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Benedetto Croce.

"Man's thought and man's doubt can never cease, and he
could not think [at all] did he not live in the truth, the
light of God." -- from "Concerning My Philosophical Worrk"
by Benedetto Croce, in 'Philosophy - Poetry - History: An
Anthology of Essays by Benedetto Croce', London: Oxford
University Press, 1966.

 "If, however, philosophy be conceived as standing to history in the relation of guide to guided, light-bringer to the lightless, form to matter, then undeniably a form of transcendence is perpetuated or reintroduced with the assignment of a primacy or sovereignty to philosophy over history similar to that claimed by the metaphysical entities over experienced reality. There is only one way to avoid this dressing up of the spirit as a metaphysical and transcendent entity. It is to conceive of philosophy as being dependent upon history in the same measure as history is upon philosophy. But since Spirit and History are not concepts in natural science, their relation cannot be summed up in the scientific formula of the reciprocal action of forces, but must be interpreted as a synthetic or dialectical unity."

 "Truth is an inner vital experience of men who in the very
act of that experience seek it out, defend it, dispute logically
to possess it. Truth is (and indeed mankind is) History, in
being and in development, and is what it is by developing,
and develops by being what it is."
--  from “Considerations on the Philosophy of Jacobi”, 1941

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/ Newsgroup > alt.philosophy / 5March03 /
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                 The Nature of Mr Bush
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 "... I doubt whether the most believing theologian would
dare to ascribe to nature itself in these mountains the aim
of expediency for man, who has to steal from her with great
exertion what little he can use, and even that is paltry;
and he can never be sure whether in the course of his
wretched thieveries, while robbing a handful of grass, he
will not be smashed by rocks and avalanches; whether the
pitiful work of his hands, his poor cottage and cow stable
will not be shattered one night. In these bleak wildernesses,
educated men might perhaps sooner have invented all other
theories and sciences but hardly that part of physico-
theology which proves to the pride of man how nature has
spread out everything for his enjoyment and comfort - a
pride that at the same time characterizes our age inasmuch
as one sooner finds satisfaction in the notion that so much
has been done for us by a strange being than one would find
in the consciousness that it is man himself who has offered
all these aims to nature ..."
.
 -- from Hegel's Diary of his trip through the Bernese Alps
during July and August of 1796; as given in W. Kaufmann's
'Hegel: Reinterpretation, Texts, and Commentary', 1965, p.307.
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          - the also semi-obscure one - textman ;>>
x

8 Quotes from Hegel's 'History of Philosophy'

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 Hegel says that "the beginning is the least formed,
determinate, and developed, and is the poorest and most
abstract, and the first philosophy is the wholly general,
indeterminate thought, and the simplest, while the
newest philosophy is the most concrete and profound.
One must know this lest one seek for more behind the
old philosophies than they contain."
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 "Every philosophy ... belongs to its time and is biased by
its limitations. The individual is the son of his people,
his world. He may put on airs as much as he pleases, he
does not go beyond it".
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 "The history of philosophy represents for us the gallery
of the noble spirits, who, by the boldness of their reason,
penetrated into the nature of things of things, of man, and
into the nature of God, unveiling its depth for us and through
their work presenting to us the treasure of the highest
knowledge.  This treasure, of which we ourselves want to
partake, constitutes philosophy in general; its genesis
is what we shall learn to know and comprehend ..."
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 "One sees, on great matters ... the greatest spirits erred,
for they have been refuted by others".
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 "After having thus explained the nature of the concrete, I
now add about its significance that the true ... has the drive
to develop itself. Only the living, that which is spirit,
moves and stirs essentially, and develops. The idea, concrete
in itself and developing, is thus an organic system, a
totality which contains a wealth of stages and moments did.
 Now philosophy is for itself the recognition of this
development, and as thinking that comprehends, it is itself
this thinking development. The further this development has
reached, the more perfect is the philosophy."
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 "Thus philosophy is system in the process of development."
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 "Now I claim that the sequence of the systems of philosophy
in history is the same as the sequence in the logical
derivation of the conceptual determinations of the idea."
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 "We have reached the point where philosophy must
guard religion against certain kinds of theology."
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textman

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