You may substitute knowledge for superstition without satisfying the needs that drive people into superstition's arms.
Susan Neiman
One great function of the arts is to keep ideals alive in a culture that does not yet realize them.
culture philosophy beauty art arts idealism alive ideals great realize
As long as your ideas of what's possible are limited by what's actual, no other idea has a chance.
philosophy idealism
In the most general terms, the Enlightenment goes back to Plato's belief that truth and beauty and goodness are connected; that truth and beauty, disseminated widely, will sooner or later lead to goodness. (While we're making at effort at truth and goodness, beauty reminds us what we're hold out for.)
philosophy beauty enlightenment
religion rationality superstition
Like many others, I came to philosophy to study matters of life and death, and was taught that professionalization required forgetting them. The more I learned, the more I grew convinced of the opposite: the history of philosophy was indeed animated by the questions that drew us there
philosophy life death history
Any ethics that needs religion is bad ethics, and any religion that tries to do so is bad religion. Of course, there are plenty of both around.
religion
I'm delighted to hear someone make the claim that there is moral progress because it can be such a incendiary thing to say, and its something that I say and deeply believe in.
progress
Those who cannot find are likely to settle for the far more dangerous simplicity, or purity, instead.
simplicity
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