5 ideas
| 21855 | Only in the 1780s did it become acceptable to read Spinoza [Lord] |
| Full Idea: It was not until the 1780s that it became acceptable to read the works of Spinoza, and even then it was not without a frisson of danger. | |
| From: Beth Lord (Spinoza's Ethics [2010], Intro 'Who?') | |
| A reaction: Hence we hear of Wordsworth and Coleridge reading him with excitement. So did Kant read him? |
| 16974 | The nature of each logical concept is given by a collection of inference rules [Correia] |
| Full Idea: The view presented here presupposes that each logical concept is associated with some fixed and well defined collection of rules of inference which characterize its basic logical nature. | |
| From: Fabrice Correia (On the Reduction of Necessity to Essence [2012], 4) | |
| A reaction: [He gives Fine's 'Senses of Essences' 57-8 as a source] He seems to have in mind natural deduction, where the rules are for the introduction and elimination of the concepts. |
| 16973 | Explain logical necessity by logical consequence, or the other way around? [Correia] |
| Full Idea: One view is that logical consequence is to be understood in terms of logical necessity (some proposition holds necessarily, if some group of other propositions holds). Alternatively, logical necessity is a logical consequence of the empty set. | |
| From: Fabrice Correia (On the Reduction of Necessity to Essence [2012], 3) | |
| A reaction: I think my Finean preference is for all necessities to have a 'necessitator', so logical necessity results from logic in some way, perhaps from logical consequence, or from the essences of the connectives and operators. |
| 3061 | Anaxarchus said that he was not even sure that he knew nothing [Anaxarchus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Anaxarchus said that he was not even sure that he knew nothing. | |
| From: report of Anaxarchus (fragments/reports [c.340 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.10.1 |
| 21866 | Hobbes and Spinoza use 'conatus' to denote all endeavour for advantage in nature [Lord] |
| Full Idea: 'Conatus' [translated as 'striving' by Curley] is used by early modern philosophers, including Thomas Hobbes (a major influence of Spinoza), to express the notion of a thing's endeavour for what is advantageous to it. It drives all things in nature. | |
| From: Beth Lord (Spinoza's Ethics [2010], p.88) | |
| A reaction: I think it is important to connect conatus to Nietzsche's talk of a plurality of 'drives', which are an expression of the universal will to power (which is seen even in the interactions of chemistry). Conatus is also in Leibniz. |