really fun philosophical history

"it is clear that hume's invocation of sympathy is an invention intended to bridge the gap between any set of reasons which could support unconditional adherence to general and unconditional rules and any set of reasons for action or judgement which could derive from our particular, fluctuating,

circumstance-governed desires, emotions and interests. later on adam smith was to invoke sympathy for precisely the same purpose. but the gap of course is logically unbridgeable, and 'sympathy' as used by hume and smith is the name of a philosophical fiction."

LOL wait fuck i accidentally posted all this in the wrong thread

"we cannot characterize behavior independent of intentions, and we cannot characterize intentions independently of the settings which make those intentions intelligible both to agents themselves and to others"

"there is no present which is not informed by some image of some future and an image of the future which always presents itself in the form of a telos - or a variety of ends or goals - towards which we are either moving or failing to move in the present"