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A World Without Why QUOTES

A World Without Why QUOTES

1 " So the experience I have of my everyday work environment is of a conformist, claustrophobic and repressive verbal universe, a penitential domain of reason-mongering in which hyperactivity in detail—the endlessly repeated shouts of “why,” the rebuttals, calls for “evidence,” qualifications and quibbles—stands in stark contrast to the immobility and self-referentiality of the structure as a whole. I suffer from recurrent bouts of nausea in the face of this densely woven tissue of “arguments,” most of which are nothing but blinds for something else altogether, generally something unsavory; and I feel an urgent need to exit from it altogether. "

― Raymond Geuss , A World Without Why

2 " One of the things I have always most admired about Alasdair MacIntyre's work is the particular kind of intellectual courage it exhibits. This virtue manifests itself in a number of ways, including a willingness to adress large philosophical questions head-on and to give straightforward answers to them. This is a form of courage, rather than merely of some other more etiolated cognitive excellence, because giving relatively bald and unvarnished answers to big questions makes it difficult to avoid facing up to the implications of what one says for action, and the action involved might be of a kind that requires exhausting, deeply disruptive, and potentially radical changes in the way one lives. "

― Raymond Geuss , A World Without Why