37 ideas
| 1798 | He studied philosophy by suspending his judgement on everything [Pyrrho, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: He studied philosophy on the principle of suspending his judgement on all points. | |
| From: report of Pyrrho (reports [c.325 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.3 | |
| A reaction: In what sense was Pyrrho a philosopher, then? He must have asserted SOME generalised judgments. |
| 1800 | Sceptics say reason is only an instrument, because reason can only be attacked with reason [Pyrrho, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: The Sceptics say that they only employ reason as an instrument, because it is impossible to overturn the authority of reason, without employing reason. | |
| From: report of Pyrrho (reports [c.325 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.8 |
| 6595 | If we need a criterion of truth, we need to know whether it is the correct criterion [Pyrrho, by Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Against the Stoics, the Pyrrhonians argued that if someone presents a criterion of truth, then it will be important to determine whether it is the correct criterion. | |
| From: report of Pyrrho (reports [c.325 BCE]) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: Hence Davidson says that attempts to define truth are 'folly'. If something has to be taken as basic, then truth seems a good candidate (since, for example, logical operators could not otherwise be defined by means of 'truth' tables). |
| 6593 | The Pyrrhonians attacked the dogmas of professors, not ordinary people [Pyrrho, by Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: The attacks of the Pyrrhonian sceptics are directed against the dogmas of the 'professors', not against the beliefs of the common people pursuing the business of daily life. | |
| From: report of Pyrrho (reports [c.325 BCE]) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: This may be because they thought that ordinary people were too confused to be worth attacking, rather than because they lived in a state of beautifully appropriate beliefs. Naïve realism is certainly worth attacking. |
| 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 |
| 6592 | Academics said that Pyrrhonians were guilty of 'negative dogmatism' [Pyrrho, by Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: The ancient Academic sceptics charged the Pyrrhonian sceptics with 'negative dogmatism' when they claimed that a certain kind of knowledge is impossible. | |
| From: report of Pyrrho (reports [c.325 BCE]) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: It is this kind of point which should push us towards some sort of rationalism, because certain a priori 'dogmas' seem to be indispensable to get any sort of discussion off the ground. The only safe person is Cratylus (see Idea 578). |
| 1805 | Judgements vary according to local culture and law (Mode 5) [Pyrrho, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Fifth mode: judgements vary according to local custom, law and culture (Persians marry their daughters). | |
| From: report of Pyrrho (reports [c.325 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.9 |
| 1803 | Objects vary according to which sense perceives them (Mode 3) [Pyrrho, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Third mode: things like an apple vary according to which sense perceives them (yellow, sweet, and fragrant). | |
| From: report of Pyrrho (reports [c.325 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.9 |
| 1807 | Perception varies with viewing distance and angle (Mode 7) [Pyrrho, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Seventh mode: perception varies according to viewing distance and angle (the sun, and a dove's neck). | |
| From: report of Pyrrho (reports [c.325 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.9 |
| 1810 | Perception and judgement depend on comparison (Mode 10) [Pyrrho, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Tenth mode: perceptions and judgements depend on comparison (light/heavy, above/below). | |
| From: report of Pyrrho (reports [c.325 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.9 |
| 1802 | Individuals vary in responses and feelings (Mode 2) [Pyrrho, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Second mode: individual men vary in responses and feelings (heat and cold, for example). | |
| From: report of Pyrrho (reports [c.325 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.9 |
| 1801 | Animals vary in their feelings and judgements (Mode 1) [Pyrrho, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: First mode: animals vary in their feelings and judgements (of food, for example). | |
| From: report of Pyrrho (reports [c.325 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.9 |
| 1804 | Perception varies with madness or disease (Mode 4) [Pyrrho, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Fourth mode: perceivers vary in their mental and physical state (such as the mad and the sick). | |
| From: report of Pyrrho (reports [c.325 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.9 |
| 1808 | Perception of things depends on their size or quantity (Mode 8) [Pyrrho, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Eighth mode: perceptions of things depend on their magnitude or quantity (food and wine). | |
| From: report of Pyrrho (reports [c.325 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.9 |
| 1806 | Perception of objects depends on surrounding conditions (Mode 6) [Pyrrho, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Sixth mode: the perception of an object depends on surrounding conditions (sunlight and lamplight). | |
| From: report of Pyrrho (reports [c.325 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.9 |
| 1809 | Perception is affected by expectations (Mode 9) [Pyrrho, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Ninth mode: we perceive things according to what we expect (earthquakes and sunshine). | |
| From: report of Pyrrho (reports [c.325 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.9 |
| 23125 | Most good social changes are incremental, rather than revolutionary [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: More permanent positive social change is made incrementally rather than by revolutionary transformation. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard liberal response to revolution. Revolutionaries obviously consider such a claim to be very naïve, and a failure to grasp how deep the changes need to go. |
| 23126 | Conservatives often want peace, prosperity and tolerance, but not social fairness [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Many conservatives want their world to be peaceful, properous, and pluralist, just as liberals do, but they don't particularly care that it be fair. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: Every conservative will have a sense of what is fair (such as appropriate punishments, and keeping of contracts), but they are more inclined to think that fairness must be fought for by individuals, not imposed by governments. |
| 23132 | Conservatives believe obedience and rank are essential to social order [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The idea that the appearance of submission and obedience and rank are essential to order is at the heart of the conservative ideal. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: [He has just quoted Edmund Burke writing of Marie Antoinette] I once heard Richard Hare say that he thought social order would be best modelled on the army. A colleague once told me that obedience is a prime duty of a school teacher. |
| 23128 | The opposite of liberalism is dogmatism [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The opposite of liberalism is not conservatism but dogmatism. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: Nice. It pinpoints the liberal opposition to both extremes of normal politics. It might make anarchists their allies, though! |
| 23142 | People are fallible, so liberalism tries to distribute power [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Liberalism makes the idea of fallibility into a political practice by trying not to have too much power concentrated in one place or part of the system. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: There is a potential inefficiency and failure to focus on key goals implicit in this aim. It may be a good idea for a peacetime democracy, but a terrible idea for a wartime army. To stop corruption, don't let anyone do anything? |
| 23143 | Liberals have tried very hard to build a conscience into their institutions [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: What liberalism can say on its own behalf is that no system of power in human history has tried harder to insert a corrective conscience into its institutions. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: What we are learning in recent years is that wonderful liberal institutions can be quietly eroded by the forces of darkness, once those forces have sufficient control of the media to hide what they are doing. The 'rule of law' is wobbling. |
| 23141 | Left-wingers are inconsistent in their essentialist descriptions of social groups [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: A criticism of the left is that it is essentialist at some moments, and wildly anti-essentialist at others. We can call this opportunistic essentialism. Gender is fluid - except for transgender kids. Race is a construction - except for white races. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Interesting. Gopnik's solution seems to be to abandon all social essentialism as wicked. In this context he is probably right, but I am firmly committed to the idea that many entities in the world have essential natures. 'Bourgeois'. |
| 23124 | Liberal community is not blood ties or tradition, but shared choices, and sympathy for the losers [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The liberal idea of community is not one, as it is for many conservatives, of blood ties or traditional authority. It rest on the idea of shared choices …including even a sense of sympathy for those caught on the losing side of the argument. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: The key point is that most liberals (other than extreme libertarians) have a strong sense of community, contrary to the standard criticisms offered by communitarians. |
| 23127 | Liberal community includes flight from the family, into energetic reforming groups [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Where conservatives believe in the renewal of traditional community, liberals believe as well in the flight from family and tradition into new kinds of communal order. …It is an idea of assembling confidence and energies for reform. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: He cites Greenwich Village as an example. This suggests that his vision is a little narrow. His communities are for radicals who flee to join like minds in big cities. Politics must care about community for those left behind. Pubs, sport and pets. |
| 23129 | Right-wingers attack liberal faith in reason, left-wingers attack its faith in reform [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The right-wing critique of liberalism is largely an attack on its overreliance on reason; the left-wing one, mostly an attack on its false faith in reform. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: I doubt whether sensible liberals do rely too much on reason, though they do rely of scientific evidence (after peer review!). No one can doubt that lots of reforms have occurred, so it must be frustration with the very slow process. |
| 23133 | Cosmopolitan liberals lack national loyalty, and welcome excessive immigration [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Critics say liberal cosmopolitanism is indifference to national loyalty, making them easily contemplate going elsewhere and, worse still, welcoming in the world through unsifted immigration. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: There is certainly some truth in this. Not all liberals are so cosmopolitan, though. It is interesting to observe whether people who retire stay in their old community or move to somewhere quite new. |
| 23138 | Modern left-wingers criticise liberalism's control of culture [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Most left-wing critiques of liberalism now turn more often on its cultural power and its cultural illusions. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: As opposed to older Marxists critiques of the exploitation of workers. This is certainly fertile ground for interesting studies of our culture. It is very hard to grasp the influence had by the endless stories we expose ourselves to. |
| 23139 | Liberalism's attempt to be neutral and colour-blind erases cultural identities [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The 'colour-blind' universe of 'neutral' liberalism is actually an attempt to erase cultural identity and history. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is the modern critique of liberalism [centred on the Intersectionality of Bell Hooks or Kimberlé Crenshaw], which analyses alienated minorities, and their emphasis on their difference in response. It can lead to 'identity politics'. |
| 23135 | Classic Marxists see liberalism as the ideology of the bourgeoisie [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The classic Marxist account shows liberalism as merely the ideology of the bourgeoisie. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: The word 'merely' does an awful lot of work in philosohy! I suspect that 'bourgeoisie' is self-defining here - as the believers in liberalism - given that lots of Marxists emerge from the middle classes. |
| 23140 | Environmental disasters result not from capitalism, but from a general drive for growth [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: It is the drive for growth, not capitalism in particular, that makes environmental disasters happen. Those caused by the command economics of Eastern Europe were far greater than even the worst known in Western Europe. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: So the next question is whether you can have capitalism without a drive for growth. I would have thought not, given the role recycled profit plays in driving capitalism. Command economies are more easily swept away. |
| 23130 | Popular imperialism gives the poor the belief that their acts have world historical meaning [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Popular imperialism is the cosmopolitanism of the poor, the lever by which the small and impotent come to believe that their acts have world historical meaning. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: It is not only the poor who like imperialism. The focus of this popular attitude is the armed forces, and especially the army, where personal bravery is most obvious. The army gets strong support, no matter how dubious are its activities. |
| 23131 | Patriots love their place, but nationalists have a paranoid ethnic hostility [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The patriot loves his place and its cheeses; …the nationalist has not particular affection for the place, but employs his obsessive sense of encirclement and grievance on behalf of acts of ethnic vengeance. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: 'Vengeance' seems a bit strong. John Le Carré said nationalists are distinguished by the need to have enemies. Russia is particularly obsessed with 'encirclement'. |
| 23136 | Liberal free speech is actually paid speech [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: What liberals call free speech or a free press is invariably paid speech. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: He give this as the left-wing view of liberalism. The much-hated social media are a substantial breech in this tendency. Sales of newspapers are declining everywhere, so the battle is for television channels. |
| 23134 | A 'free' society implies a free market, which always produces predatory capitalism and inequalities [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: 'Free societies', as a matter of practical fact, always mean free-market societies - and free markets will never sponsor more than predatory capitalism. Inequalities always emerge. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is part of his account of left-wing objections to liberalism. The crux of the liberal view is a conviction that the worst of capitalism can be restrained. This began to look doubtful once huge multinational companies emerged. What to do? |
| 3062 | There are no causes, because they are relative, and alike things can't cause one another [Pyrrho, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: The idea of cause is relative to that of which it is the cause, and so has no real existence. …Also cause must either be body causing body, or incorporeal causing incorporeal, and neither of these is possible. | |
| From: report of Pyrrho (reports [c.325 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.11.11 |
| 3063 | Motion can't move where it is, and can't move where it isn't, so it can't exist [Pyrrho, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Motion is not moved in the place in which it is is, and it is impossible that it should be moved in the place in which it is not, so there is no such thing as motion. | |
| From: report of Pyrrho (reports [c.325 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.11.11 |