Tzara On Philosophers And Dialectic

“A philosopher questions: from which angle to start looking at life, god, ideas, or anything else. Everything we look at is false. I don't think the relative result is any more important than the choice of patisserie or cherries for dessert. The way people have of looking hurriedly at things from the opposite point of view, so as to impose their opinions indirectly, is called dialectic, in other words, heads I win and tails you lose, dressed up to look scholarly.”

Recently, for various reasons, I found myself re-reading Tristan Tzara’s ‘Dada Manifesto’. The previous and subsequent quotes are taken from the ‘Manifesto’. Am presently posting more quotes from Tzara, and Marinetti (the ‘Futuristic Manifesto’), at Hypomnemata.

“Dialectic is an amusing machine that leads us (in banal fashion) to the opinions which we would have held in any case. Do people really think that, by the meticulous subtlety of logic, they have demonstrated the truth and established the accuracy of their opinions? Even if logic were confined by the senses it would still be an organic disease. To this element, philosophers like to add: The power of observation. But this magnificent quality of the mind is precisely the proof of its impotence. People observe, they look at things from one or several points of view, they choose them from amongst the millions that exist. Experience too is the result of chance and of individual abilities.”