Combining Philosophers

All the ideas for Bryan van Norden, Beth Lord and Brand Blanshard

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7 ideas

1. Philosophy / B. History of Ideas / 2. Ancient Thought

23392	The Dao (Way) first means the road, and comes to mean the right way to live [Norden]
	Full Idea: The 'Dao' (tr 'Way) has five meanings: 1) path or road, 2) mode of doing something, 3) account of how to do something, 4) the right way to live, and 5) the ultimate metaphysical entity responsible for nature, and how it should be.
	From: Bryan van Norden (Intro to Classical Chinese Philosophy [2011], 1.III)
	A reaction: [compressed] So it is essentially metaphorical, just like the English 'way to do a thing'. Number 5 seems a rather large leap from the others, and most discussion seems to centre on number 4. The Chinese hoped for consensus on the Dao.

1. Philosophy / B. History of Ideas / 5. Later European Thought

21855	Only in the 1780s did it become acceptable to read Spinoza [Lord]
	Full Idea: It was not until the 1780s that it became acceptable to read the works of Spinoza, and even then it was not without a frisson of danger.
	From: Beth Lord (Spinoza's Ethics [2010], Intro 'Who?')
	A reaction: Hence we hear of Wordsworth and Coleridge reading him with excitement. So did Kant read him?

1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 3. Hermeneutics

23408	The hermeneutic circle is either within the text, or between text and biased reader [Norden]
	Full Idea: The first type of hermeneutic circle operates inside the text, studying relationships between sentences. …The second type is between the text and the reader, …who brings assumptions about what it means.
	From: Bryan van Norden (Intro to Classical Chinese Philosophy [2011], App A.I)
	A reaction: The first kind is an essential aspect of reading well. Readers are biased, but I get very tired of those who do nothing but search for bias, and ignore the truth a text has to offer. If everything is bias, intellectual life is dead.

23407	Heremeneutics is either 'faith' (examining truth) or 'suspicion' (looking for hidden motives) [Norden]
	Full Idea: A 'hermeneutics of faith' treat a text as a candidate for truth. ….A 'hermeneutics of suspicion' looks not for truth but for explanations of why someone makes certain claims, …particularly to serve their ulterior interests.
	From: Bryan van Norden (Intro to Classical Chinese Philosophy [2011], App I.1)
	A reaction: As far as I can see, the suspicious approach was a legitimate development in sociology, which studies the sources of ideas, but is absurdly offered by some philosophers as a total replacement of the faith approach.

2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 6. Coherence

2764	Full coherence might involve consistency and mutual entailment of all propositions [Blanshard, by Dancy,J]
	Full Idea: Blanshard says that in a fully coherent system there would not only be consistency, but every proposition would be entailed by the others, and no proposition would stand outside the system.
	From: report of Brand Blanshard (The Nature of Thought [1939], 2:265) by Jonathan Dancy - Intro to Contemporary Epistemology 8.1
	A reaction: Hm. If a proposition is entailed by the others, then it is a necessary truth (given the others) which sounds deterministic. You could predict all the truths you had never encountered. See 1578:178 for quote.

3. Truth / D. Coherence Truth / 1. Coherence Truth

19080	Coherence tests for truth without implying correspondence, so truth is not correspondence [Blanshard, by Young,JO]
	Full Idea: Blanshard said that coherent justification leads to coherence truth. It might be said that coherence is a test for truth, but truth is correspondence. But coherence doesn't guarantee correspondence, and coherence is a test, so truth is not correspondence.
	From: report of Brand Blanshard (The Nature of Thought [1939], Ch.26) by James O. Young - The Coherence Theory of Truth §2.2
	A reaction: [compression of Young's summary] Rescher (1973) says that Blanshard's argument depends on coherence being an infallible test for truth, which it isn't.

15. Nature of Minds / C. Capacities of Minds / 10. Conatus/Striving

21866	Hobbes and Spinoza use 'conatus' to denote all endeavour for advantage in nature [Lord]
	Full Idea: 'Conatus' [translated as 'striving' by Curley] is used by early modern philosophers, including Thomas Hobbes (a major influence of Spinoza), to express the notion of a thing's endeavour for what is advantageous to it. It drives all things in nature.
	From: Beth Lord (Spinoza's Ethics [2010], p.88)
	A reaction: I think it is important to connect conatus to Nietzsche's talk of a plurality of 'drives', which are an expression of the universal will to power (which is seen even in the interactions of chemistry). Conatus is also in Leibniz.