Raymond Geuss Quotes

#1. Neither the good nor the true is self-realizing, so it is not generally a sufficient explanation of why people believe that X that X is true, or of why people do Y that Y is good.

Raymond Geuss

#2. We do not wish to "judge" or assess out surrounding merely as a kind of expressive activity carelessly projected onto the world, but we wish to evaluate the world "correctly," i.e., in according with that it truly is, and the desire to know is directed at determining what the world truly is.

Raymond Geuss

#3. When Catullus expresses his love and hate for Lesbia, he is not obviously voicing a wish to rid himself of one or the other of these two sentiments. Not all contradictions resolve into temporal change of belief or desire.

Raymond Geuss

#4. The idea that all problems either have a solution or can be shown to be pseudo-problems is not one I share.

Raymond Geuss

#5. One way ... in which a political philosophy can be ideological is by presenting a relatively marginal issue as if it were central and essential.

Raymond Geuss

#6. A major danger in using highly abstractive methods in political philosophy is that one will succeed merely in generalizing one's own local prejudices and repackaging them as demands of reason. The study of history can help to counteract this natural human bias.

Raymond Geuss

#7. The Kantian philosophy is no more than at best a half-secularized version of such a theocratic ethics, with "Reason" in the place of God. This does not amount to much more than a change of names.

Raymond Geuss

#8. Can one understand politics without understanding history, especially the history of political thought, and will this distinguish political philosophy from some other kinds of philosophy (such as, perhaps, logic) to which the study of history is not integral?

Raymond Geuss

#9. Asking what the question is, and why the question is asked, is always asking a pertinent question.

Raymond Geuss

#10. The general point that a political theory is, among other things, a partisan intervention, is well taken. So question about the actual political implication of a theory cannot be excluded as, in principle, irrelevant.

Raymond Geuss