45 ideas
19579 | The history of philosophy is just experiments in how to do philosophy [Novalis] |
Full Idea: The history of philosophy up to now is nothing but a history of attempts to discover how to do philosophy. | |
From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 01) | |
A reaction: I take post-Fregean analytic metaphysics to be another experiment in how to do philosophy. I suspect that the experiment of Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida etc has been a failure. |
19583 | Philosophy only begins when it studies itself [Novalis] |
Full Idea: All philosophy begins where philosophizing philosophises itself. | |
From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 79) | |
A reaction: The modern trend for doing metaphilosophy strikes me as wholly admirable, though I suspect that the enemies of philosophy (who are legion) see it as a decadence. |
23269 | Philosophy must start from clearly observed facts [Galen] |
Full Idea: True philosophers concern themselves first and foremost to take clearly observed facts as their point of departure. | |
From: Galen (The soul's dependence on the body [c.170], Kiv.11.817) | |
A reaction: I love this one, especially the desire that the facts be 'clearly observed'. That, thank goodness, eliminates quantum mechanics. If you don't love history and the physical sciences, you are not a philosopher. Oh, and reliable gossip. |
22026 | Philosophy is homesickness - the urge to be at home everywhere [Novalis] |
Full Idea: Philosophy is actually homesickness - the urge to be everywhere at home. | |
From: Novalis (General Draft [1799], 45) | |
A reaction: The idea of home [heimat] is powerful in German culture. The point of romanticism was seen as largely concerning restless souls like Byron and his heroes, who do not feel at home. Hence ironic detachment. |
19588 | The highest aim of philosophy is to combine all philosophies into a unity [Novalis] |
Full Idea: He attains the maximum of a philosopher who combines all philosophies into a single philosophy | |
From: Novalis (Logological Fragments II [1798], 31) | |
A reaction: I have found the epigraph for my big book! Recently a few narrowly analytical philosophers have attempted big books about everything (Sider, Heil, Chalmers), and they get a huge round of applause from me. |
19598 | Philosophy relies on our whole system of learning, and can thus never be complete [Novalis] |
Full Idea: Now all learning is connected - thus philosophy will never be complete. Only in the complete system of all learning will philosophy be truly visible. | |
From: Novalis (Logological Fragments II [1798], 39) | |
A reaction: Philosophy is evidently the unifying subject, which reveals the point of all the other subjects. It matches my maxim that 'science is the servant of philosophy'. |
19586 | Philosophers feed on problems, hoping they are digestible, and spiced with paradox [Novalis] |
Full Idea: The philosopher lives on problems as the human being does on food. An insoluble problem is an indigestible food. What spice is to food, the paradoxical is to problems. | |
From: Novalis (Logological Fragments II [1798], 09) | |
A reaction: Novalis would presumably have disliked Hegel's dialectic, where the best food seems to be the indigestible. |
19587 | Philosophy aims to produce a priori an absolute and artistic world system [Novalis] |
Full Idea: Philosophy ...is the art of producing all our conceptions according to an absolute, artistic idea and of developing the thought of a world system a priori out of the depths of our spirit. | |
From: Novalis (Logological Fragments II [1798], 19) | |
A reaction: A lovely statement of the dream of building world systems by pure thought - embodying perfectly the view of philosophy despised by logical positivists and modern logical metaphysicians. The Novalis view will never die! I like 'artistic'. |
23248 | Early empiricists said reason was just a useless concept introduced by philosophers [Galen, by Frede,M] |
Full Idea: The so-called Empiricists in Hellenistic times [as cited by Galen] denied the existence of reason, treating it as a useless theoretical postulate introduced by some philosophers | |
From: report of Galen (An Outline of Empiricism [c.170], 87.4-9.28ff) by Michael Frede - Intro to 'Rationality in Greek Thought' p.3 | |
A reaction: I think 'be sensible' is understood by everyone, but 'use your reason' is far from obvious. The main role of reason seems to be as an identifier for human exceptionalism. Animals obviously make good judgements. Frede thinks the empiricists were right. |
19574 | If man sacrifices truth he sacrifices himself, by acting against his own convictions [Novalis] |
Full Idea: Man has his being in truth - if he sacrifices truth he sacrifices himself. Whoever betrays truth betrays himself. It is not a question of lying - but of acting against one's conviction. | |
From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 038) | |
A reaction: Does he condone lying here, as long as you don't believe the lie? We would call it loss of integrity. |
19571 | Delusion and truth differ in their life functions [Novalis] |
Full Idea: The distinction between delusion and truth lies in the difference in their life functions. | |
From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 008) | |
A reaction: Pure pragmatism, it seems. We might expect doubts about objective truth from a leading light of the Romantic movement. |
19597 | Logic (the theory of relations) should be applied to mathematics [Novalis] |
Full Idea: Ought not logic, the theory of relations, be applied to mathematics? | |
From: Novalis (Logological Fragments II [1798], 38) | |
A reaction: Bolzano was 19 when his was written. I presume Novalis would have been excited by set theory (even though he was a hyper-romantic). |
19581 | A problem is a solid mass, which the mind must break up [Novalis] |
Full Idea: A problem is a solid, synthetic mass which is broken up by means of the penetrating power of the mind. | |
From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 04) |
19584 | Whoever first counted to two must have seen the possibility of infinite counting [Novalis] |
Full Idea: Whoever first understood how to count to two, even if he still found it difficult to keep on counting, saw nonetheless the possibility of infinite counting according to the same laws. | |
From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 84) | |
A reaction: Presumably it is the discerning of the 'law' which triggers this. Is the key concept 'addition' or 'successor' (or are those the same?). |
22025 | Novalis thought self-consciousness cannot disclose 'being', because we are temporal creatures [Novalis, by Pinkard] |
Full Idea: Novalis came to think that the kind of existence , or 'being', that is disclosed in self-consciousness remains, as it were, forever out of our reach because of the kind of temporal creatures we are. | |
From: report of Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 06 | |
A reaction: It looks here as if Novalis kicked Heidegger's Dasein into the long grass before it even got started, but maybe they have different notions of 'being', with Novalis seeking timeless being, and Heidegger, influenced by Bergson, accepting temporality. |
19575 | Refinement of senses increasingly distinguishes individuals [Novalis] |
Full Idea: The more our senses are refined, the more capable they become of distinguishing between individuals. The highest sense would be the highest receptivity to particularity in human nature. | |
From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 072) | |
A reaction: I adore this idea!! It goes into the collection of support I am building for individual essences, against the absurd idea of kinds as essences (when they are actually categorisations). It also accompanies particularism in ethics. |
22067 | Poetry is true idealism, and the self-consciousness of the universe [Novalis] |
Full Idea: Poetry is true idealism - contemplation of the world as contemplation of a large mind - self-consciousness of the universe. | |
From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], vol 3 p.640), quoted by Ernst Behler - Early German Romanticism | |
A reaction: It looks like the step from Fichte's idealism to the Absolute is poetry, which embraces the ultimate Spinozan substance through imagination. Or something... |
19572 | Experiences tests reason, and reason tests experience [Novalis] |
Full Idea: Experience is the test of the rational - and vice versa. | |
From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 010) | |
A reaction: A wonderful remark. Surely we can't ignore our need to test claims of pure logic by filling in the variables with concrete instances, to assess validity? And philosophy without examples is doomed to be abstract waffle. Coherence is the combined aim. |
19590 | Empiricists are passive thinkers, given their philosophy by the external world and fate [Novalis] |
Full Idea: An empiricist is one whose way of thinking is an effect of the external world and of fate - the passive thinker - to whom his philosophy is given. | |
From: Novalis (Teplitz Fragments [1798], 33) | |
A reaction: Novalis goes on to enthuse about 'magical idealism', so he rejects empiricism. This is an early attack on the Myth of the Given, found in Sellars and McDowell. |
19594 | General statements about nature are not valid [Novalis] |
Full Idea: General statements are not valid in the study of nature. | |
From: Novalis (Last Fragments [1800], 17) | |
A reaction: This is his striking obsession with the particularity and fine detail of nature. Alexander von Humbolt was exploring nature in S.America in this year. It sounds wrong about physics, but possibly right about biology. |
23266 | The spirit in the soul wants freedom, power and honour [Galen] |
Full Idea: The spirited part of the soul is desiderative of freedom, victory, power, authority, reputation, and honour. | |
From: Galen (The soul's dependence on the body [c.170], Kiv.2.772) | |
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). |
6003 | Galen showed by experiment that the brain controls the body [Galen, by Hankinson] |
Full Idea: Galen established by experiments in neural anatomy that the brain really is, contra the Stoics and Aristotelians, the body's control centre. | |
From: report of Galen (On Hippocrates and Plato [c.170]) by R.J. Hankinson - Galen (damaged) | |
A reaction: And about time too. This is one of the most significant events in the development of human understanding. No one has been able to go back to the old view, even Descartes, no matter how much they may long to do so. |
23219 | Stopping the heart doesn't terminate activity; pressing the brain does that [Galen, by Cobb] |
Full Idea: Even when an animals heart was stopped [by hand] it continued its muted whimpers, …but when the brain was pressed the animal stopped making a noise and became unconscious. | |
From: report of Galen (The soul's dependence on the body [c.170]) by Matthew Cobb - The Idea of the Brain 1 | |
A reaction: It's not that the ancients didn't do science. It's that ancient people paid no attention to what their scientists discovered. |
21799 | We just use the word 'faculty' when we don't know the psychological cause [Galen] |
Full Idea: So long as we are ignorant of the true essence of the cause which is operating, we call it a 'faculty'. | |
From: Galen (On the Natural Faculties [c.170], I.iv), quoted by Dominik Perler - Intro to The Faculties: a History 2 | |
A reaction: This is probably the view of most modern neuroscientists. I want to defend the idea that we need the concept of a faculty in philosophy, even if the psychologists and neuroscientists say it is too vague for their purposes. |
23264 | Philosophers think faculties are in substances, and invent a faculty for every activity [Galen] |
Full Idea: Philosophers conceive of faculties as things which inhabit 'substances' much as we inhabit houses, not realising that causes of events are conceived in relational terms. We therefore attribute as many faculties to a substance as activities. | |
From: Galen (The soul's dependence on the body [c.170], Kiv.2.769) | |
A reaction: This seems to demolish speculative faculties, but they were revived during the Enlightenment. I am happy to talk of 'philosophical faculties' where they are presumed to originate a type of thought, without commitment to any neuroscience. |
19591 | Desire for perfection is an illness, if it turns against what is imperfect [Novalis] |
Full Idea: An absolute drive toward perfection and completeness is an illness, as soon as it shows itself to be destructive and averse toward the imperfect, the incomplete. | |
From: Novalis (General Draft [1799], 33) | |
A reaction: Deep and true! Novalis seems to be a particularist - hanging on to the fine detail of life, rather than being immersed in the theory. These are the philosophers who also turn to literature. |
19596 | The whole body is involved in the formation of thoughts [Novalis] |
Full Idea: In the formation of thoughts all parts of the body seem to me to be working together. | |
From: Novalis (Last Fragments [1800], 20) | |
A reaction: I can only think that Spinoza must be behind this thought, or La Mettrie. It seems a strikingly unusual intuition for its time, when almost everyone takes a spiritual sort of dualism for granted. |
19573 | The seat of the soul is where our inner and outer worlds interpenetrate [Novalis] |
Full Idea: The seat of the soul is the point where the inner and the outer worlds touch. Wherever they penetrate each other - it is there at every point of penetration. | |
From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 020) | |
A reaction: I surmise that Spinoza's dual-aspect monism is behind this interesting remark. See the related idea from Schopenhauer. |
23220 | The brain contains memory and reason, and is the source of sensation and decision [Galen] |
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. | |
From: Galen (The soul's dependence on the body [c.170]), quoted by Matthew Cobb - The Idea of the Brain 1 | |
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. |
23265 | The rational part of the soul is the desire for truth, understanding and recollection [Galen] |
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. | |
From: Galen (The soul's dependence on the body [c.170], Kiv.2.772) | |
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. |
19577 | Everything is a chaotic unity, then we abstract, then we reunify the world into a free alliance [Novalis] |
Full Idea: Before abstraction everything is one - but one as chaos is - after abstraction everything is again unified - but in a free alliance of independent, self-determined beings. A crowd has become a society - a chaos is transformed into a manifold world. | |
From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 094) | |
A reaction: Personally I take (unfashionably) psychological abstraction to one of the key foundations of human thought, so I love this idea, which gives a huge picture of how the abstracting mind relates to reality. |
19585 | Every person has his own language [Novalis] |
Full Idea: Every person has his own language. Language is the expression of the spirit. | |
From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 91) | |
A reaction: Nice to see someone enthusiastically affirming what was later famously denied, and maybe even disproved. |
19578 | Only self-illuminated perfect individuals are beautiful [Novalis] |
Full Idea: Everything beautiful is a self-illuminated, perfect individual. | |
From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 101) | |
A reaction: It is a commonplace to describe something beautiful as being 'perfect'. Unfinished masterpieces are interesting exceptions. Are only 'individuals' beautiful? Is unity a necessary condition of beauty? Bad art fails to be self-illuminated. |
19582 | Morality and philosophy are mutually dependent [Novalis] |
Full Idea: Without philosophy there is no true morality, and without morality no philosophy. | |
From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 21) | |
A reaction: Challenging! Maybe unthinking people drift in a sea of vague untethered morality, and people who seem to have a genuine moral strength are always rooted in some sort of philosophy. Maybe. Is the passion for philosophy a moral passion? |
7453 | Galen's medicine followed the mean; each illness was balanced by opposite treatment [Galen, by Hacking] |
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). | |
From: report of Galen (On Medical Experience [c.169]) by Ian Hacking - The Emergence of Probability Ch.5 | |
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. |
6030 | Each part of the soul has its virtue - pleasure for appetite, success for competition, and rectitude for reason [Galen] |
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. | |
From: Galen (On Hippocrates and Plato [c.170], 5.5.8) | |
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. |
22027 | Life isn't given to us like a novel - we write the novel [Novalis] |
Full Idea: Life must not be a novel that is given to us, but one that is made by us. | |
From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 99) | |
A reaction: The roots of existentialism are in the Romantic movement. Sartre seems to have taken this idea literally. |
19589 | The whole point of a monarch is that we accept them as a higher-born, ideal person [Novalis] |
Full Idea: The distinguishing character of the monarchy lies precisely in the fact of belief in a higher-born person, of voluntary acceptance of an ideal person. I cannot choose a leader from among my peers. | |
From: Novalis (Fath and Love, or the King and Queen [1798], 18) | |
A reaction: Novalis was passionately devoted to the new king and queen of Prussia, only a few years after the French Revolution. This attitude seems to me unchanged among monarchists in present day Britain. Genetics has undermined 'higher-born'. |
23268 | We execute irredeemable people, to protect ourselves, as a deterrent, and ending a bad life [Galen] |
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. | |
From: Galen (The soul's dependence on the body [c.170], Kiv.11.816) | |
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. |
20723 | Only when working people are poor do they remain obedient to God [Calvin, by Weber] |
Full Idea: Calvin made the much-quoted statement that only when the people, i.e. the mass of labourers and craftsmen, were poor did they remain obedient to God. | |
From: report of Jean Calvin (works [1549]) by Max Weber - The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 5 | |
A reaction: This is only one aspect of Christian influence. The alternative is John Wesley's exhortation to work diligently, live modestly, save, invest and get rich. Most people want a comfortable intermediate state, but who proclaims that? |
19580 | If the pupil really yearns for the truth, they only need a hint [Novalis] |
Full Idea: If a pupil genuinely desires truth is requires only a hint to show him how to find what he is seeking. | |
From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 02) | |
A reaction: The tricky job for the teacher or supervisor is assessing whether the pupil genuinely desires truth, or needs motivating. |
19593 | Persons are shaped by a life history; splendid persons are shaped by world history [Novalis] |
Full Idea: What is it that shapes a person if not his life history? And in the same way a splendid person is shaped by nothing other than world history. Many people live better in the past and in the future than in the present. | |
From: Novalis (Last Fragments [1800], 15) | |
A reaction: Clearly there is a lot to be said for splendid people who live entirely in the present (such as jazz musicians). Some people do have an awesomely wide historical perspective on their immediate lives. Palaeontology is not the master discipline though! |
19595 | Nature is a whole, and its individual parts cannot be wholly understood [Novalis] |
Full Idea: Nature is a whole - in which each part in itself can never be wholly understood. | |
From: Novalis (Last Fragments [1800], 18) | |
A reaction: This doesn't seem right when studying some item in a laboratory, but it seems undeniable when you consider the history and future of each item. |
19592 | The basic relations of nature are musical [Novalis] |
Full Idea: Musical relations seem to me to be actually the basic relations of nature. | |
From: Novalis (Last Fragments [1800], 10) | |
A reaction: Novalis shows no signs of being a pythagorean, and then suddenly comes out with this. I suppose if you love music, this thought should float into your mind at regular intervals, because the power of music is so strong. Does he mean ratios? |
19576 | Religion needs an intermediary, because none of us can connect directly to a godhead [Novalis] |
Full Idea: Nothing is more indispensable for true religious feeling than an intermediary - which connects us to the godhead. The human being is absolutely incapable of sustaining an immediate relation with this. | |
From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 073) | |
A reaction: I take this to be a defence of priests and organised religion, and an implied attack on protestants who give centrality to private prayer and conscience. |