"Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them." Arthur Schopenhauer
Monday, February 7, 2011
Judging Greatness
"Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them." 
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ReplyDeleteWhat a great quote. I generally do not believe that it makes sense to study history in order to understand the present. I think we have to understand the present first, and then we can possibly learn something on the past either and find elements which fit together with the present. I therefore think it is an illusion that we understand the past better than those people who were living then. But Schopenhauer points out an ecception.
ReplyDeleteDue to modern technologies of diffusion, great minds will earlier be recognized in their magnitude– yet alive. Consequently most of them can raise a cheer and win laurels and money, still being alive.
ReplyDeleteThe tragedy is, that they can´t be sure about the lastingness of their magnitude. So it is a well known practise when the great minds are busy in boosting the square around their great building.
Great flux of ideas causes congestion and holdup. Not in the internet, whose bottlenecks can be eliminated by technical solutions, but in the brains.
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