264 ideas
| 23889 | Among the Greeks Aristotle is the only philosopher in the modern style [Weil] |
| Full Idea: In Greece, Aristotle is perhaps the only philosopher in the modern sense, and he is entirely outside the Greek tradition. | |
| From: Simone Weil (God in Plato [1942], p.45) | |
| A reaction: She sees Plato as embodying the true tradition. Everything Aristotle writes is 'peri phusis' (about nature), and that is a standard topic of philosophy right from the start. She emphasises Plato long historical roots. Pythagoras is key. |
| 23881 | All thought about values is philosophical, and thought about anything else is not philosophy [Weil] |
| Full Idea: All reflections bearing on the notion of value and on the hierarchy of values is philosophical; all efforts of thought bearing on anything other than value are, if one examines them closely, foreign to philosophy. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Value [1941], p.30) | |
| A reaction: If nothing else proves that Weil is a platonist, this does. She, of course, has a transcendent and religious view of values, whereas I just see them as concepts which embody what is important. That said, I'm not far off agreeing with this. |
| 23885 | Philosophy aims to change the soul, not to accumulate knowledge [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy does not consist in accumulating knowledge, as science does, but in changing the whole soul. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Value [1941], p.33) | |
| A reaction: I agree, roughly. In the sense that philosophy is a much more personal matter than any pure pursuit of knowledge, such as geology. Though a life in geology could change your soul. Not just any old change, of course…. |
| 12667 | Metaphysics aims at the simplest explanation, without regard to testability [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The methodology of metaphysics... is that of arguing to the simplest explanation, without regard to testability. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 1) | |
| A reaction: I love that! I'd be a bit cautious about 'simplest', since 'everything is the output of an ineffable God' is beautifully simple, and brings the whole discussion to a halt. I certainly think metaphysics goes deeper than testing. String Theory? |
| 23886 | Systems are not unique to each philosopher. The platonist tradition is old and continuous [Weil] |
| Full Idea: People believe that every philosopher has a system that contradicts all the others! But there is a tradition, genuinely philosophical, that is as old as humanity itself. …Plato is the most perfect representative of this tradition. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Value [1941], p.33) | |
| A reaction: I see roughly two traditions. If you believe in transcendence you follow Plato, like Simone. If you are a naturalist (like me) you follow Aristotle. A third tradition might be much more sceptical. |
| 13567 | Ontology should give insight into or an explanation of the world revealed by science [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A good ontology should provide insight into, or offer some kind of explanation of, the salient general features of the world that has been revealed to us by science. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I think I agree with this. The difficulty is that the most fundamental level revealed by science is a quantum one, so if you take a reductionist view then your ontology is both crazy, and resting on things which are not understood. |
| 5486 | Essentialism says metaphysics can't be done by analysing unreliable language [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The new essentialism leads to a turning away from semantic analysis as a fundamental tool for the pursuit of metaphysical aims, ..since there is no reason to think that the language we speak accurately reflects the kind of world we live in. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: The last part of that strikes me as false. We have every reason to think that a lot of our language very accurately reflects reality. It had better, because we have no plan B. We should analyse our best concepts, but not outdated, culture-laden ones. |
| 24215 | We call experience 'objective' when it seems necessary [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Everything we call 'objective' in experience is what appears in it as necessary. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Lect 2: Discovery of Mind [1933], p.112) | |
| A reaction: An interesting thought. The obvious problem is that what seems necessary to me may not seem so to you. Which comes first in experience, the objectivity or the necessity? |
| 23884 | Truth is a value of thought [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Truth is a value of thought. The word 'truth' cannot have any other meaning. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Value [1941], p.32) | |
| A reaction: This makes a nice change from truth being a mere predicate. I would call truth the criterion of success in thought, and that counts as a value, so she is right. |
| 23877 | Most people won't question an idea's truth if they depend on it [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The majority of human beings do not question the truth of an idea without which they would literally be unable to live. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Is There a Marxist Doctrine? [1943], p.163) | |
| A reaction: I assume that this inability grows stronger with age, as the dependence on the idea runs deeper. Hence for most people the beliefs which sustain them have a higher value than truth. Obviously we should all make love of truth our guiding idea! |
| 23755 | Genius and love of truth are always accompanied by great humility [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Love of truth is always accompanied by humility, and real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.87) | |
| A reaction: A striking and attractive thought, true of all the lovers of truth I have ever encountered. Socrates is the role model. She likens truth to an inarticulate plaintiff stammering before a judge who fluently manipulates opinions. |
| 23825 | We seek truth only because it is good [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Truth is sought not because it is truth but because it is good. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Attention') | |
| A reaction: A perfect instance of modern platonism. A few weird people seem to enjoy lying. Personally I cannot find enough content in the word 'good' in such claims. |
| 23853 | Truth is not a object we love - it is the radiant manifestation of reality [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Love of truth is not a correct form of expression. Truth is not an object of love. It is not an object at all. …Truth is the radiant manifestation of reality. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], III 'Growing') | |
| A reaction: Wow! Love that one! |
| 13604 | Real possibility and necessity has the logic of S5, which links equivalence classes of worlds of the same kind [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The logic of real possibilities and necessities is just S5. This is because the accessibility relation for real possibilities links possible worlds of the same natural kind, which is an equivalence class. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 7.06) | |
| A reaction: Most people, except Nathan Salmon, agree with this. With full accessibility, you seem to take epistemological problems out of the system, and just focus on reality. |
| 12666 | We can base logic on acceptability, and abandon the Fregean account by truth-preservation [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: In logic, acceptability conditions can replace truth conditions, ..and the only price one has to pay for this is that one has to abandon the implausible Fregean idea that logic is the theory of truth preservation. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 1) | |
| A reaction: This has always struck me as correct, given that if you assign T and F in a semantics, they don't have to mean 'true' and 'false', and that you can do very good logic with propositions which you think are entirely false. |
| 13606 | Humean conceptions of reality drive the adoption of extensional logic [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A Humean conception of reality lies behind, and motivates, the development of extensional logics with extensional semantics. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 8.04) | |
| A reaction: His proposal seems to be that it rests on the vision of a domain of separated objects. The alternative view seems to be that it is mathematics, with its absolute equality between 'objects', which drives extensionalism. |
| 12688 | Mathematics is the formal study of the categorical dimensions of things [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: I wish to explore the idea that mathematics is the formal study of the categorical dimensions of things. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 6) | |
| A reaction: Categorical dimensions are spatiotemporal relations and other non-causal properties. Ellis defends categorical properties as an aspect of science. The obvious connection seems to be with structuralism in mathematics. Shapiro is sympathetic. |
| 24189 | The criterion of the real is contradictions [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The contradictions the mind comes up against - these are the only realities: they are the criterion of the real. There is no contradiction in what is imaginary. Contradiction is the test of necessity. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Contradiction') | |
| A reaction: This seems to presume that reality contains contradictions, which I find incomprehensible. It is contradiction in the denial of a proposition which shows its necessity. So the contradictions are not in the real, but in the denial of the real. |
| 12683 | Objects and substances are a subcategory of the natural kinds of processes [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The category of natural kinds of objects or substances should be regarded simply as a subcategory of the category of the natural kinds of processes. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is a new, and interesting, proposal from Ellis (which will be ignored by the philosophical community, as all new theories coming from elderly philosophers are ignored! Cf Idea 12652). A good knowledge of physics is behind Ellis's claim. |
| 12670 | A physical event is any change of distribution of energy [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: We may define a physical event as any change of distribution of energy in any of its forms. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to result in an awful lot of events. My own (new this morning) definition is: 'An event is a process which can be individuated in time'. Now you just have to work out what a 'process' is, but that's easier than understanding an 'event'. |
| 23855 | Creation produced a network or web of determinations [Weil] |
| Full Idea: What is sovereign in this world is determinateness, limit. Eternal Wisdom imprisons this universe in a network, a web of determinations. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], III 'Growth') | |
| A reaction: Love this, because I take 'determination' to be the defining relationship in ontology. It covers both physical causation and abstract necessities. |
| 24208 | Bodies classify things prior to thought (such as chicks knowing what hits of the egg to peck) [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The body classifies things in the world before there is any thought. (Example: the chick leaving the egg distinguished what is to be pecked and what not). | |
| From: Simone Weil (Lect 1: Materialist Viewpoint [1933], p.31) | |
| A reaction: Good. It is an absurd mistake to think that classification could be exclusively human, or (even worse) exclusively verbal. How do animals cope with the world? |
| 13584 | The extension of a property is a contingent fact, so cannot be the essence of the property [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The extension of a property in any given world is just a contingent fact about that world; its extension is not the essence of the property. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 2.07) | |
| A reaction: The Quinean idea, common among logicians, that a predicate is just a set defined for some model, may be useful in the logic, but is preposterous as an account of what a property actually is in nature, even if the set covers possible worlds. |
| 5468 | Properties are 'dispositional', or 'categorical' (the latter as 'block' or 'intrinsic' structures) [Ellis, by PG] |
| Full Idea: 'Dispositional' properties involve behaviour, and 'categorical properties' are structures in two or more dimensions. 'Block' structures (e.g. molecules) depend on other things, and 'instrinsic' structures (e.g. fields) involve no separate parts. | |
| From: report of Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.4) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: This is an essentialist approach to properties, and sounds correct to me. The crucial preliminary step to understanding properties is to eliminate secondary qualities (e.g. colour), which are not properties at all, and cause confusion. |
| 13587 | There is no property of 'fragility', as things are each fragile in a distinctive way [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There is no natural property of 'fragility'; glasses, parchments, ecosystems and spiders' webs are fragile in their own ways, but they have nothing intrinsic or structural in common. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.06) | |
| A reaction: This is important (and, I think, correct) because we are inclined to say that something is 'intrinsically' fragile, but that still isn't enough to identify a true property. Ellis wants universals to be involved, and even a nominalist must sort-of agree. |
| 12673 | Physical properties are those relevant to how a physical system might act [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: We may define a physical property as one whose value is relevant, in some circumstances, to how a physical system is likely to act. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 2) | |
| A reaction: Fair enough, but can we use the same 'word' property when we are discussing abstractions? Does 'The Enlightenment' have properties? Do very simple things have properties? Can 'red' act, if it isn't part of any physical system? |
| 13577 | Typical 'categorical' properties are spatio-temporal, such as shape [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The paradigmatically 'categorical' properties are spatio-temporal, depending on how things are distributed in space and time. Shape is the obvious example. ...Other examples are number, size and configuration. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.09) | |
| A reaction: I'm finding it very frustrating that this concept is much discussed in current philosophy of science (e.g. by Bird), but it is exceedingly hard to pin down any exact account of these 'categorical' properties, or even why they are so-called. |
| 9436 | The property of 'being an electron' is not of anything, and only electrons could have it [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There is no property of being an electron. It could only be instantiated by electrons, so it does not seem genuine. And what is the thing that supposedly instantiates the property of being an electron? | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 75,92), quoted by Stephen Mumford - Laws in Nature 7.3 | |
| A reaction: I agree entirely. Bird launches an excellent attack on categorial properties. |
| 5469 | The passive view of nature says categorical properties are basic, but others say dispositions [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: 'Categorical realism' is the most widely accepted theory of dispositional properties, because passivists can accept it, ..that is, that dispositions supervene on categorical properties; ..the opposite would imply nature is active and reactive. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: Essentialists believe 'the opposite' - i.e. that dispositions are fundamental, and hence that the essence of nature is active. See 5468 for explanations of the distinctions. I am with the essentialists on this one. |
| 12665 | I support categorical properties, although most people only want causal powers [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: I want to insist on the existence of a class of categorical properties distinct from causal powers. This is contentious, for there is a growing body of opinion that all properties are causal powers. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Alexander Bird makes a case against categorical properties. If what is meant is that 'being an electron' is the key property of an electron, then I disagree (quite strongly) with Ellis. Ellis says they are needed to explain causal powers. |
| 12682 | Essentialism needs categorical properties (spatiotemporal and numerical relations) and dispositions [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Essentialist metaphysics seem to require that there be at least two kinds of properties in nature: dispositional properties (causal powers, capacities and propensities), and categorical ones (spatiotemporal and numerical relations). | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3) | |
| A reaction: At last someone tells us what a 'categorical' property is! Couldn't find it in Stanford! Bird and Molnar reject the categorical ones as true properties. If there are six cats, which cat has the property of being six? Which cat is 'three metres apart'? |
| 12684 | Spatial, temporal and numerical relations have causal roles, without being causal [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Spatial, temporal and numerical relations can have various causal roles without themselves being instances of causal powers. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3) | |
| A reaction: He cites gaps, aggregates, orientations, approaching and receding, as examples of categorical properties which make a causal difference. I would have thought these could be incorporated in accounts of more basic causal powers. |
| 13582 | 'Being a methane molecule' is not a property - it is just a predicate [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: In my view 'being a methane molecule' is not a property name, but a predicate that is constructed out of a natural kind name, and so pretends to name a property. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 2.03) | |
| A reaction: I can't tell you how strongly I agree with this. How long have you got? This is so incredibly right that... You get the idea. He observes that such properties cannot be instantiated 'in' anything. |
| 12672 | Properties and relations are discovered, so they can't be mere sets of individuals [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: To regard properties as sets of individuals, and relations as sets of ordered individuals, is to make a nonsense of the whole idea of discovering a new property or relationship. Sets are defined or constructed, not discovered. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 2) | |
| A reaction: This bizarre view of properties (as sets) drives me crazy, until it dawns on you that they are just using the word 'property' in a different way, probably coextensively with 'predicate', in order to make the logic work. |
| 5456 | Redness is not a property as it is not mind-independent [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Redness is not a property, because it has no mind-independent existence. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Well said. Secondary qualities are routinely cited in discussions of properties, and they shouldn't be. Redness causes nothing to happen in the physical world, unless a consciousness experiences it. |
| 18398 | Space, time, and some other basics, are not causal powers [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Spatial, temporal, and other primary properties and relationships are not causal powers. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Response to David Armstrong [1999], p.42), quoted by David M. Armstrong - Truth and Truthmakers 10.4 | |
| A reaction: It is hard to see how time and space could actually be powers, but future results in physics (or even current results about 'fields') might change that. |
| 13580 | Causal powers must necessarily act the way they do [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There can be no question of a causal power's acting one way in one world and another way in a different world. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.12) | |
| A reaction: Perhaps the very core idea of scientific essentialism. It doesn't feel quite right that when you ask for the source of this necessity, you are only told that it is necessary for the very identity of a power. The truth is that it is a primitive of nature. |
| 13598 | Causal powers are often directional (e.g. centripetal, centrifugal, circulatory) [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Causal powers are often directional. For example, they may be centripetal, centrifugal, or circulatory. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.11) | |
| A reaction: The examples all seem to raise a few questions, about whether the directionality arises from the context, rather than from the intrinsic power. |
| 12676 | Causal powers can't rest on things which lack causal power [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A causal power can never be dependent on anything that does not have any causal powers. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3) | |
| A reaction: Sounds right, though you worry when philosophers make such bold assertions about such extreme generalities. But see Idea 12667. This is, of course, the key argument for saying that causal powers are the bedrock of reality, and of explanation. |
| 13568 | Basic powers may not be explained by structure, if at the bottom level there is no structure [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: It may be that the most fundamental things have no structure, and therefore no structure in virtue of which they have the powers they have. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Maybe the world has inexplicable powers, so there is a God? It seems obvious that there will be no explanation of the 'lowest level' of reality, and also obvious (to me and Leibniz, anyway) that this lowest level has to be active. |
| 13586 | Maybe dispositions can be explained by intrinsic properties or structures [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: One view is that there must be an intrinsic property or structure in virtue of which a given thing has the behavioural disposition in question. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.06) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Prior, Pargetter,Jackson 1982] A key question in the metaphysics of nature - whether dispositions should be taken as primitive, or whether we should try to explain them in other terms. I take powers and dispositions to be prior to properties. |
| 5481 | Properties have powers; they aren't just ways for logicians to classify objects [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: One cannot think of a property as just a set of objects in a domain (as Fregean logicians do), as though the property has no powers, but is just a way of classifying objects. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: I agree. It is sometimes suggested that properties are what 'individuate' objects, but how could they do that if they didn't have some power? If properties are known by their causal role, why do they have that causal role? |
| 23781 | Categoricals exist to influence powers. Such as structures, orientations and magnitudes [Ellis, by Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: Ellis allows categoricals alongside powers, …to influence the sort of manifestations produced by powers. He lists structures, arrangements, distances, orientations, and magnitudes. | |
| From: report of Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009]) by Neil E. Williams - The Powers Metaphysics 05.2 | |
| A reaction: I would have thought that all of these could be understood as manifestations of powers. The odd one out is distances, but then space and time are commonly overlooked in every attempt to produce a complete ontology. [also Molnar 2003:164]. |
| 13585 | The most fundamental properties of nature (mass, charge, spin ...) all seem to be dispositions [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The properties of the most fundamental things in nature, including mass, charge, spin, and the like, would all appear to be dispositional. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.05) | |
| A reaction: This goes with the Leibnizian claim that the most fundamental features of nature must be active in character. |
| 5458 | Nearly all fundamental properties of physics are dispositional [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: With few, if any, exceptions, the fundamental properties of physical theory are dispositional properties of the things that have them. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: He is denying that they are passive (as Locke saw primary qualities), and says they are actively causal, or else capacities or propensities. Sounds right to me. |
| 13596 | A causal power is a disposition to produce forces [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A causal power is a disposition of something to produce forces of a certain kind. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.09) | |
| A reaction: Hence when Leibniz was putting all his emphasis on the origin of the forces in nature, he was referring to exactly what we mean by 'powers'. From Ellis's formulation, I take powers to be more basic than dispositions. Does he realise this? |
| 13599 | Powers are dispositions of the essences of kinds that involve them in causation [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The causal powers of an object are the dispositional properties of that object that are the real essences of the natural kinds of processes that involve that object in the role of cause. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.11) | |
| A reaction: This is Ellis's formal definition at the end of his discussion of causal powers. He only seems to allow powers to the kind rather than to the individual. How do we account for the causal powers of unique genius? I say the powers are the essences. |
| 12686 | Causal powers are a proper subset of the dispositional properties [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The causal powers are just a proper subset of the dispositional properties. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 5) | |
| A reaction: Sounds wrong. Causal powers have a physical reality, while a disposition sounds as if it can wholly described by a counterfactual claim. It seems better to say that things have dispositions because they have powers. |
| 13572 | There are 'substantive' (objects of some kind), 'dynamic' (events of some kind) and 'property' universals [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Three categories of universals: 'substantive' universals have instances that are members of natural kinds of objects or substances; 'dynamic' universals are kinds of events or processes; 'property' universals are tropes of real properties or relations. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.01) | |
| A reaction: I would want to distinguish real properties from relations. It is important to remember that an object can traditionally instantiate a universal, and that they aren't just properties. |
| 13573 | Universals are all types of natural kind [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The various kinds of universals are all natural kinds of one sort or another. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.01) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't sound right. What about the universals of mathematics, or universals which are a matter of social or linguistic convention? I think Ellis is trying to hijack the word 'universal' in response to Armstrong's more idealistic account. |
| 12685 | Categorical properties depend only on the structures they represent [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: I would define categorical properties as those whose identities depend only on the kinds of structures they represent. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3 n8) | |
| A reaction: Aha. So categorical properties would be much more perspicaciously labelled as 'structural' properties. Why does philosophical terminology make it all more difficult than it needs to be? |
| 5443 | Kripke and others have made essentialism once again respectable [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The revival of essentialism owes much to the work of Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam, who made belief in essences once again respectable, with Harré and Madden arguing that there were real causal powers in nature. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me important to separate two stages of this: 1) causation results from essences, and 2) essences can never change. The first seems persuasive to me. For the second, see METAPHYSICS/IDENTITY/COUNTERPARTS. |
| 5444 | 'Individual essences' fix a particular individual, and 'kind essences' fix the kind it belongs to [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The new essentialism retains Aristotelian ideas about essential properties, but it distinguishes more clearly between 'individual essences' and 'kind essences'; the former define a particular individual, the latter what kind it belongs to. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This might actually come into conflict with Aristotle, who seems to think that my personal essence is largely a human nature I share with everyone else. The new distinction is trying to keep the Kantian individual on the stage. |
| 13571 | Scientific essentialism doesn't really need Kripkean individual essences [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: My current view is that individual essences (about which Kripke's essentialism has a lot to say) do not matter much from the point of view of a scientific essentialist. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: [Kripke parenthesis on p.54] Presumably this is because science is only committed to dealing in generalities, and so natural kinds are needed for such things. I'm inclined to regard individual essences as prior in the pure ontology of the thing. |
| 12679 | A real essence is a kind's distinctive properties [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A distinctive set of intrinsic properties for a given kind is called a 'real essence'. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3) | |
| A reaction: Note that he thinks essence is a set of properties (rather than what gives rise to the properties), and that it is kinds (and not individuals) which have real essences, and that one role of the properties is to be 'distinctive' of the kind. Cf. Oderberg. |
| 5462 | Essential properties are usually quantitatively determinate [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Most of the essential properties of things are quantitatively determinate properties. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: This makes the essential nature of the world very much the province of science, which deals in quantities and equations. Essentialists must deal with mental events, as well as basic physics. |
| 5448 | 'Real essence' makes it what it is; 'nominal essence' makes us categorise it a certain way [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The 'real essence' of a thing is that set of its properties or structures in virtue of which it is a thing of that kind; its 'nominal essence' is the properties or structures in virtue of which it is described as a thing of that kind. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: I like this distinction, because it is the kind made by realists like me who are fighting to make philosophers keep their epistemology and their ontology separate. |
| 13578 | The old idea that identity depends on essence and behaviour is rejected by the empiricists [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The old Aristotelian idea that the identity of a thing might depend on its essential nature, which would dispose it to behave in certain ways, is firmly rejected by empiricists. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.10) | |
| A reaction: Ellis is accusing empiricists of having a falsely passive concept of objects. This dispute is best captured in the disagreement between Locke and Leibniz on the subject. |
| 5477 | One thing can look like something else, without being the something else [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: In considering questions of real possibility, it is important to keep the distinction between what a thing is and what it looks like clearly in mind. There is a possible world containing a horse that could then look like a cow, but it wouldn't BE a horse. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This is an interesting test assertion of the notion that there are essences (although Ellis does not allow that animals actually have essences - how could you, given evolution?). His point is a good one. |
| 13576 | Necessities are distinguished by their grounds, not their different modalities [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Strictly speaking, the distinction between two brands of necessity is one of grounds, rather than modality. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.06) | |
| A reaction: This idea I associate with Kit Fine. I like it, because it allows 'necessity' to be a univocal concept, which seems right to me. The types of necessity arise from types of things which already occur in our ontology. |
| 12668 | Metaphysical necessity holds between things in the world and things they make true [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysical necessitation is the relation that holds between things in the world and the things they make true. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 1) | |
| A reaction: Not sure about that. It implies that it is sentences that have necessity, and he confirms it by calling it 'a semantic relation'. So there are no necessities if there are no sentences? Not the Brian Ellis we know and love. |
| 5479 | Scientific essentialists say science should define the limits of the possible [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Scientific essentialists hold that one of the primary aims of science is to define the limits of the possible. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure working scientists will go along with that, but I like the claim that philosophy is very much part of the same enterprise as practical science (and NOT subservient to it!). I think of metaphysics as very high level physics. |
| 23900 | Chance is compatible with necessity, and the two occur together [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Chance is not the contrary of necessity; it is not incompatible with necessity. On the contrary, it never appears except at the same time as necessity. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Scientific Image [1941], p.175) | |
| A reaction: She illustrates it with the six terminating results of a die throw, and the innumerabe ways the throw can occur. This thought strikes me as relevant to discussions of free will. …But I'm not sure I fully understand it. |
| 12687 | Metaphysical necessities are those depending on the essential nature of things [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A metaphysically necessary proposition is one that is true in virtue of the essential nature of things. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 6) | |
| A reaction: It take this to be what Kit Fine argues for, though it tracks back to Aristotle. I also take it to be correct, though one might ask whether there are any other metaphysical necessities, ones not depending on essences. |
| 5483 | Essentialists deny possible worlds, and say possibilities are what is compatible with the actual world [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Essentialists are modal realists; ..what is really possible, they say, is what is compatible with the natures of things in this world (and this does not commit them to the existence of any world other than the actual world). | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: This introduces something like 'compatibilities' into our ontology. That must rest on some kind of idea of a 'natural contradiction'. We can discuss the possibilities resulting from essences, but what are the possible variations in the essences? |
| 13570 | Individual essences necessitate that individual; natural kind essences necessitate kind membership [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There are necessities grounded in the individual real essences of things, and necessities grounded in the natural kind essences of things. In the first case, without the property it isn't that individual, and in the second it isn't a member of that kind. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is the distinction we must hang onto to avoid a huge amount of confusion in this territory. I just say that ceasing to be that individual will presumably entail ceasing to be that kind, but not necessarily vice versa, so individual essences rule. |
| 5447 | Metaphysical necessities are true in virtue of the essences of things [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysical necessities are propositions that are true in virtue of the essences of things. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: I am cautious about this. It sounds like huge Leibnizian metaphysical claims riding in on the back of a rather sensible new view of the laws of science. How can we justify equating natural necessity with metaphysical necessity? |
| 5476 | Essentialists say natural laws are in a new category: necessary a posteriori [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Essentialists do not accept the standard position, which says necessity is a priori, and contingency is a posteriori. They have a radically new category: the necessary a posteriori. The laws of nature are, for example, both necessary and a posteriori. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: Based on Kripke. I'm cautious about this. Presumably God, who would know the essences, could therefore infer the laws a priori. The laws may follow of necessity from the essences, but the essences can't be known a posteriori to be necessary. |
| 5478 | Imagination tests what is possible for all we know, not true possibility [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The imaginability test of possibility confuses what is really or metaphysically possible with what is only epistemically possible. ..The latter is just what is possible for all we know. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.6) |
| 5482 | Possible worlds realism is only needed to give truth conditions for modals and conditionals [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The main trouble with possible worlds realism is that the only reason anyone has, or ever could have, to believe in other possible worlds (other than this one) is that they are needed, apparently, to provide truth conditions for modals and conditionals. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: This attacks Lewis. Ellis makes this sound like a trivial technicality, but if our metaphysics is going to make sense it must cover modals and conditionals. What do they actually mean? Lewis has a theory, at least. |
| 24194 | Wanting new discoveries blocks good thinking about what has been discovered [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The desire to discover something new prevents people from allowing their thoughts to dwell on the transcendent, undemonstrable meaning of what has already been discovered. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Intelligence') | |
| A reaction: Struck a strong chord with me. The principal motivation for this collection of ideas. I am generally a pessimistic about future discoveries of anything other than new gadgets. We may be at the end of a two century golden age. Time to consolidate. |
| 24195 | Don't reject opinions; arrange them all in a hierarchy [Weil] |
| Full Idea: We have not to choose between opinions. We have to welcome them all, but arrange them vertically, placing them on suitable levels. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Intelligence') | |
| A reaction: What a brilliant thought. Relativists and non-relativists might even unite around that vision. |
| 23888 | Knowledge is beyond question, as an unavoidable component of thinking [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The speaker refuses to pose the question of knowledge, since knowledge is a given that is mixed with thought, and that no thinking being can get away from. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Philosophy [1941], p.42) | |
| A reaction: On the whole I favour belief-first, but I take the primary purpose of minds to be navigation, and that needs facts, not hopeful beliefs. Weil's thought pushes me a bit towards the knowledge first view. |
| 24209 | Senses are unaware of each other, and give isolated information [Weil] |
| Full Idea: None of the senses tells us that there are other senses. None of the senses tells us how the sensations it gives are related to those that are given by the other senses. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Lect 1: Materialist Viewpoint [1933], p.43) | |
| A reaction: That is quite striking, but it is obviously a mistake (even a category error) to think that the senses should in themselves be aware of anything. This helps to clarify their role. So we don't just know something by seeing it. |
| 5453 | Essentialists mostly accept the primary/secondary qualities distinction [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Essentialists mostly accept the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, ..where the primary qualities of things are those that are intrinsic to the objects that have them. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: One reason I favour essentialism is because I have always thought that the primary/secondary distinction was a key to understanding the world. 'Primary' gets at the ontology, 'secondary' shows us the epistemology. |
| 5466 | Primary qualities are number, figure, size, texture, motion, configuration, impenetrability and (?) mass [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: For Boyle, Locke and Newton, the qualities inherent in bodies were just the primary qualities, namely number, figure, size, texture, motion and configuration of parts, impenetrability and, perhaps, body (or mass). | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: It is nice to have a list. Ellis goes on to say these are too passive, and urges dispositions as primary. Even so, the original seventeenth century insight seems to me a brilliant step forward in our understanding of the world. |
| 24211 | Associations are not lawlike, because we make arbitrary choice of which representation matters [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The so called laws of association are not laws really because, if we follow them, every representation can bring in its train whatever representation we choose, the choice of one rather than the other remains unexplained. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Lect 1: Materialist Viewpoint [1933], p.63) | |
| A reaction: I suppose if you saw several representations or contiguities simultaneously you would face this situation. It doesn't seem plausible that there are 'laws' of association, but something like it obviously occurs. |
| 24214 | Pragmatists are right that science is action on nature - but it must be methodical [Weil] |
| Full Idea: One might say, with the pragmatists, that all science reduces itself to a process of action on nature, but it is necessary to add the word methodical. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Lect 2: Discovery of Mind [1933], p.111) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a sort of hybrid pragmatism, where the required success is not achieved by mere blind trial-and-error - which sounds obvious. Theory is needed - but that too can be explained pragmatically. |
| 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 |
| 12669 | Science aims to explain things, not just describe them [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The primary aim of science is to explain what happens, not just to describe it. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 2) | |
| A reaction: This I take to be a good motto for scientific essentialism. Any scientist who is happy with anything less than explanation is a mere journeyman, a servant in the kitchens of the great house of science. |
| 13607 | If events are unconnected, then induction cannot be solved [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: If one believes, as Hume did, that all events are loose and separate, then the problem of induction is probably insoluble. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 8.09) | |
| A reaction: This points to the essentialist solution of induction - that we can genuinely derive inductive truths if we can inductively identify the essences which give rise to the necessities of further cases. I take that to be a correct account. |
| 5485 | Emeralds are naturally green, and only an external force could turn them blue [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Emeralds cannot all turn blue in 2050 (as Nelson Goodman envisaged), because to do so they would have to have an extrinsically variable nature. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: I was never very impressed by the 'grue' problem, probably for this reason, but also because Goodman probably thought predicates and properties are the same thing, which they aren't (Idea 5457). |
| 13597 | Good explanations unify [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: An acceptable explanation must have some unifying power. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.11) | |
| A reaction: There is a tension here, between the particular and the general. If I say 'why did the building collapse' and you say 'gravity', you have certainly got a unifying explanation, but we want something narrower. |
| 5484 | Essentialists don't infer from some to all, but from essences to necessary behaviour [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: For essentialists the problem of induction reduces to discovering what natural kinds there are, and identifying their essential problems and structures. We then know how they must behave in any world, and there is no inference from some to all. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: The obvious question is how you would determine the essences if you are not allowed to infer 'from some to all'. Personally I don't see induction as a problem, because it is self-evidently rational in a stable world. Hume was right to recommend caution. |
| 24213 | Explanations always concern how one thing changes into another [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Every intelligible explanation is a matter of understanding how one thing changes into another. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Lect 2: Discovery of Mind [1933], p.111) | |
| A reaction: That seems tantamount to saying that all explanations are causal. But there also seem to be structural or situational explanations, and explanations of why a thing fails to change into another. |
| 13601 | Explanations of particular events are not essentialist, as they don't reveal essential structures [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Explanations of particular events in history, geology, or evolution, are causal explanations, requiring belief in some causal mechanisms. But they are not essentialist explanations because they do not seek to lay bare the essential structure of anything. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 4.05) | |
| A reaction: The explanation might be two-stage, as when we explain an earthquake by a plate boundary rupture, which is in turn explained by a theory of plate techtonics. The relationship between mechanistic and essentialist explanation needs study. |
| 13569 | To give essentialist explanations there have to be natural kinds [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There can be no essentialist explanations constructed in any field where the subject matter is not naturally divided into kinds. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: A crux. I like individual essences, such as the character of a particular person. However, Ellis may be right, since while we may identify an individual essence as the source of a behaviour, we may not then be able to give any 'explanation'. |
| 24210 | Abstraction is just the character of generalisation [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The problem of abstraction is exactly the same as that of general ideas. We call what characterises general ideas abstract. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Lect 1: Materialist Viewpoint [1933], p.59) | |
| A reaction: Note that is not general ideas which are abstract, but what 'characterises' them. Is resemblance an intermediate step between generalisation and abstraction? The concepts seem to develop in stages. |
| 24212 | We don't infer the straight from the twisted, because judging the twisted needs the straight [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The materialist says: it is by means of a series of straight lines that one imagines the perfect straight line as an ideal limit. But the progression itself contains what is infinite. It is in relation to the straight that we say a line is less twisted. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Lect 1: Materialist Viewpoint [1933], p.87) | |
| A reaction: This is the platonist response to my preferred view that the mind produces all the pure concepts such as idealisations. I prefer to refer to pulling a rope, where the straight emerges as an obvious observed limit. |
| 13600 | The point of models in theories is not to idealise, but to focus on what is essential [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Most model theories abstract from reality in order to focus on the essential nature of some kind of process or system of relations. ... The point of idealizing in this case is not to simplify, but to eliminate what is not essential. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 4.03) | |
| A reaction: I like this idea a lot. It is where scientific essentialism cashes out in actual scientific practice. Ellis's example is the idealised Carnot heat engine, which never can exist, but which captures what is essential about the process. |
| 23747 | What is sacred is not a person, but the whole physical human being [Weil] |
| Full Idea: There is something sacred in every man, but it is not his person. Nor yet is it the human personality. It is this man; no more and no less. …It is he. The whole of him. The arms, they eyes, the thoughts, everything. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p,70) | |
| A reaction: I take her to be referring to exactly the concept of a 'person' which Locke introduced. It is important to remember that his concept is mainly forensic - as a concept of ownership and contracts. A person is an abstraction. Even a corpse is a human. |
| 24207 | Observing oneself in the present is impossible, and oneself in the past may be wrong [Weil] |
| Full Idea: If one tries to observe oneself in the present one finds in oneself only the state of observing oneself. Introspection, then, can only work in the case of past states of mind, …about which one can always be mistaken. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Lect 1: Materialist Viewpoint [1933], p.28) | |
| A reaction: I don't think this is wholly correct. We can become self-aware for a moment while absorbed in something else, and have some insight into what the absorption was like. Some aspects of past experience can be known accurately. |
| 24182 | We must be obedient, and love necessity [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Obedience is the supreme virtue. We have to love necessity. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Necessity') | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche loved the slogan 'amor fati', love of fate. I'm not sure why I should love hideous things, just because they are unavoidable. But 'go with the flow' is quite a good slogan. |
| 23756 | The mind is imprisoned and limited by language, restricting our awareness of wider thoughts [Weil] |
| Full Idea: At the very best, a mind is enclosed in language as in a prison. It is limited to the number of relations which words can make simultaneously present to it; and remains in ignorance of thoughts which involve the combination of a greater number. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.89) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a germ of the type of view of language which blossoms in Derrida. But she is on to something. None of us grasp fully, I think, the non-linguistic nature of good thinking. |
| 24177 | Higher emotions have less energy, and actions may need the lower emotions [Weil] |
| Full Idea: As a rule the energy supplied by the higher emotions is limited. If the situation requires us to go beyond this limit we have to fall back on lower feelings (fear, covetousness, desire to beat the record, love of honours) which are richer in energy. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Void') | |
| A reaction: Presumably there is supposed to be a consensus about which emotions are 'higher'. If she means that most great achievements have rather dishonourable motives, then I don't think I agree. Sustained emotions do that. |
| 5457 | Predicates assert properties, values, denials, relations, conventions, existence and fabrications [Ellis, by PG] |
| Full Idea: As well as properties, predicates can assert evaluation, denial, relations, conventions, existence or fabrication. | |
| From: report of Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.3) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: This seems important, in order to disentangle our ontological commitments from our language, which was a confusion that ran throughout twentieth-century philosophy. A property is a real thing in the world, not a linguistic convention. |
| 5488 | Regularity theories of causation cannot give an account of human agency [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A Humean theory of causation (as observed regularities) makes it very difficult for anyone even to suggest a plausible theory of human agency. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: I'm not quite sure what a 'theory' of human agency would look like. Hume himself said we only get to understand our mental powers from repeated experience (Idea 2220). How do we learn about the essence of our own will? |
| 23878 | Weakness of will is the inadequacy of the original impetus to carry through the action [Weil] |
| Full Idea: It is naďve to be astonished when we do not stick to firm resolutions. Something stimulated the resolution, but that something was not powerful enough to bring us to the point of carrying it out. Making the resolution may even have exhausted the stimulus. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Is There a Marxist Doctrine? [1943], p.169) | |
| A reaction: Socrates says it is a change of belief. Aristotle says it is a desire overcoming a belief. Weil gives a third way: that it is a fading in the strength of the original belief/desire impetus. |
| 5489 | Humans have variable dispositions, and also power to change their dispositions [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: It seems that human beings not only have variable dispositional properties, as most complex systems have, but also meta-powers: powers to change their own dispositional properties. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me a key to how we act, and also to morality. 'What dispositions do you want to have?' is the central question of virtue theory. Humans are essentially multi-level thinkers. Irony is the window into the soul. |
| 24184 | What matters about an action is not its aim, but the origin of its compulsion [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Every act should be considered from the point of view not of its object but of its compulsion. The question is not 'What is the aim?' It is 'What is the origin?'. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Necessity') | |
| A reaction: Doubtful. It is notoriously difficult to know the origins of our motivations. What of the well meaning fool, who has nice origins for motives, but misjudges the aims? |
| 23899 | The secret of art is that beauty is a just blend of unity and its opposite [Weil] |
| Full Idea: A just blend of unity and that which opposes it is the condition of the beautiful, and it is the secret of art. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Scientific Image [1941], p.169) | |
| A reaction: Rather sweeping, but the observation strikes me as fairly accurate. It seems to work for most novels, paintings and music, though more recent art may provide counterexamples. |
| 23832 | We both desire what is beautiful, and want it to remain as it is [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Everything beautiful is the object of desire but one desires that it be not otherwise, that it be unchanged, that it be exactly what it is. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Prerequisite to Dignity of Labour [1941], p.268) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be mostly true, though I don't think it reveals the essence of beauty. I might love a particular landscape, but want to plant a carefully place tree within it. Or change one or two words in a great poem. |
| 23848 | The aesthete's treatment of beauty as amusement is sacreligious; beauty should nourish [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The aesthete's point of view is sacreligious, not only in matters of religion but even in those of art. It consists in amusing oneself with beauty by handling it and looking at it. Beauty is something to be eaten: it is a food. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Country') | |
| A reaction: She is endorsing the 'food' view against the 'handling' view. Beauty should nourish, she says. |
| 23758 | Beauty is an attractive mystery, leaving nothing to be desired [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Beauty is the supreme mystery of the world. It is a gleam which attracts the attention and yet does nothing to sustain it. …While exciting desire, it makes clear that there is nothing in it to be desired, because what we want is that it should not change. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.92) | |
| A reaction: She attributes beauty to a supernatural source. I catalogue this idea under 'the sublime', rather than 'beauty'. It may be better to say that beauty inspires love, rather than desire. |
| 23887 | Art (like philosophy) establishes a relation between world and self, and between oneself and others [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Isn't true art a method for establishing a certain relation between the world and the self, and between oneself and others, and isn't that the equivalent of philosophy? | |
| From: Simone Weil (Philosophy [1941], p.38) | |
| A reaction: I hope the definition of 'true' art doesn't have to conform to achieving this relation. I suppose each good work of art shows you a distinctive way of relating to the world. An interesting thought (as so often with this thinker). |
| 24198 | Perfect works of art seem to be essentially anonymous [Weil] |
| Full Idea: A work of art has an author and yet, when it is perfect, it has something which is essentially anonymous about it. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Beauty') | |
| A reaction: It is certainly the case that when you feel a work is perfect, it seems to move into some separate class of existence, as if it were part of nature. |
| 23903 | When we admire a work, we see ourselves as its creator [Weil] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible to admire a work of art without thinking oneself, in a way, its creator and without, in a sense, becoming so. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Letters [1940], 1940-03c) | |
| A reaction: This rings true for me. You almost see yourself making the brush strokes, or writing the phrase, or penning the chords. It is engagment which is essential for artistic experience. So all art lovers want to be artists? |
| 23898 | Those who say immorality is not an aesthetic criterion must show that all criteria are aesthetic [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Writers and readers who cry out that immorality is not an aesthetic criterion need to prove, which they have never done, that one should apply only aesthetic criteria to literature. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Literature and Morals [1941], p.146) | |
| A reaction: I take the first criterion of literature that it not be boring, and I don't think that is an aesthetic matter. A lot must be achieved before a work can even be considered for aesthetic judgment. Being deeply offensive might rule it out. |
| 24216 | Everyone is devoted to morality, if they don't have to implement it [Weil] |
| Full Idea: All men accept the most rigorous morality when there is no question of putting it into practice. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Lect 3: Politics and Society [1933], p.129) | |
| A reaction: Presumably this ranges from deliberate hypocrisy to a failure to know ourselves. There is also the question of scope. The mafia seem to be devoted to morality, but only within their family. |
| 23854 | Beauty is the proof of what is good [Weil] |
| Full Idea: When the subject in question is the good, beauty is a rigorous and positive proof. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], III 'Growing') | |
| A reaction: Purest platonism! It is incomprehensible to say 'this thing is evil, but it is beautiful'. But there are plenty of things which strike me as beautiful, without connecting that in any way to moral goodness. |
| 23826 | Beauty, goodness and truth are only achieved by applying full attention [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The authentic and pure values - truth, beauty and goodness - in the activity of a human being are the result of one and same act, a certain application of the full attention to the object. Teaching should only aim to train the attention for such an act. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Attention') | |
| A reaction: A distinctive Weil idea, that absorbed 'attention' produces almost mystical results. I am not convinced that a great still life painter (than which there is no higher criterion of attention) achieves contact with goodness thereby. But attention is good! |
| 23814 | Every human yearns for an unattainable transcendent good [Weil] |
| Full Idea: There is a reality outside the world …outside any sphere that is accessible to human faculties. Corresponding to this reality, at the centre of the human heart, is the longing for an absolute good, which is always there and never appeased by this world. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.221) | |
| A reaction: I don't believe in any sort of transcendent reality, but I can identify with this. Even if you have a highly naturalistic view of what is valuable (see late Philippa Foot), there is this indeterminate yearning for that value. |
| 23824 | Where human needs are satisfied we find happiness, friendship and beauty [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Any place where the needs of human beings are satisfied can be recognised by the fact that there is a flowering of fraternity, joy, beauty, and happiness. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.230) | |
| A reaction: Weil writes a lengthy analysis of what she sees as the basic human needs, beyond the obvious food, water etc. An excellent place to start a line of political thought. |
| 5490 | Essentialism fits in with Darwinism, but not with extreme politics of left or right [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The extremes of left and right in politics have much more reason than Darwinists to be threatened by the 'new essentialism', because it must reinstate the concept of human nature. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: The point being that political extremes go against the grain of our nature. Personally I am favour of essentialism, and human nature. I notice that Steven Pinker is now defending human nature, from a background of linguistics and psychology. |
| 23879 | In a violent moral disagreement, it can't be that both sides are just following social morality [Weil] |
| Full Idea: If two men are in violent disagreement about good and evil, it is hard to believe that both of them are blindly subject to the opinion of the society around them. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Is There a Marxist Doctrine? [1943], p.171) | |
| A reaction: What a beautifully simple observation. Simone would have become a major figure if she had lived longer. No philosopher has ever written better prose. |
| 24191 | We want our values to be eternal [Weil] |
| Full Idea: We want everything which has a value to be eternal. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Chance') | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the motivation for platonism, of which Weil was a fan. Nietzsche is the strongest opponent of this aspiration. This dream explains the typical resentment of old people. |
| 23882 | Ends, unlike means, cannot be defined, which is why people tend to pursue means [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Everything that can be taken as an end cannot be defined. Means, such as power and money, are easily defined, and that is why people orient themselves exclusively towards the acquisition of means. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Value [1941], p.31) | |
| A reaction: Nice, but too neat, because so many activities can be treated either as means or as ends, and often as both. It makes sense that people pursue what is clear to them. |
| 24197 | Power and money are supreme means, thus blinding people to ends [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Power (and money, power's master key) is means at its purest. For that very reason, it is the supreme end for those who have not understood. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Metaxu') | |
| A reaction: A lovely observation about the sort of people addicted to power and money. Her thought seems to be that this means is so pure that they can't see anything beyond it. |
| 23760 | All we need are the unity of justice, truth and beauty [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Justice, truth, and beauty are sisters and comrades. With three such beautiful words we have no need to look for any others. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.93) | |
| A reaction: The embodiment of platonist values. Without the platonist ontology, I like the identification of a few core values, and have always thought that Beauty, Goodness and Truth were a well chosen trio. Swapping 'justice' for 'goodness' is interesting. |
| 23883 | Minds essentially and always strive towards value [Weil] |
| Full Idea: For the mind essentially and always, in whatever manner it is disposed, strives towards value. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Value [1941], p.31) | |
| A reaction: A typically platonist thought. If you accept my view that values identify what is important, the thought is plausible. We might distinguish between what the mind pointlessly entertains, and what it 'strives' for. |
| 23748 | The sacred in every human is their expectation of good rather than evil [Weil] |
| Full Idea: At the bottom of every human heart …there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all crimes committed, suffered and witnessed, that good and not evil will be done to him. It is this above all that is sacred in every human being. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.71) | |
| A reaction: I'm thinking that this expectation may come from having at least one loving parent, and failing that there are people who have no such expectation as adults. Simone obviously thinks the hope runs deeper than that. |
| 24181 | We need love to have a good death [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The soul which is not full of love dies a bad death. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Decreation') | |
| A reaction: Not sure I understand a 'good death', from the point of view of the deceased. Does spending your last ten minutes feeling angry count as a bad death? What matters is how the survivors remember the event. |
| 24179 | We should never desire the immortality of the people we love [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Not to desire that what we love should be immortal. We should desire neither the immortality nor the death of any human being, whoever he may be, with whom we have to do. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Detachment') | |
| A reaction: The reason why we should not desire their immortality seems a good insight into love. Personally I would certainly desire the death of the occasional hideous human being. |
| 23759 | Everything which originates in love is beautiful [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Everything which originates from pure love is lit with the radiance of beauty. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.93) | |
| A reaction: I suppose if I found a counterexample, she would say that is not 'pure' love. This sentence leaves open the possibility of beauty in the absence of love (such as a beautiful face noticed in the street). In her case, can beauty and love be separated? |
| 23762 | Evil is transmitted by comforts and pleasures, but mostly by doing harm to people [Weil] |
| Full Idea: One may transmit evil to a human being by flattering him or giving him comforts and pleasures; but most often men transmit evil to other men by doing them harm. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.94) | |
| A reaction: Some people receive harm very passively, especially if it is normal. What of tough love, which is erroneously seen as harm? |
| 24193 | If we focus on the good, our whole soul is drawn towards it [Weil] |
| Full Idea: If we turn our minds towards the good, it is impossible that little by little the whole soul will not be attracted thereto in spite of itself. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Attention') | |
| A reaction: This is a better expression of Plato's basic metaethics than anything in Plato. What puzzles everyone is what you are supposed to be thinking of when you focus your mind this way. |
| 23808 | There are two goods - the absolute good we want, and the reachable opposite of evil [Weil] |
| Full Idea: There are two goods - one which is the opposite of evil, and one which is the absolute. …That which we want is the absolute good. That which is within our reach is the good which is correlated with evil. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Beast') | |
| A reaction: Elsewhere she seems in tune with the thought of Nietzsche (whom she despised) that good and evil are false social constructs which are quite different from healthy values. Weil, of course, sees the absolute as transcendent. |
| 23833 | The good is a nothingness, and yet real [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The good seems to us a nothingness, since there is no thing that is good. But this nothingness is not unreal. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Detachment') | |
| A reaction: A neat move in the notoriously difficult platonic problem of specifying the actual nature of the good. |
| 23865 | Morality would improve if people could pursue private interests [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The common run of moralists complain that man is moved by his private interest: would to heaven it were so! | |
| From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Liberty and Social Oppression [1934], p.65) | |
| A reaction: Her point is that currently people have to sacrifice their own interests to communal activities which offer dubious benefits. |
| 24196 | Loving others as ourselves implies varied love, and varied suffering [Weil] |
| Full Idea: To love our neighbour as ourselves does not mean that we should love all people equally, for I do not have an equal love for all my the modes of existence. Nor does it mean that we should not make them suffer, for I do not refuse to make myself suffer. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Universe') | |
| A reaction: It is wonderful the way most people just accept the golden rule, but philosophers pick it apart in so many interesting ways. |
| 23896 | We see our character as a restricting limit, but also as an unshakable support [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Our character appears to us as a limit by which we do not want to be imprisoned, …but also as a support that we want to believe is unshakable. | |
| From: Simone Weil (On the Concept of Character [1941], p.100) | |
| A reaction: A nice perception. It is fairly easy to criticise, or even laugh at, one's own actions, but extremely hard to criticise our own character. Maybe we all wish we were more determined in our projects, but not much else. |
| 23893 | We don't see character in a single moment, but only over a period of time [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Character is constant over a period of time; the way a person is at a single moment does not at all reflect the character of this person. We do, however, concede that character changes. | |
| From: Simone Weil (On the Concept of Character [1941], p.98) | |
| A reaction: I do think, though, that there are moments in behaviour which are hugely revealing of character, even in a single remark. But I agree that most single moments do not show much. |
| 23894 | The concept of character is at the centre of morality [Weil] |
| Full Idea: We cannot pose a moral problem without putting the concept of character at its centre. | |
| From: Simone Weil (On the Concept of Character [1941], p.98) | |
| A reaction: The question for Aristotle (which I derive from Philippa Foot) is whether moral goodness simply is good character, or whether it is the actions (or even the consequences). Weil is close to modern virtue theory here. |
| 23895 | We modify our character by placing ourselves in situations, or by attending to what seems trivial [Weil] |
| Full Idea: We can modify our character, by putting ourselves in circumstances that will act on us from the outside, …or by the orientation of our attention in the moments that appear most insignificant or indifferent in our lives. | |
| From: Simone Weil (On the Concept of Character [1941], p.99) | |
| A reaction: I've never seen anyone address this question (apart from Aristotle's emphasis on training habits). Choosing your source for current affairs information strikes me as very important. What you read, what you watch, who you spend time with… |
| 24183 | We should only perform the good actions which we can't help doing [Weil] |
| Full Idea: We should only do those righteous actions which we cannot stop ourselves from doing, …but, through well directed attention, we should always keep on increasing the number of those which we are unable not to do. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Necessity') | |
| A reaction: She disliked Aristotle, but this sounds like his concept of the highest level of virtue. Aristotle is better because what matters is what you do, and a controlled fine deed is desirable, even if inferior. |
| 23837 | Respect is our only obligation, which can only be expressed through deeds, not words [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Humans have only one obligation: respect. The obligation is only performed if the respect is effectively expressed in a real, not a fictitious, way; and this can only be done through the medium of Man's earthly needs. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Needs') | |
| A reaction: She says man's 'eternal destiny' imposes this obligation. I read this as saying that you should not imagine that you treat people respectfully if you are merely polite to them. Col. Pickering and Eliza Doolittle! Respect is the supreme virtue. |
| 23815 | We cannot equally respect what is unequal, so equal respect needs a shared ground [Weil] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible to feel equal respect for things that are in fact unequal unless the respect is given to something that is identical in all of them. Men are all unequal in all their relations with things of this world. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.223) | |
| A reaction: Weil votes for some link to transcendence in each of us, but I would prefer some more naturalistic proposal for what we all have in common. There are plenty of aspects which unite all human beings, which grounds this unconditional respect. |
| 24185 | Friendship is a virtue, not a state we should dream of [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Learn to thrust friendship aside, or rather the dream of friendship. To desire friends is a great fault. Friendship should be a gratuitous joy like those afforded by art or life. …Friendship is to be exercised (it is a virtue). | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Love') | |
| A reaction: Presumably we won't have friends if we aren't friendly. Yearning for love is not love. She sounds a bit of a romantic here - that everything must come naturally, or not at all. Desiring friends may be a strategic error - but 'a great fault'? |
| 23834 | Friendship is partly universal - the love of a person is like the ideal of loving everyone [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Friendship has something universal about it. It consists in loving a human being as we should like to be able to love each soul in particular of all those who go to make up the human race. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Friendship [1940], p.288) | |
| A reaction: Hm. Would you like your lover to dream of loving the human race, rather than just loving you? Perhaps only a Christian could see friendship in this way? |
| 24219 | My neighbour's pleasure can't be an end for me [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Once [utilitarians make it] a question of my neighbour's pleasure, it is no longer an end for me. That is just a philosophical fraud. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Lect 4: Ethics and Aesthetics [1933], p.166) | |
| A reaction: The point seems to be the difficulty of motivation towards a 'universal good'. But then how are we to care about the 'general good' of our whole society? We don't clear up litter for the sake of individuals. 'Pleasure', or 'benefit'? |
| 24188 | It is absurd to say that evil proves life is worthless. If it were, why would evil matter? [Weil] |
| Full Idea: To say that the world is not worth anything, that this life is of no value and to give evil as the proof is absurd, for if these things are worthless what does evil take from us? | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Affliction') | |
| A reaction: It is certainly the case that a thoroughgoing nihilist must believe that evil and suffering are also of no importance - which is quite a tought thing to achieve. |
| 24205 | Monotony is beautiful as a reflection of eternity, or atrocious as unvarying perpetuity [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Monotony is the most beautiful or the most atrocious thing. The most beautiful if it is the reflection of eternity - the most atrocious if it is the sign of an unvarying perpetuity. It is time passed or time sterilised. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Work') | |
| A reaction: I'm afraid I can see not attraction at all in the contemplation of eternity (or the infinities of outer space). I think there are more positive accounts to be given of a localised monotony. |
| 23823 | Life needs risks to avoid sickly boredom [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The boredom produced by a complete absence of risk is a sickness of the human soul. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.229) | |
| A reaction: An unusual analysis of boredom. I think it is probably purposeful activity that we need, rather than actual risk, with all the stresses that involves. Risks are justified by their rewards. |
| 23844 | The most important human need is to have multiple roots [Weil] |
| Full Idea: To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognised need of the human soul. …Every human being needs to have multiple roots. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Uprootedness') | |
| A reaction: Agree. I think we are just like trees, in that we need roots to grow well, and plenty of space to fully flourish. Identifying those roots is the main task of parents and teachers. |
| 23838 | The need for order stands above all others, and is understood via the other needs [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Order is the first need of all; it evens stands above all needs properly so-called. To be able to conceive it we must know what the other needs are. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Order') | |
| A reaction: This may be music to conservative ears, but you should examine Weil's other ideas to see what she has in mind. |
| 23836 | Obligations only bind individuals, not collectives [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Obligations are only binding on human beings. There are no obligations for collectivities, as such. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Needs') | |
| A reaction: I take it that 'as such' excludes the institutions created by collectivities, such as parliaments and courts. A nomadic tribe seems to have no duties, as a tribe, apart from mutual obligations among its members. Does this excuse crimes by the tribe? |
| 24202 | Obedience to an illegitimate ruler is a nightmare [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Obedience to a man who is not illuminated by legitimacy - that is a nightmare. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Harmony') | |
| A reaction: [Written in 1942] The worst situation is where one part of society sees the person as legitimate, and enforces the obedience, but another part doesn't. |
| 24218 | People can't be citizens in public life if they are oppressed in economic life [Weil] |
| Full Idea: It is obviously quite impossible for men to be treated like things in the labour market and in production, and to be treated as citizens in public life. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Lect 3: Politics and Society [1933], p.151) | |
| A reaction: Presumably this is because if people are oppressed in one area, they can never be fully free in another. Hard to prove, but sounds right. |
| 23840 | A citizen should be able to understand the whole of society [Weil] |
| Full Idea: A man needs to be able to encompass in thought the entire range of activity of the social organism to which he belongs. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Responsibility') | |
| A reaction: She is urging the active involvement of citizens in decision making - for which they need appropriate knowledge. |
| 23843 | Even the poorest should feel collective ownership, and participation in grand display [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Participation in collective possessions is important. Where real civic life exists, each feels he has a personal ownership in the public monuments, gardens, ceremonial pomp and circumstances; sumptuousness is thus place within the reach of the poorest. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Collective') | |
| A reaction: OK with gardens. Dubious about fobbing the poor off with pomp. Monuments are a modern controversy, when they turn out to commemorate slavery and colonial conquest. I agree with her basic thought. |
| 23822 | We all need to partipate in public tasks, and take some initiative [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The human soul has need of disciplined participation in a common task of public value, and it has need of personal initiative within this participation. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.229) | |
| A reaction: The intrusion of competitive capitalism into almost every area of modern life has more or less eliminated such activities. Only state employees now have such satisfactions, on the whole. I admire Weil's approach here. |
| 24200 | A citizen is defined by their subjection to the laws [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The difference between a slave and a citizen: a slave is subject to his master, and a citizen to the laws. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Imprint') | |
| A reaction: [She mentions Montesquieu and Rousseau] This is perhaps why threats to the rule of law (prominent in the years 2016-2024) are such a potential catastrophe for a society. |
| 23846 | Culture is an instrument for creating an ongoing succession of teachers [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Culture - as we know it - is an instrument manipulated by teachers for manufacturing more teachers, who, in their turn, will manufacture still more teachers. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Towns') | |
| A reaction: Lot of truth in this. We tend to view our greatest successes in students who become academics and teachers. Culture is very much seen as something which must be 'transmitted' to each new generation. |
| 23866 | In oppressive societies the scope of actual control is extended by a religion of power [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Every oppressive society is cemented by a religion of power, which falsifies all social relations by enabling the powerful to command over and above what they are able to impose. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Liberty and Social Oppression [1934], p.69) | |
| A reaction: A rather acute and accurate observation, I think. Flashy cars, grand uniforms, lots of medals, rituals of deference….. Sometimes I like the order and security this brings, but Simone Weil could quickly change my view. |
| 23812 | Force is what turns man into a thing, and ultimately into a corpse [Weil] |
| Full Idea: To define 'force' - it is that x that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing. Exercised to the limit, it turns man into a thing in the most literal sense: it makes a corpse out of him. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Iliad or the Poem of Force [1940], p.183) | |
| A reaction: She celebrates The Iliad as the great examination of force in human affairs. I have felt that sense of reduction to a thing whenever anyone above me in the hierarchy has arbitrarily exerted their power over me. |
| 24201 | Social order is equilibrium of forces, which must be corrected when imbalanced [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Equilibrium is the submission of one order to another. …Equilibrium alone destroys and annuls force. Social order can be nothing but an equilibrium of forces.…If we know how society is unbalanced, we must do what we can to add weight to the lighter scale. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Harmony') | |
| A reaction: Good. If only political parties would agree on this principle, and confine their haggling to the nature of the imbalance, and proposals to correct it. First we must identify the main forces. |
| 24199 | There is no oppression, or oppressive class; there is only an oppressive society [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The notion of oppression is a stupidity. And the notion of an oppressive class is even more stupid. We can only speak of an oppressive structure of society. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Imprint') | |
| A reaction: Good. The notion of hatred between the classes is a disastrous mistake. Most people are born into their class, and they barely understand any collusion they have in its bad behaviour. |
| 23831 | The essence of power is illusory prestige [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Prestige, which is an illusion, is the very essence of power. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Power of Words [1934], p.255) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to maintain illusory prestige if there is no actual power behind it. |
| 23857 | People in power always try to increase their power [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Every human group that exercises power does so …in such a way as to increase that power. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Prospects: Proletarian Revolution? [1933], p.15) | |
| A reaction: Not so true in smaller institutions, but at the centre of power you can control how power is distributed, so the temptation is too much. |
| 23839 | A lifelong head of society should only be a symbol, not a ruler [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Wherever a man is placed for life at the head of a social organism, he ought to be a symbol and not a ruler, as is the case with the King of England. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Obedience') | |
| A reaction: Nice to hear a radical French thinker endorsing an ancient British tradition! She may not be endorsing a lifelong head of state. Lifelong rulers are the main agents of totalitarianism. |
| 23871 | No central authority can initiate decentralisation [Weil] |
| Full Idea: It is quite patently impossible for decentralisation to be initiated by the central authority. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Liberty and Social Oppression [1934], p.113) | |
| A reaction: This is contradicted by the creation of regional parliaments and mayors, but we see nothing beyond that. A state could crumble into small parts if there were'lots of autonomous regional groups. Easier for weird minorities to take control. |
| 23856 | Spontaneous movements are powerless against organised repression [Weil] |
| Full Idea: A spontaneous movement is fundamentally impotent when it comes to fighting against organised forces of repression. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Prospects: Proletarian Revolution? [1933], p.2) | |
| A reaction: Her example is the Paris Commune of 1870. Hence revolution requires prior penetration of the corridors of power. Hence the phenomenon of 'entryism' of more radical people into reformist parties. |
| 23867 | After a bloody revolution the group which already had the power comes to the fore [Weil] |
| Full Idea: There is no real break in continuity after a bloody struggle for regime change; for the victory just sanctions forces that before the struggle were the decisive factor in community life, patterns which were replacing those of the declining regime. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Liberty and Social Oppression [1934], p.73) | |
| A reaction: [from Marx] I assume she has in mind the French Revolution, and perhaps the Russian Revolution, though in the latter the new bourgeois leaders also got swept away. So revolutions are not nearly as dramatic as they appear to be. |
| 24203 | Atheistic materialism must be revolutionary, because its good is in the future [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Atheistic materialism is necessarily revolutionary, for, if it is to be directed towards an absolute good here on earth, it has to place it in the future. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Harmony') | |
| A reaction: Her alternative, of course, is a religious absolute good, which is presumably timeless. She must have Russia in mind. I'm not clear why atheistic materialists must believe in an absolute good. She says their great idea is 'progress'. |
| 23830 | A group is only dangerous if it endorses an abstract entity [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Any group which has not secreted an abstract entity will probably not be dangerous. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Power of Words [1934], p.255) | |
| A reaction: Written in the 1930s, the era of many political -isms. No group can be united if it lacks a clear label, and a few simple slogans. |
| 23870 | Decentralisation is only possible by co-operation between strong and weak - which is absurd [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The only possibility of salvation would lie in a co-operation between weak and strong, with a view to accomplishing a progressive decentralisation of social life; but the absurdity of such an idea strikes one immediately. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Liberty and Social Oppression [1934], p.113) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a judgement on the anarchist ideal, rather than a bit of modest devolution. The UK government set up regional parliaments. She says centralisation is remorseless. |
| 23809 | Our only social duty is to try to limit evil [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Our only duty with regard to the social is to try to limit the evil of it. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Beast') | |
| A reaction: This is one of Weil's occasional remarks that have an anarchist flavour. I increasingly sympathise with this less idealistic view as I get older. |
| 24190 | Anarchists thought (hopelessly) that empowering the oppressed would end evil [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Sincere anarchists, discerning, as through a mist, the principle of the union of opposites, thought that evil could be destroyed by giving power to the oppressed. An impossible dream | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Contradiction') | |
| A reaction: Weil joined the anarchists in Spain in 1936. Orwell did too, and wrote 'Animal Farm'. So who should we give power to? Showbiz celebrities and poisonous haters? Weil thinks 'destroying evil' is an absurd aim. Do anarchists want to 'empower' anyone? |
| 23817 | We need both equality (to attend to human needs) and hierarchy (as a scale of responsibilities) [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The human soul has need of equality and of hierarchy. Equality is the public recognition …of the principal that an equal degree of attention is due to the needs of all human beings. Hierarchy is the scale of responsibilities. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.228) | |
| A reaction: This is the conservative aspect of Weil's largely radical political thinking. Presumably what we respect in these people is their responsibilies, and not their mere rank. Idle members of the British House of Lords have no rank in this hierarchy. |
| 23829 | National leaders want to preserve necessary order - but always the existing order [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Those in command see their duty as defending order, without which no social life can survive; and the only order they conceive is the existing one. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Power of Words [1934], p.249) | |
| A reaction: She sympathises with them, because a new order is such an unknown. But it always struck me as weird that traditions are preserved because they are traditions, and not because they are good. (My old school, for example!). |
| 23842 | Party politics in a democracy can't avoid an anti-democratic party [Weil] |
| Full Idea: A democracy where public life is made up of strife between political parties is incapable of preventing the formation of a party whose avowed aim is the overthrow of that democracy. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Opinion') | |
| A reaction: We have seen this around 2020 in the USA and the UK. Freedom is compulsory? Weil hates political parties (as did Rousseau). |
| 23859 | True democracy is the subordination of society to the individual [Weil] |
| Full Idea: In the subordination of society to the individual lies the definition of true democracy, and that of socialism as well. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Prospects: Proletarian Revolution? [1933], p.19) | |
| A reaction: This is the simplest definition of the liberal view. The big difference is whether this subordination is the starting point of political thinking, or the end result at which it aims. |
| 23863 | Only individual people of good will can achieve social progress [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The enlightened goodwill of men acting in an individual capacity is the only possible principle of social progress. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Liberty and Social Oppression [1934], p.57) | |
| A reaction: I identify with this. Virtually every admirable institution in a society can be traced back to the initiative of a few individuals. Every helpful technology was someone's brainwave. |
| 23869 | In the least evil societies people can think, control community life, and be autonomous [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The least evil society is that in which the general run of men are most often obliged to think while acting, have the most opportunities for exercising control over collective life as a whole, and enjoy the greatest amount of independence. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Liberty and Social Oppression [1934], p.97) | |
| A reaction: So Simone Weil was a liberal. How do you stop the most dynamic thinkers, social controllers, and exercisers of their own independence from coming to dominate the others? Only liberal institutions, such as the law and education, can do this. |
| 23847 | Socialism tends to make a proletariat of the whole population [Weil] |
| Full Idea: What is called Socialism tends to force everybody without distinction into the proletarian condition. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Towns') | |
| A reaction: For example, Weil favours maximising private house ownership, rather than communally owned housing. She is describing wholesale nationalisation. I would incline towards nationalisation only of all basic central services. |
| 23750 | It is not more money which the wretched members of society need [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Suppose the devil were bargaining for the soul of some wretch, and some pitying person said to the devil 'Shame on you, that commodity is worth twice as much'. Such is the sinister farce played by the working class unions, parties and intellectuals. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.80) | |
| A reaction: A striking thought. It is paradoxical when the working classes despise the middle classes, and yet aspire to be like them. It's hard to know what a mystic like Weil has in mind. An obvious thought is that the aspiration should be freedom, not money. |
| 23749 | The problem of the collective is not suppression of persons, but persons erasing themselves [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The chief danger does not lie in the collectivity's tendency to circumscribe the person, but in the person's tendency to immolate himself in the collective. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.78) | |
| A reaction: I'm guessing that in 1943 she had in mind both Nazis and Communists. She seems to articulate a strong form of liberalism in an interesting way. It sounds like a form of Bad Faith. |
| 23807 | The collective is the one and only object of false idolatry [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The Great Beast is the great object of idolatry, the only ersatz of God. …Only one thing can be taken as an end, for in relation to the human person it possesses a kind of transcendence: this is the collective. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Beast') | |
| A reaction: [Society as the Great Beast is in Republic Bk 6] She is referring to both fascist and communist states. Weil seems to be a left-wing liberal, with a tendency towards anarchism, because her priority is the individual, not the group. |
| 23861 | Marx showed that capitalist oppression, because of competition, is unstoppable [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Marx gives a first-rate account of the mechanism of capitalist oppression; but so good is it that one finds it hard to visualise how this mechanism could cease to function. …The exploitation is the competitive need to expand as rapidly as possible. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Liberty and Social Oppression [1934], p.39) | |
| A reaction: [Last bit compressed] This pinpoints the main motivation for desiring to overthrow capitalism. Resistance to that view is presumably the fear that an even worse oppression might replace it. |
| 23897 | Once money is the main aim, society needs everyone to think wealth is possible [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Money, once it becomes the goal of desires and efforts, cannot tolerate in its domain internal conditions in which it is impossible to be enriched. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Work of a Free Person [1942], p.134) | |
| A reaction: The possibility for everyone that they might become rich seems basic to capitalism, even though it is utterly impossible. In theory we can all set up small successful businesses, but if they are good they nearly all get squeezed out. |
| 23845 | The capitalists neglect the people and the nation, and even their own interests [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The capitalists have betrayed their calling by criminally neglecting not only the interests of the people, not only those of the nation, but even their own. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Towns') | |
| A reaction: It is certainly true that the dedicated capitalist has little loyalty either to the people or to the nation. She doesn't spell out their failure of self-interest. I guess it produces a way of life they don't really want, deep down. |
| 23828 | National prestige consists of behaving as if you could beat the others in a war [Weil] |
| Full Idea: What is called national prestige consists in behaving always in such a way as to demoralise other nations by giving them the impression that, if it comes to war, one would certainly defeat them. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Power of Words [1934], p.244) | |
| A reaction: It's true. No nation gains prestige because of the happy lives of its citizens, or the creativity of its culture. |
| 23810 | Charity is the only love, and you can feel that for a country (a place with traditions), but not a nation [Weil] |
| Full Idea: We must not have any other love than charity. A nation cannot be an object of charity. But a country can be one - as an environment bearing traditions which are eternal. Every country can be that. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Beast') | |
| A reaction: This definitely strikes a chord with me. I am English and British to the core, but don't feel any love at all for the current central institutions of the state. But I love my island, and its history, and its culture, and its style. |
| 23811 | If effort is from necessity rather than for a good, it is slavery [Weil] |
| Full Idea: To strive from necessity and not for some good - ...that is always slavery. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Work') | |
| A reaction: It is usual to see the possibility of anarchism as the starting point for political thinking, but I think for Weil the state of slavery has that role. |
| 23868 | The pleasure of completing tasks motivates just as well as the whip of slavery [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The sight of the unfinished task attracts the free man as powerfully as the over-seer's whip stimulates the slave. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Liberty and Social Oppression [1934], p.94) | |
| A reaction: This is Weil's key social idea - that freely performed productive work can be, and should be, a joy, as long as it is accompanied by respect and friendship, rather than oppression. Did this idea ever occur to a slave owner? |
| 23819 | Deliberate public lying should be punished [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Every avoidable material falsehood publicly asserted should become a punishable offence. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.228) | |
| A reaction: Yes please! The early 21st century has become the time when truth lost all value in public life. Lying to the House of Commons in the UK required instant resignation 50 years ago. Now it is just a source of laughter. No freedom to lie! |
| 23818 | We have liberty in the space between nature and accepted authority [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Liberty is the power of choice within the latitude left between the direct constraint of natural forces and the authority accepted as legitimate. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.228) | |
| A reaction: Accepting legitimate authority is a nicely softened version of the social contract. We often find that the office and rank are accepted as legitimate, but then are unable to accept the appalling individual who holds the office. |
| 23901 | Relationships depend on equality, so unequal treatment kills them [Weil] |
| Full Idea: I conceive human relations solely on the plane of equality; therefore, so soon as someone begins to treat me as an inferior, human relations between us become impossible in my eyes. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Letters [1940], 1936-03) | |
| A reaction: Love that. This is precisely where equality starts. I fear that the problem is that people who don't treat others as equals don't want relationships with them, which particularly occurs in a competitive or hierarchical culture. |
| 23753 | People absurdly claim an equal share of things which are essentially privileged [Weil] |
| Full Idea: To the dimmed understanding of our age there seems nothing odd in claiming an equal share of privilege for everybody - an equal share in things whose essence is privilege. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.84) | |
| A reaction: Not sure what she has in mind. Probably not the finest food and drink. I suppose she is attacking the modern egalitarian view of democratic society. What things have privilege as their 'essence'? Being a 'winner'? Interesting, though. |
| 24221 | Equality is the result of unlimited freedom [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Equality has its origin in freedom: once one has power over the unlimited faculty of freedom, everyone is equal. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Lect 4: Ethics and Aesthetics [1933], p.182) | |
| A reaction: Equality seems to result from unconditional respect - so what is the basis of that? We respect rationality, or pain, or mere humanity. If she is implying anarchism, equality seems an unlikely consequence of that. |
| 23841 | By making money the sole human measure, inequality has become universal [Weil] |
| Full Idea: By making money the sole, or almost the sole, motive of all actions, the sole, or almost the sole, measure of all things, the poison of inequality has been introduced everywhere. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Equality') | |
| A reaction: Presumably this dates right back to the invention of money, and then increases with the endless rise of capitalism. |
| 23864 | Inequality could easily be mitigated, if it were not for the struggle for power [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Inequality could easily be mitigated by the resistance of the weak and the feeling for justice of the strong, …were it not for the intervention of a further factor, namely, the struggle for power. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Liberty and Social Oppression [1934], p.62) | |
| A reaction: The implication is that many of 'the strong' are inclined to diminish inequality, but find themselves trapped and unable to do so, because of irresistable capitalist forces. Sounds plausible. |
| 23751 | Rights are asserted contentiously, and need the backing of force [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Rights are always asserted in a tone of contention; and when this tone is adopted, it must rely upon force in the background, or else it will be laughed at. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.81) | |
| A reaction: This is the sort of observation which leads on to Foucault's account of all-pervasive power. Her observation may not be so sinister. It is obvious that introductions of new rights go against the grain of a conservative society - and so need a push. |
| 23752 | Giving centrality to rights stifles all impulses of charity [Weil] |
| Full Idea: To place the notion of rights at the centre of social conflicts is to inhibit any possible impulse of charity on both sides. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.83) | |
| A reaction: I think she exaggerates. To place personal charity at the centre of social conflicts strikes me as extremely conservative, and unlikely to improve the situation very much. I'm unsure how to reconcile this with Idea 23750. What sort of charity? |
| 23835 | People have duties, and only have rights because of the obligations of others to them [Weil] |
| Full Idea: A right is effectual only in relation to its corresponding obligation, springing not from the individual who possesses it, but from others who consider themselves under an obligation to him. In isolation a man only has duties, and only others have rights. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Needs') | |
| A reaction: This seems correct, and obviously refutes the idea that people have intrinsic natural rights. However, it may be our sense of what nature requires which gives rise to the obligations we feel towards others. |
| 23820 | People need personal and collective property, and a social class lacking property is shameful [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The human soul has need of both personal property and collective property. …The existence of a social class defined by the lack of personal and collective property is as shameful as slavery. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.229) | |
| A reaction: Nice. Particularly the idea that we all need collective property, such as parks and beaches and public buildings. |
| 23813 | Only people who understand force, and don't respect it, are capable of justice [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love and justice. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Iliad or the Poem of Force [1940], p.212) | |
| A reaction: There are, of course, occasions when we are grateful to people who exercise appropriate force on our behalf. I think she was concerned with what is inappropriate. |
| 23757 | The spirit of justice needs the full attention of truth, and that attention is love [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Because affliction and truth need the same kind of attention …the spirit of justice and the spirit of truth are one. The spirit of justice and truth is nothing else be a certain kind of attention, which is pure love. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.92) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure about this as an observation, but as an inspiration it is very appealing, and (as so often with Weil) strikingly and attractively independent. I prefer love to arise naturally, rather than be a product of exhortation. |
| 23761 | Justice (concerning harm) is distinct from rights (concerning inequality) [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Justice is seeing that no harm is done to men. When a man cries inwardly 'Why am I being hurt?' he is being harmed. The other cry of 'Why have others got more than me?' refers to rights. We must distinguish them, and hush the second with law. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.93) | |
| A reaction: Her great passion is for justice, and so she downplays rights. The simple 'why am I being hurt?' has a horrible resonance in 1943. What of the hurts of disease? Are they unjust? |
| 23852 | To punish people we must ourselves be innocent - but that undermines the desire to punish [Weil] |
| Full Idea: In order to have the right to punish the guilty, we ought first of all to purify ourselves of their crimes. …But once this is accomplished we shall no longer feel the least desire to punish, or as little as possible and with extreme sorrow. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], III 'Growing') | |
| A reaction: Elsewhere she endorses punishment, as a social necessity, and a redemption for the wicked. This idea looks like a bit of a change of heart. She may be thinking of Jesus on the mote in someone's eye. |
| 23764 | The only thing in society worse than crime is repressive justice [Weil] |
| Full Idea: There is one, and only one, thing in society more hideous than crime - namely, repressive justice. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.95) | |
| A reaction: Presumably fans of 'repressive' justice would describe it as 'reformative' justice. In general, one of the most hideous parts of historical human societies has been the punishments they dished out (simply because they had the power to do it). |
| 23821 | Crime should be punished, to bring the perpetrator freely back to morality [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The human soul needs punishment and honour. A committer of crime has become exiled from good, and needs to be reintegrated with it through suffering. This aims to bring the soul to recognise freely some day that is infliction was just. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.229) | |
| A reaction: The Scanlon contractualist approach to punishment - that the victim of it accepts its justice. Given her saintly character, Simone had a very tough view of this issue. |
| 23763 | Punishment aims at the good for men who don't desire it [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Punishment is solely a method of procuring pure good for men who do not desire it. The art of punishing is the art of awakening in a criminal, by pain or even death, the desire for pure good. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.95) | |
| A reaction: I know Weil is seen as some sort of saint, but this remark could have come from the Inquisition. I'm always alarmed by talk of 'pure' good and 'pure' evil, which seem to need a superior insight the rest of us lack. But see Idea 23764. |
| 23827 | Modern wars are fought in the name of empty words which are given capital letters [Weil] |
| Full Idea: For our contemporaries the role of Helen in the Trojan War is is played by words with capital letters. …When empty words are given capital letters, then, on the slightest pretext, men will begin shedding blood for them and piling up ruin in their name. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Power of Words [1934], p.241) | |
| A reaction: This seems particularly true of the 1930s, where specific dogmatic ideologies seemed to grip and divide people. Simple aggressive nationalism seems to be the cause of current wars, now the fear of Communism has diminished. |
| 23880 | When war was a profession, customary morality justified any act of war [Weil] |
| Full Idea: At the time when war was a profession, fighting men had a morality whereby any act of war, in accordance with the customs of war, and contributing to victory, was legitimate and right. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Is There a Marxist Doctrine? [1943], p.173) | |
| A reaction: Note the caveat about 'customs', which were largely moral. See the discussion of killing the non-combatant prisoners in Shakespeare's 'Henry V'. |
| 23850 | The soldier-civilian distinction should be abolished; every citizen is committed to a war [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The distinction between soldiers and civilians, which the pressure of circumstances has already almost obliterated, should be entirely abolished. Every individual in the population owes his country the whole of his strength, resources and life itself. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Nation') | |
| A reaction: Written in London in 1943. The year carpet bombing seriously escalated. The facts of warfare can change the ethics. |
| 23858 | War is perpetuated by its continual preparations [Weil] |
| Full Idea: War perpetuates itself under the form of preparation for war. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Prospects: Proletarian Revolution? [1933], p.16) | |
| A reaction: There are periods when military preparations are scaled down, but a reason is always found to scale them back up again. |
| 23851 | Education is essentially motivation [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Education - whether its object be children or adults, individuals or an entire people, or even oneself - consists in creating motives. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], III 'Growing') | |
| A reaction: I can't disagree. Intellectual motivation is simply what we find interesting, and there is no formula for that. A teacher can teach a good session, and only 5% of the pupils find it interesting. A bad session could be life-changing for one student. |
| 23873 | Dividing history books into separate chapters is disastrous [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The division of history textbooks into chapters will cost us many disastrous mistakes. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Fragments [1936], p.131) | |
| A reaction: Nice observation. The point is that we fail to grasp what really happened if we draw sharp lines across history. |
| 24217 | History is scientific when it relies on accurate documents [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Generally speaking, history is scientific when it depends on documents whose accuracy is not questioned. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Lect 3: Politics and Society [1933], p.140) | |
| A reaction: This seems to miss the obvious hermeneutic point, that even reliable documents need deconstructing, and to be seen against a background. I think she still makes an important distinction. |
| 23860 | Even if a drowning man is doomed, he should keep swimming to the last [Weil] |
| Full Idea: A man who is thrown overboard in the middle of the ocean ought not to let himself drown, even though there is very litte chance of his reaching safety, but to go on swimming till exhausted. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Prospects: Proletarian Revolution? [1933], p.21) | |
| A reaction: You might survive a little longer if you don't exhaust yourself! Not clear where her authority for 'ought' comes from, but it expresses an interesting attitude. |
| 6613 | The natural kinds are objects, processes and properties/relations [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There are three hierarchies of natural kinds: objects or substances (substantive universals), events or processes (dynamic universals), and properties or relations (tropic universals). | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 91) | |
| A reaction: Most interesting here is the identifying of natural kinds with universals, making universals into the families of nature. Universals are high-level sets of natural kinds. To grasp universals you must see patterns, and infer the underlying order. |
| 5472 | Natural kinds are of objects/substances, or events/processes, or intrinsic natures [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Natural kinds appear to be of objects or substances, or of events or processes, or of the intrinsic nature of things; hence there should be laws of nature specific to each of these categories. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: It is nice to see someone actually discussing what sort of natural kinds there are, instead of getting bogged down in how natural kinds terms get their meaning or reference. Ellis recognises that 'intrinsic nature' needs some discussion. |
| 12681 | There are natural kinds of processes [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There are natural kinds of processes. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. I am tempted by the view that processes are the most basic feature of reality, since I think of the mind as a process, and quantum reality seems more like processes than like objects. |
| 13583 | There might be uninstantiated natural kinds, such as transuranic elements which have never occurred [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There are reasons to believe that there are natural kinds that might never be instantiated, such as a transuranic element, capable of existing for some fraction of a second, but which has never actually existed anywhere. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 2.05) | |
| A reaction: He cautiously claims that kinds are ontologically prior to their individual members. I would say that there is no natural kind of the type that he describes. He says you have at least some grounds for predicting what kinds are possible. |
| 5471 | Essentialism says natural kinds are fundamental to nature, and determine the laws [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: According to essentialists, the world is wholly structured at the most fundamental level into natural kinds, and the laws of nature are all determined by those kinds. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: I am a fan of this view, despite being cautious about claims that natural kinds have necessary identity. Why are the essences active? That is the old Greek puzzle about the origin of movement. And why are natural kinds stable? |
| 13574 | Natural kinds are distinguished by resting on essences [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Natural kinds are distinguished from other sorts of things by their associations with essential properties and real essences. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.02) | |
| A reaction: I don't think I agree with this. I rest my notion of natural kind on the elementary realising that to know all about this kind you only have to examine one sample of it, as in the Upanishads. The source of such a phenomenon is an open question. |
| 12680 | Natural kind structures go right down to the bottom level [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Natural kind structures go all the way down to the most basic levels of existence. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3) | |
| A reaction: Even the bottom level? Is there anything to explain why the bottom level is a kind, given that all the higher kinds presumably have an explanation? |
| 5446 | For essentialists two members of a natural kind must be identical [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Modern essentialists would insist that any two members of the same natural kind must be identical in all essential respects. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: For this reason, animals no longer qualify as natural kinds, but electrons, gold atoms, and water molecules do. My sticking point is when anyone asserts that an electron necessarily has (say) its mass. Why no close counterpart of electrons? |
| 5480 | The whole of our world is a natural kind, so all worlds like it necessarily have the same laws [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: It is plausible to suppose that the world is an instance of a natural kind, ..and what is naturally necessary in our world is what must be true in any world of the same natural kind. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This is putting an awful lot of metaphysical weight on the concept of a 'natural kind', so it had better be a secure one. If we accept that natural laws necessarily follow from essences, why shouldn't the whole of our world have an essence, as water does? |
| 13575 | If there are borderline cases between natural kinds, that makes them superficial [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There cannot be any borderline cases between the real essences of different natural kinds because, if there were, the distinctions between the kinds would be superficial, like the blue/green distinction. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.05) | |
| A reaction: His particular target here is biological natural kinds, in which he doesn't believe, because they blur across time, in the evolutionary process. Personally I am inclined to relax the notion of a natural kind, otherwise they are too basic to explain. |
| 5445 | Essentialists regard inanimate objects as genuine causal agents [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Essentialist suppose that the inanimate objects of nature are genuine causal agents: things capable of acting or interacting. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I have no idea how one might demonstrate such a fact, even though it seems to stare us in the face. This is where science bumps into philosophy. I find myself intuitively taking the essentialist side quite strongly. |
| 5463 | Essentialists believe causation is necessary, resulting from dispositions and circumstances [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Essentialists believe elementary causal relations involve necessary connections between events, namely between the displays of dispositional properties and the circumstances that give rise to them. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: I like essentialism, but I feel a Humean caution about talk of 'natural necessity'. Let's just say that causation seems to be entirely the result of the nature of how things are. How things could be is a large topic for little mites like us. |
| 5491 | A general theory of causation is only possible in an area if natural kinds are involved [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A general theory of causation in an area is possible only if the kinds of entities under investigation can reasonably be assumed to belong to natural kinds. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: Human beings will be a problem, and also different levels of natural kinds (e.g. a chemical and an organism). 'Natural kind' is a very loose concept. He is referring to scientific, rather than philosophical, theories, I presume. |
| 13595 | Laws don't exist in the world; they are true of the world [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Laws are not things that exist in the world; they are things that are true of the world. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.09) | |
| A reaction: I'm happy with this formulation. The one to get rid of is the idea of laws which could precede creation of the universe, and survive its demise. That might be possible, but we have absolutely no grounds for the claim. Humeans ought to agree. |
| 5442 | For 'passivists' behaviour is imposed on things from outside [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A 'passivist' believes that the tendencies of things to behave as they do can never be inherent in the things themselves; they must always be imposed on them from the outside. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is the medieval view, inherited by Newton and Hume, which makes miracles a possibility, and makes the laws of nature contingent. Essentialism disagree. I think I am with the essentialists. |
| 5473 | The laws of nature imitate the hierarchy of natural kinds [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: If the natural kinds are divided into hierarchical categories, then essentialists would expect the laws of nature also to divide up into these categories, with the same hierarchy. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me a real step forwards in our understanding of nature, and hence a nice example of the contribution which philosophy can make, instead of just physics. |
| 5474 | Laws of nature tend to describe ideal things, or ideal circumstances [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Most of the propositions we think of as being (or as expressing) genuine laws of nature seem to describe only the behaviour of ideal kinds of things, or of things in ideal circumstances. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Ellis this suggests that this phenomenon is because science aims at broad understanding instead of strict prediction. Do we simplify because we are a bit dim? Or is it because generalisation wouldn't exist without idealisation and abstraction? |
| 5475 | We must explain the necessity, idealisation, ontology and structure of natural laws [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There are four major problems about the laws of nature: a necessity problem (must they be true?), an idealisation problem (why is this preferable?), an ontological problem (their grounds), and a structural problem (their relationships). | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: One might also ask why the laws (or their underlying essences) are the way they are, and not some other way, though the prospects of answering that don't look good. I don't think we should be satisfied with saying all of these questions are hopeless. |
| 6616 | Least action is not a causal law, but a 'global law', describing a global essence [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The principle of least action is not a causal law, but is what I call a 'global law', which describes the essence of the global kind, which every object in the universe necessarily instantiates. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005]) | |
| A reaction: As a fan of essentialism I find this persuasive. If I inherit part of my essence from being a mammal, I inherit other parts of my essence from being an object, and all objects would share that essence, so it would look like a 'law' for all objects. |
| 12675 | Laws of nature are just descriptions of how things are disposed to behave [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The laws of nature must be supposed to be just descriptions of the ways in which things are intrinsically disposed to behave: of how they would behave if they existed as closed and isolated systems. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3) | |
| A reaction: I agree with this, and therefore take 'laws of nature' to be eliminable from any plausible ontology (which just contains the things and their behaviour). Ellis tends to defend laws, when he doesn't need to. |
| 5460 | Causal relations cannot be reduced to regularities, as they could occur just once [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Causal relations cannot be reduced to mere regularities, as Hume supposed, as they could exist as a singular case, even if it never happened on more than one occasions. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the key reason for modern views moving away from Hume. The suspicion is that regularity is a test for or symptom of causation, but we are deeply committed to the real nature of causation being whatever creates the regularities. |
| 13566 | A proton must have its causal role, because without it it wouldn't be a proton [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: I assume it is metaphysically impossible for a proton to have a different causal role, ...which is plausible because a proton would appear to have no identity at all apart from its role in causal processes. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a key idea in scientific essentialism, which links essentialism of identity with essentialism in the laws of nature. Could a proton become not-quite-a-proton? |
| 13579 | What is most distinctive of scientific essentialism is regarding processes as natural kinds [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: What is most distinctive of the scientific version of essentialism is that scientific essentialists are realists about natural kinds of processes, as well as natural kinds of objects and substances. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.11) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure whether other scientific essentialists would agree with this, but I am happy to go along with it. A process like melting or sublimation seems to be a standard widespread phenomenon which is always intrinsically the same, as kinds must be. |
| 13581 | Scientific essentialism is more concerned with explanation than with identity (Locke, not Kripke) [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Scientific essentialism is less concerned with questions of identity, and more with questions of explanation, than is the essentialism of Aristotle or of Kripke. It is closest to the kind of essentialism described by Locke. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.12) | |
| A reaction: Locke is popularly held to be anti-essentialist, but that is only because of his epistemological problems. I think Ellis is here misreading Aristotle, and I would ally Aristotle, Locke (cautiously), Leibniz, Ellis and Fine against Kripkeans on this one. |
| 13594 | The ontological fundamentals are dispositions, and also categorical (spatio-temporal and structural) properties [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: We do not claim, as some do, that fundamental dispositional properties are the ontological basis of all properties. On the contrary, there are equally fundamental categorical properties - for example, spatio-temporal relations and structures. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.09) | |
| A reaction: The source of disagreement between Bird and Ellis. Bird denies the existence of 'categorical properties'. I think I am with Bird. Space and time are as much part of the given as the elements, and then categorical properties result from dispositions. |
| 5459 | Essentialists say dispositions are basic, rather than supervenient on matter and natural laws [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Essentialists say that dispositional properties may be fundamental, whereas for a passivist such qualities are not primary, but supervene on the primary qualities of matter, and on the laws of nature. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: I am strongly in favour of this view of nature. Without essentialism, we have laws of nature arising out of a total void (or God), and arbitrarily imposing themselves on matter. What are the 'primary qualities of matter', if not dispositions? |
| 5461 | The essence of uranium is its atomic number and its electron shell [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The essential properties of uranium are its atomic number, and the common electron shell structure for all uranium atoms. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: For those who deny essences (e.g. Quineans) this is a nice challenge. You might have to add accounts of the essences of the various particles that make up the atoms. There is nothing arbitrary or conventional about what makes something uranium. |
| 6615 | A species requires a genus, and its essence includes the essence of the genus [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A specific universal can exist only if the generic universal of which it is a species exists, but generic universals don't depend on species; …the essence of any genus is included in its species, but not conversely. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 91) | |
| A reaction: Thus the species 'electron' would be part of the genus 'lepton', or 'human' part of 'mammal'. The point of all this is to show how individual items connect up with the rest of the universe, giving rise to universal laws, such as Least Action. |
| 13603 | A primary aim of science is to show the limits of the possible [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Scientific essentialists hold that one of the primary aims of science is to define the limits of the possible. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 7.06) | |
| A reaction: I like this. It breaks down into the study of modal profiles, and it can work for abstracta as well as for the physical world. It even covers the study of character, and you could say that it is the subject matter of Jane Austen. |
| 5464 | For essentialists, laws of nature are metaphysically necessary, being based on essences of natural kinds [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Essentialist believe the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary, because anything that belongs to a natural kind is logically required (or is necessarily disposed) to behave as its essential properties dictate. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: What a thrillingly large claim. Best approached with caution.. If we say 'essences make laws, and essences are necessary', we might wonder whether a natural kind essence could be SLIGHTLY different (a counterpart) in another world. |
| 6614 | A hierarchy of natural kinds is elaborate ontology, but needed to explain natural laws [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The hierarchy of natural kinds proposed by essentialism may be more elaborate than is strictly required for purposes of ontology, but it is necessary to explain the necessity of the laws of nature, and the universal applicability of global principles. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 91) | |
| A reaction: I am all in favour of elaborating ontology in the name of best explanation. There seem, though, to be some remaining ontological questions at the point where the explanations of essentialism run out. |
| 5487 | Essentialism requires a clear separation of semantics, epistemology and ontology [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Scientific essentialism requires that philosophers distinguish clearly between semantic issues, epistemological issues, and ontological issues. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: Music to my ears - but then I think everyone should require that of philosophers, because it where they get themselves most confused. The trouble is that ontology is only obtainable epistemologically, and only expressible semantically. |
| 6612 | Without general principles, we couldn't predict the behaviour of dispositional properties [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: It is objected to dispositionalism that without the principle of least action, or some general principle of equal power, the specific dispositional properties of things could tell us very little about how these things would be disposed to behave. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 90) | |
| A reaction: Ellis attempts to meet this criticism, by placing dispositional properties within a hierarchy of broader properties. There remains a nagging doubt about how essentialism can account for space, time, order, and the existence of essences. |
| 12671 | I deny forces as entities that intervene in causation, but are not themselves causal [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The classical conception of force is an entity that intervenes between a physical cause and its effect, but is not itself a physical cause. I see no reason to believe in forces of this kind. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 2) | |
| A reaction: The difference of view between Leibniz and Newton is very illuminating on this one (coming this way soon!). Can you either have forces and drop causation, or have causation and drop forces? |
| 12674 | Energy is the key multi-valued property, vital to scientific realism [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps the most important of all multi-valued properties is energy itself. I think a scientific realist must believe that energy exists. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 2) | |
| A reaction: It's odd that the existence of the most basic thing in physics needs a credo from a certain sort of believer. I have been bothered by notion of 'energy' for fifty years, and am still none the wiser. I'm sure I could be scientific realist without it. |
| 12689 | Simultaneity can be temporal equidistance from the Big Bang [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Cosmologists have a concept of objective simultaneity, which they take to mean something like 'temporally equidistant from the Big Bang'. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 6) | |
| A reaction: I find this very appealing, when faced with all the relativity theory that tells me there is no such thing as global simultaneity, a claim which I find deeply counterintuitive, but seems to have the science on its side. Bravo. |
| 24204 | The past is known to us but unreachable - a perfect image of eternal, supernatural reality [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The past: Something real, but absolutely beyond our reach, towards which we cannot take one step, towards which we can but turn ourselves, so that an emanation from it may come to us. Thus it is the most perfect image of eternal, supernatural reality. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Harmony') | |
| A reaction: For Weil that is a transcendent religious insight, but for the non-religious it is still a wonderful observation. There is nothing else in our experience like the eternal unchanging reality of the past. |
| 24222 | If we ignore all our thoughts of the past and the future, there is nothing left of the present [Weil] |
| Full Idea: What would be left of our thought if we were to leave out of the account all the thoughts which have to do with the future and the past? Nothing would be left. So what we do possess, the present, is something non-existent. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Lect 4: Ethics and Aesthetics [1933], p.198) | |
| A reaction: Yet another paradox of the weirdness of the present moment. For idealists that means the present doesn't exist, so either time is eternal, or non-existent. Or fragmentary, if it only consists of our thoughts. |
| 12690 | The present is the collapse of the light wavefront from the Big Bang [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The global wavefront that collapses when a light signal from the Big Bang is observed is what most plausibly defines the frontier between past and future. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 6) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure I understand this, but it is clearly worth passing on. Of all the deep mysteries, the 'present' time may be the deepest. |
| 24220 | As the highest value, God cannot be proved [Weil] |
| Full Idea: By definition, in so far as he is the highest value, God is indemonstrable. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Lect 4: Ethics and Aesthetics [1933], p.171) | |
| A reaction: An extremely platonist (or neo-platonist) view of God. I'm not sure I grasp how God could be both a being and a value. Presumably a proof must rely on a highest value. |
| 23754 | The only choice is between supernatural good, or evil [Weil] |
| Full Idea: In all the crucial problems of human existence the only choice is between supernatural good on the one hand and evil on the other. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.86) | |
| A reaction: This idea strikes me as absurd, but I include it for a fuller picture of Simone Weil. Aristotle (my hero) is referred to, and labelled as more stupid than a village idiot. |
| 23816 | Attention to a transcendent reality motivates a duty to foster the good of humanity [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Anyone whose attention and love are directed towards the reality outside the world recognises that he is bound by the permanent obligation to remedy …all the privations of soul and body which are liable to destroy or damage any human being whatsoever. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.225) | |
| A reaction: [abridged] An interesting attempt to articulate the religious motivation of morality. The Euthyphro question remains - of why this vision of a wholly good higher morality should motivate anyone, unless they already possess a desire for that good. |
| 24192 | My love makes me believe in God; the inconceivability of this God makes me disbelieve [Weil] |
| Full Idea: True contradictories. I am sure there is a God in the sense that I am quite sure that my love is not illusory. I am sure there is not a God in the sense that I am quite sure nothing real can be anything like what I conceive when I pronounce this word. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Atheism') | |
| A reaction: [She adds that inconceivability doesn't mean illusory] I can't see a feeling of love as a reason for theism. But the inconceivability of God isn't a good reason for atheism. |
| 23892 | The only legitimate proof of God by order derives from beauty [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The only legitimate proof [of God's existence] from the order of the world is the proof from the beauty of the world. | |
| From: Simone Weil (God in Plato [1942], p.89) | |
| A reaction: She finds this proof in Plato. Hume's critique never (I think) mentions beauty, although in the 18thC love of the sublime could play that role. For me, the human experience of beauty doesn't have such cosmic significance. |
| 23904 | The cruelty of the Old Testament put me off Christianity [Weil] |
| Full Idea: I have always been kept away from Christianity by its ranking the Old Testament stories, so full of pitiless cruelty, as sacred texts. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Letters [1940], 1941-01) | |
| A reaction: After 1938 she was a devout and intense Christian, but of a highly individual and platonist kind. Her religion is dominated by love and beauty. |
| 24178 | We must leave on one side the ordinary 'consolations' of religion [Weil] |
| Full Idea: We must leave on one side the beliefs which fill up voids and sweeten what is bitter. The belief in immortality, in the utility of sin, in the providential ordering of events - in short the 'consolations' which are ordinarily sought in religion. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Detachment') | |
| A reaction: Her positive views of religion seem rather daunting, and may only be for the few. |
| 24206 | Revolution (not religion) is the opium of the people [Weil] |
| Full Idea: It is not religion but revolution which is the opium of the people. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Work') | |
| A reaction: Right now in Europe hatred of migrants is the opium of the people. Maybe football, or television light entertainment. Or nationalism. Or fast food… Vodka? |
| 23849 | Religion should quietly suffuse all human life with its light [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The proper function of religion is to suffuse with its light all secular life, public or private, without in any way dominating it. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Nation') | |
| A reaction: Even for the non-religious there is something attractive about some view of the world which 'suffuses our lives with light'. It probably describes medieval Christendom, but that contained an awful lot of darkness. |
| 23902 | I attach little importance to immortality, which is an undecidable fact, and irrelevant to us [Weil] |
| Full Idea: You attach great importance to the reasoning about immortality. I myself attach little. It is a factual question, which cannot be decided in advance by any reasoning. And what does it matter to us? | |
| From: Simone Weil (Letters [1940], 1937-04c) | |
| A reaction: I love 'what does it matter to us?'. The idea that our future bliss or misery depends on how we live now is an utterly wicked fiction, which derails attempts to live a proper life. |
| 24180 | We just see immortality as prolongation of life, making death meaningless [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Belief in immortality is harmful because it is not in our power to conceive of the soul as really incorporeal. So this belief is in fact a belief in the prolongation of life, and it robs death of its purpose. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Decreation') | |
| A reaction: I can possibly see a cosmic purpose in death, but hardly matters to individuals. Interesting that a mystic can't shake off the need for the body. |
| 23765 | The soul is the intrinsic value of a human [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The soul is the human being considered as having a value in itself. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Love') | |
| A reaction: [from 'Gravity and Grace'] A rather modern view, treating the soul as an abstraction, rather than as an entity. |
| 24186 | If the world lacked evil, then the evil would be in our desires, which would be worse [Weil] |
| Full Idea: How could there be no evil in the world? The world has to be foreign to our desires. If this were so without it containing evil, our desires would be entirely bad. That must not happen. God's world is not the best possible, but contains all good and evil. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Evil') | |
| A reaction: What an original mind she had! Doesn't seem to answer the standard problem, of why a benevolent God gave us evil desires. |
| 24187 | Without worldly affliction, we'd think this is paradise [Weil] |
| Full Idea: If there were no affliction in this world, we might think we were in paradise. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Affliction') | |
| A reaction: Peersonally I wouldn't object to living in paradise, even it is temporary. Interesting, though. |