Scepticism and Cynicism
So for Hegel history shows that stoicism is replaced by scepticism and cynicism. Here again the complete disbelief in society, rather than the reasoned and calculated disbelief of the stoic, eventually leads to a dissolution of oneself. The comedy of the cynic that is directed against society, eventually begins to turn against the comedian. The idea of goodness is seen as completely foreign to mankind.
Read more about this topic: Unhappy Consciousness
Famous quotes containing the words scepticism and, scepticism and/or cynicism:
“What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say “I know” instead of “I am learning,” and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for scepticism and activity.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The great subverter of Pyrrhonism or the excessive principles of scepticism is action, and employment, and the occupations of common life.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“Cynicism makes things worse than they are in that it makes permanent the current condition, leaving us with no hope of transcending it. Idealism refuses to confront reality as it is but overlays it with sentimentality. What cynicism and idealism share in common is an acceptance of reality as it is but with a bad conscience.”
—Richard Stivers, U.S. sociologist, educator. The Culture of Cynicism: American Morality in Decline, ch. 1, Blackwell (1994)