23.8.07

kant on dreamers:

When will you begin to live virtuously, Plato asked an old man who was telling him that he was attending a series of lectures on virtue. One must not just speculate for ever; one must one day also think about actual practice. But today we think that those who live as they teach are dreamers.

Immanuel Kant, The philosophical encyclopaedia.

1 comment:

Alex said...

Woot! Go Kant :). The interesting thing to me is that Kant thought it when he did. I guess I keep forgetting that despite the myriad ways in which the world was different a few hundred (or few thousand) years ago, it really is the same in a huge number of ways. I guess it shows we have to look farther afield for a model of society where teaching as one lives is admirable. Maybe two thousand years is a short time after all.