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I'm fascinated by Comte's clear-eyed analysis of what was wrong with modern society, which is that you've got industrial capitalism on one side and ro...more

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The claims I'm making for art are simply the claims that we naturally make around music or around poetry. We're much more relaxed around those art for...more

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I'm not an academic philosopher, and don't agree with the way the universities approach the subject. I'm a philosopher only in the very loose sense of...more

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In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.

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[L]ife is a phenomenon in need of criticism, for we are, as fallen creatures, in permanent danger of worshipping false gods, of failing to understand ...more

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What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their bea...more

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Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awarene...more

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It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisi...more

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It is in books, poems, paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought...more

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A storyteller who provided us with such a profusion of details would rapidly grow maddening. Unfortunately, life itself often subscribes to this mode ...more

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What we encounter in works of art and philosophy are objective versions of our own pains and struggles, evoked and defined in sound, language or image...more

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The essence of art is that its one case applies to thousands,' knew Schopenhauer.