Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Novalis, Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski and Jacob Zabarella

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2 ideas

18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 3. Emotions / d. Emotional feeling
The feeling accompanying curiosity is neither pleasant nor painful [Zagzebski]
     Full Idea: Most feelings are experienced as pleasant or painful, but it is not evident that they all are; curiosity may be one that is not. [note: 'curiosity' may not be the name of a feeling, but a feeling typically accompanies it]
     From: Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski (Virtues of the Mind [1996], II 3.1)
     A reaction: If a machine generates a sliding scale from pain to pleasure, is there a neutral feeling at the midpoint, or does all feeling briefly vanish there? Not sure.
18. Thought / E. Abstraction / 2. Abstracta by Selection
Everything is a chaotic unity, then we abstract, then we reunify the world into a free alliance [Novalis]
     Full Idea: Before abstraction everything is one - but one as chaos is - after abstraction everything is again unified - but in a free alliance of independent, self-determined beings. A crowd has become a society - a chaos is transformed into a manifold world.
     From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 094)
     A reaction: Personally I take (unfashionably) psychological abstraction to one of the key foundations of human thought, so I love this idea, which gives a huge picture of how the abstracting mind relates to reality.