display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
4 ideas
| 19576 | Religion needs an intermediary, because none of us can connect directly to a godhead [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Nothing is more indispensable for true religious feeling than an intermediary - which connects us to the godhead. The human being is absolutely incapable of sustaining an immediate relation with this. | |
| From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 073) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a defence of priests and organised religion, and an implied attack on protestants who give centrality to private prayer and conscience. |
| 6737 | Particular evils are really good when linked to the whole system of beings [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: Those particular things which, considered in themselves, appear to be evil, have the nature of good, when considered as linked with the whole system of beings. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §153) | |
| A reaction: This wildly contradicts the rest of Berkeley's philosophy, which is strictly empiricist, and rests wholly on actual experience. What experience does he have of the 'whole system of beings', and its making evil into actual good? |
| 3956 | People are responsible because they have limited power, though this ultimately derives from God [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: Thinking rational beings, in the production of motions, have the use of limited powers, ultimately derived from God, but immediately under the direction of their own wills, which is sufficient to entitle them to all the guilt of their own actions. | |
| From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], III p.228) | |
| A reaction: An episcopal evasion. A classic attempt to have cake and eat it. Either God is in charge or he isn't. |
| 3955 | If sin is not just physical, we don't consider God the origin of sin because he causes physical events [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: If sin doth not consist of purely physical actions, the making God a cause of all such actions, is not making him the author of sin. | |
| From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], III p.227) | |
| A reaction: An equivocation. If responsibility resides in consciousness, God is presumably conscious, and we can judge the events he causes. |