'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.




Tuesday, March 30, 2010

on certainty 380

380. I might go on: “Nothing in the world will convinces me of the opposite!” For me this fact is at the bottom of all knowledge. I shall give up other things but not this.



the argument is false from the start –

it is not a question of one certainty or another –

the ground of knowledge is uncertainty –

any proposition one operates with –

is open to question –

open to doubt


© greg t. charlton. 2010.