'For the person or persons that hold dominion, can no more combine with the keeping up of majesty the running with harlots drunk or naked about the streets, or the performances of a stage player, or the open violation or contempt of laws passed by themselves than they can combine existence with non-existence'.

- Benedict de Spinoza. Political Treatise. 1677.




Monday, January 18, 2010

on certainty 238


238.  I might therefore interrogate someone who said that the earth did not exist before his birth, in order to find out which of my convictions he was at odds with. And then it might be that he was contradicting my fundamental attitudes, and if that were how it was, I should have to put up with it.

Similarly if he said he had at some time been on the moon.



what you have here –

is different views

if you want to load up with rhetoric –

and talk of ‘conviction’

and what is ‘fundamental’ –

fair enough


© greg t. charlton. 2010.