display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
8 ideas
| 13256 | Nous is unlimited, self-ruling and pure; it is the finest thing, with great discernment and strength [Anaxagoras] |
| Full Idea: Nous is unlimited and self-ruling and has been mixed with no thing, but is alone itself by itself. ...For it is the finest of all things and the purest, and indeed it maintains all discernment about everything and has the greatest strength. | |
| From: Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B12), quoted by Patricia Curd - Anaxagoras 3.3 | |
| A reaction: Anaxagoras seems to have been a pioneer in elevating the status of the mind, which is a prop to the rationalist view, and encourages dualism. More naturalistic accounts are, in my view, much healthier. |
| 13784 | Mind is self-ruling, pure, ordering and ubiquitous [Anaxagoras, by Plato] |
| Full Idea: Anaxagoras says that mind is self-ruling, mixes with nothing else, orders the things that are, and travels through everything. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by Plato - Cratylus 413c | |
| A reaction: This elevation of the mind in the natural scheme of things by Anaxagoras looks increasingly significant in western culture to me. Without this line of thought, Descartes and Kant are inconceivable. |
| 5606 | Freedom and natural necessity do not contradict, as they relate to different conditions [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Are freedom and natural necessity contradictory in an action? We have shown that freedom can relate to conditions of a kind entirely different from those in natural necessity, so each is independent of the other. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B585/A557) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure I understand this, but I suspect that it means that a serious case of kleptomania while never provide even the hint of an excuse for a minor theft. We're all free, and that's that. I am dubious. |
| 4086 | Kant thought that consciousness depends on self-consciousness ('apperception') [Kant, by Crane] |
| Full Idea: Kant thought that consciousness in general depends for its possibility on self-consciousness (or, as he called it, 'apperception'). | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Tim Crane - Elements of Mind 3.21 | |
| A reaction: What would Kant have made of Darwin? Consciousness looks very useful in small dim animals for registering survival information. |
| 2869 | Kant's only answer as to how synthetic a priori judgements are possible was that we have a 'faculty'! [Nietzsche on Kant] |
| Full Idea: Kant asked himself: how are synthetic judgements a priori possible? And what, really, did he answer? By means of a faculty! | |
| From: comment on Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil §011 |
| 5572 | Reason has logical and transcendental faculties [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Reason has logical and transcendental faculties. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B355/A299) | |
| A reaction: The notion of a transcendental faculty is not entirely clear (despite all Kant's efforts), but it is certainly vital to grasp that rationality extends way beyond logic. The clearest example is induction, which is rational, despite its shortage of logic. |
| 9346 | Judgements which are essentially and strictly universal reveal our faculty of a priori cognition [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Empirical universality is an increase in validity from most cases to all cases (e.g. all bodies are heavy), whereas strict universality belongs to a judgement essentially; this points to a special faculty of a priori cognition for it. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B004) | |
| A reaction: I would say that 'strict' universality arises not directly from some faculty, but from increasing degrees of refinement by abstraction. It is merely the iterations of a lower faculty, not the pure deliverances of a higher one. |
| 22443 | We are seldom aware of imagination, but we would have no cognition at all without it [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Imagination - a blind though indispensable function of the soul, without which we would have no cognition at all, but of which we are seldom even conscious. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B103/A78) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure why he calls it 'blind', since I can very deliberately control imagination. Neverthless, I applaud his recognition of imagination's central importance, even (I take it) in the simple act of looking out of the window. |