7 ideas
| 11193 | Understanding begins with the notion of being and essence [Avicenna] |
| Full Idea: Understanding begins with the notion of being and essence. | |
| From: Avicenna (Abu Ibn Sina) (Commentary on the Metaphysics [1022], 1/6), quoted by Thomas Aquinas - De Ente et Essentia (Being and Essence) p.91 | |
| A reaction: I think I might put it that wisdom is only really possible for people who aim to grasp being and essence in some way. I see no prospect of understanding 'being', and even essences may be forever just beyond our grasp. |
| 11209 | The simple's whatness is its very self [Avicenna] |
| Full Idea: The simple's whatness is its very self. | |
| From: Avicenna (Abu Ibn Sina) (Commentary on the Metaphysics [1022], 5.5), quoted by Thomas Aquinas - De Ente et Essentia (Being and Essence) p.103 | |
| A reaction: Aquinas endorses this Aristotelian view in Idea 11208. |
| 11204 | The ultimate material of things has the unity of total formlessness [Avicenna] |
| Full Idea: The ultimate material of things has the unity of total formlessness. | |
| From: Avicenna (Abu Ibn Sina) (Commentary on the Metaphysics [1022], 11/12.14), quoted by Thomas Aquinas - De Ente et Essentia (Being and Essence) | |
| A reaction: This remark is not invalidated by developments in modern particle physics. |
| 15036 | An essence can either be universal (in the mind) or singular (in concrete particulars) [Avicenna, by Panaccio] |
| Full Idea: Avicenna's 'indifference of essence' says the essence of certain things can become universal or singular, according to whether it is entertained by the mind (as a universal) or concretely exemplified as a singular thing. One essence can exist in two ways. | |
| From: report of Avicenna (Abu Ibn Sina) (Commentary on the Metaphysics [1022]) by Claude Panaccio - Medieval Problem of Universals 'Sources' | |
| A reaction: This would appear to be a form of nominalism, since in the concrete external world we only have particulars, and it is our mode of thinking (by abstraction?) that generates the universal aspect. I think this is probably right. |
| 20739 | Levinas took 'first philosophy' to begin with seeing the vulnerable faces of others [Levinas, by Aho] |
| Full Idea: Levinas forwarded a notion of 'ethics as first philosophy' that begins from the concete exposure and openness to 'the face' of the other, an experience of vulnerability and suffering that undercuts our ordinary egoistic and objectifying tendencies. | |
| From: report of Emmanuel Levinas (works [1956]) by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 1 'Existentialism' | |
| A reaction: Iris Murdoch speaks of seeing a falcon in flight as having a similar effect of diminishing the ego. If the main focus is on potential 'suffering' does this eventually cash out as utilitarianism? I bet not! |
| 20445 | Levinas says Marxism is the replacement of individualist ethics, by solidarity and sociality [Levinas, by Critchley] |
| Full Idea: For Levinas, Marxism is the absorption of the ethical in the socioeconomic, and so it is the disappearance of the face-to-face relation and the privileging of relations of solidarity and anonymous sociality, which he calls 'socialism'. | |
| From: report of Emmanuel Levinas (works [1956]) by Simon Critchley - Impossible Objects: interviews 1 | |
| A reaction: Startling, if you are not used to this sort of thing. If you are in trouble, I should help you, not because you are you, or a human being, but because you are a member of my group? So what about the Good Samaritan? Or solidarity with humanity? Animals? |
| 6005 | Animals are dangerous and nourishing, and can't form contracts of justice [Hermarchus, by Sedley] |
| Full Idea: Hermarchus said that animal killing is justified by considerations of human safety and nourishment and by animals' inability to form contractual relations of justice with us. | |
| From: report of Hermarchus (fragments/reports [c.270 BCE]) by David A. Sedley - Hermarchus | |
| A reaction: Could the last argument be used to justify torturing animals? Or could we eat a human who was too brain-damaged to form contracts? |