of affairs through judgments, but *every* intention in general, whether perception, representation, remembering, the feeling of value, or the posing of ends and goals, points beyond the act and the contents of the act and intends something other than the act [*ein Aktfremdes*], even when what is thought is in turn itself a thought. Indeed, *intentio* signifies a goal-directed movement toward something which one does not have oneself or has only partially and incompletely. Berkeley (following Locke, who was the first to make the basic philosophical error which introduced “psychologism” into epistemology) arrived at the principle *esse est percipi* by making the idea [*Vorstellung*] (and even the sensation) into a thing, an immaterial substance, and by failing to distinguish between the act, the content of an act, and the object. Furthermore, Berkeley confused the being of objects with the fact of being-an-object, even though the latter has only a loose and variable connection with the former. On the other hand, the transcendence of the intentional object with respect to both the *intentio* and its present content is common to every instance of being-an-object. It is, for instance, proper to objects of pure mathematics which are certainly not real but ideal (for example, the number 3). These are produced from the *a priori* material of intuition in accordance with an operational law governing the steps of our thought or intuition. Transcendence is further proper to all fictitious objects and even to contradictory objects, for instance, a square circle. All these sorts of objects, e.g., the golden mountain or Little Red Riding Hood, satisfy the basic principle of the transcendence of objects over and above that aspect of them which is, at any moment, given in consciousness, just as much as do real objects existing independently of all consciousness and knowledge." ―from_Idealism and Realism_”

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Author:Max Scheler
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“It is precisely because the principle of the transcendence of the object is completely independent of the existential status of the objects themselves and, thus, independent of the question whether they are produced by us or subsist on their own―whether they are fictions or real beings―that the fact of the consciousness of transcendence is not even remotely qualified to solve the problem of reality. This has been misunderstood equally by W. Freytag, Edith Landmann, P. Linke, and even by Husserl himself. Indeed, people have wanted to speak of an intentional realism (E. Landmann) in contrast to Critical Realism and to all other forms of realism. N. Hartmann was quite correct in emphasizing, in opposition to this, that the projection [*Hinausragen*] of the intentional object beyond the content of consciousness and its act cannot make the least contribution to solving the problem of realism. If something is an intentional object, we cannot recognize from this fact alone, whether it is real or not. If the perceived cherry, the conceived triangle, a friend’s visit anticipated in a dream, Little Red Riding Hood, a freely planned project, or a felt value, have entirely different characteristics and predicates than do the mental processes and the actual contents in which these objects appear, then the distinction between intentional and mental holds equally of both the real and the irreal. *Thus, the problem of what is real is not touched by the fact of the transcendence of the object*, and *percipi est esse*, in Berkeley’s psychologistic sense, is laid to rest. This also frustrates attempts, such as Hume’s in his *Treatise*, to derive being-an-object in general―an object as distinguished from an idea―from a psychogenetic process in which the very ideas through which this psychogenetic process is supposed to be accomplished are themselves reified [*verdinglicht*]." ―from_Idealism and Realism_”

PhilosophyLogicMetaphysicsEpistemologyOntologyPhenomenology
Author:Max Scheler
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“Just like the forces of Good and Evil, on the levels so much distant from man, logic and reason clash with each other. In that merciless, multi-millennial and primal battle, none of them stepped away for an inch. In a craddle, like no man's land, we, the young human beings, find ourselves gazing upon the "toys that glitter". I wanted to believe.”

ReasonHuman BeingsBattleLogicDistanceParanormalGood And EvilSuperficialBelievingNo Man S Land
Book:Svetioničar - Vesnici oluje
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“Spinoza formulated the profoundly important principle that *all determination is negation*. To determine a thing is to cut it off from some sphere of being and so to limit it. To define is to set boundaries. To say that a thing is green limits it by cutting it from the sphere of pink, blue, or other-coloured things. To say that it is good cuts it off from the sphere of evil. This limitation is the same as negation. To *affirm* that a thing is within certain limits is to *deny* that it is outside those limits. To say that it is green is to say that it is not pink. Affirmation involves negation. Whatever is said of a thing denies something else of it. All determination is negation. This principle is fundamental for Hegel also, but with him it takes rather the converse form that *all negation is determination*. Formal logicians will remind us that we cannot simply convert Spinoza's proposition. But it is sufficient to point out in reply that not only does affirmation involve negation; negation likewise involves affirmation. To say that a thing belongs to one class is to affirm that it belongs to some other class,—though we may not know what that class is. Positive and negative are correlatives which mutually involve each other. To posit is to negate: this is Spinoza's principle. To negate is to posit: this is Hegel's. When, therefore, we meet Hegel talking about "the portentous power of the negative," we have to consider that for him negation is the very process of creation. For the *positive* nature of an object consists in its determinations. The nature of a stone is to be white, heavy, hard, etc. And since all determinations are negations, it follows that the positive nature of a thing consists in its negations. Negation, therefore, is of the very essence of positive being. And for the world to come into being what is above all necessary is the force of negation, "the portentous power of the negative." The genus only becomes the species by means of the differentia, and the differentia is precisely that which carves out a particular class from the general class by excluding, i.e., negating, the other species. And the species again only becomes the individual in the same way, by negating other individuals. These thoughts are no causal reflections of Hegel. They underlie his entire system. We must get to understand that these three ideas, determination, limitation, and negation, all involve each other." —from_The Philosophy of Hegel_”

PhilosophyLogicHegel
Author:W.T. Stace
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“منطق العرب أن ليس لهم منطق .. إنما إنفعالات ونزوات شخصية تتحكم في الملايين عشرات السنين .. فالعرب لم يبتعدوا كثيرا عن التفسير الشخصي للأحداث .. وعن الإختراع الشخصي للأحداث أيضا ولذلك ف الدوافع شخصية و الكوارث قومية”

LogicArab
Book:في السياسة الجزء الأول
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