RG
Rebecca Goldstein
80quotes
Full Name and Common Aliases
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is commonly known by her full name Rebecca Goldstein.
Birth and Death Dates
Born on July 2, 1950 (still alive).
Nationality and Profession(s)
American novelist, philosopher, and professor of philosophy at Sarah Lawrence College.
Early Life and Background
Rebecca Goldstein was born in White Plains, New York. She grew up in a family that valued intellectual pursuits, with her father being a chemist and her mother an artist. Goldstein's interest in science and mathematics began early, as she would often spend hours exploring the woods near her home, observing the natural world. Her love for reading and writing was also encouraged from a young age.
Major Accomplishments
Goldstein's breakthrough novel _The Mind-Body Problem_ (1983) explored themes of Jewish identity, intellectualism, and human relationships. This work earned her critical acclaim and established her as a prominent voice in contemporary literature. She went on to write several more novels, including _Mazel_ (1988), _The Wind Done Gone_ (2001), and _Plato at the Googleplex_ (2012). In addition to her fiction writing, Goldstein has published numerous non-fiction works, such as _Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel_ (2005) and _A Converse in the Criminal Café_ (2010).
Notable Works or Actions
One notable achievement is Goldstein's novel _The Wind Done Gone_, which was a response to Margaret Mitchell's classic novel _Gone with the Wind_. Goldstein's work offered an alternative perspective on the Civil War, focusing on the experiences of enslaved individuals. Her writing often explores themes of intellectualism, human relationships, and Jewish identity.
Impact and Legacy
Goldstein's works have been recognized for their thought-provoking exploration of complex ideas and their impact on contemporary culture. Her novels and non-fiction writings have garnered numerous awards and accolades, including the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Why They Are Widely Quoted or Remembered
Rebecca Goldstein's significance can be attributed to her unique blend of intellectualism, creativity, and humanity. As a novelist and philosopher, she has successfully bridged the gap between literary fiction and philosophical inquiry. Her work often challenges readers to consider new perspectives on complex issues, making her a widely respected voice in both the literary and academic communities.
Quotes by Rebecca Goldstein
Rebecca Goldstein's insights on:
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The only object we truly possess is our own mind. The only pleasure over which we have complete dominion is the progress of our own understanding.
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It’s very important to remember that the philosophers were social dissidents. They were social critics. The man in the street or woman in the street did not particularly cherish what they said. Socrates was killed.
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Plato’s concern is not just an intellectual issue, but it is knitted with emotional life as well.
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When you didn’t force yourself to think in formal reconstructions, when you didn’t catch these moments of ravishments under the lens of premises and conclusions, when you didn’t impale them and label them, like so many splayed butterflies, bleeding the transcendental glow right out of them, then... what?
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It baffled me how people could resist math’s gorgeousness, but people did, and people do. The fine of its purity drives them away, the purity of the fine, unmixed with the heaviness of unnecessitated being.
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All truths – even those that had seemed so certain as to be immune to the very possibility of revision – are essentially manufactured. Indeed the very notion of the objectively true is a socially constructed myth. Our knowing minds are not embedded in truth. Rather the entire notion of truth is embedded in our minds, which are themselves the unwitting lackeys of organizational forms of influence.
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Almost everybody thinks about philosophy, even if they don’t realize it’s philosophy and even if they have no sense of the difficulty of the problems, the array of possible answers.
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No validation of our rationality – of our very sanity – can be accomplished using our rationality itself. How can a person operating within a system of beliefs, including beliefs about beliefs, get outside that system to determine whether it is rational? If your entire system becomes infected with madness, including the very rules by which you reason, then how can you ever reason your way out of your madness?
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If we don’t understand our tools, then there is a danger we will become the tool of our tools. We think of ourselves as Google’s customers, but really we’re its products.
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That’s one of the compensations for being mediocre. One doesn’t have to worry about becoming mediocre.
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