Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Quotes #4

On Eldership….

“What is the secret of eldership? It lies in the fact that an old man is through with his own life but not at all through with life. On the contrary, like a grandfather he watches all the later generations with a loving wisdom, which alone can reconcile their strife. He is the great pacifier, the guardian of life’s continuity, because people know that he alone is free from personal partisan aims. Therefore he is peculiarly the regenerative force in society; he sees to it that the full cycle of life is re-begun in the proper order. And it is the expectation of one day becoming elders that should carry us through the full cycle of our own lives.”

~from I Am an Impure Thinker: Teaching Too Late, Learning Too Early, page 104.

I Am an Impure Thinker is available for free pdf download. Click here for that.

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Quotes #3

On the birth of the University….

“[I]n Paris two great schools existed in the same place; this made room for a real university. The difference between a school of mere learning and the Higher School of fundamental thinking has been an element in European life since Abailard. Acknowledged competition between two schools of thought in the same place is what gives the Higher School its value. Wherever the disaccord of various and contradictory principles is born, the higher life of the mind begins to reveal its power. The forms of human life are indivisible and individual (you are a physician or a boy or a grandmother), whilst the forms of the life of thought are exactly the reverse. Thought is created and promoted in a dialectical process, by polarities and paradoxes, in a dialogue between pro and con. The existence of at least two complete sets of doctors at Paris gave the proper form of existence to thought and thinking for the first time in history.”

~from Out of Revolution, page 151.

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Quotes #2

“The young are backed by God; only the mature must face Him.”

“We know God primarily because we know that we are not gods but would like to be.”

~from The Christian Future, page 96.

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Quotes #1

“The meaning of the Christian era is that the time of divided loyalties is coming to an end and the reunion of mankind has begun. In every epoch after Christ another part of creation is finding its home in lasting unity.”

~from The Christian Future, page 131.

Safe Spaces be Damned

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In light of all the “safe space” talk coming out of universities these days, I thought I’d quote Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy speaking to his students in a philosophy course at Dartmouth College in the 1950s….

“So my appeal in all these (philosophy) classes, you may now understand, has always been to you as people who have to outgrow your childishness. I therefore cannot act as your wet-nurse. I — I’m not interested when you have a cold. Have 10 colds. Suffer! Because it will make you able, if you really suffer, to grow up. And if you — (if) I should pity you in all your difficulties and hardships, you see, I would forestall this process. I would tell you that you are still protected. I am not here to protect you against anything. I’m here to expose you. And this is what the world can expect from anybody who has this tremendous retardation of his growth granted to him in a college.”

*Quote taken from lecture #15 of Cross of Reality taught at Dartmouth College in 1953.

Rosenstock-Huessy’s lectures are available for free mp3 download here.