/lit/ - Literature

>>15575952
>How is the truth to be disentangled from these
>several doctrines? Will it suffice if we take the good
>points of Epictetus and Montaigne and let each of
>them complement the other? That cannot be done.
>Each of these philosophies, from the point of view of
>human nature, must be accepted wholly or not at all.
>Man is a unity, and this unity would be broken if we
>made to co-exist in him the duty of the stoic and the
>impotence of the pyrrhonist. Neither Epictetus nor
>Montaigne could have concluded otherwise than
>they have done. And thus the two doctrines produce
>a contradiction at the same time inevitable, since each
>of them is necessary, and insoluble since man of whom
>they treat is essentially one and indivisible. Here we
>have reason herself grappling with a problem she
>cannot escape from. It is a case which admits neither
>of affirmation nor denial ; scepticism is no less
>excluded than dogmatism.