Combining Philosophers

Ideas for H.Putnam/P.Oppenheim, Keith T. Maslin and Sren Kierkegaard

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3 ideas

16. Persons / B. Nature of the Self / 2. Ethical Self
The real subject is ethical, not cognitive [Kierkegaard]
     Full Idea: The real subject is not the cognitive subject …the real subject is the ethically existing subject.
     From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], p.281), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 2 'Subjective'
     A reaction: Perhaps we should say the essence of the self is its drive to live, not its drive to know. Just getting through the day is top priority, and ethics don’t figure much for the solitary person. But each activity, such as cooking, has its virtues.
16. Persons / B. Nature of the Self / 3. Self as Non-physical
The self is a combination of pairs of attributes: freedom/necessity, infinite/finite, temporal/eternal [Kierkegaard]
     Full Idea: A human being is essentially spirit, but what is spirit? Spirit is to be a self. But what is the Self? In short, it is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity.
     From: Søren Kierkegaard (Sickness unto Death [1849], p.59)
     A reaction: The dense language of his first paragraph was to poke fun at fashionable Hegelian writing. The book gets very lucid afterwards! [SY]
16. Persons / B. Nature of the Self / 7. Self and Body / b. Self as brain
If we are brains then we never meet each other [Maslin]
     Full Idea: If I am my brain this leads to the odd result that you have never met me because you have never seen my brain.
     From: Keith T. Maslin (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2001], 10.7)
     A reaction: 'Star Trek' is full of aliens who appear beautiful, and turn out to be ugly grey lumps. 'I am my face' would be just as odd, particularly if I were in a coma, or dead.