This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The essence of the Jewish concept of life seems to me to be the affirmation of life for all creatures. For the life of the individual has meaning only in the service of enhancing and ennobling the life of every living thing. Life is holy; i.e., it is the highest worth on which all other values depend.
Dōgen, aka Dōgen Kigen, Eihei Dōgen, titled as Dōgen Zenji NULL
To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things.
Self |
A human being is part of the whole called by us 'universe', a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self [ego]. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive.
Beauty | Compassion | Consciousness | Delusion | Ego | Experience | Feelings | Humanity | Nature | Prison | Rest | Self | Sense | Space | Thinking | Time | Universe | Value |
By one’s self the evil is done, by one’s self one suffers; by one’s self evil is left undone, by one’s self one is purified. The pure and the impure stand and fall by themselves, no one can purify another.
In the axial mode, human life is understood as involving a journey in which those who are successful move from a Lower to a Higher Realm. This journey is central to the meaning of life. Through an elevated mode of knowing, the world as we ordinarily experience is largely left behind, deemed less if not illusory, and the domain of reality itself is approached.
Experience | Journey | Knowing | Life | Life | Meaning | Reality | World |
An important way to distinguish philosophy from religion is that philosophy, at its best, raises questions, whereas religion provides answers. Answers can sometimes lose their force, however, if the questions to which they provide answers have somehow been lost, muted, or superseded. But philosophy can never end. As long as we live, we are going to ask ourselves about the meaning of life. Some have written about the “end of philosophy.” It has been thought that philosophy exists only if you can construe life as a journey traveling to a new and different dimension. Some have said that the cognitive sciences, linguistics, neuroscience, and so forth will advance so much that traditional technical problems of philosophy will diminish. Insofar as philosophy is a pursuit of the art of living providing (often conflicting) guidance for living, there is a future for philosophy.
Art | Distinguish | Force | Future | Guidance | Important | Journey | Life | Life | Meaning | Philosophy | Problems | Religion | Thought | Will | Guidance | Art | Thought |
Nels F. S. Ferré, fully Nels Fredrick Solomon Ferré
To face God and eternal life aright, each person must accept reality. Flight from God is the flight of fear. Acceptance of God is the acceptance of the love that involves the acceptance of self and others. It is the acceptance of life.
Acceptance | Eternal | Fear | God | Life | Life | Love | Reality | Self | God |
If I am part of God, if the Self at its core is God, then I cannot deny Him, nor He deny me, and there is no relationship, for He is constrained by His being as I, and He is not the only necessary being, for I am necessary too, and He exists by my will as much as I do by His.
God | Relationship | Self | Will |
A grand meta-narrative is a story of the development and purpose of human history in which we as individual can find a place and play a role. Four basic meta-narratives: (1) Platonic Christian is the idea of life as a journey to another unchanging realm. (2) Hegel’s view that history is the unfolding of the consciousness of God. (3) Marx’s notion of another revolution ushering in a new era. (4) Nietzsche’s idea that there is no “beyond” and that the only meaning comes through creative activities through which we shape a life for ourselves.
Consciousness | Era | God | History | Individual | Journey | Life | Life | Meaning | Play | Purpose | Purpose | Revolution | Story |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
In our effort to escape from aloneness and powerlessness, we are ready to get rid of our individual self either by submission to new forms of authority or by a compulsive conforming to accepted patterns.
Authority | Effort | Individual | Self | Submission |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
There is no meaning in life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his power, by living productively… Only constant vigilance, activity, and effort can keep us from failing in the one task that matters – the full development of our powers within the limitations set up by the laws of our existence.
Effort | Existence | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Power | Vigilance |
In our loss of the perception of the Void and our conviction that particular things are finally real, we come to believe in the separate, isolated reality of some enduring self within us for which we a plan and hope great things. Alas, we are frustrated in our hoping because all through our lives our hopes are incompletely attained or, if fulfilled, strangely unsatisfying after all.