2
" At its most simple, the notion underlying The Great Chain of Being, as identified in the first instance by Plato, is that the universe is essentially a rational place, in which all organisms are linked in a great chain, not on one scale of low to high (for Plato could see that even ‘lowly’ creatures were perfectly ‘adapted’, as we would say, to their niches in the scheme of things) but that there was in general terms a hierarchy which ranged from nothingness through the inanimate world, into the realm of plants, on up through animals and then humans, and above that through angels and other ‘immaterial and intellectual’ entities, reaching at the top a superior or supreme being, a terminus or Absolute. "
― Peter Watson , Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud
3
" Cardinal Bellarmino, whom we shall meet in Chapter 25 as the leader of the Catholic Church’s resistance to Copernicus, also said: ‘God wills that man should in some measure know him through his creatures, and because no single created thing could fitly represent the infinite perfection of the Creator, he multiplied creatures, and bestowed on each a certain degree of goodness and perfection, that from these we might form some idea of the goodness and perfection of the Creator, who, in one most simple and perfect essence, contains infinite perfections.’32 On this reading, Copernicus’ breakthrough was an infinitesimal increase in man’s ascent to God. Rousseau, in Émile, said: ‘O Man! Confine thine "
― Peter Watson , Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud
8
" reader is asked, for the moment, to accept this as a reasonable statement of fact, that in a part of the world that had for centuries been civilised, and quite highly civilised, there gradually emerged a people, not very numerous, not very powerful, not very well organised, who had a totally new conception of what human life was for, and showed for the first time what the human mind was for. "
― Peter Watson , Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud
17
" Epicurus, on the other hand, says something very different, ‘Man is not by nature adapted for living in civic communities.’98 Nothing, he adds, is an end in itself except individual happiness. Justice, taxes, voting – these have no value in themselves, other than their utilitarian value for what happiness they bring the individual. Independence is everything. In the same way, the Stoics, after Zeno, sought apathia, passionlessness – their ideal was to be impassive, dry, detached and invulnerable. ‘Man is a dog tied to a cart; if he is wise he will run with it.’99 "
― Peter Watson , Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud
19
" Dado el triunfo del enfoque aristotélico tanto en el pasado remoto como inmediato, ¿no ha llegado quizá el momento de enfrentar la posibilidad, e incluso la probabilidad, de que la noción platónica del "Yo Interior" sea equívoca? Esto es, la posibilidad que no exista ese yo interior. Al buscar "dentro", no hemos encontrado nada-- nada estable en cualquier caso, nada perdurable, nada sobre lo cual podamos establecer un consenso, nada concluyente-- porqué no hay nada que encontrar. Los seres humanos somos parte de la naturaleza y, por tanto, es muy probable que aprendamos más sobre nuestro "ser interior"-sea sobre nosotros mismos, buscando fuera de nosotros atendiendo al lugar que tenemos en ella como animales. En lo cual, en palabras de John Gray . "
― Peter Watson , Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud
