54 ideas
| 8093 | Seek wisdom rather than truth; it is easier [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: To seek wisdom rather than truth. It is more within our grasp. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1797) | |
| A reaction: A nice challenge to the traditional goal of philosophy. The idea that we should 'seek truth' only seems to have emerged during the Reformation. The Greeks may well never have dreamed of such a thing. |
| 8095 | We must think with our entire body and soul [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: Everything we think must be thought with our entire being, body and soul. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1798) | |
| A reaction: Not just that thinking must be a whole-hearted activity, but that the very contents of our thinking will be better if it arises out of being a physical creature, and not just a disembodied reasoner. Maybe the bowels are not needed to analyse set theory. |
| 21887 | Derrida focuses on other philosophers, rather than on science [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: We should focus on other philosophers, and not on science. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21888 | Philosophy is just a linguistic display [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is entirely linguistic, and is a display. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21896 | Philosophy aims to build foundations for thought [Derrida, by May] |
| Full Idea: Derrida points out that the project of philosophy consists largely in attempting to build foundations for thought. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 1.04 | |
| A reaction: You would first need to be convinced that there could be such a thing as foundations for thinking. Derrida thinks the project is hopeless. I think of it more as building an ideal framework for thought. |
| 21893 | Philosophy is necessarily metaphorical, and its writing is aesthetic [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: All of philosophy is necessarily metaphorical, and hence aesthetic. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 8107 | The love of certainty holds us back in metaphysics [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: What stops or holds us back in metaphysics is a love of certainty. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1814) | |
| A reaction: This is a prominent truth from the age of Descartes, but may have diminished in the twenty-first century. The very best metaphysicians (e.g. Aristotle and Lewis) always end in a trail of dots when things become unsure. |
| 21892 | Interpretations can be interpreted, so there is no original 'meaning' available [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Because interpretations of texts can be interpreted, they can therefore have no 'original meaning'. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 20925 | Hermeneutics blunts truth, by conforming it to the interpreter [Derrida, by Zimmermann,J] |
| Full Idea: Derrida worried that hermeneutics blunts the disruptive power of truth by forcing it conform to the interpreter's mental horizon. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Jens Zimmermann - Hermeneutics: a very short introduction 3 'The heart' | |
| A reaction: Good heavens - I agree with Derrida. Very French, though, to see the value of truth in its disruptiveness. I tend to find the truth reassuring, but then I'm English. |
| 20934 | Hermeneutics is hostile, trying to overcome the other person's difference [Derrida, by Zimmermann,J] |
| Full Idea: Derrida described the hermeneutic impulse to understand another as a form of violence that seeks to overcome the other's particularity and unique difference. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Jens Zimmermann - Hermeneutics: a very short introduction App 'Derrida' | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure about 'violence', but Derrida was on to somethng here. The 'hermeneutic circle' sounds like a creepy process of absorption, where the original writer disappears in a whirlpool of interpretation. |
| 21895 | Structuralism destroys awareness of dynamic meaning [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Structuralism destroys awareness of dynamic meaning. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 8210 | Deconstructing philosophy gives the history of concepts, and the repressions behind them [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: To 'deconstruct' philosophy would be to think the structured genealogy of philosophy's concepts, but at the same time determine what this history has been able to dissimulate or forbid, making itself into history by this motivated repression. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (Implications [1967], p.5) | |
| A reaction: All of this type of philosophy is motivated by what I think of as (I'm afraid!) a rather adolescent belief that we are all being 'repressed', and that somehow, if we think hard enough, we can all become 'free', and then everything will be fine. |
| 8211 | The movement of 'différance' is the root of all the oppositional concepts in our language [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: The movement of 'différance', as that which produces different things, that which differentiates, is the common root of all the oppositional concepts that mark our language, such as sensible/intelligible, intuition/signification, nature/culture etc. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (Implications [1967], p.7) | |
| A reaction: 'Différance' is a word coined by Derrida, and his most famous concept. At first glance, the concept of a thing which is the source of all differentiation sounds like a fiction. |
| 6840 | Derrida came to believe in the undeconstructability of justice, which cannot be relativised [Derrida, by Critchley] |
| Full Idea: In Derrida's later work we find him moving explicitly towards a belief in the undeconstructability of justice, as he puts it, which is an overarching value that cannot be relativised. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (later work [1980]) by Simon Critchley - Interview with Baggini and Stangroom p.191 | |
| A reaction: A nice corrective to the standard Anglo-Saxon assumption that Derrida is an extreme (and stupid) relativist. The notion of 'undeconstructability' is nice, just as Descartes found an idea that resisted the blasts of scepticism. |
| 21934 | The idea of being as persistent presence, and meaning as conscious intelligibility, are self-destructive [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| Full Idea: The tradition of conceiving being in terms of persisting presence, and meaning in terms of pure intelligibility or logos potentially present to the mind, finds itself dismantled by resources internal to its own construction. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 6 | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Glendinning says this is the basic meaning of de-construction. My personal reading of this is that Aristotle is right, and grand talk of Being is hopeless, so we should just aim to understand objects. I also believe in propositions. |
| 21883 | Sincerity can't be verified, so fiction infuses speech, and hence reality also [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Sincerity can never be verified, so fiction infuses all speech, which means that reality is also fictional. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21882 | Sentences are contradictory, as they have opposite meanings in some contexts [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Sentences are implicitly contradictory, because they can be used differently in different contexts (most obviously in 'I am ill'). | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 8216 | Deconstruction is not neutral; it intervenes [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Deconstruction, I have insisted, is not neutral. It intervenes. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (Positions [1971], p.76) | |
| A reaction: This, I think, is because there is in Derrida, as in most French philosophers, a strong streak of Marxism, and a desire to change the world, rather than merely understanding it. Idea 8213 shows the sort of thing he wants to change. |
| 21881 | We aim to explore the limits of expression (as in Mallarmé's poetry) [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: The aim is to explore the limits of expression (which is what makes the poetry of Mallarmé so important). | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 8099 | The truths of reason instruct, but they do not illuminate [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: There are truths that instruct, perhaps, but they do not illuminate. In this class are all the truths of reasoning. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1800) | |
| A reaction: A rather romantic view, which strikes me as false. An inspiring truth can suddenly collapse when you see why it must be false. Equally a line of reasoning can lead to a truth which need becomes an illumination. |
| 8213 | I try to analyse certain verbal concepts which block and confuse the dialectical process [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: I have tried to analyse certain marks in writing which are undecidables, false verbal properties, which inhabit philosophical opposition, resisting and disorganising it, without ever constituting a third term, withour ever leaving room for a solution. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (Positions [1971], p.40) | |
| A reaction: [I have simplified his sentence!] Much of Derrida seems to be a commentary on the Hegelian dialectic, and the project is presumably to figure out why philosophy is not advancing in the way we would like. Interesting... |
| 8098 | Truth consists of having the same idea about something that God has [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: Truth consists of having the same idea about something that God has. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1800) | |
| A reaction: Presumably sceptics about the existence of objective truth must also be sceptical about the possibility of such a God. I think Joubert is close to the nature of truth here. It is a remote and barely imaginable ideal. |
| 4756 | Derrida says that all truth-talk is merely metaphor [Derrida, by Engel] |
| Full Idea: Derrida's view is that every discourse is metaphorical, and there is no difference between truth-talk and metaphor. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Pascal Engel - Truth §2.5 | |
| A reaction: Right. Note that this is a Frenchman's summary. How would one define metaphor, without mentioning that it is parasitic on truth? Certainly some language tries to be metaphor, and other language tries not to be. |
| 21877 | True thoughts are inaccessible, in the subconscious, prior to speech or writing [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: 'True' thoughts are inaccessible, buried in the subconscious, long before they get to speech or writing. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction | |
| A reaction: [My reading of some Derrida produced no quotations. I've read two commentaries, which were obscure. The Derrida ideas in this db are my simplistic tertiary summaries. Experts can chuckle over my failure] |
| 21889 | 'I' is the perfect name, because it denotes without description [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: 'I' is the perfect name, because it denotes without description. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21878 | Names have a subjective aspect, especially the role of our own name [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: We can give a subjective account of names, by considering our own name. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21879 | Even Kripke can't explain names; the word is the thing, and the thing is the word [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Even Kripke can't explain names, because the word is the thing, and also the thing is the word. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 8101 | To know is to see inside oneself [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: To know: it is to see inside oneself. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1800) | |
| A reaction: Extreme internalism about justification! Personally I am becoming convinced that 'know' (unlike 'believe' and 'true') is an entirely social concept. Fools spend a lot of time instrospecting; wise people ask around, and check in books. |
| 21890 | Heidegger showed that passing time is the key to consciousness [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Heidegger showed us the importance of transient time for consciousness. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 8094 | The imagination has made more discoveries than the eye [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: The imagination has made more discoveries than the eye. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1797) | |
| A reaction: As a fan of the imagination, I love this one. I suspect that imagination, which was marginalised by Descartes, is actually the single most important aspect of thought (in slugs as well as humans). Abstraction requires imagination. |
| 8103 | A thought is as real as a cannon ball [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: A thought is a thing as real as a cannon ball. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1801) | |
| A reaction: Nice. The realisation of a thought can strike someone as if they have been assaulted, and hearing some remarks can be as bad as being stabbed. That is quite apart from political consequences. Joubert is good on the physicality of thinking. |
| 21880 | 'Tacit theory' controls our thinking (which is why Freud is important) [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: All thought is controlled by tacit theory (which is why Freud is so important). | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction | |
| A reaction: This idea is said to be the essential thought of Derrida's Deconstruction. The aim is liberation of thought, by identifying and bypassing these tacit metaphysical schemas. |
| 8100 | Where does the bird's idea of a nest come from? [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: The idea of the nest in the bird's mind, where does it come from? | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1800) | |
| A reaction: I think this is a very striking example in support of innate ideas. Most animal behaviour can be explained as responses to stimuli, but the bird seems to hold a model in its mind while it collects its materials. |
| 21894 | Madness and instability ('the demonic hyperbole') lurks in all language [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Madness and instability ('the demonic hyperbole') lurks behind all language. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21932 | 'Différance' is the interwoven history of each sign [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| Full Idea: What Derrida calls 'différance' can be understood as the movement through which every sign is 'constituted historically as a weave of differences'....This replacement for 'speech' in the 'origin' of the system is to avoid the circularity in structuralism. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (Différance [1982]) by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 5 | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Struggling to grasp this. Some English words entirely change their meaning over time (e.g. buxom). Does the lost meaning remain part of the new meaning? If so, how? He also calls différance 'sameness which is not identical'. |
| 21886 | Meanings depend on differences and contrasts [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Meaning depends on 'differences' (contrasts). | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21930 | For Aristotle all proper nouns must have a single sense, which is the purpose of language [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: A noun [for Aristotle] is proper when it has but a single sense. Better, it is only in this case that it is properly a noun. Univocity is the essence, or better, the telos of language. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 5 | |
| A reaction: [no ref given] His target seem to be Aristotelian definition, and also formal logic, which usually needs unambiguous meanings. {I'm puzzled that he thinks 'telos' is simply better than 'essence', since it is quite different]. |
| 21884 | Capacity for repetitions is the hallmark of language [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: The capacity for repetitions is the hallmark of language. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21935 | The sign is only conceivable as a movement between elusive presences [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: The sign is conceivable only on the basis of the presence that it defers, and moving toward the deferred presence that it aims to reappropriate. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 6 | |
| A reaction: [Glendinning gives no source for this] I take the fundamental idea to be that meanings are dynamic, when they are traditionally understood as static (and specifiable in dictionaries). |
| 21933 | Writing functions even if the sender or the receiver are absent [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| Full Idea: Writing can and must be able to do without the presence of the sender. ...Also writing can and must he able to do without the presence of the receiver. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 6 | |
| A reaction: In simple terms, one of them could die during the transmission. This is the grounds for the assertion of the primacy of writing. It opposes orthodox views which define language in terms of sender and receiver. |
| 8212 | Everything that is experienced in consciousness is meaning [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: All experience is the experience of meaning (Sinn). Everything that appears to consciousness, everything that is for consciousness in general, is meaning. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (Semiology and Grammatology [1968], p.26) | |
| A reaction: This an assertion, from a quite different philosophical tradition, of the centrality of linguistic meaning in philosophy. It links with the centrality of intentionality in our understanding of the mind. |
| 21929 | Derrida focuses on ambiguity, but talks of 'dissemination', not traditional multiple meanings [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Derrida affirms something like an 'ambiguity of meaning'. But he explicitly contrasts the word he uses to characterize the phenomenon at issue, what he calls 'dissemination', with the traditional concept of 'polysemia' - multiple meanings. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (Of Grammatology [1967]), quoted by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 2 'After' | |
| A reaction: The point, I presume, is that there is vagueness and elision to the meanings, rather than a list of options, such as bank/bank. Context (sense-making paths) is crucial for Derrida. Can the analytic apparatus for the logic of vagueness be brought to bear? |
| 21931 | 'Dissemination' is opposed to polysemia, since that is irreducible, because of multiple understandings [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| Full Idea: The intention to oppose polysemia with dissemination does not aim to affirm that everything we say is ambiguous, but that polysemia is irreducible in the sense that each and every 'meaning' is itself subject to more than one understanding. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 5 | |
| A reaction: The key point, I think, is that ambiguity and polysemia are not failures of language (which is the way most logicians see it), but part of the essential and irreducible nature of language. Nietzsche started this line of thought. |
| 21885 | Words exist in 'spacing', so meanings are never synchronic except in writing [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Words only exist is 'spacings' (of time and space), so there are no synchronic meanings (except perhaps in writing). | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21891 | The good is implicitly violent (against evil), so there is no pure good [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Even the good is implicitly violent (against evil), so there can be no 'pure' good. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 8096 | He gives his body up to pleasure, but not his soul [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: He gives his body up to pleasure, but not his soul. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1799) | |
| A reaction: A rather crucial distinction in the world of hedonism. There seems something sincere about someone who pursues pleasure body and soul, and something fractured about the pursuit of pleasure without real commitment. The split seems possible. |
| 8104 | What will you think of pleasures when you no longer enjoy them? [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: What will you think of pleasures when you no longer enjoy them? | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1802) | |
| A reaction: A lovely test question for aspiring young hedonists! It doesn't follow at all that we will despise past pleasures. The judgement may be utilitarian - that we regret the pleasures that harmed others, but love the harmless ones. Shame is social. |
| 8097 | Virtue is hard if we are scorned; we need support [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: It would be difficult to be scorned and to live virtuously. We have need of support. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1800) | |
| A reaction: He seems to have hit on what I take to be one of the keys to Aristotle: that virtue is a social matter, requiring both upbringing and a healthy culture. But we can help to create that culture, as well as benefiting from it. |
| 21936 | A community must consist of singular persons, with nothing in common [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| Full Idea: In Derrida's modal reversal (where the only possible forgiveness is forgiving the unforgivable), the only possible community is the impossible community, which is a 'community of singularities' without anything in common. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (later work [1980]) by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 7 | |
| A reaction: Since this seems to go beyond multiculturalism, I can only see it as hyper-liberalism - that isolated individuals have an absolute status. Sounds like Nozick, but Derrida saw himself as a non-Marxist left-winger. |
| 21937 | Can there be democratic friendship without us all becoming identical? [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| Full Idea: The question is whether it is possible to think of a politics of democratic friendship that could free itself from the terrifying threat of homogenization. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (later work [1980]) by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 7 | |
| A reaction: Being terrified of people becoming all the same links Derrida to existentialist individualism. Is he just a linguistic existentialist, trying to free us from the tyranny of linguistic uniformity? |
| 8106 | In raising a child we must think of his old age [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: In raising a child we must think of his old age. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1809) | |
| A reaction: Very nice, and Aristotle would approve. If educators think much about the future, it rarely extends before the child's first job. We should be preparing good grand-parents, as well as parents and employees. Educate for retirement! |
| 8105 | We can't exactly conceive virtue without the idea of God [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: If we exclude the idea of God, it is impossible to have an exact idea of virtue. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1808) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that an 'exact' idea is impossible even with an idea of God. This is an interesting defence of the importance of God in moral thinking, but it only requires the concept of a supreme being, and not belief. |
| 8102 | We cannot speak against Christianity without anger, or speak for it without love [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: We cannot speak against Christianity without anger, or speak for it without love. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1801) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be rather true at the present time, when a wave of anti-religious books is sweeping through our culture. Presumably this remark used to be true of ancient paganism, but it died away. Christianity, though, is very personal. |
| 1513 | The Egyptians were the first to say the soul is immortal and reincarnated [Herodotus] |
| Full Idea: The Egyptians were the first to claim that the soul of a human being is immortal, and that each time the body dies the soul enters another creature just as it is being born. | |
| From: Herodotus (The Histories [c.435 BCE], 2.123.2) |