A Polite Conversation On Human Understanding

A Few Good Quotes:

Burke's opening monologue:

Locke: "General truths are most looked after by the mind as those that most enlarge our knowledge…; Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book IV, Chapter 5, Section 9.
Burke: "Nothing more deeply engrosses a man than his burdens…"
Locke: "it is impossible to speak clearly or distinctly of our knowledge without considering first, the nature, use, and signification of language… the knowledge of truth consists in knowing what ideas words stand for"; ECHU, Book II, Chapter 33, section 19.
Burke: "I recognize that people like to label, that labeling comforts by getting things placed ."; Philosophy of Literary Form, 8.
Locke: "God having designed man for a sociable creature furnished him with language, which was to be the great instrument and common tie of society…"; ECHU, Book III, Chapter 1, Section 1.
Burke: "if men were not apart from one another, there would be no need for the rhetorician to proclaim there unity. If men were wholly and truly of one substance, absolute communication would be of man's very essence!"; RM
Locke: "To form a clear notion of truth, it is very necessary to consider truth of thought, and truth of words, distinctly from one another—but yet it is very difficult to treat of them asunder. Because it is unavoidable, in treating of mental propositions, to make use of words."; ECHU
Burke: "a perfectionist might seek to evolve terms free of ambiguity and inconsistency… what we want is not terms that avoid ambiguity , but terms that clearly reveal the strategic spots at which ambiguities necessarily arise.; GM, xviii.
Locke: "though give me leave here to say, that it is a perverting use of words, and brings obscurity and confusion into their signification, whenever we make them stand for anything but those ideas we have in our own minds!"; ECHU, Book III, Chapter 2, Section 5.
Burke: "I think that an attempt to eliminate magic, in this sense, would involve us in the elimination of vocabulary itself as a way of sizing up reality"! "Do we simply use words? Or do they not also use us?; Language as Symbolic Action, "Definition of Man", 6.
Locke: "Truth is to be found and supported by a mature and due consideration of things themselves, and not by artificial terms and ways of arguing, which lead men not so much into the discovery of truth, as into a captious and fallacious use of doubtful words, which is the most useless and disingenuous way of talking, and most unbecoming a gentleman or a lover of truth of any thing in the world."; Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Section 189.
Burke: "But can we bring ourselves to realize just how overwhelmingly much of what we deem reality has been built up for us through nothing but our symbol systems? ...to mediate on this fact until one sees its full implications is much like peering over the edge of things into an ultimate abyss. And doubtless that's one reason why, though man is typically the symbol-using animal, he clings to a kind of naïve verbal realism that refuses to realize the full extent of the role played by symbolicity in his notions of reality"; LSA, DoM, 5.
Locke: "be sure not to let your son be bred up in the art and formality of disputing, either practicing it himself, or admiring it in others; unless, instead of an able man, you desire to have him an insignificant wrangler, opiniator in discourse, and priding himself in contradicting others; or which is worse, questioning everything, and thinking there is no such thing as truth to be sought, but only victory in disputing."; STCE, Section 189 ("Insignificant Wrangler" is my new favorite phrase).
Burke: "All questions are leading questions…every question selects a field of battle, and in this selection it forms the nature of its answers!"; (RM 22); "We refer to that ultimate disease of cooperation: war!" .; RM 22, Philosophy of Literary Form, 67.
Locke: "there is much more falsehood and error among men than truth and knowledge."; ECHU, Book IV, Chapter 15, Section 6.
Burke: "the rhetoric must lead us through the Scramble, the Wrangle of the Market Place, the flurries and flare-ups of the Human Barnyard, the Give and Take, the wavering line of pressure and counterpressure, the Logomachy, the onus of ownership, the Wars of Nerves, the War…rhetoric is concerned with the state of Babel after the Fall!; RM 23
Hume: "there is still room to hope, that the industry, good fortune, or improved sagacity of succeeding generations may reach discoveries unknown to former ages. Each adventurous genius will still leap at the arduous prize, and find himself stimulated, rather than discouraged, by the failures of his predecessors"; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Book, Section 7, Chapter 6.
Burke: "what great progress that would be!"; LSA, "DoM" 18.
Hume: "It is confessed, that the utmost effort of human reason is to reduce the principles, productive of natural phenomena, to a greater simplicity, and to resolve the many particular effects into a few general causes. But as to the causes of these general causes, we should in vain attempt their discovery. These ultimate springs and principles are totally shut up from human curiosity and enquiry."; An Enquiry Chapter 26.
Burke: "Hume was certainly correct in contending that there is no purely empirical evidence for concepts like causality, power, necessary connection!"; Grammar of Motives 183.
Hume: "ambiguity, by this means, is gradually introduced into our reasonings…. the chief obstacle, therefore, to our improvement in the moral or metaphysical sciences is the obscurity of… ideas, and the ambiguity of… terms"; An Enquiry, Section 7, Chapter 48.
Burke: "Men seek for vocabularies that will be faithful reflections of reality. To this end, they must develop vocabularies that are selections of reality. And any selection of reality must, in certain circumstances, function as a deflection of reality."; GM, 59.
Hume: "the principles of taste be universal, and nearly, if not entirely, the same in all men…strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice, can alone entitle critics to [proclaim] the true standard of taste and beauty."; Essay on the Standards of Taste Section 23.
Burke: "each man is free to be his own tyrant."; "Goaded by the spirit of hierarchy and rotten with perfection!"; LSA, "Terministic Screens," 52, LSA, "DoM," 16.
Hume: "accuracy is, in every case advantageous to beauty"; "Obscurity, indeed, is painful to the mind as well as to the eye"; "we must submit to this fatigue , in order to live at ease ever after: and must cultivate true metaphysics with some care, in order to destroy the false and adulterate"; An Enquiry, Section 1, Chapter 5; Section 1, Chapter 6; Section 1, Chapter 7.
Burke: "is not the sufferer exerting almost superhuman efforts in the attempt to give his life a certain form?"; LSA, "DoM," 18.
Hume: "this recommends an universal doubt…no reasoning could ever bring us to a state of assurance and conviction on any subject"; An Enquiry, Section 12, Chapter 116.
Burke: "what more thorough illustrations could one want, of a drive to make one's life "perfect," despite the fact that such efforts at perfection might cause the unconscious striver great suffering?"; LSA, DoM, 18.
Hume: "by this means, his sentiments are perverted…"; SoT, Section 21.
Locke: one "may have reason to suspect, that either there is no such thing as truth at all, or that mankind hath no sufficient means to attain a certain knowledge of it"; ECHU Section 1.
Burke: "the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress."; PLF 110-1.

Polite Conversation on Human Understanding: The Usual [French] Suspects

A Few Good Quotes: