Moss_Piglet comments on Rationality Quotes September 2013 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Vaniver 04 September 2013 05:02AM

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Comment author: Moss_Piglet 04 September 2013 04:38:15PM 0 points [-]

For to translate man back into nature; to master the many vain and fanciful interpretations and secondary meanings which have been hitherto scribbled and daubed over that eternal basic text homo natura; to confront man henceforth with man in the way in which, hardened by the discipline of science, man today confronts the rest of nature, with dauntless Oedipus eyes and stopped-up Odysseus ears, deaf to the siren songs of old metaphysical bird-catchers who have all too long been piping to him 'you are more! you are higher! you are of a different origin!' - that may be a strange and extravagant task but it is a task - who would deny that? Why did we choose it, this extravagant task? Or, to ask the question differently; 'why knowledge at all?' - Everyone will ask us about that. And we, thus pressed, we who have asked ourselves that same question a hundred times, we have found and can find no better answer...

Friedrich Nietzsche

Comment author: Estarlio 10 September 2013 01:13:41PM 1 point [-]

Because it's really really useful?

Comment author: Moss_Piglet 10 September 2013 02:37:14PM 1 point [-]

Jeez, people really don't appreciate poetic language around here, huh?

(That would probably be close to my answer too, I'm just a little stunned by all the downvotes.)