DIVINITY & HUMANITY

'...the evolution of the contemporary world has involved the intersection of two broad tendencies. There has been a humanising of the divine. To give an example: one could argue that the universal declaration of the rights of man is no more than (and again Nietzche saw this clearly) a "secularised" Christianity, in other words a restatement of the content of the Christian religion without belief in God being a requisite. And there is no doubt that we are living through a reversal of divinisation, or a making sacred of the human, in the sense I have just defined: it is only on behalf of another human being that we are prepared, in the case of necessity, to undertake risks, and certainly not to defend the abstract entities of the past.' 

Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought, p.244. 

WHERE THE WORLD IS HEADING

'...contrary to the philosophy of the Enlightenment, which aimed at emancipation and human happiness, technology is well and truly a process without purpose, devoid of any objectives: ultimately, nobody knows any longer the directions in which the world is moving, because it is automatically governed by competition and in no sense directed by the conscious will of men united by a project, at the heart of society...' 

Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought, p.215. 

AN EMBODIED GOD

'Although atheists would have us believe otherwise, the Christian religion is not entirely given over to waging war against the body, the flesh, the senses. If that were so, how would Christianity have accepted that the divine principle be incarnated in the person of Christ, that the Logos take on the physical aspect of a simple mortal?' 

Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought, p.89. 

HUMILITY

'There is...a double humility in religion, which opposes it to Greek philosophy from the outset, and which corresponds to the two aspects of the theoria , that of the divinit (theion) and that of contemplative seeing (orao). On the one hand there is the humility, "objective" if you like, of a divine Logos which finds itself "reduced" in the person of Jesus to the status of a lowly mortal (too lowly, for the Greeks). On the other hand, there is the subjective humility of our being enjoined by believers to "let go" of our own thinking faculty, to forsake reason for trust, so as to make a place for faith.'   

Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought, p.66. 

CHRISTIANITY & HUMAN RIGHTS

'...by resting its case upon a definition of the human person and an unprecedented idea of love, Christianity was to have an incalculable effect upon the history of ideas. To give one example, it is quite clear that, in this Christian re-evaluation of the human person, of the individual as such, the philosophy of human rights to which we subscribe today would have never established itself.'  

Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought, p.60. 

THE INCARNATION

'...what does it matter - for us, today - that the Logos (for the Stoics a "logical" ordering of the world) came to mean Christ as far as Christians were concerned? I might reply that today there exist more than a thousand million Christians - and that for this reason alone, to understand what drives them, their motives, the content and meaning of their faith, is not absurd for anyone with a modicum of interest in their fellow men. But this answer would be inadequate. For what is at stake in this seemingly abstract debate as to where the divine principle resides - whether in the structure of the universe or in the personality of one exceptional man - is no less that the transition from an anonymous and blind doctrine of salvation to one that promises not only that we shall be saved by one person, Christ, but that we shall be saved as individuals in our own right: for what we are, and as we are.' 

Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought, p.59. 

DEATH

'...death means everything that is unrepeatable. Death is, in the midst of life, that which will not return; that which belongs irreversibly to time past, which we have no hope of ever recovering. It can mean childhood holidays with friends, the divorce of parents, or houses and schools we have to leave, or a thousand other examples: even if it does not always mean the disappearance of a loved one, everything that comes under the heads of "Nevermore" belongs in death's ledger.'  

Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: a A Philosophical Guide to Living, p.5.