Key Insights & Memorable Quotes
Below are the most popular and impactful highlights and quotes from A New History of Western Philosophy:
“virtue is indeed teachable,”
“In exile in Lampsacus, Anaxagoras made his final benefaction to humanity: the invention of the school holiday.”
“Philosophy is not a matter of knowledge; it is a matter of understanding, that is to say, of organizing what is known.”
“If grace was necessary for salvation, was it also sufficient? If you are offered grace, can you resist it? If so, then there would be some scope for freedom in human destiny. While some would end up in hell because they had never been offered grace, hell would also contain those who had been offered grace and turned it down. In the course of controversy Augustine’s position continually hardened, and in the end he denied even this vestige of human choice: grace cannot be declined, cannot be overcome. There are only two classes of people: those who have been given grace and those who have not, the predestined and the reprobate. We can give no reason why any individual falls in one class rather than another. If”
“Where then does evil come from? In his youth Augustine had subscribed to the Manichaean view that there were two supreme principles controlling the universe, one good and one evil, in conflict with each other. As a Christian he gave up belief in the evil principle, but this did not mean that he believed that the good God was the cause of evil. Evil is only a privation of good, it is not a positive reality and does not need a causal principle. Any evil in creatures is simply a loss of good—of integrity, beauty, health, or virtue (DCD XII. 3).”
