'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.




Thursday, June 03, 2010

on certainty 497




497. If someone wanted to arouse doubts in me and spoke like this: here your memory is deceiving you, there you’ve been taken in, there again you have not been thorough enough in satisfying yourself, etc., and if I did not allow myself to be shaken but kept to my certainty – then my doing so cannot be wrong, even if only because this is just what defines a game.


someone arousing doubts –

and someone else sticking to their certainty –

is just the rhetorical game

the logic of the situation is –

any proposal – any proposition –

is open to question –

open to doubt –

is uncertain


© greg t. charlton. 2010.