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23392
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The Dao (Way) first means the road, and comes to mean the right way to live [Norden]
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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.
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From:
Bryan van Norden (Intro to Classical Chinese Philosophy [2011], 1.III)
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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.
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23408
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The hermeneutic circle is either within the text, or between text and biased reader [Norden]
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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.
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From:
Bryan van Norden (Intro to Classical Chinese Philosophy [2011], App A.I)
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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.
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23266
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The spirit in the soul wants freedom, power and honour [Galen]
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Full Idea:
The spirited part of the soul is desiderative of freedom, victory, power, authority, reputation, and honour.
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From:
Galen (The soul's dependence on the body [c.170], Kiv.2.772)
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A reaction:
This is the concept of 'thumos' [spirit], taken straight from Plato's tripartite account of the soul, in 'Republic'. Note that it includes a desire for freedom (in an age of slavery).
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23220
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The brain contains memory and reason, and is the source of sensation and decision [Galen]
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Full Idea:
The brain is the principal organ of the psychical members. For within the brain is seated memory, reason and intellect, and from the brain is distributed the power, sensation and voluntary motion.
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From:
Galen (The soul's dependence on the body [c.170]), quoted by Matthew Cobb - The Idea of the Brain 1
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A reaction:
[not sure of ref] Interesting that he assigns the whole of mind to the brain, and not just some aspect of it. He had done experiments. Understanding the role of the brain was amazingly slow. Impeded by religion, I guess.
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23265
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The rational part of the soul is the desire for truth, understanding and recollection [Galen]
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Full Idea:
That part of the soul which we call rational is desiderative: …it desires truth, knowledge, learning, understanding, and recollection - in short, all the good things.
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From:
Galen (The soul's dependence on the body [c.170], Kiv.2.772)
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A reaction:
Truth is no surprise, but recollection is. Note the separation of knowledge from understanding. This is a very good characterisation of rationality. For the Greeks it has a moral dimension, of wanting what is good.
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20344
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Music is not an expressive art, because it expresses no familiar emotions [Hanslick, by Wollheim]
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Full Idea:
Hanslick concluded from the fact that music doesn't express definite feelings like piety, love, joy, or sadness, that it isn't an art of expression.
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From:
report of Eduard Hanslick (The Beautiful in Music [1854]) by Richard Wollheim - Art and Its Objects 48
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A reaction:
Whether music is 'expressive' (which it may not be) should not be confused with whether it is emotional, which it clearly is, even in its coolest examples. Hanslick viewed music as a code, not a language.
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7453
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Galen's medicine followed the mean; each illness was balanced by opposite treatment [Galen, by Hacking]
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Full Idea:
Galen ran medicine on the principle of the mean; afflictions must be treated by contraries; hot diseases deserve cold medicine and moist illnesses want drying agents. (Paracelsus rebelled, treating through similarity).
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From:
report of Galen (On Medical Experience [c.169]) by Ian Hacking - The Emergence of Probability Ch.5
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A reaction:
This must be inherited from Aristotle, with the aim of virtue for the body, as Aristotle wanted virtue for the psuché. In some areas Galen is probably right, that natural balance is the aim, as in bodily temperature control.
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6030
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Each part of the soul has its virtue - pleasure for appetite, success for competition, and rectitude for reason [Galen]
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Full Idea:
We have by nature these three appropriate relationships, corresponding to each form of the soul's parts - to pleasure because of the appetitive part, to success because of the competitive part, and to rectitude because of the rational part.
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From:
Galen (On Hippocrates and Plato [c.170], 5.5.8)
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A reaction:
This is a nice combination of Plato's tripartite theory of soul (in 'Republic') and Aristotle's derivation of virtues from functions. Presumably, though, reason should master the other two, and there is nothing in Galen's idea to explain this.
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23268
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We execute irredeemable people, to protect ourselves, as a deterrent, and ending a bad life [Galen]
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Full Idea:
We kill the irredeemably wicked, for three reasons: that they may no longer harm us; as a deterrent to others like them; and because it is actually better from their own point of view to die, when their souls are so damaged they cannot be improved.
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From:
Galen (The soul's dependence on the body [c.170], Kiv.11.816)
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A reaction:
The third one sounds like a dubious rationalisation, given that the prisoner probably disagrees. Nowadays we are not so quick to judge someone as irredeemable. The first one works when they run wild, but not after their capture.
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