display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
2 ideas
1597 | Thales was the first western thinker to believe the arché was intelligible [Roochnik on Thales] |
Full Idea: Thales was the first thinker in the west to believe that the arché (the basis of things) was intelligible. | |
From: comment on Thales (fragments/reports [c.585 BCE]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.138 |
2666 | Carneades' pinnacles of philosophy are the basis of knowledge (the criterion of truth) and the end of appetite (good) [Carneades, by Cicero] |
Full Idea: Carneades said the two greatest things in philosophy were the criterion of truth and the end of goods, and no man could be a sage who was ignorant of the existence of either a beginning of the process of knowledge or an end of appetition. | |
From: report of Carneades (fragments/reports [c.174 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - Academica II.09.29 | |
A reaction: Nice, but I would want to emphasise the distinction between truth and its criterion. Admittedly we would have no truth without a good criterion, but the truth itself should be held in higher esteem than our miserable human means of grasping it. |