11 ideas
| 20771 | Six parts: dialectic, rhetoric, ethics, politics, physics, theology [Cleanthes, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Cleanthes says there are six parts: dialectic, rhetoric, ethics, politics, physics, and theology. | |
| From: report of Cleanthes (fragments/reports [c.270 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.41 | |
| A reaction: This was a minority view, as most stoics agreed with Zeno and Chrysippus that there are three main topics. Nowadays there is little discussion of the 'parts' of philosophy, but the recent revival of meta-philosophy should encourage it. |
| 12066 | Aristotelian and Kripkean essentialism are very different theories [Witt] |
| Full Idea: The differences between Aristotelian essentialism and Kripke's essentialism are so fundamental and pervasive that it is a serious distortion of both views to think of essentialism as a single theory. | |
| From: Charlotte Witt (Substance and Essence in Aristotle [1989], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me to be very important, because there is a glib assumption that when essentialism is needed for modal logic, that we must immediately have embraced what Aristotle was saying. Aristotle was better than Kripke. |
| 12067 | An Aristotelian essence is a nonlinguistic correlate of the definition [Witt] |
| Full Idea: An Aristotelian essence is a nonlinguistic correlate of the definition of the entity in question. | |
| From: Charlotte Witt (Substance and Essence in Aristotle [1989], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is a simple and necessity corrective to the simplistic idea that Aristotle thought that essences just were definitions. Aristotle believes in real essences, not linguistic essences. |
| 12082 | If unity is a matter of degree, then essence may also be a matter of degree [Witt] |
| Full Idea: By holding that the most unified beings have essences in an unqualified sense, while allowing that other beings have them in a qualified sense - we can think of unity as a matter of degree. | |
| From: Charlotte Witt (Substance and Essence in Aristotle [1989], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: This is Witt's somewhat unorthodox view of how we should read Aristotle. I am sympathetic, if essences are really explanatory. That means they are unstable, and would indeed be likely to come in degrees. |
| 12089 | Essences mainly explain the existence of unified substance [Witt] |
| Full Idea: The central function of essence is to explain the actual existence of a unified substance. | |
| From: Charlotte Witt (Substance and Essence in Aristotle [1989], 5 n1) | |
| A reaction: She is offering an interpretation of Aristotle. Since existence is an active and not a passive matter, the identity of the entity will include its dispositions etc., I presume. |
| 12102 | Essential properties of origin are too radically individual for an Aristotelian essence [Witt] |
| Full Idea: The radical individuality of essential properties of origin makes them unsuitable for inclusion in an Aristotelian essence. | |
| From: Charlotte Witt (Substance and Essence in Aristotle [1989], 6.2) | |
| A reaction: Nevertheless, Aristotle believes in individual essences, though these seem to be fixed by definitions, which are composed of combinations of universals. The uniqueness is of the whole definition, not of its parts. |
| 6901 | Understanding is needed for imagination, just as much as the other way around [Betteridge] |
| Full Idea: Although it might be right to say that imagination is required in order to make reasoning and understanding possible, this also works the other way, as imagination cannot occur without some prior understanding. | |
| From: Alex Betteridge (talk [2005]), quoted by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a very illuminating remark, particularly for anyone who aspires to draw a simplified flowdiagram of the mind showing logical priority between its various parts. In fact, the parts are interdependent. Maybe imagination is understanding. |
| 6028 | Bodies interact with other bodies, and cuts cause pain, and shame causes blushing, so the soul is a body [Cleanthes, by Nemesius] |
| Full Idea: Cleanthes says no incorporeal interacts with a body, but one body interacts with another body; the soul interacts with the body when it is sick and being cut, and the body feels shame and fear, and turns red or pale, so the soul is a body. | |
| From: report of Cleanthes (fragments/reports [c.270 BCE]) by Nemesius - De Natura Hominis 78,7 | |
| A reaction: This is precisely the interaction problem with dualism, or, as we might now say, the problem of mental causation. The standard Stoic view is that the soul is a sort of rarefied fire, which disperses at death. |
| 20831 | The soul suffers when the body hurts, creates redness from shame, and pallor from fear [Cleanthes] |
| Full Idea: Nothing incorporeal shares an experience with a body …but the soul suffers with the body when it is ill and when it is cut, and the body suffers with the soul - when the soul is ashamed the body turns red, and pale when the soul is frightened. | |
| From: Cleanthes (fragments/reports [c.270 BCE]), quoted by Nemesius - De Natura Hominis 2 | |
| A reaction: Aha - my favourite example of the corporeal nature of the mind - blushing! It is the conscious content of the thought which brings blood to the cheeks. |
| 12085 | Reality is directional [Witt] |
| Full Idea: Reality is directional. | |
| From: Charlotte Witt (Substance and Essence in Aristotle [1989], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: [Plucked from context! She attributes the view to Aristotle] This slogan beautifully summarises the 'scientific essentialist' view of reality, based not on so-called 'laws', but on the active powers of the stuffs of reality. |
| 5993 | The ascending scale of living creatures requires a perfect being [Cleanthes, by Tieleman] |
| Full Idea: Cleanthes tried to prove the existence of God, arguing that the ascending scale of living creatures requires there to be a perfect being. | |
| From: report of Cleanthes (fragments/reports [c.270 BCE]) by Teun L. Tieleman - Cleanthes | |
| A reaction: Not a very good argument. Even if you accept its basic claim, it is not clear what has to exist. A perfect tree? If the being transcends the physical (in order to achieve perfection), does it cease to be a 'being'? |