Sentences with phrase «nihilism unless»

To be sure, Kirk had disagreements with Strauss, who believed traditionalism led to nihilism unless it was fused with the philosophical quest for permanent wisdom.

Nor can it survive under a hostile polity contemptuous of truth, justice, law, and beauty: It will fall into lassitude and nihilism unless it maintains its longing for the transcendent, its upward thrust into the future, and the highest aspirations of the human heart.

Not exact matches

In this way the ontological argument, by drawing out the presupposition of metaphysical understanding, indicates that the choice before us is between holding that there is a God and that «reality» makes sense in some metaphysical manner, whether or not we can ever grasp what that sense is, and holding that there is no God and that any apparent metaphysical understanding of reality can only be an illusion which does not significantly correspond to the ultimate nature of things — unless this «nihilism» be regarded as a kind of metaphysical understanding instead of its blank negation.

(p. 99) «Nietzsche's atheism is thus a corollary of his basic commitment to question all premises and to reject them unless they are for some reason inescapable... To escape nihilism — which seems involved both in asserting the existence of God and thus robbing this world of ultimate significance, and also in denying God and thus robbing everything of meaning and value — that is Nietzsche's greatest and most persistent problem.»