15 tweets about the “philosophical act” (by Pieper)

1. Philosophers and poets are concerned with the mirandum (…) or whatever calls for astonishment or wonder (69)
2. In a world of total work, all the various forms and methods of transcendence must themselves become sterile (69)
3. It is exactly here, in this inner experience, that philosophy has its beginning: in the experience of wonder (100)
4. He who knows, does not feel wonder (…) But this un-knowing is not the kind that brings resignation (106)
5. Wonder is the desiderium sciendi, the desire for knowledge, active longing to know (107)
6. Wonder is also… joy (107)
7. Omnia admirabilia sunt delectabilia – the source of joy and the source of wonder are the same thing (107)
8. A philosopher, like the saint, only exists as an ideal (110)
9. The most that man can do is call someone a loving searcher of the truth (111)
10. It belongs to the very concept of philosophy to include an orientation to theology (114)
11. A claim to have “a formula for the world” is by definition “un-philosophy” or “pseudo-philosophy”! (115)
12. Rationalism still has its own articles of faith (124)
13. The Christian cannot expect from philosophy an answer to the question about human salvation (131)
14. To do philosophy is to realize the naturally essential inclination of the human mind toward totality (132)

Josef Pieper

“The Philosophical Act”

Published in:

Leisure, The Basis of Culture

St. Augustine’s Press

South Bend, 1998 (original 1904)