William Hamilton Quotes on Knowledge
Sir William Hamilton (1788–1856), the principal Scottish philosopher of the second quarter of the nineteenth century and the editor of the standard nineteenth-century edition of Reid, developed the doctrine of the relativity of human knowledge — the "philosophy of the conditioned" — across his Edinburgh lectures and the Discussions on Philosophy and Literature (1852). The framework holds that the human intellect can know only through limitation and contrast, and that the unconditioned (the Absolute and the Infinite) lies necessarily beyond its reach. J. S. Mill's An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (1865) is the classical critical engagement with the position.
Quotes
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Attributed to William Hamilton:
“To be conscious is to be conscious of something distinguished from self.”
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Attributed to William Hamilton:
“All knowledge is of the relative; the absolute, as such, is unknowable.”
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Attributed to William Hamilton:
“Philosophy is reasoned consciousness.”
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Attributed to William Hamilton:
“Logic is the science of the formal laws of thought.”
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“The discovery of the art of Printing unbarred afresh the gates of Heaven, and let in that flood of light, of knowledge, and of wisdom, which enabled men to emancipate themselves again from the slavery of superstition—to take their proper place in the ranks of created beings—and in ennobling themselves, in gradually exalting their understandings and amending their hearts, to pay at length the worthiest homage to the goodness of their common Parent, and prove themselves to be—as the Almighty himself originally formed them—inferior only to the Angels.”
The History of Medicine, Surgery, and Anatomy, from the Creation of the World, to the Commencement of the Nineteenth Century (1831), Vol. 1 -
“Analysis and synthesis , though commonly treated as two different methods, are, if properly understood, only the two necessary parts of the same method. Each is the relative and correlative of the other. Analysis, without a subsequent synthesis, is incomplete; it is a mean cut off from its end. Synthesis, without a previous analysis, is baseless; for synthesis receives from analysis the elements which it recomposes.”
Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic : "6th Lecture on Metaphysics", p. 69, ed. 1871, Boston; partly reported in Austin Allibone ed. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. (1903), p. 34 -
“Analysis and synthesis , though commonly treated as two different methods, are, if properly understood, only the two necessary parts of the same method. Each is the relative and correlative of the other. Analysis, without a subsequent synthesis, is incomplete; it is a mean cut off from its end. Synthesis, without a previous analysis, is baseless; for synthesis receives from analysis the elements w”
Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic : "6th Lecture on Metaphysics", p. 69, ed. 1871, Boston; partly reported in Austin Allibone ed. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. (1903), p. 34 -
“Notes on Reid , from the Fragments of Epicharmus , 255.”
Be sober, and to doubt prepense, These are the sinews of good sense. -
“The primary principle of education is the determination of the pupil to self-activity — the doing nothing for him which he is able to do for himself.”
As quoted by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895). p. 573. -
“"Sordet cognita veritas" is a shrewd aphorism of Seneca . A truth, once known, falls into comparative insignificance.”
Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic(1860) Vol. 1 -
“"The intellect," says Aristotle ... "is perfected, not by knowledge but by activity..." and... "The arts and sciences are powers, but every power exists only for the sake of action; the end of philosophy... is not knowledge, but the energy conversant about knowledge."”
Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic(1860) Vol. 1