display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
3 ideas
8011 | Aristotle is a buffoon who has misled the Church [Luther, by MacIntyre] |
Full Idea: Aristotle is a buffoon who has misled the Church. | |
From: report of Martin Luther (talk [1525]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.10 | |
A reaction: Before he became famous, Luther was a university lecturer on Aristotle. This remark was a hundred years before philosophers began serious criticism of Aristotle. Presumably Protestants just stopped reading him. |
7950 | Philosophy tries to explain how the actual is possible, given that it seems impossible [Macdonald,C] |
Full Idea: Philosophical problems are problems about how what is actual is possible, given that what is actual appears, because of some faulty argument, to be impossible. | |
From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
A reaction: [She is discussing universals when she makes this comment] A very appealing remark, given that most people come into philosophy because of a mixture of wonder and puzzlement. It is a rather Wittgensteinian view, though, that we must cure our own ills. |
7923 | 'Did it for the sake of x' doesn't involve a sake, so how can ontological commitments be inferred? [Macdonald,C] |
Full Idea: In 'She did it for the sake of her country' no one thinks that the expression 'the sake' refers to an individual thing, a sake. But given that, how can we work out what the ontological commitments of a theory actually are? | |
From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: For these sorts of reasons it rapidly became obvious that ordinary language analysis wasn't going to reveal much, but it is also a problem for a project like Quine's, which infers an ontology from the terms of a scientific theory. |