97 ideas
| 19608 | Wisdom is just the last gasp of a dying civilization [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Wisdom is the last word of an expiring civilization, the nimbus of historic twilights, fatigue transfigured into a vision of the world, the last tolerance before the advent of newer gods, and of barbarism. A vain attempt at melody among the death rattles. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Twilight') | |
| A reaction: I didn't quite get what he said there, but I picked up the tone all right. But I thought wisdom was something sought in the early stages of western civilization, and now relegated to the wings as an idle dream? |
| 23064 | So-called wisdom is just pondering things instead of acting [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: What is known as 'wisdom' is ultimately only a perpetual 'thinking it over', i.e. non-action as first impulse. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 01) | |
| A reaction: This may be how most people view wisdom. Wisdom is for the spectators, not the actors (perhaps). Wisdom needs a lot of thought, and I don't associate it with extremely active people. |
| 19624 | Intelligence only fully flourishes at the end of a historical period [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Intelligence flourishes only in the ages when beliefs wither. ...Every period's ending is the mind's paradise, for the mind regains its play and its whims only within an organism in utter dissolution. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Felicity') | |
| A reaction: I wouldn't have thought that the facts of history supported this very well. The golden ages of philosophy are the Age of Pericles, the Aristotelian Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the early twentieth century. |
| 19599 | Ideas are neutral, but people fill them with passion and weakness [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: In itself, every idea is neutral, or should be; but man animates ideas, projects his flames and flaws into them. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Genealogy') | |
| A reaction: If it isn't neutral (if, say, it expresses love or hatred) then presumably it doesn't qualify as an 'idea'. Are ideas as neutral as mathematical theorems. It's a nice remark, and a good epigraph for a book on the history of ideas. |
| 19631 | The history of ideas (and deeds) occurs in a meaningless environment [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: The history of ideas, like that of deeds, unfolds in a meaningless climate. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is the 'Tory' view of the history of ideas (as opposed to the 'Whig' view of directedness - a distinction made by historians). I would say there are periods where a certain inevitable sequence is worked out, but then there are dislocations. |
| 19645 | Some thinkers would have been just as dynamic, no matter when they had lived [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: A Kierkegaard, a Nietzsche, had they appeared in the most anodyne age, would have had no less tremulous, no less incendiary an inspiration. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 6 'Truths') | |
| A reaction: He is saying that some (only some) thinkers are independent of the age and culture in which they live. Personally I think of those two as distinctive products of a romantic age. Diogenes of Sinope seems a bit of a misfit! |
| 19629 | A nation gives expression to its sum of values, and is then exhausted [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: A nation cannot create indefinitely. It is called upon to give expression and meaning to a sum of values which are exhausted with the soul which has begotten them. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 3) | |
| A reaction: This phenomenon is obvious. Is it the people who run out of steam, or the ideas and values to which their nation is giving expression? Is this a reason to break up nations every few centuries, and re-form them differently? Break up the UK! |
| 19618 | I abandoned philosophy because it didn't acknowledge melancholy and human weakness [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: I turned away from philosophy when it became impossible to discover in Kant any human weakness, any authentic accent of melancholy; in Kant and in all the philosophers. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Farewell') | |
| A reaction: An interesting challenge, but if I set out to develop a philosophy based on human weakness I'm not sure where I would start, once I had settled the 'akrasia' [weakness of will] problem. |
| 19621 | Originality in philosophy is just the invention of terms [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: The philosopher's originality comes down to inventing terms. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Farewell') | |
| A reaction: Analytic philosophers are just as obsessed with inventing terms as their continental rivals. Kit Fine, for example. It can't be wrong to invent terms. Scientists do it too. |
| 19607 | The mind is superficial, only concerned with the arrangement of events, not their significance [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: The mind in itself can be only superficial, its nature being uniquely concerned with the arrangement of conceptual events, and not with their implications in the spheres the signify. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 'The Abstract') | |
| A reaction: This may be excessively pessimistic, and any decent philosopher must partially concede the point. Thoughts about the significance of historical events just recede into the mist. |
| 19638 | Metaphysics is a universalisation of physical anguish [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Every metaphysic begins with an anguish of the body, which then becomes universal. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 6 'Underside') | |
| A reaction: Not sure if I understand this, but anyone who registers the physical aspect of abstract thought gets a nod of approval from me. |
| 12027 | There must be a plausible epistemological theory alongside any metaphysical theory [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: No metaphysical account which renders it impossible to give a plausible epistemological theory is to be countenanced. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 9.1) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to object to this principle, though we certainly don't want to go verificationist, and thus rule out speculations about metaphysics which are beyond any possible knowledge. Some have tried to prove that something must exist (e.g. Jacquette). |
| 19620 | Great systems of philosophy are just brilliant tautologies [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: The great philosophical systems are no more than brilliant tautologies. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Farewell') | |
| A reaction: This makes them sound pointless, but the terms used in the system all have some kind of reference, so the systems are in some way about the world, and not mere private games. At the very least, they are a wonderful branch of poetry. |
| 23072 | Systems are the worst despotism, in philosophy and in life [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle, Aquinas, Hegel - three enslavers of the mind. The worst form of despotism is the system, in philosophy and in everything. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 07) | |
| A reaction: I'm not quite clear why intellectual 'despotism' is a dreadful crime. I revere Aristotle, partly because he is systematic, but I reject about 30% of what he says. Still, many people agree with this idea. |
| 23075 | A text explained ceases to be a text [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Why embroider upon what excludes commentary? A text explained is not longer a text. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 09) | |
| A reaction: I like that. I'm not a great fan of explicating texts, especially if they are literary, where the whole point is the primary experience, of a novel, poem or play. Philosophy is different, because that is a dialogue between writer and reader. |
| 19630 | No great idea ever emerged from a dialogue [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Nothing monumental has ever emerged from dialogue, nothing explosive, nothing 'great'. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 3) | |
| A reaction: This may be an argument in favour of dialogue! It smacks of the creepier side of Nietzsche's thinking. I suspect individuals have had many great ideas during dialogues, though not as part of them. Greek schools were all dialogue. |
| 19636 | Truth is just an error insufficiently experienced [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: What we call truth is an error insufficiently experienced. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 5) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure how to go about refuting that claim! Turn the tables, I suppose. 'Tell me, Cioran, are you claiming that this idea is true?' |
| 19642 | Eventually every 'truth' is guaranteed by the police [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Once a belief is established the police will guarantee its 'truth' sooner or later. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 6 'Views') |
| 12005 | The symbol 'ι' forms definite descriptions; (ιx)F(x) says 'the x which is such that F(x)' [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: We use the symbol 'ι' (Greek 'iota') to form definite descriptions, reading (ιx)F(x) as 'the x which is such that F(x)', or simply as 'the F'. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: Compare the lambda operator in modal logic, which picks out predicates from similar formulae. |
| 23066 | Negation doesn't arise from reasoning, but from deep instincts [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Negation never proceeds from reasoning but from something much more obscure and old. Arguments come afterward, to justify and sustain it. Every no rises out of the blood. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 02) | |
| A reaction: Music to my ears. In the Fregean era no one is allowed to talk about the origins of logical relations in the universal facts of physical existence. You can watch dogs saying no. |
| 12010 | Is the meaning of 'and' given by its truth table, or by its introduction and elimination rules? [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: The typical semantic account of validity for propositional connectives like 'and' presupposes that meaning is given by truth-tables. On the natural deduction view, the meaning of 'and' is given by its introduction and elimination rules. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 4.4) |
| 19632 | An axiom has no more authority than a frenzy [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: This earth is a place where can confirm anything with an equal likelihood: here axioms and frenzies are interchangeable. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 3) | |
| A reaction: A perceptive and poetic expression of the modern anti-Euclidean and anti-Fregean view of axioms, as purely formal features of a model or system. |
| 23077 | The word 'being' is very tempting, but in fact means nothing at all [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Whether it is spoken by a grocer or a philosopher, the word 'being', apparently so rich, so tempting, so charged with significance, in fact means nothing at all; incredible that a man in his right mind can use it on any occasion whatever. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 12) | |
| A reaction: I entirely agree. It resembles the redundancy view of 'true' (with which I do not agree). |
| 23068 | People who really believe anti-realism don't bother to prove it [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: When you know quite absolutely that everything is unreal, you then cannot see why you should take the trouble to prove it. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 02) | |
| A reaction: Does the same apply to realists? There are at least genuine arguments in both directions. Presumably the thought is that realists have something they care about, but true anti-realists don't. |
| 12023 | Vagueness problems arise from applying sharp semantics to vague languages [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: It is very plausible that the sorites paradoxes arose from the application of a semantic apparatus appropriate only for sharp predicates to languages containing vague predicates (rather than from deficiency of meaning, or from incoherence). | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 7.3) | |
| A reaction: Sounds wrong. Of course, logic has been designed for sharp predicates, and natural languages are awash with vagueness. But the problems of vagueness bothered lawyers long before logicians like Russell began to worry about it. |
| 12017 | In all instances of identity, there must be some facts to ensure the identity [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: For each instance of identity or failure of identity, there must be facts in virtue of which that instance obtains. ..Enough has been said to lend this doctrine some plausibility. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: Penelope Mackie picks this out from Forbes as a key principle. It sounds to be in danger of circularity, unless the 'facts' can be cited without referring to, or implicitly making use of, identities - which seems unlikely. |
| 12024 | If we combined two clocks, it seems that two clocks may have become one clock. [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: If we imagine a possible world in which two clocks in a room make one clock from half the parts of each, the judgement 'these two actual clocks could have been a single clock' does not seem wholly false. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 7.4) | |
| A reaction: You would, of course, have sufficient parts left over to make a second clock, so they look like a destroyed clock, so I don't think I find Forbes's intuition on this one very persuasive. |
| 11885 | Only individual essences will ground identities across worlds in other properties [Forbes,G, by Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Forbes argues that, unless we posit individual essences, we cannot guarantee that identities across possible worlds will be appropriately grounded in other properties. | |
| From: report of Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985]) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been 2.4 | |
| A reaction: There is a confrontation between Wiggins, who says identity is primitive, and Forbes, who says identity must be grounded in other properties. I think I side with Forbes. |
| 12014 | An individual essence is a set of essential properties which only that object can have [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: An individual essence of an object x is a set of properties I which satisfies the following conditions: i. every property P in I is an essential property of x; ii. it is not possible that some object y distinct from x has every member of I. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: I am coming to the view that stable natural kinds (like electrons or gold) do not have individual essences, but complex kinds (like tigers or tables) do. The view is based on the idea that explanatory power is what individuates an essence. |
| 12015 | Non-trivial individual essence is properties other than de dicto, or universal, or relational [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: A non-trivial individual essence is properties other than a) those following from a de dicto truth, b) properties of existence and self-identity (or their cognates), c) properties derived from necessities in some other category. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: [I have compressed Forbes] Rather than adding all these qualificational clauses to our concept, we could just tighten up on the notion of a property, saying it is something which is causally efficacious, and hence explanatory. |
| 12013 | Essential properties depend on a category, and perhaps also on particular facts [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: The essential properties of a thing will typically depend upon what category of thing it is, and perhaps also on some more particular facts about the thing itself. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: I see no way of dispensing with the second requirement, in the cases of complex entities like animals. If all samples are the same, then of course we can define a sample's essence through its kind, but not if samples differ in any way. |
| 13804 | A property is essential iff the object would not exist if it lacked that property [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: A property P is an essential property of an object x iff x could not exist and lack P, that is, as they say, iff x has P at every world at which x exists. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 1) | |
| A reaction: This immediately places the existence of x outside the normal range of its properties, so presumably 'existence is not a predicate', but that dictum may be doubted. As it stands this definition will include trivial and vacuous properties. |
| 13805 | Properties are trivially essential if they are not grounded in a thing's specific nature [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: Essential properties may be trivial or nontrivial. It is characteristic of P's being trivially essential to x that x's possession of P is not grounded in the specific nature of x. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 2) | |
| A reaction: This is where my objection to the modal view of essence arises. How is he going to explain 'grounded' and 'specific nature' without supplying an entirely different account of essence? |
| 12012 | Essential properties are those without which an object could not exist [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: An essential property of an object x is a property without possessing which x could not exist. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: This is certainly open to question. See Joan Kung's account of Aristotle on essence. I am necessarily more than eight years old (now), and couldn't exist without that property, but is the property part of my essence? |
| 13808 | A relation is essential to two items if it holds in every world where they exist [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: A relation R is essential to x and y (in that order) iff Rxy holds at every world where x and y both exist. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 2) | |
| A reaction: I find this bizarre. Not only does this seem to me to have nothing whatever to do with essence, but also the relation might hold even though it is a purely contingent matter. All rabbits are a reasonable distance from the local star. Essence of rabbit? |
| 13806 | Trivially essential properties are existence, self-identity, and de dicto necessities [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: The main groups of trivially essential properties are (a) existence, self-identity, or their consequences in S5; and (b) properties possessed in virtue of some de dicto necessary truth. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 2) | |
| A reaction: He adds 'extraneously essential' properties, which also strike me as being trivial, involving relations. 'Is such that 2+2=4' or 'is such that something exists' might be necessary, but they don't, I would say, have anything to do with essence. |
| 13807 | A property is 'extraneously essential' if it is had only because of the properties of other objects [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: P is 'extraneously essential' to x iff it is possessed by x at any world w only in virtue of the possession at w of certain properties by other objects. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 2) | |
| A reaction: I would say that these are the sorts of properties which have nothing to do with being essential, even if they are deemed to be necessary. |
| 12022 | Same parts does not ensure same artefact, if those parts could constitute a different artefact [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: Sameness of parts is not sufficient for identity of artefacts at a world, since the very same parts may turn up at different times as the parts of artefacts with different designs and functions. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 7.2) | |
| A reaction: Thus the Ship of Theseus could be dismantled and turned into a barn (as happened with the 'Mayflower'). They could then be reconstituted as the ship, which would then have two beginnings (as Chris Hughes has pointed out). |
| 12025 | Artefacts have fuzzy essences [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: Artefacts can be ascribed fuzzy essences. ...We might say that it is essential to an artefact to have 'most' of its parts. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 7.6) | |
| A reaction: I think I prefer to accept the idea that essences are unstable things, in all cases. For all we know, electrons might subtly change their general character, or cease to be uniform, tomorrow. Essences explain, and what needs explaining changes. |
| 13809 | One might be essentialist about the original bronze from which a statue was made [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: In the case of artefacts, there is an essentialism about original matter; for instance, it would be said of any particular bronze statue that it could not have been cast from a totally different quantity of bronze. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 3) | |
| A reaction: Forbes isn't endorsing this, and it doesn't sound convincing. He quotes the thought 'I wish I had made this pot from a different piece of clay'. We might corrupt a statue by switching bronze, but I don't think the sculptor could do so. |
| 12020 | An individual might change their sex in a world, but couldn't have differed in sex at origin [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: In the time of a single world, the same individual can undergo a change of sex, but it is less clear that an individual of one sex could have been, from the outset, an individual of another. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 6.5) | |
| A reaction: I don't find this support for essentiality of origin very persuasive. I struggle with these ideas. Given my sex yesterday, then presumably I couldn't have had a different sex yesterday. Given that pigs can fly, pigs can fly. What am I missing? |
| 11888 | Identities must hold because of other facts, which must be instrinsic [Forbes,G, by Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Forbes has two principles of identity, which we can call the No Bare Identities Principle (identities hold in virtue of other facts), and the No Extrinsic Determination Principle (that only intrinsic facts of a thing establish identity). | |
| From: report of Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 127-8) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been 2.7 | |
| A reaction: The job of the philosopher is to prise apart the real identities of things from the way in which we conceive of identities. I take these principles to apply to real identities, not conceptual identities. |
| 12003 | De re modal formulae, unlike de dicto, are sensitive to transworld identities [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: The difference between de re and de dicto formulae is a difference between formulae which are, and formulae which are not, sensitive to the identities of objects at various worlds. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 3.1) |
| 12028 | De re necessity is a form of conceptual necessity, just as de dicto necessity is [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: De re necessity does not differ from de dicto necessity in respect of how it arises: it is still a form of conceptual necessity. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 9.4) | |
| A reaction: [Forbes proceeds to argue for this claim] Forbes defends a form of essentialism, but takes the necessity to arise from a posteriori truths because of the a priori involvement of other concepts (rather as Kripke argues). |
| 13810 | The source of de dicto necessity is not concepts, but the actual properties of the thing [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: It is widely held that the source of de dicto necessity is in concepts, ..but I deny this... even with simple de dicto necessities, the source of the necessity is to be found in the properties to which the predicates of the de dicto truth refer. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 3) | |
| A reaction: It is normal nowadays to say this about de re necessities, but this is more unusual. |
| 12008 | Unlike places and times, we cannot separate possible worlds from what is true at them [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: There is no means by which we might distinguish a possible world from what is true at it. ...Whereas our ability to separate a place, or a time, from its occupier is crucial to realism about places and times, as is a distance relation. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: He is objecting to Lewis's modal realism. I'm not fully convinced. It depends whether we are discussing real ontology or conceptual space. In the latter I see no difference between times and possible worlds. In ontology, a 'time' is weird. |
| 12009 | The problem with possible worlds realism is epistemological; we can't know properties of possible objects [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: The main objection to realism about worlds is from epistemology. Knowledge of properties of objects requires experience of these objects, which must be within the range of our sensory faculties, but only concrete actual objects achieve that. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: This pinpoints my dislike of the whole possible worlds framework, ontologically speaking. I seem to be an actualist. I take possibilities to be inferences to the best explanation from the powers we know of in the actual world. We experience potentiality. |
| 12007 | Possible worlds are points of logical space, rather like other times than our own [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: Someone impressed by the parallel between tense and modal operators ...might suggest that just as we can speak of places and times forming their own manifolds or spaces, so we can say that worlds are the points of logical space. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: I particularly like the notion of worlds being "points of logical space", and am inclined to remove it from this context and embrace it as the correct way to understand possible worlds. We must understand logical or conceptual space. |
| 12011 | Transworld identity concerns the limits of possibility for ordinary things [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: An elucidation of transworld identity can be regarded as an elucidation of the boundaries of possibility for ordinary things. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: I presume that if we don't search for some such criterion, we just have to face the possibility that Aristotle could have been a poached egg in some possible world. To know the bounds of possibility, study the powers of actual objects. |
| 12016 | The problem of transworld identity can be solved by individual essences [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: The motivation for investigating individual essences should be obvious, since if every object has such an essence, the problem of elucidating transworld identity can be solved. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: It is important that, if necessary, the identities be 'individual', and not just generic, by sortal, or natural kind. We want to reason about (and explain) truths at the fine-grained level of the individual, not just at the broad level of generalisation. |
| 12004 | Counterpart theory is not good at handling the logic of identity [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: The outstanding technical objection to counterpart-theoretic semantics concerns its handling of the logic of identity. In quantified S5 (the orthodox semantics) a = b → □(a = b) is valid, but 'a' must not attach to two objects. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 3.5) |
| 12021 | Haecceitism attributes to each individual a primitive identity or thisness [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: Haecceitism attributes to each individual a primitive identity or thisness, as opposed to the sort of essentialism that gives non-trivial conditions sufficient for transworld identity. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 6.6) | |
| A reaction: 'Haecceitism' is the doctrine that things have primitive identity. A 'haecceity' is a postulated property which actually does the job. The key point of the view is that whatever it is is 'primitive', and not complex, or analysable. I don't believe it. |
| 12029 | We believe in thisnesses, because we reject bizarre possibilities as not being about that individual [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: The natural response to an unreasonable hypothesis of possibility for an object x, that in such a state of affairs it would not be x which satisfies the conditions, is evidence that we do possess concepts of thisness for individuals. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 9.4) | |
| A reaction: We may have a 'concept' of thisness, but we needn't be committed to the 'existence' of a thisness. There is a fairly universal intuition that cessation of existence of an entity when it starts to change can be a very vague matter. |
| 23078 | Opinions are fine, but having convictions means something has gone wrong [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: To have opinions is inevitable, is natural; to have convictions is less so. Each time I meet someone who has convictions, I wonder what intellectual vice, what flaw has caused him to acquire such a thing. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 12) | |
| A reaction: 'The best lack all conviction/ While the worst are full of passionate intensity' (Yeats). I agree with this. Convictions are so often accompanied by anger. |
| 23073 | Convictions are failures to study anything thoroughly [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: We have convictions only if we have studied nothing thoroughly. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 08) | |
| A reaction: Excellent! I cannot imagine studying anything at all in great depth without it resulting in a dwindling expectation of full understanding. Philosophy in spades, but also probably any topic in history. |
| 20653 | Six reduction levels: groups, lives, cells, molecules, atoms, particles [Putnam/Oppenheim, by Watson] |
| Full Idea: There are six 'reductive levels' in science: social groups, (multicellular) living things, cells, molecules, atoms, and elementary particles. | |
| From: report of H.Putnam/P.Oppenheim (Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis [1958]) by Peter Watson - Convergence 10 'Intro' | |
| A reaction: I have the impression that fields are seen as more fundamental that elementary particles. What is the status of the 'laws' that are supposed to govern these things? What is the status of space and time within this picture? |
| 19626 | Our instincts had to be blunted and diminished, to make way for consciousness! [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: How much our instincts must have had to be blunted and their functioning slackened before consciousness extended its control over the sum of our actions and our thoughts! | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'The Coming') | |
| A reaction: Modern wisdom, founded in neuroscience, seems to tell us that the role of consciousness even now is far less than Cioran believed. Once you digest that wisdom, I believe introspection supports it. Still, instinct in animals is much stronger than ours. |
| 23076 | If people always acted without words we would take them for robots [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: It is because of speech that men give the illusion of being free. If they did - without a word - what they do, we would take them for robots. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 09) | |
| A reaction: Love this one. Though it might be said that the power of speech does add an extra dimension of freedom to an action, beyond what any animal could attain. I take the absolute idea of 'being free' to be nonsense. |
| 19633 | We use concepts to master our fears; saying 'death' releases us from confronting it [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: It is the use of concepts which makes us master of our fears. We say: Death - and this abstraction releases us from experiencing its infinity, its horror. By baptising events and things, we elude the inexplicable. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 3) | |
| A reaction: I like this idea. I'm struck by how weird our lives would become if people no longer had names. They are so deeply embedded in our experience that we don't notice them. Imagine if it were taboo to ever name death. |
| 23065 | If only we could write like a reptile, of endless sensations and no concepts! [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: If only we could reach back before the concept, could write on a level with the senses, record the infinitesimal variations of what we touch, do what a reptile would do if it were to set about writing! | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 02) | |
| A reaction: A lovely thought. It is a huge effort for us to try to imagine a mental life without concepts. And then to express that mental life in words…..! |
| 19615 | I want to suppress in myself the normal reasons people have for action [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: I want to suppress in myself the reasons men invoke in order to exist, in order to act. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Gamut') | |
| A reaction: So much of our inner and moral life concerns not what we think or feel, but what we want to think or feel. The theory of action (if there can be such a thing) must account for these metareasons, which hover over us while we act. |
| 23071 | We could only be responsible if we had consented before birth to who we are [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: The problem of responsibility would have a meaning only if we had been consulted before our birth and had consented to be precisely who we are. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 06) | |
| A reaction: The question could still be asked retrospectively, like agreeing to be in an army into which you have been conscripted. People gripped by deeply anti-social desires would probably welcome the chance to become different. |
| 23070 | We morally dissolve if we spend time with excessive beauty [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Moral disintegration when we spend time in a place that is too beautiful: the self dissolves upon contact with paradise. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 06) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure whether that is true, but it is worth thinking about the value of experiences which are overwhelming. |
| 19628 | At a civilisation's peak values are all that matters, and people unconsciously live by them [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Epochs of apogee cultivate values for their own sake: life is only a means of realising them; the individual is not aware of living - he lives. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is a very Nietzschean thought. Mind you, a crazed and dangerous crowd exhibits the same absorption in simple values. |
| 19646 | Values don't accumulate; they are ruthlessly replaced [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Values do not accumulate: a generation contributes something new only by trampling on what was unique in the preceding generation. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 6 'We') | |
| A reaction: That may seem true for a Frenchman or a Romanian, but it doesn't feel true of British culture, which seems to me to have accumulated values over the last five hundred years. Before 1500 it seems to me to be a foreign country. We may be near the end! |
| 19614 | Lovers are hateful, apart from their hovering awareness of death [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: As for lovers, they would be hateful if among their grimaces the presentiment of death did not hover. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Gamut') | |
| A reaction: A nice existential corrective, if you were planning to build an ethical system around a rather sentimental idea of love! If you are not gripped by a latent fear that your beloved may die, I doubt whether you are in love. |
| 19634 | Man is never himself; he always aims at less than life, or more than life [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Able to live only beyond and short of life, man is a prey to two temptation: imbecility and sanctity: sub-man and superman, never himself. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 4 'Threat') | |
| A reaction: To me, Taoism embodies imbecility, and spiritual religions embody the superman idea. [This is not Nietzsche's übermensch]. |
| 19619 | To live authentically, we must see that philosophy is totally useless [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: We begin to live authentically only where philosophy ends, at its wreck, when we have understood its terrible nullity, when we have understood that it was futile to resort to it, that it is no help. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Farewell') | |
| A reaction: The existentialist dream of trying to find an 'authentic' way of life. That idea means nothing to me. You would need to be utterly immersed in the life of a community with which you identified to live authentically, and that life has almost vanished. |
| 19622 | The pointlessness of our motives and irrelevance of our gestures reveals our vacuity [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: When we realise that no human motive is compatible with infinity, and that no gesture is worth the trouble of making it, our heart, by its very beating, can no longer conceal its vacuity. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Disintoxication') | |
| A reaction: An interesting choice of reasons. Nihilism in comparison with infinity, and in comparison with the vastness of society? If you were immortal, and there were only fifty other humans, would that help? |
| 19617 | Evidence suggests that humans do not have a purpose [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: By all evidence, we are in the world to do nothing. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Militant') | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear what evidence there could be. Other animals are all enmeshed in a particular environment. As soon as homo sapiens left Africa, it became a baffling phenonomen. I'm not sure what an alligator is in the world for, either. |
| 19612 | The universe is dirty and fragile, as if a scandal in nothingness had produced its matter [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Everything which is done and undone in the universe bears the stamp of a filthy fragility, as if matter were the fruit of a scandal at the core of nothingness. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'The Reactionary') | |
| A reaction: A gloriously imagined idea, worthy of Shakespeare. By 'scandal' I suppose he implies that the universe is the bastard child of a horrible relationship. A prize exhibit for my 'Nihilism' collection. True nihilists, of course, don't write books. |
| 19604 | Unlike other creatures, mankind seems lost in nature [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Whereas all beings have their place in nature, man remains a metaphysically straying creature, lost in Life, a stranger to the Creation. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'The Indirect5') | |
| A reaction: Nice challenge to the Aristotelian idea that we can identify the nature and function of man, and derive an ethics from it. This idea seems to state the essence of existentialism, perhaps better than anything in Sartre. We should have stayed in Africa? |
| 19606 | We can only live because our imagination and memory are poor [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and our memory | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'The Key') | |
| A reaction: Does this mean that we should actually aspire to limit our imaginations and memories? Or are we mercifully intrinsically limited, so that massive intellectual ambition will do no harm? We should be told these things, Cioran! |
| 19601 | Life is now more dreaded than death [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: By dint of accumulating non-mysteries and monopolizing non-meanings, life inspires more dread than death; it is life which is the Great Unknown. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Variations') | |
| A reaction: This is the sort of remark we pay continental philosophers to make. |
| 23074 | In anxiety people cling to what reinforces it, because it is a deep need [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: In anxiety, a man clings to whatever can reinforce, can stimulate his providential discomfort: to try to cure him of it is to destroy his equilibrium, anxiety being the basis of his existence and his prosperity. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 09) | |
| A reaction: A report from the front line of the age of anxiety, on which I am not qualified to comment. I assume that some anxiety can be a good thing, like nerves before a public performance. |
| 19640 | No one is brave enough to say they don't want to do anything; we despise such a view [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: No one has the audacity to exclaim: 'I don't want to do anything!' - we are more indulgent with a murderer than with a mind emancipated from actions. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 6 'The Architect') | |
| A reaction: Perhaps this should be the anti-epigraph for this website. I've slogged away at this project for nineteen years, probably for no other reason than that inactivity appears to be wicked. If I abandoned it, I would invent another project. Sad. |
| 23069 | Fear cures boredom, because it is stronger [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Fear is the antidote to boredom: the remedy must be stronger than the disease. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 05) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that this is the motivation of people who indulge in dangerous sports. Maybe all that is need is something daunting, rather than frightening. |
| 19644 | History is the bloody rejection of boredom [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: History is the bloody product of the rejection of boredom. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 6 'Views') | |
| A reaction: How many absurd and horrible things have been done by people who could not stand being bored? But also, almost everything wonderful has the same source. How did Bach and Shakespeare and Rembrandt feel about boredom? |
| 19641 | If you lack beliefs, boredom is your martyrdom [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Ennui is the martyrdom of those who live and die for no belief. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 6 'Obsequies') |
| 23062 | It is better to watch the hours pass, than trying to fill them [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: I do nothing, granted. But I see the hours pass - which is better than trying to fill them. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 01) | |
| A reaction: As Nietzsche would have pointed out, this came from a man who regularly wrote books. It is, though, certainly worth asking whether the way we fill our time is better than doing nothing. |
| 19602 | You are stuck in the past if you don't know boredom [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: The man who knows nothing of ennui is still in the world's childhood. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Dislocation') | |
| A reaction: Boredom well may be the central experience of existentialism, rather than angst, or nihilism, or the temptations of suicide. |
| 19613 | It is pointless to refuse or accept the social order; we must endure it like the weather [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: It is equally futile to refuse or to accept the social order: we must endure its changes for the better or the worse with a despairing conformism, as we endure birth, love, the weather, and death. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'The Reactionary') |
| 19627 | Opportunists can save a nation, and heroes can ruin it [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Opportunists have saved nations; heroes have ruined them. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Defense') | |
| A reaction: Siegfried smashes the staff of Wotan. Napoleon looks like a hero, but he increasingly looks like the single most disastrous figure ever to have emerged in Europe. It took the Germans till 1940 to avenge what he did. |
| 19625 | The ideal is to impose a religion by force, and then live in doubt about its beliefs [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: To belong to a church uncertain of its god - after once imposing that god by fire and sword - should be the ideal of every detached mind. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Felicity') | |
| A reaction: I'm trying hard to think of an adequate response to this. I'll get back to you.... |
| 19605 | Despite endless suggestions, no one has found a goal for history [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: No one has found a valid goal for history; but everyone has proposed one. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'The Indirect') | |
| A reaction: This seems to be an attack on the Hegelian idea of destiny that suffused both marxism and fascism in the 1930s. |
| 19637 | History is wonderfully devoid of meaning [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: That History has no meaning is what should delight our hearts. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 5) | |
| A reaction: I have just read a history of the Wars of the Roses, and I wholeheartedly endorse Cioran's view. |
| 19610 | Religions see suicide as insubordination [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: If the religions have forbidden us to die by our own hand, it is because they saw that such practices set an example of insubordination which humiliated temples and gods alike. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Resources') | |
| A reaction: Has anyone ever committed suicide in a cathedral (even during a service)? How many bishops, cardinals, rabbis etc have committed suicide? It is not uncommon among priests in the lower echelons. |
| 19611 | No one has ever found a good argument against suicide [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: No church, no civil institution has as yet invented a single argument valid against suicide. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Resources') | |
| A reaction: Suicide in young people usually looks like an error of judgement (in quiet moments of history). You need more inductive evidence that life is going to be irremediably awful. But if life is fine but they choose suicide anyway, what can you say? |
| 19609 | If you have not contemplated suicide, you are a miserable worm [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: The man who has never imagined his own annihilation, who has not anticipated recourse to the rope, the bullet, poison, or the sea, is a degraded galley slave or a worm crawling upon the cosmic carrion. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1'Resources') | |
| A reaction: I guess by this date everyone in Paris had read Camus' 'The Myth of Sisyphus', so suicide was the main topic in the cafés. I sort of agree with it. The possibility of suicide is part of the examined life. |
| 23067 | Suicide is pointless, because it always comes too late [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: It's not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 02) | |
| A reaction: A neat thought, but unlikely to be true for those who commit suicide, which presumably results from a sustained and apparently incurable situation. |
| 19639 | We all need sexual secrets! [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Woe to those who have no sexual secrets! | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 6 'Wonders') |
| 19603 | Why is God so boring, and why does God resemble humanity so little? [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Why is God so dull, so feeble, so inadequately picturesque? Why does He lack interest, vigor, actuality and resemble us so little? Is there any image less anthropomorphic and more gratuitously remote? | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'The Devil') | |
| A reaction: This seems to be directed at those like Feuerbach who said that we had merely created God as a glorified image of humanity. |
| 19616 | As the perfect wisdom of detachment, philosophy offers no rivals to Taoism [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: China alone long since arrived at a refined wisdom superior to philosophy: Taoism surpasses all the mind has conceived by way of detachment. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Militant') | |
| A reaction: Personally I dislike Taoism, which seems to advocate a sort of suicide within life. But given Cioran's evident state of mind, I can see its attractions. If this country deteriorates any further [I write on 4th July 2016], I may turn to Taoism. |
| 19600 | When man abandons religion, he then follows new fake gods and mythologies [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Even when he turns from religion, man remains subject to it; depleting himself to create fake gods, he then feverishly adopts them: his need for fiction, for mythology triumphs over evidence and absurdity alike. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Genealogy') | |
| A reaction: Cioran had just lived through the high water mark of communism and fascism. I don't think modern atheists fit this description very well. |
| 19643 | A religion needs to motivate killings, and cannot tolerate rivals [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: A religion dies when it tolerates truths which exclude it; and the god in whose name one no longer kills is dead indeed. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 6 'Views') | |
| A reaction: I fear that in our time we have people who are killing in the name of their religion as a last resort to try to convince themselves that their religion is not dying. It is startlingly how religion can now be publicly mocked. Unthinkable 50 years ago. |
| 23063 | The first man obviously found paradise unendurable [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Paradise was unendurable, otherwise the first man would have adapted to it. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 01) | |
| A reaction: Seems a bit harsh. There was evidently one aspect that was missing (knowledge), and he was surprised to find himself ejected for wanting it. Like a holiday in a Mediterranean hotel, with good food. |
| 19623 | Circles of hell are ridiculous; all that matters is to be there [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: What a preposterous notion, to draw circles in hell, to make the intensity of the flames vary in its compartments, to hierarchise its torments! The important thing is to be there. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], '1 'La Perduta') |