25 JUL 2011 by ideonexus

 The Platonic School Believed Nothing Was Knowable

A caution must also be given to the understanding against the intemperance which systems of philosophy manifest in giving or withholding assent, because intemperance of this kind seems to establish idols and in some sort to perpetuate them, leaving no way open to reach and dislodge them. This excess is of two kinds: the first being manifest in those who are ready in deciding, and render sciences dogmatic and magisterial; the other in those who deny that we can know anything, and so introduce...
  1  notes

They believed science and nature were simply shadows, mere reflections of a reality we could never hope to truly know.

08 JAN 2011 by ideonexus

 The Samurai Reject Elaborately Ornate Religious Displays

The leading principle of the Utopian religion is the repudiation of the doctrine of original sin; the Utopians hold that man, on the whole, is good. That is their cardinal belief. Man has pride and conscience, they hold, that you may refine by training as you refine his eye and ear; he has remorse and sorrow in his being, coming on the heels of all inconsequent enjoyments. How can one think of him as bad? He is religious; religion is as natural to him as lust and anger, less intense, indeed, ...
  1  notes

Like over-eating or alcoholism, the Samurai view ornate religion as a form of gluttony, as they also see religion accepted with an uncritical eye.