36 ideas
| 7990 | Serene wisdom is freedom from ties, and indifference to fortune [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Who everywhere is free from all ties, who neither rejoices nor sorrows if fortune is good or is ill, his is a serene wisdom. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 2.57) | |
| A reaction: This is very similar to the 'apatheia' of the Stoics, though they are always more committed to rationality. This is quite a good strategy when times are hard, but as a general rule it offers a bogus state of 'wisdom' which is really half way to death. |
| 7989 | Seek salvation in the wisdom of reason [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Seek salvation in the wisdom of reason. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 2.49) | |
| A reaction: Quotations like this can usually be counterbalanced in eastern philosophy by wild irrationality, but they certainly felt to tug of reason. Only the Dhaoists seem really opposed to reason (e.g. Idea 7289). |
| 12268 | Contradiction is impossible [Antisthenes (I), by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Antisthenes said that contradiction is impossible. | |
| From: report of Antisthenes (Ath) (fragments/reports [c.405 BCE]) by Aristotle - Topics 104b21 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle is giving an example of a 'thesis'. It should be taken seriously if a philosopher proposes it, but dismissed as rubbish if anyone else proposes it! No context is given for the remark. |
| 602 | Some fools think you cannot define anything, but only say what it is like [Antisthenes (I), by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There is an application of that old chestnut of the cynic Antisthenes' followers (and other buffoons of that kind). Their claim was that a definition of what something is is impossible. You cannot define silver, though you can say it is like tin. | |
| From: report of Antisthenes (Ath) (fragments/reports [c.405 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1043b |
| 7996 | I am all the beauty and goodness of things, says Krishna [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: I am the beauty of all things beautiful; ...I am the goodness of those who are good, says Krishna. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 10.36) | |
| A reaction: Another attempt to annexe everything which is admirable to the nature of God. This sounds strikingly Platonic (c.f. Idea 7992, which seems Aristotelian). One scholar dates the text to 150 BCE. I think there is influence, one way or the other. |
| 7995 | In all living beings I am the light of consciousness, says Krishna [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: In all living beings I am the light of consciousness, says Krishna. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 10.22) | |
| A reaction: Everything grand seems to be claimed for God at this stage of culture, but I am not sure how coherent this view is, unless this is pantheism. In what sense could we possibly be Krishna, when none of us (except Arjuna) is aware of it? |
| 7999 | All actions come from: body, lower self, perception, means of action, or Fate [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Whatever a man does, good or bad, in thought, word or deed, has these five sources of action: the body, the lower 'I am', the means of perception, the means of action, and Fate. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 18.14/15) | |
| A reaction: The 'means of action' will presumably take care of anything we haven't thought of! Nothing quite matches the idea of 'the will' here. A twitch from the first, eating from the second, a startled jump from the third, struck by lightning from the fifth. |
| 7991 | Hate and lust have their roots in man's lower nature [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Hate and lust for things of nature have their roots in man's lower nature. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 3.34) | |
| A reaction: It seems outmoded now (since Freud) to label parts of human nature as 'higher' and 'lower'. I would defend the distinction, but it is not self-evident. The basis of morality is good citizenship, and parts of our nature are detrimental to that. |
| 1664 | I would rather go mad than experience pleasure [Antisthenes (I)] |
| Full Idea: I would rather go mad than experience pleasure. | |
| From: Antisthenes (Ath) (fragments/reports [c.405 BCE]), quoted by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 06.3 | |
| A reaction: Did he actually prefer pain? If both experiences would drive him mad, it seems like a desire for death. I cannot understand why anyone is opposed to harmless pleasures. |
| 21385 | Antisthenes said virtue is teachable and permanent, is life's goal, and is like universal wealth [Antisthenes (I), by Long] |
| Full Idea: The moral propositions of Antisthenes foreshadowed the Stoics: virtue can be taught and once acquired cannot be lost (fr.69,71); virtue is the goal of life (22); the sage is self-sufficient, since he has (by being wise) the wealth of all men (8o). | |
| From: report of Antisthenes (Ath) (fragments/reports [c.405 BCE]) by A.A. Long - Hellenistic Philosophy 1 | |
| A reaction: [He cites Caizzi for the fragments] The distinctive idea here is (I think) that once acquired virtue can never be lost. It sounds plausible, but I'm wondering why it should be true. Is it like riding a bicycle, or like learning to speak Russian? |
| 23125 | Most good social changes are incremental, rather than revolutionary [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: More permanent positive social change is made incrementally rather than by revolutionary transformation. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard liberal response to revolution. Revolutionaries obviously consider such a claim to be very naïve, and a failure to grasp how deep the changes need to go. |
| 23126 | Conservatives often want peace, prosperity and tolerance, but not social fairness [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Many conservatives want their world to be peaceful, properous, and pluralist, just as liberals do, but they don't particularly care that it be fair. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: Every conservative will have a sense of what is fair (such as appropriate punishments, and keeping of contracts), but they are more inclined to think that fairness must be fought for by individuals, not imposed by governments. |
| 23132 | Conservatives believe obedience and rank are essential to social order [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The idea that the appearance of submission and obedience and rank are essential to order is at the heart of the conservative ideal. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: [He has just quoted Edmund Burke writing of Marie Antoinette] I once heard Richard Hare say that he thought social order would be best modelled on the army. A colleague once told me that obedience is a prime duty of a school teacher. |
| 23128 | The opposite of liberalism is dogmatism [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The opposite of liberalism is not conservatism but dogmatism. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: Nice. It pinpoints the liberal opposition to both extremes of normal politics. It might make anarchists their allies, though! |
| 23142 | People are fallible, so liberalism tries to distribute power [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Liberalism makes the idea of fallibility into a political practice by trying not to have too much power concentrated in one place or part of the system. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: There is a potential inefficiency and failure to focus on key goals implicit in this aim. It may be a good idea for a peacetime democracy, but a terrible idea for a wartime army. To stop corruption, don't let anyone do anything? |
| 23143 | Liberals have tried very hard to build a conscience into their institutions [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: What liberalism can say on its own behalf is that no system of power in human history has tried harder to insert a corrective conscience into its institutions. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: What we are learning in recent years is that wonderful liberal institutions can be quietly eroded by the forces of darkness, once those forces have sufficient control of the media to hide what they are doing. The 'rule of law' is wobbling. |
| 23141 | Left-wingers are inconsistent in their essentialist descriptions of social groups [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: A criticism of the left is that it is essentialist at some moments, and wildly anti-essentialist at others. We can call this opportunistic essentialism. Gender is fluid - except for transgender kids. Race is a construction - except for white races. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Interesting. Gopnik's solution seems to be to abandon all social essentialism as wicked. In this context he is probably right, but I am firmly committed to the idea that many entities in the world have essential natures. 'Bourgeois'. |
| 23124 | Liberal community is not blood ties or tradition, but shared choices, and sympathy for the losers [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The liberal idea of community is not one, as it is for many conservatives, of blood ties or traditional authority. It rest on the idea of shared choices …including even a sense of sympathy for those caught on the losing side of the argument. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: The key point is that most liberals (other than extreme libertarians) have a strong sense of community, contrary to the standard criticisms offered by communitarians. |
| 23127 | Liberal community includes flight from the family, into energetic reforming groups [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Where conservatives believe in the renewal of traditional community, liberals believe as well in the flight from family and tradition into new kinds of communal order. …It is an idea of assembling confidence and energies for reform. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: He cites Greenwich Village as an example. This suggests that his vision is a little narrow. His communities are for radicals who flee to join like minds in big cities. Politics must care about community for those left behind. Pubs, sport and pets. |
| 23129 | Right-wingers attack liberal faith in reason, left-wingers attack its faith in reform [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The right-wing critique of liberalism is largely an attack on its overreliance on reason; the left-wing one, mostly an attack on its false faith in reform. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: I doubt whether sensible liberals do rely too much on reason, though they do rely of scientific evidence (after peer review!). No one can doubt that lots of reforms have occurred, so it must be frustration with the very slow process. |
| 23133 | Cosmopolitan liberals lack national loyalty, and welcome excessive immigration [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Critics say liberal cosmopolitanism is indifference to national loyalty, making them easily contemplate going elsewhere and, worse still, welcoming in the world through unsifted immigration. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: There is certainly some truth in this. Not all liberals are so cosmopolitan, though. It is interesting to observe whether people who retire stay in their old community or move to somewhere quite new. |
| 23138 | Modern left-wingers criticise liberalism's control of culture [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Most left-wing critiques of liberalism now turn more often on its cultural power and its cultural illusions. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: As opposed to older Marxists critiques of the exploitation of workers. This is certainly fertile ground for interesting studies of our culture. It is very hard to grasp the influence had by the endless stories we expose ourselves to. |
| 23139 | Liberalism's attempt to be neutral and colour-blind erases cultural identities [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The 'colour-blind' universe of 'neutral' liberalism is actually an attempt to erase cultural identity and history. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is the modern critique of liberalism [centred on the Intersectionality of Bell Hooks or Kimberlé Crenshaw], which analyses alienated minorities, and their emphasis on their difference in response. It can lead to 'identity politics'. |
| 23135 | Classic Marxists see liberalism as the ideology of the bourgeoisie [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The classic Marxist account shows liberalism as merely the ideology of the bourgeoisie. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: The word 'merely' does an awful lot of work in philosohy! I suspect that 'bourgeoisie' is self-defining here - as the believers in liberalism - given that lots of Marxists emerge from the middle classes. |
| 23140 | Environmental disasters result not from capitalism, but from a general drive for growth [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: It is the drive for growth, not capitalism in particular, that makes environmental disasters happen. Those caused by the command economics of Eastern Europe were far greater than even the worst known in Western Europe. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: So the next question is whether you can have capitalism without a drive for growth. I would have thought not, given the role recycled profit plays in driving capitalism. Command economies are more easily swept away. |
| 23130 | Popular imperialism gives the poor the belief that their acts have world historical meaning [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Popular imperialism is the cosmopolitanism of the poor, the lever by which the small and impotent come to believe that their acts have world historical meaning. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: It is not only the poor who like imperialism. The focus of this popular attitude is the armed forces, and especially the army, where personal bravery is most obvious. The army gets strong support, no matter how dubious are its activities. |
| 23131 | Patriots love their place, but nationalists have a paranoid ethnic hostility [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The patriot loves his place and its cheeses; …the nationalist has not particular affection for the place, but employs his obsessive sense of encirclement and grievance on behalf of acts of ethnic vengeance. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: 'Vengeance' seems a bit strong. John Le Carré said nationalists are distinguished by the need to have enemies. Russia is particularly obsessed with 'encirclement'. |
| 23136 | Liberal free speech is actually paid speech [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: What liberals call free speech or a free press is invariably paid speech. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: He give this as the left-wing view of liberalism. The much-hated social media are a substantial breech in this tendency. Sales of newspapers are declining everywhere, so the battle is for television channels. |
| 23134 | A 'free' society implies a free market, which always produces predatory capitalism and inequalities [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: 'Free societies', as a matter of practical fact, always mean free-market societies - and free markets will never sponsor more than predatory capitalism. Inequalities always emerge. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is part of his account of left-wing objections to liberalism. The crux of the liberal view is a conviction that the worst of capitalism can be restrained. This began to look doubtful once huge multinational companies emerged. What to do? |
| 7988 | There is no greater good for a warrior than to fight in a just war [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: There is no greater good for a warrior than to fight in righteous war. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 2.31) | |
| A reaction: What worries me now is not the urging to fight, as long as a good cause can be found, but the idea that someone should see his social role as 'warrior'. The modern 'soldier' is ready to fight, but a traditional 'warrior' is obliged to fight. |
| 7992 | The visible forms of nature are earth, water, fire, air, ether; mind, reason, and the sense of 'I' [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: The visible forms of nature are eight: earth, water, fire, air, ether; the mind, reason, and the sense of 'I'. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 7.4) | |
| A reaction: Presumably there is an implication that there are also invisible forms. The Bhuddists launched an attack on 'I' as one of the categories. The first five appear to be Aristotle's, which must be of scholarly (and chronological) interest. |
| 7994 | Everything, including the gods, comes from me, says Krishna [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: All the gods come from me, says Krishna. ...I am the one source of all | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 10.2/8) | |
| A reaction: This seems very close to monotheism, and sounds very similar to the position that Zeus seems to occupy in later Greek religion, where he is shading off into a supreme and spiritual entity. |
| 2631 | Antisthenes says there is only one god, which is nature [Antisthenes (I), by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Antisthenes says there is only one god, which is nature. | |
| From: report of Antisthenes (Ath) (fragments/reports [c.405 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') I.32 |
| 7993 | Brahman is supreme, Atman his spirit in man, and Karma is the force of creation [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Brahman is supreme, the Eternal. Atman is his Spirit in man. Karma is the force of creation, wherefrom all things have their life. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 8.3) | |
| A reaction: I can't help wondering how they know all this stuff, but then I'm just a typical product of my culture. We seem to have a trinity here. Who's in charge? Is Atman just a servant? Is Karma totally under the control of Brahman? |
| 7997 | Only by love can men see me, know me, and come to me, says Krishna [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Only by love can men see me, and know me, and come unto me, says Krishna | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 11.54) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be a paradox here, as it is unclear how you can love Krishna, if you have not already seen him in some way. This is another paradox of fideism - that faith cannot possibly be the first step in a religion, as faith needs a target. |
| 7998 | The three gates of hell are lust, anger and greed [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Three are the gates of this hell, the death of the soul: the gate of lust, the gate of wrath, and the gate of greed. Let a man shun the three. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 16.21) | |
| A reaction: Anyone who wishes to procreate, champion justice, and make a living, has to pursue all three. Wisdom consists of pursuing the three appropriately, not in shunning them. How did this bizarre puritanism ever come to grip the human race? |