Jean Wahl Quotes on Mind
Jean Andre Wahl was a French philosopher and poet and the principal channel by which Hegel, Kierkegaard, and the wider current of existentialism reached French philosophical education in the years before and after the Second World War. This page collects quotes attributed to Jean Wahl on the topic of mind, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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Attributed to Jean Wahl:
“Existentialism is the discovery that thought belongs to a singular life.”
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Attributed to Jean Wahl:
“Poetry is the philosophical act that knows itself.”
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“Imagination is not an empirical or superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom .”
L'imagination ( Imagination: A Psychological Critique ) (1936) -
“L'âge de raison ( The Age of Reason ) (1945)”
He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being. -
“L'âge de raison ( The Age of Reason ) (1945)”
He yawned. He had finished the day and he had also finished with his youth. Various well-bred moralities had already discreetly offered him their services: disillusioned epicureanism , smiling tolerance , resignation , common sense stoicism - all the aids whereby a man may savour, minute by minute, like a connoisseur, the failure of a life.