Deceit
Doublethink
Trickery
Deception
Entrapment
Concealment
Fallibility
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The Dhammapada.
"Life is easily lived
By a shameless one,
A disparager, crafty as a crow,
An obtruder, impudent and corrupt."
[v. 244]1a
"The one who speaks lies,
goes to hell . . . " [v. 306]1b
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The Analects.
"The Master said:
'If a man does not anticipate
deception and does not reckon on bad faith, but on the other hand
is aware in good time when they occur, he is a man of quality, isn't
he?'" [14:31]1a
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Mencius.
"'What do you
mean by understanding words?' asked Kung-sun Ch'ou.
"'I understand what lies hidden beneath beguiling
words. I understand the trap beneath extravagant words. I
understand the deceit beneath depraved words. And I
understand the weariness beneath evasive words.'"
[III.2]1a*
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Republic.
"[W]ould
God willingly mask the truth behind appearance and deceive us by
his words or action? . . . [T]here's nothing of the lying poet in
God. . . God is entirely uniform and truthful."1a
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The
Dead Sea Scrolls.
" . . Cursed be [S]atan in his hostile design, and damned in
his guilty dominion. Cursed be all the spirits of his [lo]t in their wicked
design . . . For they are a lot of darkness and their visitation is for eternal
destruction. Amen, amen. . . [Cursed be a]ll those who practi[se] their [wicked designs] .
. . [plotting against Go]d'[s Covenant] . . . to exchange the
judgemen[ts of
truth for folly.]"1
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The New
Testament.
" . . .
[T]here
is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and
hid, that shall not be known." [St. Matthew 10:26]1a
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The Nag
Hammadi Library.
"Do not trust anyone as a
friend, for this whole world has come into being deceitfully
. . . All things [of] the world are not profitable, but
they happen in vain. There is no one, not even a brother,
(who is trustworthy), since each one is seeking his own advantage."1a
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The Essential
Augustine.
" . . .
[I]f I am deceived, I am. For he
who does not exist cannot be deceived; and if I am deceived, by
this same token I am."1a
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The Prince.
" . . . [I]t is necessary . . . to be a great feigner and
dissembler; and men are so simple and so ready to obey present
necessities, that one who deceives will always find those who
allow themselves to be deceived."1a
The Discourses. " . . . [A] prince who wishes
to do great things must learn to practice deceit."2a
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Meditations.
"Everything I have accepted up to now as being absolutely
true and assured, I have learned from or through the senses. But I
have sometimes found that these senses played me false, and it
is prudent never to trust entirely those who have once deceived
us."1a
"I recognize that
it is impossible that [God] should ever deceive me, since in
all fraud and deceit is to be found a certain imperfection;
and although it may seem that to be able to deceive is a mark of
subtlety or power, yet the desire to deceive bears evidence
without doubt of weakness or malice, and, accordingly, cannot be
found in God."1b
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The Ethics.
"He who has a true
idea knows at the same time that he has a true idea, and
cannot doubt its truth."1a*
"The free man never acts deceitfully, but always with good
faith."1b*
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Selected Essays.
"Mankind are, in all ages, caught by the same baits: the
same tricks played over and over again, still trepan them."1 |
Phenomenology of
Spirit.
"The masses are the victims
of the deception of a priesthood which, in its
envious conceit, holds itself to be the sole possessor of insight
and pursues its other selfish ends as well. . . From the stupidity
and confusion of the people brought about by the trickery of
priestcraft, despotism, which despises both, draws for itself the
advantage of undisturbed domination . . . "1a* |
The Descent of
Man.
"False
facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they
often endure long . . . "1a
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Bertrand
Russell on
God and Religion. "I am persuaded that there is absolutely
no limit to the absurdities that can, by government action,
come to be generally believed. Give me an adequate army . .
. and I will undertake . . . to make the majority of the
population believe that two and two are three . . . "1a
"How
are we to know what really is God's will? If the forces
of evil have a certain share of power, they may deceive
us into accepting as Scripture what is really their work. This
was the view of the Gnostics, who thought that the Old
Testament was the work of an evil spirit."1b
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Being and Time.
"The
'Being-true' . . . means . . . the entities of which one is
talking must be taken out of their hiddenness; one must let them be
seen as something unhidden; that is, they must be discovered.
Similarly, 'Being false' . . . amounts
to deceiving in the sense of covering up [verdecken]:
putting something in front of something (in such a way as to let it
be seen) and thereby passing it off as
something which it is not."1* |
Galileo.
"Nowadays, anyone who wishes to combat lies and ignorance and
to write the truth must overcome at least five difficulties. He
must have the courage to write the truth when truth is everywhere opposed;
the keenness to recognize it, although it is everywhere concealed; the
skill to manipulate it as a weapon; the judgment
to select those
in whose hands it will be effective; and the running to spread the truth
among such persons."1
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Nineteen
Eighty-Four.
"TWO AND TWO MAKE FIVE."1a*
"Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc,
since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious
deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes
with complete honesty. . . It need hardly be said that the
subtlest practitioners of doublethink are those who
invented doublethink and know that it is a vast
system of mental cheating."1b*
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The
Crisis of Global Capitalism.
"Why
bother about the truth when a proposition does not need to be
true to be effective? Why be honest when it is success,
not honesty or virtue that
gains people's respect? . . . We are ready to enter the Age of
Fallibility."1a
"
. . . [P]eople can get rich in financial markets and
powerful in politics by propounding false theories or self-fulfilling
prophesies."1b
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*
Italics in the original.
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1 Buddha (c.563-c.483
BC). The
Dhammapada. Translated with an Introduction and Notes
by John Ross Carter and Mahinda Palihawadana. John Ross Carter and
Mahinda Palihawadana, 2000. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press,
1987.
a Chapter XVIII. Stains, v. 244, at 44.
b Chapter XXII. Hell, v. 306, at 55.
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1 Confucius. The
Analects. Translated with an Introduction and
Notes by Raymond Dawson. Translation, Editorial material, Raymond
Dawson, 1993. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. {The
Analects consist of about 500 pieces organized by book and
chapter; Confucius is referred to as Master Kong.]
a 14:31.
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1 Mencius. Mencius. Translated with an Introduction
by David Hinton. David Hinton, 1998. Washington, DC: COUNTERPOINT,
member of the Perseus Books Group.
a Kung-Sun Ch'ou, Book One, III.2, 49.
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1
Plato.
Republic. Translated by Robin
Waterfield. Robin Waterfield, 1993. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
a Primary Education for the Guardians (382a-382c), at
77-78.
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1 Geza Vermes.
The Dead Sea Scrolls.
4th ed. G. Vermes, 1962, 1965, 1968, 1975, 1987, 1995. Penguin Group. London, England: Penguin
Books Ltd., at 185. (The liturgical curse identified as 4Q286-7 was published by
J.T. Milik, Journal of Jewish Studies 23, 1972, 126-35.)
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1
The Holy Bible.
The New Testament. King James Version. London, England: Collins'
Clear-Type Press, 1957.
a St. Matthew 10:26.
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1 James
M. Robinson (ed.). The Nag Hammadi
Library in English. 3rd completely revised edition.
Translated and introduced by members of the Coptic Gnostic Library
Project of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity,
Claremont, California. Afterword by Richard Smith. E. J. Brill,
Leiden, The Netherlands, 1978, 1988. New York, NY: HarperCollins
Publishers, 1990.
a The Teachings of Silvanus (VII,4). Introduced and
translated by Malcolm L. Peel and Jan Zandee, at 386. [Note: Teach. Silv. is not
gnostic.]
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1 Saint
Augustine.
The Essential
Augustine.
2nd ed. Selected and with Commentary by Vernon J. Bourke. Vernon
J. Bourke, 1964-1974. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing
Company.
a If I am Deceived, I Exist, at 33. Source of the
translation: City of God, XI, 26; trans. The Works of
Aurelius Augustinus, ed. Marcus Dods, 15 vols, Edinburgh: T.
& T. Clark Co., 1871-1876. Revised by Vernon J. Bourke.
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1 Niccol� Machiavelli
(1469-1527). The
Prince (1531). Translated by Luigi Ricci. Revised by
E.R.P. Vincent. Introduction by
Christian Gauss. New York, NY: The New American Library of World Literature, Inc.,
1952. (Reprint of a hardcover edition published by Oxford University Press, Inc.)
a In What Way Princes Must Keep Faith, at 93.
2 Niccol� Machiavelli. The
Discourses. Edited with an Introduction by Bernard
Crick using the translation of Leslie J. Walker, S.J. Revisions by
Brian Richardson. Bernard Crick, 1970. London, UK: Penguin Books
Ltd. (Penguin Classics.)
a Book Two, Discourse 13, at 310.
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1 René
Descartes (1596-1650). Discourse on
Method and the Meditations (1637). Translated with an
Introduction by F.E. Sutcliffe. F.E. Sutcliffe, 1968. London, UK:
Penguin Books Ltd.
a First Meditation: About the Things We May Doubt, at
96.
b Fourth Meditation: Of Truth and Error, at
132-133.
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1 Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677). The
Ethics. Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. Selected
Letters . Translated by Samuel Shirley. Edited,
with Introductions, by Seymour Feldman. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett
Publishing Company, Inc., 1992.
a Proposition 43, Part II, at 91.
b Proposition 72, Part IV, at 194.
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1 David Hume (1711-1776). Selected
Essays (1741-1742). Edited with an Introduction by Stephen Copley and Andrew
Edgar, 1993. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, at 214.
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1 G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831).
Phenomenology
of Spirit.
Translated by A.V. Miller with Analysis of the Text and Foreword by
J.N. Findlay. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1977.
a The Struggle of the Enlightenment with Superstition,
at 330.
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1 Charles Darwin
(1809-1882). The Descent of Man (1871). In Darwin,
Philip
Appleman (ed.), 2nd ed., New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company,
Inc., 1970, 1979.
a General Summary and Conclusion, at 196.
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1 Bertrand Russell.
Bertrand Russell on
God and Religion.
Edited by Al
Sekel.
a An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish, at 225.
b An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish, at 215.
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1 Martin Heidegger. Being
and Time. A
translation of Sein und Zeit (7th ed., Neomarius Verlag,
Tübingen) by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York, NY:
Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated, 1962 [HarperSanFrancisco].
(The Concept of the Logos, at 55-58.)
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1 Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956).
"Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties." Translated by Richard Winston. Originally published in the United
States in Twice A Year (New York), Tenth Anniversary Issue, 1948.
a Translation reprinted in Bertolt Brecht,
Galileo. Edited and with an
Introduction by Eric Bentley, 1966. English version by Charles Laughton. Arvid Englind,
1940. Bertolt Brecht, 1952 (Indiana University Press). New York, NY: Grove Press.
(Appendix A, at 133-150.)
b The first version of Brecht's essay was first published in the Pariser
Tagebaltt, December 12, 1934, under the title "Dichter sollen die Wahrheit
schreiben" ("Poets Are to Tell the Truth"). The final version of Brecht's
essay was published in Unsere Zeit (Paris), VIII, Nos. 2/3, April 1935, at 23-24.
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1 George Orwell (1903-1950). Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Eric Blair, 1949. Estate of the late Sonia Brownwell Orwell, 1987.
Note on the Text by
Peter Davison, 1989.London, UK: Penguin Group, 1989, 1990. (First
published by Martin Secker and Warburg Ltd., 1949.)
a
"2+2=5,"
at 290 and 303.
b
Doublethink
and the "secret of rulership," at 223-224.
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1
George Soros. The
Crisis of Global Capitalism [Open Society Endangered].
George Soros, 1998. New York, NY: PublicAffairs.
a The Enlightenment, at 89-90.
b Reflexivity and Social Scientists, at 34.
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