Begreppsanalys ger svindel (Paul Valery & Isaiah Berlin)

Brev till Cressida Nonham Carter, mars 1939.

[Paul Valery] said words were like thin planks over precipices [stup/avgrund], & if you crossed rapidly nothing happened, but if you stopped on any of them & stared into the gulf you would get vertigo & that was what philosophers were doing.

Isaiah Berlin, Flourishing. Letters 1928—1946, Chatto & Windus, London, 2004, s. 295.