270 ideas
| 16395 | Kripke separated semantics from metaphysics, rather than linking them, making the latter independent [Kripke, by Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's contribution was not to connect metaphysical and semantic issues, but to separate them: to provide a context in which questions about essences of things could be posed independently of assumptions about semantic rules of reference. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Robert C. Stalnaker - Reference and Necessity Intro | |
| A reaction: In other words, Kripke set metaphysics free from the tyranny of Quine, and facilitated its modern rebirth. Bravo. |
| 17034 | Analyses of concepts using entirely different terms are very inclined to fail [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Philosophical analyses of some concept like reference, in completely different terms which make no mention of reference, are very apt to fail. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: Kripke consistently criticises analysic, and philosophical 'theories'. It is why he wanted a 'direct' theory of reference, with just you and the object. |
| 19767 | Reason leads to prudent selfishness, which overrules natural compassion [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Reason is what engenders egocentrism ...turns man in upon himself ...and separates him from all that troubles him and afflicts him. Philosophy is what ...moves him to say at the sight of a suffering man 'Perish if you will; I am safe and sound'. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: He goes on to observe that fights in the marketplace are stopped by women, while the philosophers have all run away! This thinking leads to the sentimental movement, and then to romanticism. |
| 19807 | Both nature and reason require that everything has a cause [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Under the law of reason nothing takes place without a cause, any more than under the law of nature. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.04) | |
| A reaction: Is this the influence of Leibniz? Note that the principle is identified in two different areas, so in nature we may say 'everything has a cause', and in rationality we may say 'there is a reason for everything'. But are these the same? |
| 4955 | Some definitions aim to fix a reference rather than give a meaning [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Some things called definitions really intend to fix a reference rather than to give the meaning of a phrase, to give a synonym. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: His example is pi. Some definitions relate to reality (e.g. ostensive definition), and others are part of a language game. But then some concepts are dictated to us by reality, and others are arbitrarily invented by us for convenience. |
| 15327 | Kripke's semantic theory has actually inspired promising axiomatic theories [Kripke, by Horsten] |
| Full Idea: Kripke has a semantic theory of truth which has inspired promising axiomatic theories of truth. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Outline of a Theory of Truth [1975]) by Leon Horsten - The Tarskian Turn 01.2 | |
| A reaction: Feferman produced an axiomatic version of Kripke's semantic theory. |
| 15343 | Kripke offers a semantic theory of truth (involving models) [Kripke, by Horsten] |
| Full Idea: One of the most popular semantic theories of truth is Kripke's theory. It describes a class of models which themselves involve a truth predicate (unlike Tarski's semantic theory). | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Outline of a Theory of Truth [1975]) by Leon Horsten - The Tarskian Turn 02.3 | |
| A reaction: The modern versions explored by Horsten are syntactic versions of this, derived from Feferman's axiomatisation of the Kripke theory. |
| 14966 | The Tarskian move to a metalanguage may not be essential for truth theories [Kripke, by Gupta] |
| Full Idea: Kripke established that, contrary to the prevalent Tarskian dogma, attributions of truth do not always force a move to a metalanguage. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Outline of a Theory of Truth [1975], 5.1) by Anil Gupta - Truth | |
| A reaction: [Gupta also cites Martin and Woodruff 1975] |
| 14967 | Certain three-valued languages can contain their own truth predicates [Kripke, by Gupta] |
| Full Idea: Kripke showed via a fixed-point argument that certain three-valued languages can contain their own truth predicates. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Outline of a Theory of Truth [1975]) by Anil Gupta - Truth | |
| A reaction: [Gupta also cites Martin and Woodruff 1975] It is an odd paradox that truth can only be included if one adds a truth-value of 'neither true nor false'. The proposed three-valued system is 'strong Kleene logic'. |
| 16328 | Kripke classified fixed points, and illuminated their use for clarifications [Kripke, by Halbach] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's main contribution was …his classification of the different consistent fixed points and the discussion of their use for discriminating between ungrounded sentences, paradoxical sentences, and so on. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Outline of a Theory of Truth [1975]) by Volker Halbach - Axiomatic Theories of Truth 15.1 |
| 10163 | Propositional modal logic has been proved to be complete [Kripke, by Feferman/Feferman] |
| Full Idea: At the age of 19 Saul Kripke published a completeness proof of propositional modal logic. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (A Completeness Theorem in Modal Logic [1959]) by Feferman / Feferman - Alfred Tarski: life and logic Int V |
| 10559 | Kripke's modal semantics presupposes certain facts about possible worlds [Kripke, by Zalta] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's modal semantics presupposes that worlds are maximal and consistent, that there is a unique actual world, and that worlds are coherent (e.g. lack contradiction, obey conjunction). | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Edward N. Zalta - Deriving Kripkean Claims with Abstract Objects |
| 16985 | Possible worlds allowed the application of set-theoretic models to modal logic [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: The main and the original motivation for the 'possible worlds analysis' - and the way it clarified modal logic - was that it enabled modal logic to be treated by the same set theoretic techniques of model theory used successfully in extensional logic. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity preface [1980], p.19 n18) | |
| A reaction: So they should be ascribed the same value that we attribute to classical model theory, whatever that is. |
| 10760 | With possible worlds, S4 and S5 are sound and complete, but S1-S3 are not even sound [Kripke, by Rossberg] |
| Full Idea: Kripke gave a possible worlds semantics to a whole range of modal logics, and S4 and S5 turned out to be both sound and complete with this semantics. Hence more systems could be designed. S1-S3 failed in soundness, leading to 'impossible worlds'. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (A Completeness Theorem in Modal Logic [1959]) by Marcus Rossberg - First-order Logic, 2nd-order, Completeness §4 |
| 16189 | The variable domain approach to quantified modal logic invalidates the Barcan Formula [Kripke, by Simchen] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's variable domain approach to quantified modal logic famously invalidates the Barcan Formula. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (A Completeness Theorem in Modal Logic [1959]) by Ori Simchen - The Barcan Formula and Metaphysics §3 | |
| A reaction: [p.9 and p.16] In a single combined domain all the possibilia must be present, but with variable domains objects in remote domains may not exist in your local domain. BF is committed to those possible objects. |
| 15132 | The Barcan formulas fail in models with varying domains [Kripke, by Williamson] |
| Full Idea: Kripke showed that the Barcan formula ∀x□A⊃□∀xA and its converse fail in models which require varying domains. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (A Completeness Theorem in Modal Logic [1959]) by Timothy Williamson - Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula §1 | |
| A reaction: I think this is why I reject the Barcan formulas for metaphysics - because the domain of metaphysics should be seen as varying, since some objects are possible in some contexts and not in others. Hmm… |
| 10437 | Names are rigid, making them unlike definite descriptions [Kripke, by Sainsbury] |
| Full Idea: It was important to Kripke to contrast the rigidity of names with the non-rigidity of many or most definite descriptions. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Mark Sainsbury - The Essence of Reference 18.6 | |
| A reaction: Philosophers always want sharp distinctions, but there are tricky names like 'Homer' and 'Jack the Ripper' where the name is stable, but its referent wobbles. |
| 4949 | Names are rigid designators, which designate the same object in all possible worlds [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: I will call something a 'rigid designator' if in every possible world it designates the same object, ..and I will maintain the intuitive thesis that names are rigid designators. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: The immediate problem seems to be objects that change across possible worlds. Did nature rigidly designate Aristotle (e.g. by his DNA)? Could Aristotle have been shorter, female, cleverer, his own twin? Is the River Thames rigid? |
| 4951 | A bundle of qualities is a collection of abstractions, so it can't be a particular [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: I deny that a particular is nothing but a 'bundle of qualities', whatever that may mean. If a quality is an abstract object, a bundle of qualities is an object of an even higher degree of abstraction, not a particular. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: Supports the 'baptism' view of reference, rather than Searle's bundle of descriptions. It shows that theories of reference must tie in with theories of universals, and that Searle is a nominalist. Is Kripke trying to duck metaphysical responsibility? |
| 17031 | A name can still refer even if it satisfies none of its well-known descriptions [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Suppose the vote yields no object, that nothing satisfies most, or even any, substantial number, of the φ's. Does that mean the name doesn't refer? No. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: As example he gives the case of 'Gödel' referring to the famous man, even if none of the descriptions of him are true. In Note 42 he blames the descriptivists for relying too much on famous people. |
| 9175 | We may fix the reference of 'Cicero' by a description, but thereafter the name is rigid [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: We may fix the reference of 'Cicero' by use of some descriptive phrase, such as 'author of these works'. But once we have this reference fixed, we then use the name 'Cicero' rigidly to designate the man who in fact we have identified by his authorship. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Identity and Necessity [1971], p.183) | |
| A reaction: Even supposedly rigid names can shift reference, as Evans's example of 'Madagascar' shows (Idea 9041). Reference is a much more social activity than Kripke is willing to admit. There is a 'tradition' of reference (Dummett) for the name 'Cicero'. |
| 8957 | Some references, such as 'Neptune', have to be fixed by description rather than baptism [Kripke, by Szabó] |
| Full Idea: Kripke explicitly allows for the introduction of names through initial reference-fixing via descriptions. Versions of the causal theory of reference that disallow this would have a difficult time explaining how the name 'Neptune' came to refer. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Zoltán Gendler Szabó - Nominalism 4.2 n35 | |
| A reaction: The initial reference to Neptune has to be by description, but you could still give a baptismal account once it is discovered. The direct contact now takes precedence. Suppose another similar planet was found nearby... |
| 9171 | The function of names is simply to refer [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: The function of names is simply to refer. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Identity and Necessity [1971], p.167) | |
| A reaction: This is Kripke reverting to the John Stuart Mill view of names. If I say "you are a right Casanova" I don't simply refer to Casanova. In notorious examples like 'Homer' reference is fine, but the object of reference is a bit elusive. |
| 10428 | Proper names must have referents, because they are not descriptive [Kripke, by Sainsbury] |
| Full Idea: A common source of the view that proper names must have referents is that they are not descriptive (as expressed by Kripke). | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Mark Sainsbury - The Essence of Reference 18.2 | |
| A reaction: Sainsbury observes that there might be some other way for a name to be intelligible, with describing or referring. |
| 4959 | A name's reference is not fixed by any marks or properties of the referent [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: It is in general not the case that the reference of a name is determined by some uniquely identifying marks, some unique properties satisfied by the referent and known or believed to be true of that referent by the speaker. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: He is proposing, instead, his historical/causal theory. There does seem to be a problem with objects which have a historical 'baptism', and then entirely change their properties. Kripke us desperate for a simple account of reference. |
| 16982 | A man has two names if the historical chains are different - even if they are the same! [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Two totally distinct 'historical chains' that be sheer accident assign the same name to the same man should probably count as creating distinct names despite the identity of the referents. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity preface [1980], p.08 n9) | |
| A reaction: A nice puzzle for his own theory. 'What's you name?' 'Alice, and Alice!' |
| 18946 | Unreflectively, we all assume there are nonexistents, and we can refer to them [Reimer] |
| Full Idea: As speakers of the language, we unreflectively assume that there are nonexistents, and that reference to them is possible. | |
| From: Marga Reimer (The Problem of Empty Names [2001], p.499), quoted by Sarah Sawyer - Empty Names 4 | |
| A reaction: Sarah Swoyer quotes this as a good solution to the problem of empty names, and I like it. It introduces a two-tier picture of our understanding of the world, as 'unreflective' and 'reflective', but that seems good. We accept numbers 'unreflectively'. |
| 10792 | The substitutional quantifier is not in competition with the standard interpretation [Kripke, by Marcus (Barcan)] |
| Full Idea: Kripke proposes that the substitutional quantifier is not a replacement for, or in competition with, the standard interpretation. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (A Problem about Substitutional Quantification? [1976]) by Ruth Barcan Marcus - Nominalism and Substitutional Quantifiers p.165 |
| 14896 | Kripke's metaphysics (essences, kinds, rigidity) blocks the slide into sociology [Kripke, by Ladyman/Ross] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's metaphysics of essences, natural kinds, and rigid designation gave philosophers a means of avoiding the relativist path that was bound to end in the tears of sociology. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by J Ladyman / D Ross - Every Thing Must Go 1.2 | |
| A reaction: They are contemptuous of Kripke's project, but this is the core of it. He was making a stand against Kuhn, and trying to build a metaphysics for realism. Good for Kripke. |
| 17000 | We might fix identities for small particulars, but it is utopian to hope for such things [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Maybe strict identity only applies to the particulars (the molecules) in a case of vague identity. …It seems, however, utopian to suppose that we will ever reach a level of ultimate, basic particulars for which identity relations are never vague. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity notes and addenda [1972], note 18) | |
| A reaction: I agree with this. Ladyman and Ross laugh at the unscientific picture found in dreams of 'simples'. |
| 17647 | Kripke individuates objects by essential modal properties (and presupposes essentialism) [Kripke, by Putnam] |
| Full Idea: The difficulty is that Kripke individuates objects by their modal properties, by what they (essentially) could and could not be. Kripke's ontology presupposes essentialism; it can not be used to ground it. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Hilary Putnam - Why there isn't a ready-made world 'Essences' |
| 16995 | Given that a table is made of molecules, could it not be molecular and still be this table? [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: This table is composed of molecules. …Could anything be this very object and not be composed of molecules? …It's hard to imagine under what circumstances you would have this very object and find that it is not composed of molecules. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: This is the thesis of essentiality of constitution. Given that it is square, might it have been round? Yes. Given that it is wood, might it have been metal? No? Given that it is molecular, might it have been plasma? No. ….Maybe. |
| 17047 | If we imagine this table made of ice or different wood, we are imagining a different table [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Though we can imagine a table identical to this one in this room, but made of ice (or different wood), it seems to me that this is not to imagine this table as made of ice, but to imagine another table, resembling this one, made of ice. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: This is the Necessity of Constitution thesis, which I doubt. Might this table have had one leg different? Why not? Then you have a Ship of Theseus question. How much could be different? How much of the constitution is necessary? |
| 11868 | A different piece of wood could have been used for that table; constitution isn't identity [Wiggins on Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Could the artificer not, when he made the table, have taken other pieces? Surely he could. [n37: I venture to think that Kripke's argument in note 56 for the necessity of constitution depends on treating constitution as if it were identity]. | |
| From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity notes and addenda [1972], note 56) by David Wiggins - Sameness and Substance Renewed 4.11 | |
| A reaction: Suppose the craftsman completed the table, then changed a piece of wood in it for some reason. Has he now made a second table and destroyed the first one? Wiggins seems to be right. |
| 5450 | For Kripke, essence is origin; for Putnam, essence is properties; for Wiggins, essence is membership of a kind [Kripke, by Mautner] |
| Full Idea: Kripke makes the origin of an organism essential to it, according to Putnam the fundamental physical properties of a thing are essential, Wiggins sees an organism's essence in belonging to a particular kind, etc. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Thomas Mautner - Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy p.179 | |
| A reaction: This is helpful for seeing where the problems remain, if you embrace essentialism (as I feel inclined to do). It is vital to remember Putnam's point, that we could suddenly discover that cats are alien robots. This seems to undermine Kripke and Wiggins. |
| 17055 | Atomic number 79 is part of the nature of the gold we know [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: It is part of the nature of gold as we have it to be an element with atomic number 79. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: The word 'nature' directly invokes Aristotle's concept of an essence. Scientific essentialism arises from the idea that by discovering the atomic number, we have somehow 'arrived' at the essence, and enquiry is reaching its terminus. |
| 16997 | An essential property is true of an object in any case where it would have existed [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: When we think of a property as essential to an object we usually mean that it is true of that object in any case where it would have existed. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to equate essence with necessary properties, which is the view attacked nicely be Fine in 1994. I take essence (in Aristotle's sense) to be quite different from necessary properties (in being non-trivial, for example). |
| 17045 | De re modality is an object having essential properties [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: De re modality is an object having essential properties. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: [Plucked out of context] It is because Kripke says there are necessities about things, and not just about statements about things, that he has caused a revival of essentialism. Fine has famously said modality depends on essence. |
| 17030 | Important properties of an object need not be essential to it [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Important properties of an object need not be essential, unless 'importance' is used as a synonym for essence. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: Kripke's examples are the writings of Aristotle and the actions of Hitler, but these don't strike me as being 'properties' of those people. They are not intrinsic. Kripke, of course, is concerned with how we identify them, not who they actually are. |
| 16955 | Kripke says internal structure fixes species; I say it is genetic affinity and a common descent [Kripke, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Kripke stresses that membership of a single animal species requires identity or similarity of internal structure. In my view, what matters is genetic affinity - a common descent. Internal structure is merely a clue. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Michael Dummett - Could There Be Unicorns? 2 | |
| A reaction: The crucial test question would be whether we can make a tiger artificially (even constructing the DNA). I would say that if you make a tiger, that's a tiger, so Kripke is right and Dummett is wrong. The species is what it is, not where it came from. |
| 16996 | Given that Nixon is indeed a human being, that he might not have been does not concern knowledge [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Suppose Nixon actually turned out to be an automaton. That might happen. But that is a question about our knowledge. The question of whether he might not have been a human being, given that he is one, is not a question about knowledge. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: Given that you are sitting, might you be standing? Yes. Given that you are human, might you be non-human? No. Maybe! |
| 13971 | Kripke claims that some properties, only knowable posteriori, are known a priori to be essential [Kripke, by Soames] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's first (good) route to the necessary a posteriori is based on the idea that certain properties of objects that they can be known to have only a posteriori, may be known a priori to be essential properties of anything that has them. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Scott Soames - Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori p.180 | |
| A reaction: Interesting, and a key issue. I think this is precisely where I disagree with the Kripkean view of necessities. Logicians want to know a priori what is essential for identity, but scientists want to know what makes things tick. See Kripke on pain. |
| 12100 | An essence is the necessary properties, derived from an intuitive identity, in origin, type and material [Kripke, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: For Kripke an object's essence simply consists of its necessary properties. ...His essential properties of individual objects follow from our intuitions about their identity. ...They are of three sorts: of origin, of sortals, and of material. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle 6 n3 | |
| A reaction: This is because Kripke is only interested in identity, whereas Aristotle is interested in explanation. The sorts are efficient, formal, material. Big Q: could Aristotle's account of essence do all the work that is required of essences by Kripke? |
| 16991 | No one seems to know the identity conditions for a material object (or for people) over time [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Adequate necessary and sufficient conditions for identity which do not beg the question are very rare. …I don't know of such conditions for identity of material objects over time, or for people. Everyone knows what a problem this is. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: Typical of Kripke, who only seems to commit to conclusions suggested to him by his modal logic, and is baffled by almost everything else. I think one can at least attempt an essentialist approach to this problem. |
| 11867 | If we lose track of origin, how do we show we are maintaining a reference? [Kripke, by Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps Kripke's argument for the necessity to a thing of its actual origin is that the speculator has to be able to rebut the charge that he has lost his grasp of his subject of discourse if he conceives of this subject with changed parents or origin. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by David Wiggins - Sameness and Substance Renewed 4.10 | |
| A reaction: On the whole Wiggins opposes necessity of origin (cf. Forbes, who defends it). If this idea is right, then any means of ensuring reference will do the job, and it clearly wouldn't be an argument that guaranteed necessity of origin. |
| 12018 | Kripke argues, of the Queen, that parents of an organism are essentially so [Kripke, by Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: If we generalise what Kripke says about the Queen, then he is arguing that the parents of any organism are essentially the parents of that organism. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Graeme Forbes - The Metaphysics of Modality 6.1 | |
| A reaction: It strikes me that we have to be extremely careful in specifying what it is that Kripke is saying. I take it that either Kripke is saying something rather uninteresting, or he is saying what Forbes suggests. Parenthood is essential, not just necessary. |
| 17046 | Could the actual Queen have been born of different parents? [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Could the Queen - could this woman herself - have been born of different parents from the parents from whom she actually came? | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: Tricky! No, because the past is fixed? Could the Queen have visited Russia when she was 20? I suppose so. Might she not have had parents, given who she is? I don't see why not. Could this desk have been made by someone else? Why not? |
| 8274 | Socrates can't have a necessary origin, because he might have had no 'origin' [Lowe on Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Against Kripke's thesis of 'necessity of origin' I will just point out the intuitive force of the claim that Socrates - that very person - could, logically, have had no beginning to his existence at all, or have come into existence ex nihilo. | |
| From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], p.110-) by E.J. Lowe - The Possibility of Metaphysics 6.5 | |
| A reaction: It also strikes me that one base-pair difference in his DNA (by a mutation, or a fractionally different parent) would still leave him as Socrates. People are not good candidates for 'rigid' designation. Counterparts seems a better account here. |
| 16981 | With the necessity of self-identity plus Leibniz's Law, identity has to be an 'internal' relation [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: It is clear from (x)□(x=x) and Leibniz's Law that identity is an 'internal' relation: (x)(y)(x=y ⊃ □x=y). What pairs (w,y) could be counterexamples? Not pairs of distinct objects, …nor an object and itself. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity preface [1980], p.03) | |
| A reaction: I take 'internal' to mean that the necessity of identity is intrinsic to the item(s), and not imposed by some other force. |
| 17044 | A relation can clearly be reflexive, and identity is the smallest reflexive relation [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers have thought that a relation, being essentially two-termed, cannot hold between a thing and itself. This position is plainly absurd ('he is his own worst enemy'). Identity is nothing but the smallest reflexive relation. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity notes and addenda [1972], note 50) | |
| A reaction: I have no idea what 'smallest' means here. I can't be 'to the left of myself', so not all of my relations can be reflexive. I just don't understand what it means to say something is 'identical with itself'. You've got the thing - what have you added? |
| 17036 | Identity statements can be contingent if they rely on descriptions [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: If the man who invented bifocals was the first Postmaster General of the United States - that they were one and the same - it's contingently true. …So when you make identity statements using descriptions, that can be a contingent fact. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) |
| 17038 | If Hesperus and Phosophorus are the same, they can't possibly be different [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: If Hesperus and Phosphorus are one and the same, then in no other possible world can they be different. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: If we ask whether one object could possibly be two objects, and deny that possibility, then Kripke's novel thought seems just right and obvious. |
| 4942 | The indiscernibility of identicals is as self-evident as the law of contradiction [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: It seems to me that the Leibnizian principle of the indiscernibility of identicals (not to be confused with the identity of indiscernibles) is as self-evident as the law of contradiction. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity preface [1980], p.03) | |
| A reaction: This seems obviously correct, as it says no more than that a thing has whatever properties it has. If a difference is discerned, either you have made a mistake, or it isn't identical. |
| 16999 | A vague identity may seem intransitive, and we might want to talk of 'counterparts' [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: When the identity relation is vague, it may seem intransitive; a claim of apparent identity may yield an apparent non-identity. Some sort of 'counterpart' notion may have some utility here. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity notes and addenda [1972], note 18) | |
| A reaction: He firmly rejects the full Lewis apparatus of counterparts. The idea would be that a river at different times had counterpart relations, not strict identity. I like the word 'same' for this situation. Most worldly 'identity' is intransitive. |
| 11880 | Kripke says his necessary a posteriori examples are known a priori to be necessary [Kripke, by Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Kripke claims that all of his examples of the necessary a posteriori have the characteristic that we can know a priori that if they are true, they are necessarily true. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], 159) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been 1.4 | |
| A reaction: That is, it seems, that they are not really necessary a posteriori! The necessity seems to only arrive with the addition of a priori judgements, thus endorsing the traditional view that necessity is only derivable a priori. Hm. |
| 17058 | What many people consider merely physically necessary I consider completely necessary [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: My third lecture suggests that a good deal of what contemporary philosophy regards as mere physical necessity is actually necessary tout court. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity notes and addenda [1972], Add (g)) | |
| A reaction: He avoids the term 'metaphysically necessary', which most people would not use for this point. |
| 4797 | Instead of being regularities, maybe natural laws are the weak a posteriori necessities of Kripke [Kripke, by Psillos] |
| Full Idea: By defending a posteriori necessary statements, Kripke introduced the concept of a necessity in nature that was weaker than logical necessity; ..as a result, the dominant view of laws as mere regularities started to be seriously challenged. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §6.1 | |
| A reaction: Most of Kripke's examples of discovered necessities seem to be identities, which seem to be as strong as any logical necessity. I'm not sure I can make sense of a 'less strong necessity'. Necessity sounds all-or-nothing to me. |
| 4970 | What is often held to be mere physical necessity is actually metaphysical necessity [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: My third lecture suggests that a good deal of what contemporary philosophy regards as mere physical necessity is actually necessary 'tout court'. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity notes and addenda [1972], Add (g)) | |
| A reaction: This huge claim rides in on the back of Kripke's very useful clarifications. It is the 'new essentialism', and seems to me untenable in this form. There is no answer to Hume's request for evidence of necessity. Why can't essences (and laws) change? |
| 17037 | Physical necessity may be necessity in the highest degree [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Physical necessity might turn out to be necessity in the highest degree. But that's a question which I don't wish to prejudge. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: Presumably necessity 'in the highest degree' is 'metaphysical' necessity, but Kripke is a bit coy about that. This is the germ of modern scientific essentialism. |
| 17059 | Unicorns are vague, so no actual or possible creature could count as a unicorn [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: If the unicorn myth is supposed to be a particular species, with insufficient internal structure to determine it uniquely, then there is no actual or possible species of which we can say that it would have been the species of unicorns. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity notes and addenda [1972], Add (a)) | |
| A reaction: Dummett and Rumfitt discuss this proposal elsewhere. |
| 16984 | I don't think possible worlds reductively reveal the natures of modal operators etc. [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: I do not think of 'possible worlds' as providing a reductive analysis in any philosophically significant sense, that is, as uncovering the ultimate nature, from either an epistemological or a metaphysical view, of modal operators, propositions etc. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity preface [1980], p.19 n18) | |
| A reaction: I think this remark opens the door for Kit Fine's approach, of showing what modality is by specifying its sources. Possible worlds model the behaviour of modal inferences. |
| 4728 | Kripke separates necessary and a priori, proposing necessary a posteriori and contingent a priori examples [Kripke, by O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: It is now recognised that the apriori and the necessary don't always have to go together, ..and Kripke has suggested examples of necessary-aposteriori and contingent-apriori beliefs. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: The simple point is that whether something is necessary or contingent is a quite separate question from how we come to know that they are. There isn't a new mode of reality called 'necessary a posteriori'. |
| 16990 | A priori = Necessary because we imagine all worlds, and we know without looking at actuality? [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: People think 'necessary' and 'a priori' mean the same for two reasons: we can assess what is feasible in all possible world by running them through our heads, and something known a priori avoids looking at the world, so it must be necessary. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Kripke denies this doctrine, and pulls the concepts apart. Kant seems to be the chief representative of the view he is attacking. Hossack defends the older view. |
| 9386 | The meter is defined necessarily, but the stick being one meter long is contingent a priori [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: In 'one meter is the length of stick S at t', one designator (one meter) is rigid and the other (length of S at t) is not. 'S is one meter long at t' is contingent, as it could have a different length. In this sense, there are contingent a priori truths. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: [very compressed] Not convincing. He is proposing that a truth is knowable a priori, though knowledge of it is utterly dependent on a ceremony having taken place. It would not be true if that event hadn't taken place, so how can be it be known a priori? |
| 9385 | The very act of designating of an object with properties gives knowledge of a contingent truth [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: If a speaker introduced a designator into a language by a ceremony, then in virtue of his very linguistic act, he would be in a position to say 'I know that Fa', but nevertheless 'Fa' would be a contingent truth (provided F is not an essential property). | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity preface [1980], p.14) | |
| A reaction: If someone else does the designation, I seem to have contingent knowledge that the ceremony has taken place. You needn't experience the object, but you must experience the ceremony, even if you perform it. |
| 4960 | "'Hesperus' is 'Phosphorus'" is necessarily true, if it is true, but not known a priori [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: An identity statement between names (such as 'Hesperus' and 'Phosphorus'), when true at all, is necessarily true, even though one may not know it a priori. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: This seems correct, but one should not read too much into it. What should we say if Venus fissions into two, one for the morning, one for the evening? That identity implies x=x doesn't prove the existence of unchanging essences. |
| 4966 | Theoretical identities are between rigid designators, and so are necessary a posteriori [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Theoretical identities, according to the conception I advocate, are generally identities involving rigid designators and therefore are examples of the necessary a posteriori. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't open up a huge new realm of a posteriori necessity. We just cured some of our ignorance. I remain unconvinced that the Morning Star is necessarily the Evening Star, except in the boring way that if it is, it is. Venus could fission. |
| 9174 | It is necessary that this table is not made of ice, but we don't know it a priori [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Although the statement that this table (if it exists at all) was not made of ice, is necessary, it certainly is not something that we know a priori. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Identity and Necessity [1971], p.180) | |
| A reaction: One of the key thoughts in modern philosophy. Kit Fine warns against treating it as a new and exciting toy, but it is a new and exciting toy. Scientific essentialism, which I so want to be true, is built on this proposal. |
| 2408 | Kripke has demonstrated that some necessary truths are only knowable a posteriori [Kripke, by Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Kripke has demonstrated the existence of necessary truths such as "water is H2O" whose necessity is only knowable a posteriori. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by David J.Chalmers - The Conscious Mind 2.4.2 |
| 13967 | Kripke's essentialist necessary a posteriori opened the gap between conceivable and really possible [Soames on Kripke] |
| Full Idea: With Kripke's essentialist route to the necessary a posteriori came a sharp distinction between conceivability and genuine possibility - ways things could conceivably be versus ways things could really be (or have been). | |
| From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Scott Soames - Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori p.167 | |
| A reaction: A key idea, for me. I love 'could there be a bonfire on the moon?' Imagining it is easy-peasy. 'Could wood combine with oxygen when there is no oxygen present?' We imagined it all right, but did we 'conceive' it? |
| 13970 | Kripke gets to the necessary a posteriori by only allowing conceivability when combined with actuality [Kripke, by Soames] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's first (superior) route to necessary a posteriori has a sharp distinction between how the universe could conceivably and really be. ..On this picture conceivability is a fallible but useful guide, when combined with knowledge of actuality. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Scott Soames - Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori p.168 | |
| A reaction: [compressed from p.168 and 170] To dismiss conceivability is ridiculous (see Williamson on that), and this formula of Soames sound right. To understand possibility, you have to study actuality (across time and space). Study history! |
| 4943 | Instead of talking about possible worlds, we can always say "It is possible that.." [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: We should remind ourselves the 'possible worlds' terminology can always be replaced by modal talk, such as "It is possible that…" | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity preface [1980], p.15) | |
| A reaction: Coming from an originator of the possible worlds idea, this is a useful reminder that we don't have to get too excited about the ontological commitments involved. It may be just a 'way to talk', and hence a tool, rather than a truth about reality. |
| 4950 | Possible worlds are useful in set theory, but can be very misleading elsewhere [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: The apparatus of possible worlds has (I hope) been very useful as far as the set-theoretic model-theory of quantified modal logic is concerned, but has encouraged philosophical pseudo-problems and misleading pictures. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity notes and addenda [1972], note 15) | |
| A reaction: This is presumably a swipe at David Lewis, who claims possible worlds are real. The fact that the originator of possible worlds sees them as unproblematic doesn't mean they are. Fine if they are a game, but if they assert truth, they need a metaphysics. |
| 16992 | Possible worlds aren't puzzling places to learn about, but places we ourselves describe [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: A possible world isn't a distant country that we are coming across, or viewing through a telescope. …A possible world is given by the descriptive conditions we associate with it. …Possible worlds are stipulated, not discovered by powerful telescopes. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: His point is that it is absurd to be puzzling over the identity of what exists in some possible world, because the world is specified by us. If I say 'Nixon might have been a frog', I must be referring to Nixon. The problem is whether it is true. |
| 16983 | Probability with dice uses possible worlds, abstractions which fictionally simplify things [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: In studying probabilities with dice, we are introduced at a tender age to a set of 36 (miniature) possible worlds, if we (fictively) ignore everything except the two dice. …The possibilities are abstract states of the dice, not physical entities. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity preface [1980], p.16) | |
| A reaction: Interesting for the introduction by the great man of the words 'fictional' and 'abstract' into the discussion. He says elsewhere that he takes worlds to be less than real, but more than mere technical devices. |
| 16993 | If we discuss what might have happened to Nixon, we stipulate that it is about Nixon [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: There is no reason why we cannot stipulate that, in talking about what would have happened to Nixon in a certain counterfactual situation, we are talking about what would have happened to HIM. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: For many people (including me now, I think) this lays to rest the supposed problem of 'transworld identity' wrestled with by Kaplan and Lewis. |
| 16998 | Transworld identification is unproblematic, because we stipulate that we rigidly refer to something [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: It is because we refer (rigidly) to Nixon, and stipulate that we are speaking of what might have happened to him (under certain circumstances), that 'transworld identifications' are unproblematic in such cases. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: This responds to those who say you need transworld identification before you can rigidly designate something, which has 'reversed the cart and horse' says Kripke. Nice. |
| 17001 | A table in some possible world should not even be identified by its essential properties [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: A table should not be identified with the set or 'bundle' of its properties, nor with the subset of its essential properties. Don't ask: how can I identify this table in another possible world, except by its properties? I have the table in my hands. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: You identify the table by what's in front of you, but the essence might be relevant to deciding how far this table could change and remain this table. |
| 4952 | Identification across possible worlds does not need properties, even essential ones [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Some properties of an object may be essential to it, in that it could not have failed to have them. But these properties are not used to identify the object in another possible world, for such an identification is not needed. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: So how DO you identify objects in other possible worlds, or in this one? You may say he was baptised 'Aristotle' so that's rigid, but if Athens is full of pseudo-Aristotles I want to pick out the real one. I say Kripke muddles epistemology and ontology. |
| 7761 | Test for rigidity by inserting into the sentence 'N might not have been N' [Kripke, by Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Kripke offers an intuitive test for telling whether a term is rigid: try the term in the sentence-frame "N might not have been N". (For example, try the terms 'Nixon' and 'President of the USA'). | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by William Lycan - Philosophy of Language Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: Helpful, but if you try it, the results do not seem to be conclusive. You are left saying 'Well, it depends what you mean by...' Think of possible worlds with a crippled Nixon, twin Nixons, an honest Nixon, a robot Nixon, a dark skinned Nixon... |
| 7693 | Kripke avoids difficulties of transworld identity by saying it is a decision, not a discovery [Kripke, by Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: Objects we find in the actual world might have been so different than they actually are that it appears impossible to identify the same objects from world to world. Kripke sidesteps the problem by saying transworld identity is a decision, not a discovery. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Dale Jacquette - Ontology Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This is the strategy that opposes Lewis's proposal of 'counterpart' objects that have properties in common. It is also the source of Kripke's causal theory of reference, and hence a key to massive modern debates. |
| 5821 | Saying that natural kinds are 'rigid designators' is the same as saying they are 'indexical' [Kripke, by Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's doctrine that natural kind words are rigid designators and our doctrine that they are indexical are two ways of making the same point. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Hilary Putnam - Meaning and Reference p.161 | |
| A reaction: I think I prefer Putnam's terminology, because it is more modest in its claims Kripke gets into trouble when a natural kind in some other possible world is only subtly different from the original. How 'rigid'? Putnam sticks to how the word gets started. |
| 14068 | If Kripke names must still denote a thing in a non-actual situation, the statue isn't its clay [Gibbard on Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Kripke gives an account of proper names from which it follows that Goliath (the statue) cannot be identical the lumpl (the clay), ..because if a proper name denotes a thing in the actual world, then it denotes that same thing in non-actual situations. | |
| From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Allan Gibbard - Contingent Identity III | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a powerful criticism of Kripke's claim - and has led to extensive discussion which I will now have to pursue. Watch this space. |
| 10436 | A rigid expression may refer at a world to an object not existing in that world [Kripke, by Sainsbury] |
| Full Idea: In the Kripkean perspective, rigidity is understood in such a way that an expression may have as referent at a world an object which does not exist at that world. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Mark Sainsbury - The Essence of Reference 18.6 | |
| A reaction: This means that 'the present King of France' is a rigid designator. |
| 4953 | We do not begin with possible worlds and place objects in them; we begin with objects in the real world [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: We do not begin with worlds (which are supposed somehow to be real), and then ask about criteria of transworld identification; on the contrary, we begin with objects, which we have, and can identify, in the real world. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: This gives us clearly Kripke's underlying empiricist metaphysics, I take it. I find the realism of it appealing, but am uneasy about the idea of an object as basic, when Heraclitus said that they tend to fluctuate. Platonism waits in the wings. |
| 4961 | It is a necessary truth that Elizabeth II was the child of two particular parents [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: How could a person originating from different parents, from a totally different sperm and egg, be this very woman (Elizabeth II)? ..It seems to me that anything coming from a different origin would not be this very object. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: Since baby Elizabeth could have been smuggled into the palace in a bedpan, it seems to me that her properties now are rather more obvious than her origin. I fear the only necessity here is that you can't change the past. An intriguing puzzle. |
| 9172 | A 'rigid designator' designates the same object in all possible worlds [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: By 'rigid designator' I mean a term that designates the same object in all possible worlds. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Identity and Necessity [1971]) | |
| A reaction: I am persistently troubled by the case of objects which are slightly different in another possible world. Does 'Aristotle' refer to him as young or old? Might the very same man have had a mole on his cheek? |
| 9173 | We cannot say that Nixon might have been a different man from the one he actually was [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: It seems that we cannot say "Nixon might have been a different man from the man he in fact was", unless we mean it metaphorically. He might have been a different sort of person. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Identity and Necessity [1971], p.176) | |
| A reaction: The problem is that being a 'different sort of person' could become more and more drastic, till Nixon is unrecognisable. I don't see how I can stipulate that a small and dim mouse is Richard Nixon, even in a possible world with magicians. |
| 17003 | Kaplan's 'Dthat' is a useful operator for transforming a description into a rigid designation [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: It is useful to have an operator which transforms each description into a term which rigidly designates the object actually satisfying the description. David Kaplan has proposed such an operator and calls it 'Dthat'. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity notes and addenda [1972], note 22) |
| 9176 | Modal statements about this table never refer to counterparts; that confuses epistemology and metaphysics [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Statements about the modal properties of this table never refer to counterparts. However, if someone confuses the epistemological problems and the metaphysical problems he will be well on the way to the counterpart theory of Lewis. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Identity and Necessity [1971], p.184 n16) | |
| A reaction: I can't make out what we should say about a possible object which is very nearly this table. Kripke needs the table to have a clear and unwavering essence, but tables are not that sort of thing. How would Kripke define 'physical object'? |
| 9221 | The best known objection to counterparts is Kripke's, that Humphrey doesn't care if his counterpart wins [Kripke, by Sider] |
| Full Idea: The most famous objection to counterparts is Kripke's objection that Hubert Humphrey wouldn't care if he thought that his counterpart might have won the 1972 election. He wishes that he had won it. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity notes and addenda [1972], note 12) by Theodore Sider - Reductive Theories of Modality 3.10 | |
| A reaction: Like Sider, I find this unconvincing. If there is a world in which I don't exist, but my very close counterpart does (say exactly me, but with a finger missing), I am likely to care more about such a person than about complete strangers. |
| 16986 | That there might have been unicorns is false; we don't know the circumstances for unicorns [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: I think it is not the case that there might have been unicorns. I wouldn't say it is necessary that there are no unicorns, but that we just can't say under what circumstances there would have been unicorns. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: His point seems to be that unicorns are insufficiently individuated by the legends, whereas a typical sample of an actual creature contains everything that will individuate the species. |
| 19757 | No one would bother to reason, and try to know things, without a desire for enjoyment [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: We seek to know only because we desire to find enjoyment; and it is impossible to conceive why someon who had neither desires nor fears would go to the bother reasoning. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: This appears to be an echo of Hume's pessimism about the autonomy of reason. This downgrading of reason is a striking feature of the Enlightenment, which presumably culminates in the romantic movement. |
| 8259 | Kripke has breathed new life into the a priori/a posteriori distinction [Kripke, by Lowe] |
| Full Idea: The a priori/a posteriori is still taken seriously, and has had new life breathed into it by the work of Saul Kripke. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by E.J. Lowe - The Possibility of Metaphysics 1.1 | |
| A reaction: The distinction may be a good one, despite a blurred borderline. Did Egyptian quantity surveyors begin to suspect that Pythagoras's Theorem was a necessary truth, though they couldn't prove it? A priori understanding creeps into experience. |
| 16989 | Rather than 'a priori truth', it is best to stick to whether some person knows it on a priori evidence [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: A priori is supposed to mean something which can be known independently of experience, …but possible for whom? God, or the Martians? …Instead of 'a priori truth' it is best to stick to whether some person knows it based on a priori evidence. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is Kripke's famous attempt to establish that 'a priori' is strictly an epistemological term, and should not be taken as a term of metaphysics (or modal semantics?). I definitely prefer the Kripke view, though it downgrades the a priori. |
| 4947 | A priori truths can be known independently of experience - but they don't have to be [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: The traditional characterisation (since Kant) goes: a priori truths are those which can be known independently of any experience - ..but that doesn't mean they MUST be known a priori. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: You may discover through experience that nine matches can't be divided into two equal piles, but Leibniz (and others) say you will only see the necessity of this a priori. No necessity is visible in the matches. |
| 17052 | The a priori analytic truths involving fixing of reference are contingent [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: If statements whose a priori truth is known via the fixing of a reference are counted as analytic, then some analytic truths are contingent. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity notes and addenda [1972], note 63) |
| 13975 | Kripke was more successful in illuminating necessity than a priority (and their relations to analyticity) [Kripke, by Soames] |
| Full Idea: Kripke was far more successful in illuminating the nature of necessity, and distinguishing it from both apriority and analyticity, than he was in illuminating the nature of apriority, and distinguishing that from analyticity. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Scott Soames - Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori p.187 |
| 17048 | Analytic judgements are a priori, even when their content is empirical [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: All analytic judgements are a priori even when the concepts are empirical, as, for example, 'Gold is a yellow metal'; for to know this I require no experience beyond my concept of gold as a yellow metal. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: So I relate a priori to 'turquoise is a shade of red', even though my concepts are confused? It is my concept, perhaps, but it is false. I thought a priori had something to do with knowing, not with reporting the confused nonsense in my mind? |
| 4948 | Intuition is the strongest possible evidence one can have about anything [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: I think something's having intuitive content is very heavy evidence in favour of it. I really don't know what more conclusive evidence one can have about anything, ultimately speaking. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me a very appealing remark, especially coming from a great logician. It seems to me, though, that some intuitions are more rational than others, and we must occasionally give up intuitions that are proved wrong. |
| 4958 | Identities like 'heat is molecule motion' are necessary (in the highest degree), not contingent [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: I hold that characteristic theoretical identifications like 'heat is the motion of molecules', are not contingent truths but necessary truths, and I don't just mean physically necessary, but necessary in the highest degree. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: This helps to keep epistemology and ontology separate. The contingency was in the epistemology. That the identity is 'physically necessary' seems obvious; that it is necessary 'in the highest degrees' implies an essentialist view of nature. |
| 4969 | I regard the mind-body problem as wide open, and extremely confusing [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: I regard the mind-body problem as wide open, and extremely confusing. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity notes and addenda [1972], note 77) | |
| A reaction: Kripke opposes reductive physicalism, but is NOT committed to dualism. He seems to be drawn to Davidson or Nagel (see his note 73). I think his discussion of contingent mind-brain identity is confused. |
| 19760 | General ideas are purely intellectual; imagining them is immediately particular [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Every general idea is purely intellectual. The least involvement of the imagination thereupon makes the idea particular. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: This thought is in Berkeley, who seemed to think that general ideas were impossible, because imagination was always required. Rousseau is certainly an improvement on that. |
| 19759 | Only words can introduce general ideas into the mind [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: General ideas can be introduced into the mind only with the aid of words. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: Hm. How did humanity manage to invent general words. Do animals not have general thoughts, e.g. about food, shelter, predators? Roussea goes on to deny that monkeys see nuts as a 'type' of fruit. |
| 4967 | It seems logically possible to have the pain brain state without the actual pain [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Prima facie, it would seem that it is a least logically possible the brain state corresponding to pain should have existed (Jones's brain could have been in exactly that state at the time in question) without Jones feeling any pain at all. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: This is Kripke's commitment to the possibility of zombies, which are only possible if the mind-body connection is a contingent one, and he shows that there are no contingent 'identities'. The answer is necessary identity, and no zombies. |
| 9177 | Identity theorists must deny that pains can be imagined without brain states [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: The identity theorist has to hold that we are under some illusion in thinking that we can imagine that there could have been pains without brain states. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Identity and Necessity [1971], p.190) | |
| A reaction: The origin of Robert Kirk's idea that there might be zombies. Kripke is wrong. Of course Kripke and his friends can imagine disembodied pains; the question is whether being able to imagine them makes them possible, which it doesn't. |
| 7430 | Kripke assumes that mind-brain identity designates rigidly, which it doesn't [Armstrong on Kripke] |
| Full Idea: In his attempted disproof of materialism about the mind, Kripke assumes that the physical description is a rigid designator, but this seems to be begging the question against the causal theory, which says the description is non-rigid. | |
| From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by David M. Armstrong - Pref to new 'Materialist Theory' p.xiv | |
| A reaction: A crucial part of this is that Armstrong believes that the laws of nature are contingent, and hence mind-brain identity has to be. Personally I incline to say that the identity is rigid, but that Kripke is still wrong. |
| 7867 | If consciousness could separate from brain, then it cannot be identical with brain [Kripke, by Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's argument is that the possibility of conscious properties coming apart from material properties shows that they cannot be identical with material properties. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by David Papineau - Thinking about Consciousness 3.3 | |
| A reaction: A nice clear and simple summary. How can the possibility of coming apart be demonstrated? Only, it seems, by using our imaginations. But that is quite a good guide in areas we know well, but not in recondite areas like the brain. |
| 3228 | Kripke says pain is necessarily pain, but a brain state isn't necessarily painful [Kripke, by Rey] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's argument against mind-brain identity is that a pain is necessarily pain (just as a stone is necessarily matter), but a brain state is not necessarily painful (just as a stone is not necessarily a doorstep). | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind 11.6.2 | |
| A reaction: As with Descartes' argument from necessity for dualism, this seems to me to beg the question. It seems to me fairly self-evident that certain brain states have to be painful, just as stones always have to be hard or massive. |
| 5832 | Identity must be necessary, but pain isn't necessarily a brain state, so they aren't identical [Kripke, by Schwartz,SP] |
| Full Idea: The identity theorist, it appears, can admit that the identity is necessary if true without substantially altering his position, but Kripke argues that the identity between pain and some brain states is not necessary. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) by Stephen P. Schwartz - Intro to Naming,Necessity and Natural Kinds §IV | |
| A reaction: This appears to depend on being able to imagine the pain occurring with a different brain state, or no brain state. Bad argument. See Idea 5819. |
| 4968 | Identity theorists seem committed to no-brain-event-no-pain, and vice versa, which seems wrong [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: The identity theorist is committed to the view that there could not be a C-fibre stimulation which was not a pain, nor a pain which was not a C-fibre stimulation; these consequences are certainly surprising and counterintuitive. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: If Kripke saw a glow in an area of his brain every time he felt a pain, he would cease to find it 'counterintuitive'. Far from this conclusion being 'surprising', its opposite is absurd. Pain with no brain event? C-fibres blaze away, and I feel nothing? |
| 9178 | Pain, unlike heat, is picked out by an essential property [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: 'Heat' is a rigid designator, which is picked out by the contingent property of being felt in a certain way; pain, on the other hand, is picked out by an essential (indeed necessary and sufficient) property. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Identity and Necessity [1971], p.190 n19) | |
| A reaction: Hm. I could pick out your pain by your contingent whimpering behaviour. I can spot my own potential pain by a combination of bodily damage and pain killing tablets. I suspect him of the same blunder as Descartes on this one. |
| 19271 | No rule can be fully explained [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Every explanation of a rule could conceivably be misunderstood. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language [1982], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is Kripke's summary of what he takes to be Wittgenstein's scepticism about rules. |
| 19269 | 'Quus' means the same as 'plus' if the ingredients are less than 57; otherwise it just produces 5 [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: I will define 'quus' by x-quus-y = x + y, if x, y < 57, and otherwise it equals 5. Who is to say that this is not the function I previously meant by '+'? | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language [1982], 2) | |
| A reaction: Kripke's famous example, to illustrate the big new scepticism introduced by Wittgenstein's questions about the rationality of following a rule. I suspect that you have to delve into psychology to understand rule-following, rather than logic. |
| 16383 | Puzzled Pierre has two mental files about the same object [Recanati on Kripke] |
| Full Idea: In Kripke's puzzle about belief, the subject has two distinct mental files about one and the same object. | |
| From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (A Puzzle about Belief [1979]) by François Recanati - Mental Files 17.1 | |
| A reaction: [Pierre distinguishes 'London' from 'Londres'] The Kripkean puzzle is presented as very deep, but I have always felt there was a simple explanation, and I suspect that this is it (though I will leave the reader to think it through, as I'm very busy…). |
| 19758 | Language may aid thinking, but powerful thought was needed to produce language [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: If men needed speech in order to learn to think, they had a still greater need for knowing how to think in order to discover the art of speaking. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: I take language to be a consequence of the emergence of meta-thought in humanity, so I thoroughly endorse Rousseau's view. The idea that rationality, and even consciousness, are mainly facilitated by language strikes me as quite wrong. |
| 7305 | Kripke's Wittgenstein says meaning 'vanishes into thin air' [Kripke, by Miller,A] |
| Full Idea: Quine and Kripke's Wittgenstein attempt to argue that there are no facts about meaning, that the notion of meaning, as Kripke puts it, 'vanishes into thin air'. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language [1982]) by Alexander Miller - Philosophy of Language Pref | |
| A reaction: A tempting solution to the problem. If, though, it is possible for someone to say something that is self-evidently meaningless, or to accuse someone of speaking (deep down) without meaning, then that needs explaining. |
| 19270 | If you ask what is in your mind for following the addition rule, meaning just seems to vanish [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: What can there be in my mind that I make use of when I follow a general rule to add in the future? It seems that the entire idea of meaning vanishes into thin air. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language [1982], 2) | |
| A reaction: Introspection probably isn't the best way to investigate the phenomenon of meaning. Indeed it seems rather old-fashioned and Cartesian. Kripke says, though, that seeking 'tacit' rules is even worse [end of note 22]. |
| 17874 | Kripke has a definitional account of kinds, but not of naming [Almog on Kripke] |
| Full Idea: There seems to be an incongruity between Kripke's definitionalist account of the essence of kinds (and the induced necessities), and his definition-free account of naming. | |
| From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Joseph Almog - Nature Without Essence X | |
| A reaction: Putnam places more emphasis on baptising a prototypical example, just as we baptise named things. |
| 16394 | Kripke derives accounts of reference and proper names from assumptions about worlds and essences [Stalnaker on Kripke] |
| Full Idea: One might think that the direction of Kripke's arguments goes the other way - that conclusions about reference and proper names were derived in part from controversial metaphysical assumptions about possible worlds and essential properties. | |
| From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Robert C. Stalnaker - Reference and Necessity Intro | |
| A reaction: Nathan Salmon is famous for charging Kripke with trying to get a metaphysics from a semantics, but this remark of Stalnaker's seems much more accurate. Kripke certainly assumes realism, and robust identity. |
| 5822 | The important cause is not between dubbing and current use, but between the item and the speaker's information [Evans on Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Kripke has mislocated the important causal relation, which lies between the item's states and doings and the speaker's body of information - not between the item's being dubbed with a name and the speaker's contemporary use of it. | |
| From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Gareth Evans - The Causal Theory of Names §I | |
| A reaction: This feels sort of right. I sympathise with the much more social view of matters like reference, which grows out of Wittgenstein's anti-private language claims. I'm not sure where 'causation' come into Evans's picture. |
| 17033 | We may refer through a causal chain, but still change what is referred to [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: There may be a causal chain from our use of the term 'Santa Claus' to a certain historical saint, but still children, when they use this, by this time probably do not refer to that saint. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: This is quite a significant concession to critics of the causal theory. I take it that community agreement is much more significant for reference than the actual causal chain, which may be riddled with errors from beginning to end, and so isn't causal. |
| 4689 | Kripke makes reference a largely social matter, external to the mind of the speaker [Kripke, by McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's theory brought a social element into the function of language: a speaker is socially connected to others who may know far more than she does about the reference of her terms, and the mechanism of reference is now not in her mind, but is external. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Colin McGinn - The Making of a Philosopher Ch. 3 | |
| A reaction: Hence this theory of reference leads on to Putnam's 'wide content' and Twin Earth. I remain unconvinced. See ideas under 'Thought'. |
| 17504 | Kripke's theory is important because it gives a collective account of reference [Kripke, by Putnam] |
| Full Idea: What is important about Kripke's theory is not that the use of proper names is 'causal' - what is not? - but that the use of proper names is collective. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Hilary Putnam - Explanation and Reference II B | |
| A reaction: This is the best response to Kripke. Reference is achieved by thinkers and speakers, but it is also a team activity, as in the case of the elm, or of Amenhotep II. |
| 17035 | We refer through the community, going back to the original referent [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: It's in virtue of our connection with other speakers in the community, going back to the referent himself, that we refer to a certain man. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: There may be two theories of reference getting tangled up here. Going back to the origin is one thing, and relying on the community is another. Do I always know who I am referring to? 'The funniest man in London'. |
| 4956 | A description may fix a reference even when it is not true of its object [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: In some cases an object may be identified, and the reference of a name fixed, using a description which may turn out to be false of its object. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity notes and addenda [1972], note 34) | |
| A reaction: This is clearly possible. Someone could be identified as 'the criminal' when they were actually innocent. Nevertheless, how do you remember which person was baptised 'Aristotle' if you don't hang on to a description, even a false one? |
| 16988 | Descriptive reference shows how to refer, how to identify two things, and how to challenge existence [Kripke, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Summary: in favour of the descriptive theory of names are it gives you a mechanism for doing the referring (and Mill doesn't), we can identify two descriptions if there is one referent, and it allows us to question the existence of a referent. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: If this problem is seen in terms of mental files (with labels and contents) this whole problem becomes a lot clearer. I take reference to be the action of a thinker, not a function of language. |
| 17029 | It can't be necessary that Aristotle had the properties commonly attributed to him [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: It is just not, in any intuitive sense of necessity, a necessary truth that Aristotle had the properties commonly attributed to him. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: This replies to Searle's claim that to be Aristotle he must have a fair number of the properties. Even if Searle is right, you can hardly pick the properties out individually and claim they are necessary. Kripke pulls epistemology away from metaphysics. |
| 17032 | Even if Gödel didn't produce his theorems, he's still called 'Gödel' [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: If a Gödelian fraud were exposed, Gödel would no longer be called 'the author of the incompleteness theorem', but he would still be called 'Gödel'. The description, therefore, does not abbreviate the name. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity notes and addenda [1972], note 37) | |
| A reaction: Clearly we can't make the description a necessary fact about Gödel, but that doesn't invalidate the idea that successful reference needs some description. E.g. Gödel is a person. |
| 11076 | Community implies assertability-conditions rather than truth-conditions semantics [Kripke, by Hanna] |
| Full Idea: If we take account of the fact that a speaker is in a community, then we must adopt an assertability-conditions semantics (based on what is legitimately assertible), and reject truth-conditional semantics (based on correspondence to the facts). | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language [1982]) by Robert Hanna - Rationality and Logic 6.1 | |
| A reaction: [Part of Hanna's full summary of Kripke's argument] This sounds wrong to me. There are conditions where it is agreed that a lie should be told. Two people can be guilty of the same malapropism. |
| 14893 | Rigid designation creates a puzzle - why do some necessary truths appear to be contingent? [Kripke, by Maciŕ/Garcia-Carpentiro] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's proposal that referential expressions like indexicals, demonstratives, proper names and natural kind terms are de jure rigid designators created a puzzle - it entails 'modal illusions', truths that are in fact necessary appear to be contingent. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], p.143-4) by Maciŕ/Garcia-Carpentiro - Introduction to 'Two-Dimensional Semantics' 1 | |
| A reaction: They are identifying this puzzle as the source of the need for two-dimensional semantics. Kripke notes that rigid designators may have their reference fixed by non-rigid descriptions. |
| 11075 | The sceptical rule-following paradox is the basis of the private language argument [Kripke, by Hanna] |
| Full Idea: Kripke argues that the 'rule-following paradox' is essential to the more controversial private language argument, and introduces a radically new form of scepticism. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language [1982]) by Robert Hanna - Rationality and Logic 6.1 | |
| A reaction: It certainly seems that Kripke is right to emphasise the separateness of the two, as the paradox is quite persuasive, but the private language argument seems less so. |
| 19773 | Without love, what use is beauty? [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Where there is no love, what use is beauty? | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: Rousseau seems to be thinking of sexual attractiveness, but the aphorism seems to have universal application. |
| 7235 | Without freedom of will actions lack moral significance [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: If you take away all freedom of the will, you strip a man's actions of all moral significance. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.4) | |
| A reaction: Rousseau is (in the context) guilty of the basic error of confusing freedom of action with freedom of the will. If the will has scope to act, it has freedom of action; if the will is not contrained in its decision by prior causes, it has freedom of will. |
| 19769 | Rational morality is OK for brainy people, but ordinary life can't rely on that [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Although it might be appropriate for Socrates and minds of his stature to acquire virtue through reason, the human race would long ago have ceased to exist, if its preservation had depended solely on the reasonings of its members. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: He takes our natural compassion to be the basis of morality. Hume combines that with a natural social prudence. Apes live successfully together in groups, without a Socrates. See MacIntyre on the failure of reasoned morality. |
| 19752 | If we should not mistreat humans, it is mainly because of sentience, not rationality [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: If I am obliged not to do any harm to my fellow man, it is less because he is a rational being than because he is a sentient being. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Pref) | |
| A reaction: How should sentience and rationality be weighted here? Kant demands instrinsic respect for beings on the grounds of their rationality. What could ever justify doing needless harm to anything? An open goal for virtue theory here. |
| 19768 | The better Golden Rule is 'do good for yourself without harming others' [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Instead of the sublime maxim of reasoned justice 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you', pity inspires a less perfect but perhaps more useful one: 'Do what is good for you with as little harm as possible to others'. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: His revised maxim is like J.S. Mill's formula for liberalism. The first maxim seems more contractarian, the second more utilitarian. |
| 19766 | The fact that we weep (e.g. in theatres) shows that we are naturally compassionate [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Every day one sees in our theatres someone affected and weeping at the ills of some unfortunate person ...Nature, in giving men tears, bears witness that she gave the human race the softest hearts. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: Lovely. Of course, tears in infants are for their own misfortunes, but adults more commonly weep over the sufferings of others. But we somewhat laugh at people who easily cry over dramas about suffering. |
| 20759 | Feelings are prior to intelligence; we should be content to live with our simplest feelings [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: To exist is to feel, our feeling is undoubtedly earlier than our intelligence, and we had feelings before we had ideas. …Let us be simpler and less pretentious; let us be content with the first feelings we experience in ourselves. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Emile: treatise on education [1762], p.210), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 6 'Moods' | |
| A reaction: Beginning of the sentimental movement, and precursor to romanticism, but here seen as the basis for the existentialist concept of authenticity. Wallowing in emotions doesn't appeal to me, but you have to make space for them. Rousseau loved walking. |
| 19756 | Humans are less distinguished from other animals by understanding, than by being free agents [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: It is not so much understanding which causes the specific distinction of man from all other animals as it is his being a free agent. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure how deep Rousseau takes 'free' to go. Having little enthusiasm for free will, I would say that we are distinguished by the complexity of our decision making. But I attribute that to meta-thought, the mark of humanity. |
| 19755 | Most human ills are self-inflicted; the simple, solitary, regular natural life is good [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Most of our ills are of our own making, and we could have avoided nearly all of them by preserving the simple, regular and solitary lifestyle prescribed to us by nature. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: It is important that he is not really disagreeing with Hobbes's pessimistic view of natural life as 'nasty'. Rousseau attributes that to a later stage, when people are ineptly beginning to emerge from the state of nature. I'm an optimist here. |
| 19762 | Is language a pre-requisite for society, or might it emerge afterwards? [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Which was more necessary: an already formed society for the invention of languages, or an already invented language for the establishment of society? | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: Rousseau declines to attempt an answer. Ants and bees seem to do well, but have some means of communication. Ape colonies are quite sophisticated. |
| 19763 | I doubt whether a savage person ever complains of life, or considers suicide [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: I ask if anyone has ever heard tell of a savage who was living in liberty ever dreaming of complaining about his life and of killing himself. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: Rousseau's state of nature is much too remote from any current tribal life for this to be tested. It is a nice speculation. Do apes ever attempt suicide? |
| 19778 | Leisure led to envy, inequality, vice and revenge, which we now see in savages [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: People developed leisure pursuits, and wanted esteem, which was the first step towards inequality, and at the same time towards vice. Vanity, contempt, shame and envy were born, and acts of revenge. This is the stage of savage people we know of. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: [very compressed] This is important in understanding Rousseau, because his happier 'state of nature' is prior to what is described here, which is the violent warlike state which impressed Hobbes. |
| 19779 | Primitive man was very gentle [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Nothing is so gentle as man in his primitive state. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: This summarises Rousseau's view of the earliest stage of mankind, when there was little rivalry, and little motivation or opportunity for viciousness. |
| 19751 | Our two starting principles are concern for self-interest, and compassion for others [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: One principle prior to reason makes us ardently interested in our well-being and self-preservation; the other inspires a natural repugnance to seeing any sentient being, especially our fellow man, perish or suffer. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Pref) | |
| A reaction: This is strikingly like Hume's nascent utilitarianism. These two principles are the key to Rousseau's vision of the state of nature, from which the union around a general will leads to the formation of a state. Note that animals get included here. |
| 19791 | Natural mankind is too fragmented for states of peace, or of war and enmity [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Men are not naturally enemies, for the simple reason that men living in their original state of independence do not have sufficiently constant relationships among themselves to bring about either a state of peace or a state of war. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.4) | |
| A reaction: He sees people in a state of nature as more or less solitary, and certainly in groups any more organised than a small family. One might then be in a state of permanent feud, rather than war, but without settlements people can move away. |
| 19765 | Savages avoid evil because they are calm, and never think of it (not because they know goodness) [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: We could say that savages are not evil because they do not know what is good; for it is neither enlightenment nor legal restraint, but the calm of the passions and the ignorance of vice which prevents them from doing evil. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: Suggests one of my favourite ideas (Idea 519). While his hopes for savages and the state of nature may be optimistic, the idea that you won't do evil if it never crosses your mind (and it won't if you are a calm person) is very powerful. |
| 19771 | Savage men quietly pursue desires, without the havoc of modern frenzied imagination [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Imagination, which wreaks so much havoc among us, does not speak to savage hearts; each man peacefully awaits the impetus of nature, gives himself over to it without choice, and with more pleasure than frenzy; then all desire is snuffed out. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: Interesting to identify imagination as a source of trouble. The idea that the savage lacks imagination seems implausible. Better to say that modern imagination has been poisoned by competition. |
| 20501 | Rousseau assumes that laws need a people united by custom and tradition [Rousseau, by Wolff,J] |
| Full Idea: Rousseau assumes that there should already be bonds of custom and tradition uniting a people before it is fit to receive laws. | |
| From: report of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 3 'Rousseau' | |
| A reaction: In unusual circumstances, such as the arrival of a large population at a new colony, it might be that the laws would create the missing customs and traditions. |
| 7237 | The act of becoming 'a people' is the real foundation of society [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The act by which people become 'a people' is the real foundation of society. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.5) | |
| A reaction: The difficulty with many older countries is that it is impossible to identify such an act. Mythologies are created to fictionalise such acts; in Britain we refer back to King Alfred, and to Magna Carta. I suspect 1660 is the key year. |
| 19792 | To overcome obstacles, people must unite their forces into a single unified power [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Men have no other means of maintaining themselves but to form by aggregation a sum of forces that could gain the upper hand over the resistance of obstacles, so that their forces are directed by means of a single moving power and made to act in concert. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.6) | |
| A reaction: I prefer the Aristotelian view, that men are naturally gregarious and social (like bees and ants), so this act of solidarity in superfluous. A human people is only broken up by violence or disaster, like kicking over an ants' nest. |
| 19812 | Human nature changes among a people, into a moral and partial existence [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The establisher of a people is in a position to change human nature, to transform each individual into a part of a larger whole from which the individual receives his life and being, to substitute a partial and moral existence for natural independence. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.07) | |
| A reaction: The 'partial' part is obvious, in the compromises of society, but he says we only become moral in a people, and even more so when that people constitute a state. In the state of nature, morality seems to be unneeded, rather than absent. |
| 19814 | A state must be big enough to preserve itself, but small enough to be governable [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Like a well-formed man, there are limits to the size a state can have, so as not to be too large to be capable of being well governed, nor too small to be capable of preserving itself on its own. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.09) | |
| A reaction: Geneva was his model, and it is close to the size of a Greek polis. Presumably even Scotland would be thought ungovernable, never mind the United States. Luxembourg might be his ideal nowadays. Thousands of them! |
| 19815 | Too much land is a struggle, producing defensive war; too little makes dependence, and offensive war [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Too much land makes its defence is onerous, its cultivation inadequate, and its yield surplus, which causes defensive wars. If there is not enough land, the state is at the discretion of its neighbours for what it needs as surplus, causing offensive wars. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.10) | |
| A reaction: This sounds much too simplistic, like the causes of squabbles in a kindergarten. Certainly inequalities between nations (such as the USA and Mexico) produces frictions. Advances in agriculture technology have transformed this problem. |
| 19822 | If the state enlarges, the creators of the general will become less individually powerful [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The ratio of the sovereign to the subject increases in proportion to the number of citizens. The larger the state becomes, the less liberty there is. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.01) | |
| A reaction: This is because we remain equally subjected to the state whatever its size, but have less power to influence if there are more citizens. In modern states we all feel pathetically powerless, because of the numbers. |
| 19823 | If the population is larger, the government needs to be more powerful [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: In order to be good, the government must be relatively stronger in proportion as the populace is more numerous. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.01) | |
| A reaction: This could either imply a larger government, or more powerful laws for a fairly small government. Rousseau implies an almost mathematical law (of ratios) which determines the size of the government. |
| 19774 | A savage can steal fruit or a home, but there is no means of achieving obedience [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: A savage man could well lay hold of the fruit another has gathered, the cave that served as his shelter. But how will he ever succeed in making himself obeyed? What can be the chain of dependence among men who possess nothing? | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: You'd certainly need language to express an enduring threat, like excluding someone from all of the local caves. You need to be able to say 'I'll be back', which animals can't say. Huge muscular men must have dominated in some way. |
| 7232 | Man is born free, and he is everywhere in chains [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Man is born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.1) | |
| A reaction: I've always liked the second sentence, though it may be wishful thinking. It is probably rather fun owning slaves. The idea that man is 'born free' strikes me as nonsense. Man is a highly social animal, which only flourishes if enmeshed in a culture. |
| 7234 | No man has any natural authority over his fellows [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: No man has any natural authority over his fellows. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.4) | |
| A reaction: This is, of course, specifically denying that superior strength is the same as a natural right. 'Right' might be a better word than 'authority'. If strength doesn't bestow a natural right, then presumably neither does weakness. |
| 19772 | In a state of nature people are much more equal; it is society which increases inequalities [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: There must be much less difference between one man and another in the state of nature than in that of society, and natural inequality must increase in the human species through inequality occasioned by social institutions. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: This is the main idea of his essay - the answer to the question set by the essay prize. Slavery is common in fairly basic societies, but that is at a much more advanced stage than Rousseau is thinking of. It's hard to disagree with him. |
| 19789 | It is against nature for children to rule old men, fools to rule the wise, and the rich to hog resources [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: It is obviously contrary to the law of nature, however it is defined, for a child to command an old man, for an imbecile to lead a wise man, and for a handful of people to gorge themselves on superfluities while the starving multitude lack necessities. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: I wonder if gregarious animals ever starve to death during a time of plenty, because of social exclusion? I bet this idea was quoted widely in 1780s Paris. The massive inequality is not just nasty, but 'contrary to the law of nature'. |
| 19816 | A state's purpose is liberty and equality - liberty for strength, and equality for liberty [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The greatest good and purpose of every legislative system boils down to liberty and equality. Liberty because dependence takes force from the body of the state, and equality because liberty cannot subsist without it. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.11) | |
| A reaction: The idea of 'taking force' seems to cover the modern welfare state. Rousseau likes robustly self-sufficient citizens. To ensure equality, however, it may be necessary to restrict liberty. |
| 7247 | The greatest social good comes down to freedom and equality [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The greatest good of all, which ought to be the goal of every system of law, comes down to two main objects, freedom and equality. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.11) | |
| A reaction: He goes on the specify the nature of the equality (Idea 7248). A rival pair of goods might be security and opportunity. On balance, I think I prefer my pair to Rousseau's. |
| 19838 | The measure of a successful state is increase in its population [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The government under which, without external means, without naturalisations, without colonies, the citizens become populous and multiply the most, is infallibly the best government. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.09) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure if this was true in the eighteenth century. Birth control has entirely changed the picture, since affluent people seem less inclined to breed. Presumably poverty increased famine and infant mortality. |
| 19848 | The sovereignty does not appoint the leaders [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The election of leaders is a function of government and not of the sovereignty. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], IV.3) | |
| A reaction: The point is that the general will only establishes the form of government, and not its content. In Britain we accept leaders who are appointed by their own party, and not by the electorate. |
| 19787 | People accept the right to be commanded, because they themselves wish to command [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Citizens allow themselves to be oppressed only insofar as they are driven by blind ambition; ...they consent to wear chains in order to be able to give them in turn to others. It is difficult to reduce to obedience someone who does not wish to command. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: Beautiful. This produces what I call the 'military model of management', where people love tree diagrams showing chains of command, and their place in the hierarchy. Life becomes 'either give orders, or obey'. I like democratic teams. |
| 20567 | Rousseau insists that popular sovereignty needs a means of expressing consent [Rousseau, by Oksala] |
| Full Idea: Rousseau's idea of popular sovereignty is a much more radical idea of self-government, because he insists that the consent of the people has to have a real means of expression. | |
| From: report of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762]) by Johanna Oksala - Political Philosophy: all that matters Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: Presumably Hobbes's 'contract' is forgotten in the mists of time, and ceases to be of any interest to a ruler (such as Charles I, who thought God must have appointed him). Perhaps Britain needs an annual ceremony reaffirming the monarch. |
| 19801 | Sovereignty is the exercise of the general will, which can never be delegated [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Since sovereignty is merely the exercise of the general will, it can never be alienated, and the sovereign which is only a collective being, cannot be represented by anything but itself. Power can perfectly well be transmitted, but not the will. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.01) | |
| A reaction: Part of the post-Hobbesian revolution, which sees sovereignty as residing in the will or consensus of the people, rather than in a divine right, or a right of power. In 2016 this isn't going very well. A people choosing to obey is thereby dissolved. |
| 19805 | Just as people control their limbs, the general-will state has total control of its members [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Just as nature gives each man an absolute power over all of his members, the social compact gives the body politic an absolute over all its members, which is the power directed by the general will, and bearing the name sovereignty. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.04) | |
| A reaction: A highly organic view of the state, and his favourite political metaphor. Does the metaphor include disease and madness? In the 1930s Germany went insane. The man may be happy, but are his limbs happy? If I burn my hand? Etc. |
| 19818 | Political laws are fundamental, as they firmly organise the state - but they could still be changed [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The laws regulating the relationship of the sovereign to the state are political laws, which are also fundamental. There is one way of organising a state, and people should stand by it. ...But a people is always in a position to change its laws. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.12) | |
| A reaction: Constitutions take on a sacred and inviolable quality, but Rousseau clearly thinks 'the Sabbath is made for man'. I think the USA is crazy not to change its constitution on the subject of bearing arms. |
| 19790 | Force can only dominate if it is seen as a right, and obedience as a duty [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The strongest is never strong enough to be master all the time, unless he transforms force into right and obedience into duty. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.3) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the people only accept force as a right and obedience as a duty if they appear to be in the people's interests - because the alternative looks worse. In other words, they are terrified. |
| 7233 | The social order is a sacred right, but based on covenants, not nature [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The social order is a sacred right which serves as a basis for all other rights; and as it is not a natural right, it must be one founded on covenants. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.1) | |
| A reaction: I think Rousseau is offering a contradiction here, when he suggests we have a 'sacred' right, which is nevertheless only based on 'covenants'. You can't have it both ways. This is an abuse of the word 'sacred'. |
| 19842 | The government is instituted by a law, not by a contract [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The act that institutes the government is not a contract but a law. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.18) | |
| A reaction: This is a law which implements the general will. There is nothing for citizens to make a contract with, since the sovereign is an abstraction, whereas a social contract is made between actual people. I like Rousseau's big idea. |
| 7239 | The social pact is the total subjection of individuals to the general will [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The essence of the social pact is that 'each one of us puts into the community his person and all his powers under the supreme direction of the general will; and as a body, we incorporate every member as an indivisible part of the whole'. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.6) | |
| A reaction: This is alarmingly like totally subjecting yourself to the 'Will of God', where the big problem is a bunch of priests (or worse) insisting that they know better than you do what that Will consists of. I have no idea what the current Will of Britain is. |
| 19793 | We need a protective association which unites forces, but retains individual freedom [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The problem is to find a form of association which protects with all common forces the person and goods of each associate, by means of which each one, while uniting with all, nevertheless obeys only himself and remains as free as before. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.6) | |
| A reaction: This is the clear purpose of Rousseau's famous concept of the General Will. The idea is that you submit to the general will because you helped formulate it, so you remain free. It is a lovely idea, but notoriously difficult to implement. |
| 7240 | To foreign powers a state is seen as a simple individual [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: In relation to a foreign power, the body politic is a simple entity, an individual. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.7) | |
| A reaction: This is strikingly contrary to the spirit of liberalism, in which I may be appalled by the foreign policy of my own government, and protest strongly against it. Rousseau might be considered as freedom's greatest champion, and greatest enemy! |
| 19795 | The act of association commits citizens to the state, and the state to its citizens [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The act of association is a reciprocal commitment of public and private individuals, and each individual, contracting with himself, is under a twofold commitment, as a member of the sovereign to individuals, and as a member of the state to the sovereign. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.7) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be expressed in modern terms as a mutual entailment of rights and duties. Where the traditional social contract is just between individuals, this seems to be a contract with a unified abstraction, of state commitment to citizens. |
| 19797 | Citizens must ultimately for forced to accept the general will (so freedom is compulsory!) [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: To avoid the general compact being an empty formula, it tacitly entails the commitment that whoever refuses to obey the general will will be forced to do so by the entire body. This means merely that he will be forced to be free. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.7) | |
| A reaction: Rousseau obviously enjoyed this paradox (which sounds like US foreign policy). Apart from anarchism, any political system will need a bit of force to back it up. Should democratic voting becoming compulsory, if the turnout declines too far? |
| 19796 | Individual citizens still retain a private will, which may be contrary to the general will [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Each individual can, as a man, have a private will contrary to or different from the general will that he has as a citizen. His private interest can speak to him in an entirely different manner than the common interest. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.7) | |
| A reaction: So why I accept the general will when these two clash (apart from threat of punishment - which may be capital if I am recalcitrant!)? Usually the general will is also for my good - but not always. Idealist love of the people? |
| 7244 | The general will is common interest; the will of all is the sum of individual desires [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The general will studies only common interest, while the will of all studies private interest, and is indeed no more than the sum of individual desires. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.03) | |
| A reaction: This invites the obvious liberal response (given later by utilitarians: Idea 3778) that there can be no more to any great 'will' than the sum of the individuals (which leads to Margaret Thatcher's famous 'there is no such thing as society'). |
| 19802 | The general will is always right, but the will of all can err, because it includes private interests [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The general will is always right. ....There is often a great deal of difference between the will of all and the general will. The latter considers only the general interest, but the former considers private interest and is merely the sum of private wills. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.03) | |
| A reaction: Hence in order to get an expression of the general will, voters must exclusively focus on the general good. I do that in general elections, only to find that the people around me vote for their own interests. I wish we all did the same thing. |
| 19803 | If the state contains associations there are fewer opinions, undermining the general will [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: If there are partial association in the state ...there are no longer as many voters as there are men, but merely as many as there are associations. The differences become less numerous and yield a result that is less general. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.03) | |
| A reaction: This appears to entirely reject political parties, and similar groups, which he had seen forming in England. It goes with his interesting faith that the more separate views there are, the more the right choice will emerge. |
| 19804 | If a large knowledgeable population votes in isolation, their many choices will have good results [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: If, when a sufficiently informed populace deliberates, the citizens were to have no communication among themselves, the general will would always result from a large number of small differences, and the deliberations would always be good. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.03) | |
| A reaction: An obvious weak point in the electorate being well informed, if someone controls the sources of information. All the optimism of the Enlightenment is in this idea - that rational beings converge of the truth. All pubs closed in the month of an election? |
| 19808 | The general will changes its nature when it focuses on particulars [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Just as a private will cannot represent the general will, the general will, for its part, alters its nature when it has a particular object. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.04) | |
| A reaction: Is the general will, then, in danger of being much too general, because as soon as it gets close to anything practical it becomes distorted. It can design the constitution, but can it give a view on capital punishment, or is that too personal? |
| 7246 | The general will is always good, but sometimes misunderstood [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: By themselves the people always will what is good, but by themselves they do not always discern it. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.06) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a can of worms. It invites someone to step in as interpreter - a spin doctor, perhaps, or a newspaper proprietor. The first proposition strikes me as absurdly optimistic. Think of the people of Europe in August 1914. |
| 7250 | Laws are authentic acts of the general will [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The laws are nothing other than the authentic acts of the general will. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.12) | |
| A reaction: I wonder how you tell whether an act of the general will is 'authentic'? Nevertheless, in a modern democracy there seems a lot of truth in it; when controversial legislation is in the offing, governments have to be very attentive to the people. |
| 19844 | Assemblies must always confirm the form of government, and the current administration [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The opening of assemblies, which solely aim to preserve the social treaty, should always start with two separate propositions: 1) does it please the sovereign to preserve the present form of government?, 2) ...and to preserve the present administration? | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.18) | |
| A reaction: I would love it if the British people were allowed to discuss our form of government, but it now seems completely ossified. Being a monarchy, with the consequent patronage, almost guarantees this stasis. |
| 19846 | The more unanimous the assembly, the stronger the general will becomes [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The more harmony reigns in the assemblies, that is to say, the closer opinions come to unanimity, the more dominant too is the general will. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], IV.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems important, because the general will comes in degrees. A decision from the assembly would come with an index number indicating its strength. His dream is obviously to get close to unanimity on all decisions. Maybe! Brexit 52%! |
| 19854 | We all owe labour in return for our keep, and every idle citizen is a thief [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: In a society where a man has to live at others' expense, he owes in labour the price of his keep; and that is without exception. Work, then, is an indispensable social obligation. Rich or poor, powerful or weak, every idle citizen is a thief. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Emile: treatise on education [1762], Bk III) | |
| A reaction: Presumably rich landowners who live on rents can justify their position by good husbandry, at a higher level than tilling the soil. But Bertie Wooster won't last long in Rousseau's new world. This is a big challenge to the welfare state. |
| 19817 | Citizens should be independent of each other, and very dependent on the state [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Each citizen should be perfectly independent of all the others and excessively dependent on the city. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.12) | |
| A reaction: Unlike many other of his pronouncements, this sounds a bit like a welfare state, though I doubt if he means that. Rousseau's state, founded by the general will, seems to have a quasi-religious quality, like a devotee's love of God. |
| 19840 | A citizen is a subject who is also sovereign [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The words 'subject' and 'sovereign' are identical correlatives, whose meaning is combined in the single word 'citizen'. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.13) | |
| A reaction: 'Citizen' was the favourite post-revolutionary label, probably based on this remark. I've heard foreigners tease Britons for being 'subjects' of the monarch, where they are pure citizens. But we are all subject to the law, made by others. |
| 19780 | We seem to have made individual progress since savagery, but actually the species has decayed [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Evidence confirms that the savage state is the youth of the world, and all subsequent progress has been in appearance so many steps toward the perfection of the individual, and in fact toward the decay of the species. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as an attack on the new rising philosophy of liberalism, and a plea for communitarianism. We should judge humanity as a whole, and not just look at some individual lives which seem to be going well. |
| 19839 | The flourishing of arts and letters is too much admired [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Times in which letters and arts are known to have flourished have been admired too much. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.09 n9) | |
| A reaction: I assume most marxists would agree with this thought. Eighteenth century France is a good candidate for this judgement. The arts always needed patronage. |
| 19798 | Ancient monarchs were kings of peoples; modern monarchs more cleverly rule a land [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Ancient monarchs called themselves King of the Persians or Scythians, regarding themselve merely as the leaders of men. Today's monarchs more shrewdly call themselves King of France or England. By holding the land, they are sure of the inhabitants. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.9) | |
| A reaction: This matches the Germans being earlier defined by speaking the language, and now defined by a territory. It is more to do with the rise of the modern state than to do with the shrewdness of the monarchs. |
| 19831 | The highest officers under a monarchy are normally useless; the public could choose much better [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Those who attain the highest positions in monarchies are most often petty bunglers, swindlers and intriguers, whose talents serve only to display their incompetence to the public. The populace is much less often in error in its choice than the prince. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.06) | |
| A reaction: Many monarchs have had famously good advisers, such as Lord Burleigh. The worst thing about bad leaders, at any level, is the bad appointments they make. |
| 19833 | Hereditary monarchy is easier, but can lead to dreadful monarchs [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Some crowns are hereditary. So by substituting the disadvantage of regencies for elections, an apparent tranquillity has been preferred to a wise election, the risk of having children, monsters or imbeciles for leaders is preferred to choosing good kings. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.06) | |
| A reaction: Henry VI is the prime English example. The regents feuded, and then when he grew up it became obvious that he was hopeless. How many English monarchs would have been elected? But we would have missed Good Queen Bess. |
| 19834 | Attempts to train future kings don't usually work, and the best have been unprepared [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: A great deal of effort is made to teach young princes the art of ruling. It does not appear that this education does them any good. It would be better to teach them the art of obeying. The most celebrated kings were not brought up to reign. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.06) | |
| A reaction: King Alfred is our prime example of a success, But if only we had had Charles I's late brother Henry, instead the untrained Charles. |
| 19829 | Natural aristocracy is primitive, and hereditary is dreadful, but elective aristocracy is best [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: There are three sorts of aristocracy: natural, elective, and hereditary. The first is suited only to simple people; the third is the worst of any government. The second is the best; it is aristocracy properly so-called. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.05) | |
| A reaction: This seems like the modern idea of 'meritocracy'. The Chinese civil service exams, introduced into Europe in the nineteenth century. |
| 7249 | Natural aristocracy is primitive, hereditary is bad, and elective aristocracy is the best [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: There are three types of aristocracy, natural, elective and hereditary. The first is suited only to primitive peoples; the third is the worst of all governments; the second is the best, and this is aristocracy in the true sense of the word. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.05) | |
| A reaction: Presumably he means what we call 'meritocracy', and it seems a bit optimistic to hope that democracy will deliver that. I don't think Plato would expect a democracy to elect his Guardians. |
| 19830 | Large states need a nobility to fill the gap between a single prince and the people [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: With a large state in the hands of one man there is too great a distance between the prince and the people, and the state lacks cohesiveness. This requires intermediate orders of nobility to fill them. A small state is ruined by all these social levels. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.06) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This seems to be a justification for the French ancien regime. Presumably this bit was not quoted much in 1789. Why must the gap be filled by 'nobility'? What about an elected house of lords? |
| 19827 | Law makers and law implementers should be separate [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: It is not good for the one who makes the laws to execute them. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.04) | |
| A reaction: He doesn't give his reasons here, but this piece of wisdom is widely supported. There is a problem when the executive find themselves trying to enforce bad, discredited laws. Maybe the police know best what the law should say? Or not! |
| 19820 | The state has a legislature and an executive, just like the will and physical power in a person [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Every free action has a moral cause, the will, and a physical cause, the power to act. ...The body politic has the same moving causes, namely the legislative power, and executive power. Nothing should be done without their concurrence. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.01) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This terminology is now standard in political philosophy. An absolute monarch like Edward III presumably embodies both branches. |
| 19821 | I call the executive power the 'government', which is the 'prince' - a single person, or a group [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: I call 'government' or supreme administration the legitimate exercise of executive power; I call 'prince' or magistrate the man or body charged with that administration. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.01) | |
| A reaction: Whether the prince is one person or many is left up to the legislative body, which is the general will. Rousseau has no view on the matter. |
| 19824 | Large populations needs stronger control, which means power should be concentrated [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The government becomes slack as the magistrates are multiplied, and the more numerous the people the greater should be the increase of repressive force - ...so the number of leaders should decrease in proportion to the increase of the number of people. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.02) | |
| A reaction: This bit sounds Stalinist! A vast population seems to require a dictator. When his state is Geneva-sized Rousseau seems comfortable, but his plans for bigger states are a bit disturbing. |
| 19826 | Democracy for small states, aristocracy for intermediate, monarchy for large [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Democratic government is suited to small states, aristocratic government to states of intermediate size, and monarchical government to large ones. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.03) | |
| A reaction: Is he thinking of France for the large state? What would he have made of 1789? Does this progression go on to increase the power of the monarch as the state gets even larger, into dictatorship? |
| 19747 | Revolutionaries usually confuse liberty with total freedom, and end up with heavier chains [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: If people try to shake off a yoke, they put more distance between themselves and liberty, because in mistaking for liberty an unbridled licence which is its opposite, their revolutions usually deliver them over to seducers who make their chains heavier. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Intro letter) | |
| A reaction: This 'Animal Farm' thought was presumably ignored in 1789 and 1917. There must be basic rules for revolutionaries, of which priorities they must never drop from sight, and which priorities are dangerous and misleading. |
| 19837 | If inhabitants are widely dispersed, organising a revolt is much more difficult [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The greater the area occupied by the same number of inhabitants, the more difficult it becomes to revolt, since concerted action cannot be taken promptly and secretly. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.09) | |
| A reaction: Revolutions since then have all occurred in large cities, which have become huge. The dispersal of the rest of the population (as in Russia) doesn't matter. |
| 19843 | The state is not bound to leave civil authority to its leaders [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The state is no more bound to leave civil authority to its leaders than it is to leave military authority to its generals. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.18) | |
| A reaction: He assumes that a meeting of the citizens can articulate a new expression of the general will, but this idea also endorses revolution, if the prince or magistrates refuse to call this national AGM. |
| 19825 | If the sovereign entrusts government to at least half the citizens, that is 'democracy' [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The sovereign can entrust the government to the entire people or to the majority of them. This is given the name 'democracy'. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.03) | |
| A reaction: Note that democracy is here a form for the executive, not for the legislature. I take it that the general will must come close to unanimity, and a mere 51% support for fundamental legislation would never do. Increase the percentage with the importance? |
| 19832 | Democratic elections are dangerous intervals in government [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Elections leave dangerous intervals and are stormy. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.06) | |
| A reaction: American presidential elections partially paralyse government for about nine months. In a settled democracy the process of election seems OK. The immediate aftermath can be worse. Losers may refuse to accept the result. |
| 19748 | Plebiscites are bad, because they exclude the leaders from crucial decisions [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: I would not approve of plebiscites like those of the Romans where the state's leaders and those most interested in its preservation were excluded from the deliberations on which its safety often depended. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Intro letter) | |
| A reaction: I wish David Cameron had read this before 2016. This is exactly what happened with the Brexit referendum, where the people voted for an action entirely opposed to the preference of the majority of their elected representatives. Chaos ensued. |
| 7243 | Silence of the people implies their consent [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The silence of the people permits the assumption that the people consents. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.01) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me a crucial principle for a democracy, because it says that the democratic way of life is much more than elections. Each citizen has a duty to bravely speak out; the more citizens willing to do this, the less bravery is required. |
| 19749 | In a direct democracy, only the leaders should be able to propose new laws [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: In order to stop ...the dangerous innovations that finally ruined Athens, no one would have the power to propose new laws according to his fancy; this right belongs exclusively to the magistrates. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Intro letter) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle says (somewhere!) that control of the agenda for meetings is the key issue in democracies. I assume any citizen can propose a law, but only a magistrate can put it on the agenda. Maybe a separate 'citizen's committee' could filter suggestions. |
| 7251 | The English are actually slaves in between elections [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during the election of Members of Parliament; as soon as the Members are elected, the people is enslaved. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.15) | |
| A reaction: Rousseau seems to be hoping for some sort of direct democracy. We could probably set up a direct democracy, by implementing regular voting over the internet, but I doubt if Rousseau would like that either. I certainly wouldn't. |
| 7238 | Minorities only accept majority-voting because of a prior unanimous agreement [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: If there were no earlier agreement, how could there be any obligation on the minority to accept the decision of the majority? The law of majority-voting rests on a covenant, implying at least one previous occasion of unanimity. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.5) | |
| A reaction: In Britain this points to the Reform Acts of 1832 onwards as crucial. However, whenever democracy is newly introduced into a country (Iraq being a current spectacular case) there is usually a minority opposed to it, who are forcibly overruled. |
| 19828 | Democracy leads to internal strife, as people struggle to maintain or change ways of ruling [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: No government is so subject to civil wars and internal agitations as a democratic or popular one, since there is none that tends so forcefully and continuously to change its form, or that demands greater vigilance and courage to keep its form. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.05) | |
| A reaction: We would like to think that a robust democracy, with a free press, can cope with all this strife and still survive. He may be thinking of the English Civil War. Democracies seem to be more conservative about the structure of government. |
| 19835 | When ministers change the state changes, because they always reverse policies [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Each revolution in the ministry produces a revolution in the state, since the maxim common to all ministers and nearly all kings is to do the reverse of their predecessor in everything. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.06) | |
| A reaction: Most parents bring up their children by trying to correct mistakes their own parents made. British democracy is rife with this desperate need for a new government to make its mark, because they want to win the next election. |
| 19745 | The nature of people is decided by the government and politics of their society [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Everything is rooted in politics, and whatever might be attempted, no people would ever be other than the nature of their government made them. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Confessions [1770], 9-1756) | |
| A reaction: A striking anticipation of one of Marx's most important ideas - that society is not created by individual minds, because the nature of consciousness is created by society. The central idea in the subject of sociology, I think. |
| 19849 | In early theocracies the god was the king, and there were as many gods as nations [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: At first men had no other kings but gods, and no other government than a theocratic one. ....By the mere fact that a god was placed at the head of every political society, it followed that there were as many gods as there were peoples. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], IV.8) | |
| A reaction: He must be thinking of the Old Testament histories here. (see Spinoza on that!). He says that the modern idea that these were all really the same god is ridiculous. |
| 19784 | Enslaved peoples often boast of their condition, calling it a state of 'peace' [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Enslaved peoples do nothing but boast of the peace and tranquillity they enjoy in their chains and they give the name 'peace' to the most miserable slavery. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: It seems to be a sad truth that enslaved peoples are less upset about their condition than outside observers are, especially in modern times, where slavery is usually deemed unacceptable. Slavery might be the best you can hope for. |
| 19785 | If the child of a slave woman is born a slave, then a man is not born a man [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The jurists who have gravely pronounced that the child of a slave woman is born a slave, have decided, in other words, that a man is not born a man. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: The hidden premise of this enthymeme is that man is born free. A key issue of liberalism is the status of children. Are the children of religious believers automatically members of that sect? Can I be born a West Ham supporter? |
| 19841 | Sometimes full liberty is only possible at the expense of some complete enslavement [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: There are some unfortunate circumstances where one's liberty can be preserved only at the expense of someone else's, and where the citizen can be perfectly free only if the slave is completely enslaved. Such was the situation in Sparta. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.15) | |
| A reaction: Rousseau wrote just before the moment when it was seen that slavery in European empires might be abolished, but he was not in the forefront of thought on this one. Greek philosophy would probably never have happened without slavery. |
| 19847 | We can never assume that the son of a slave is a slave [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: To decide that the son of a slave is born a slave is to decide that he is not a man. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], IV.2) | |
| A reaction: Obviously this is because men are 'born free', though I am not clear how that maxim can be reached. I take it for granted that African slaves in the Americas found themselves born into slavery. No justification was required. |
| 19775 | People must be made dependent before they can be enslaved [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible to enslave a man without having first put him in the position of being incapable of doing without another. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: Ah yes. The key to running a slave plantation is not the threat of violence, but control of the shelter and food supply. |
| 7242 | Appetite alone is slavery, and self-prescribed laws are freedom [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: To be governed by appetite alone is slavery, while obedience to a law one prescribes to oneself is freedom. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.8) | |
| A reaction: An interesting formulation, sitting somewhere between Aristotle and Kant. The problem is to find a metaethic which will justify the prescription and nature of the self-imposed law. |
| 19746 | Like rich food, liberty can ruin people who are too weak to cope with it [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Liberty is like those solid foods or full-bodied wines appropriate for strengthening robust constitutions that are used to them, but which overpower, ruin and intoxicate the weak and delicate who are not suited to them. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Intro letter) | |
| A reaction: Rousseau vision of a successful society involves robustly self-sufficient citizens (as in the American ideal), rather than people who are free, but easily led into dependence (in a 'nanny state'). |
| 19786 | Three stages of the state produce inequalities of wealth, power, and enslavement [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Stage one gives law and property (producing inequalities of rich and poor), stage two gives a magistracy (producing weak and strong), and stage three is legitimate power becoming arbitrary (producing master and slave). | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: This is the final answer to the prize essay question (with Idea 19772). What a beautiful analysis - and he didn't even win the prize this time! |
| 19800 | The social compact imposes conventional equality of rights on people who may start unequally [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Instead of destroying natural equality, the fundamental compact substitutes a moral and legitimate equality to any natural physical inequality. ...so that men all become equal by convention and by right. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.9) | |
| A reaction: This does not pretend that equality is a natural right. The imposition of equality is virtually the main point of forming a state. Effectively, the state operates like an insurance company, treating all contributors as equal. |
| 19788 | The pleasure of wealth and power is largely seeing others deprived of them [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: If one sees a handful of powerful and rich men at the height of greatness and fortune while the mob grovels in obscurity and misery, it is because the former prize the things they enjoy only to the extent that the others are deprived of them. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be an accurate picture of ancien régime France, and it still applies to modern plutocrats. The pleasure of a nice house is not that it is very good, but that it is better than other houses. Inequality gives a lot of pleasure! |
| 7248 | No citizen should be rich enough to buy another, and none so poor as forced to sell himself [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Where wealth is concerned, no citizen should be rich enough to buy another, and none should be so poor as to be forced to sell himself. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.11) | |
| A reaction: Rousseau is thinking of slavery, but this also points to prostitution as a key indicator of social equality. In Victorian Britain it seems that extensive prostituion was unavoidable; nowadays it looks more like a voluntary choice (for indigenous Britons). |
| 19794 | If we all give up all of our rights together to the community, we will always support one another [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The social compact reduces to a single clause, namely the total alienation of each associate, together with all of his rights, to the entire community. Since this condition is equal for everyone, no one has an interest in making it burdensome for others. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.6) | |
| A reaction: He speaks elsewhere of basic natural rights which can never be alienated, such as self-defence. It is what small groups do all the time, if they start off as equals. Difficult to manage with large groups. Factions are the problem. |
| 7241 | In society man loses natural liberty, but gains a right to civil liberty and property [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and the absolute right to anything that tempts him; what he gains is civil liberty and the legal rights of propery in what he possesses. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.8) | |
| A reaction: It is an appealing idea that the purpose of society is to increase liberty, not to restrict it. That, on the whole, is my view. American libertarianism opens up the world to gun crime, vigilantes, pornographers and bounty-hunters. |
| 19806 | We alienate to society only what society needs - but society judges that, not us [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Each person alienates, by the social compact, only that portion of his power, his goods, and liberty whose use is of consequence to the community; but we must also grant that only the sovereign is the judge of what is of consequence. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.04) | |
| A reaction: The weakness here is how society sees its needs. He seems to assume that two societies will arrive at almost identical general wills, but Spartans, Prussians and Serbs may require the lives of your children for the state. |
| 19777 | Persuading other people that some land was 'owned' was the beginning of society [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say 'this is mine' and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: A wonderful riposte to Locke, who thought political legitimacy was based on property! Locke is way too simplistic about whether someone has a true right to their property. Highy dubious claims become ossified after a generation or two. |
| 19782 | What else could property arise from, but the labour people add to it? [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible to conceive of the idea of property arising from anything but manual labour, for it is not clear what man can add, beyond his own labour, in order to appropriate things he has not made. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: A thorough endorsement of Locke's labour theory of value. It is not clear to me why you have to 'add' something in order to achieve ownership. Don't you own firewood just by picking it up? Golfers give ownership of a lost ball to the first one to see it. |
| 19781 | Land cultivation led to a general right of ownership, administered justly [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: From the cultivation of land, there necessarily followed the division of land; and from property once recognised, the first rules of justice. For in order to render everyone what is his, it is necessary that everyone can have something. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: This looks rather obviously correct. You don't plant crops if you are not protected in your right to reap what you have sown, and you would expect to re-sow from the proceeds. Other people will want you to do this. |
| 19754 | If we have a natural right to property, what exactly does 'belonging to' mean? [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Others have spoken of the natural right that everyone has to preserve what belongs to him, without explaining what they mean by 'belonging'. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Pref) | |
| A reaction: This is aimed at Locke. What Marxists will challenge is the legitimacy of property ownership, granted by patronage, enclosure, exploitation and conquest. These start as injustices, but that fades after a few generations. Locke has a labour-theory. |
| 19799 | Private property must always be subordinate to ownership by the whole community [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Each private individual's right to his very own store is always subordinate to the community's right to all, without which there could be neither solidity in the social fabric nor real force in the exercise of sovereignty. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.9) | |
| A reaction: This may sound a bit drastic, but every country practices this principle, seen in compulsory purchase orders (e.g. to build a railway line). In liberal democracies you expect good compensation. In communist Roumania you were just moved. Also taxation. |
| 19819 | The state ensures liberty, so civil law separates citizens, and binds them to the state [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The relationship of members to each other should be as small as possible, and as large as possible to the entire body. ...Only the force of the state brings about the liberty of its members. From this relationship civil laws arise. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.12) | |
| A reaction: I'm guessing that these laws could be said mainly to prescribe both our rights and our duties. His four types of law are political, civil, criminal, and customary. |
| 19750 | Writers just propose natural law as the likely useful agreements among people [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Writers begin by seeking the rules on which, for the common utility, it would be appropriate for men to agree among themselves; they then give the name of 'natural law' to these rules, with no other proof than their presumed good results. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Pref) | |
| A reaction: The arguments for natural law strike me as quite good, but pinning down its content looks incredibly elusive, and at the mercy of cultural influences. |
| 7245 | Natural justice, without sanctions, benefits the wicked, who exploit it [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The laws of natural justice, lacking any natural sanctions, are unavailing among men. In fact, such laws merely benefit the wicked and injure the just, since the just respect them while others do not do so in return. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.06) | |
| A reaction: This seems a very accurate observation, and points us towards either contracts, or a justification of the use of force by good people. |
| 19809 | We accept the death penalty to prevent assassinations, so we must submit to it if necessary [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Whoever wills the end also wills the means. ...The death penalty inflicted on criminals can be viewed from more or less this point of view. It is in order to avoid being the victim of an assassin that a person consents to die, were he to become one. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.05) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be roughly the spirit in which Socrates submitted to his death. I doubt whether many criminals agree with harsh punishments dished out to other criminals who get caught. |
| 19810 | A trial proves that a criminal has broken the social treaty, and is no longer a member of the state [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The legal proceeding and judgement are the proofs and the declaration that a criminal has broken the social treaty, and consequently that he is no longer a member of the state. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.05) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a plausible rationalisation of capital punishment, but what about lesser crimes. Is the interior of a prison a sort of temporary exile from the state? Hence the significance of whether prisoners are allowed to vote. But 19811. |
| 19770 | Primitive people simply redressed the evil caused by violence, without thought of punishing [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: More primitive men regarded the acts of violence that could befall them as an easily redressed evil and not as an offence that must be punished; they did not even dream of vengeance, except as a knee-jerk response. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: This may be Rousseau at his most optimistic, trying to deny a rather more aggressive streak in people, seen in children's playgrounds. |
| 19811 | Only people who are actually dangerous should be executed, even as an example [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: There is no wicked man who could not be made good for something. One has the right to put to death, even as an example, only someone who cannot be preserved without danger. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.05) | |
| A reaction: This formulation implies that we could execute a dangerous person as a deterrent, even though they were not guilty of this particular crime. I suspect that Rousseau was too nice to go through with that. |
| 7236 | War gives no right to inflict more destruction than is necessary for victory [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: War gives no right to inflict any more destruction than is necessary for victory. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.4) | |
| A reaction: This is the principle at stake in discussion of the bombing of Germany in 1942-5. We all seem to agree with this principle, and are shocked by breaches of it, but I am not sure why. Destruction must be a fundamentally bad thing - a basic value. |
| 23607 | Wars are between States, not people, and the individuals are enemies by accident [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: War is something that occurs not between man and man, but between States. The individuals who become involved in it are enemies only by accident. A State can have as its enemies only other States, not men at all. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], p.249), quoted by Jeff McMahan - Killing in War 2.5 | |
| A reaction: This is the classic statement of the collectivist view, which goes on to assert that the morality of warfare is quite different from ordinary morality. McMahan argues against this view, very persuasively. |
| 19783 | A state of war remains after a conquest, if the losers don't accept the winners [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The conqueror and conquered peoples always remain in a state of war with one another, unless the nation, returned to full liberty, were to choose voluntarily its conqueror as leader. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: Tricky if part of the conquered nation accepts the conqueror, and the other part doesn't, as in France in 1940. In a permanent conquest the state of war seems to fade away, as in England in 1066. |
| 19850 | By separating theological and political systems, Jesus caused divisions in the state [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: In separating the theological system from the political system, Jesus made the state to cease being united and caused internal divisions. Since this new idea of an otherwordly kingdom had never entered the heads of pagans, they saw Christians as rebels. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], IV.8) | |
| A reaction: This is the sort of stuff that made Rousseau a vast number of enemies, which embittered him. It is the sort of cool assessment which became commonplace in Germany sixty year later. |
| 19852 | Civil religion needs one supreme god, an afterlife, justice, and the sanctity of the social contract [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Dogmas of civil religion should be simple. The existence of a powerful, intelligent, beneficent divinity that foresees and provides; the life to come; the happiness of the just; the punishment of the wicked; the sanctity of the social contract and laws. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], IV.8) | |
| A reaction: Notice that he gratuitously makes the social contract sacred (even though it can be voluntarily abandoned, and the general will can be changed). Presumably the foundation of any society, such as the ballot box, has to be sacred. |
| 19853 | All religions should be tolerated, if they tolerate each other, and support citizenship [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Tolerance should be shown to all religions which tolerate other religions, so long as their dogmas contain nothing contrary to the duties of a citizen. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], IV.8) | |
| A reaction: Quite a good guideline for the attitude of western countries to middle eastern religious practices which arrive in their midst. Rousseau says the state has a minimal core religion (Idea 19852), which thus tolerates most other religions. |
| 19851 | Every society has a religion as its base [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: No state has ever been founded without religion serving as its base. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], IV.8) | |
| A reaction: It is not clear to me that the ancient Greek cities had religion as a 'base', though they all had a religion, and expected conformity. Religion doesn't figure much in Thucydides. Communist Russia was the first explicitly atheist state, I think. |
| 19836 | The amount of taxation doesn't matter, if it quickly circulates back to the citizens [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: It is not on the basis of the amount of taxation that the burden is measured, but on the basis of the path they have to travel in order to return to the hands from which they came. If circulation is prompt and regular, the amount one pays is unimportant. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.08) | |
| A reaction: So the problem is when the government wants to build up a surplus, or pay off debts (or is corrupt, or even if it is suspected of corruption). |
| 19753 | Both men and animals are sentient, which should give the latter the right not to be mistreated [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Since being sentient is common to both animals and men, that should at least give the former the right not to be needlessly mistreated by the latter. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Pref) | |
| A reaction: This is why utilitarianism led to the founding of the RSPCA in Britain. There is a disturbing picture of people smashing up animals for fun, if they can only persuade themselves that the animals are not sentient. I've heard fishermen claim that. |
| 19761 | Men started with too few particular names, but later had too few natural kind names [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Men at first unduly multiplied the names of individual things, owing to their failure to know the genera and species, but later made too few genera and species, owing to their failure to have considered beings in all their differences. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: The fact that two leopards differ is not a good enough reason to assign them to two different general terms. Adjectives can do all the necessary modification. The single general term acknowledges something important. |
| 4963 | The properties that fix reference are contingent, the properties involving meaning are necessary [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Bear in mind the contrast between the a priori but perhaps contingent properties carried with a natural kind term, given by the way its reference was fixed, and the analytic (and hence necessary) properties a term may carry, given by its meaning. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: The second half of this is the 'new essentialism'. Complex. We need to distinguish 'reference' from 'definition'. The 'analytic properties' seem to be the definition, but we sometimes change our definitions (e.g. of units of time). |
| 17056 | Terms for natural kinds are very close to proper names [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: According to the view I advocate, terms for natural kinds are much closer to proper names than is ordinarily supposed. …'Common name' is appropriate for species …and also for certain mass terms such as 'gold' and 'water'. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) |
| 17053 | Gold's atomic number might not be 79, but if it is, could non-79 stuff be gold? [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Gold could turn out not to have atomic number 79. …But given that gold does have the atomic number 79, could something be gold without having the atomic number 79? | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: The question seems to be 'is atomic number 79 essential to gold?', and on p.124 Kripke seems to say 'yes'. I agree. But how do we decide which features are essential to gold? Why do we think molten gold does count as gold? |
| 4964 | 'Cats are animals' has turned out to be a necessary truth [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: 'Cats are animals' has turned out to be a necessary truth. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: False! As Putnam has pointed out, we could yet discover that cats are subtly designed alien robots. This is a revealing error by Kripke, showing his desire to move from a useful logical clarification to an excessively amibitious metaphysics. |
| 6765 | Nominal essence may well be neither necessary nor sufficient for a natural kind [Kripke, by Bird] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's tiger example shows that a nominal essence is not necessary for the existence of a natural kind; examples from Putnam show that a nominal essence is not sufficient either. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Alexander Bird - Philosophy of Science Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: None of the characteristics of a tiger is essential to it. The appearance of water doesn't fix its reference. The move is towards an external view, that what matters for natural kinds is the real essence, not human conventions about it. I agree. |
| 9387 | The scientific discovery (if correct) that gold has atomic number 79 is a necessary truth [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Scientific discoveries about what gold is are not contingent truths, but are necessary truths in the strictest possible sense. ..If scientists are right, then it will be necessary and not contingent that gold be an element with atomic number 79. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: I think this glorious and controversial claim is correct. It is hard to find supporting arguments, but the picture of nature that emerges (where the essences of the stuffs precede the laws of their behaviour) seems to me far more coherent. |
| 17054 | Scientific discoveries about gold are necessary truths [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Statement representing scientific discoveries about what this stuff (gold) is are not contingent truths but necessary truths in the strictest possible sense. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: People take him to mean 'metaphysically necessary' here. How do we distinguish the 'scientific' discoveries, which are necessary, from the more casual discoveries, which may not be? Presumably being yellow is also necessary? |
| 17057 | Once we've found that heat is molecular motion, then that's what it is, in all possible worlds [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: We have discovered a phenomenon (heat) which in all possible worlds will be molecular motion - which could not have failed to be molecular motion, because that's what the phenomenon is. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: He refers to the identification as an 'essential property' of the phenomenon (and not merely a necessity). For my taste, Kripke uses the word 'property' too widely. |
| 4965 | Science searches basic structures in search of essences [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Science attempts, by investigating basic structural traits, to find the nature, and thus the essence (in the philosophical sense) of the kind. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: The 'necessity' of essences should be treated with caution, but this account of science strikes me as right, with the inbuilt assumption that the 'laws' are the consequence of the essences. A regularity becomes a law when it is explained by an essence. |
| 19776 | Small uninterrupted causes can have big effects [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Negligible causes may have surprising power when they act without interruption. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: A wonderfully simple observation that is a key idea of the theory of evolution. If life was created 6,000 years ago, evolution is impossible. If it appeared 500,000,000 years ago, how could evolution NOT occur? Little changes must occur. |
| 17050 | Tigers may lack all the properties we originally used to identify them [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: We might find out that tigers had none of the properties by which we originally identified them. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a can of worms. If I baptise someone 'the tallest man in the room', and it turns out he isn't, I withdraw my baptism. Why would I never withdraw 'tiger'? I suppose Kripke is right. |
| 17051 | The original concept of 'cat' comes from paradigmatic instances [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: The original concept of cat is: that kind of thing, where the kind can be identified by paradigmatic instances. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: Kripke evokes Putnam at this point, since he is famous for this proposal. Note that Kripke uses the plural, invoking more than one instance. Presumably we must abstract the fur colours from the instances? |
| 17049 | 'Tiger' designates a species, and merely looking like the species is not enough [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: We can say in advance that we use the term 'tiger' to designate a species, and that anything not of this species, even though it looks like a tiger, is not in fact a tiger. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: This is the 'baptismal' direct reference theory applied to species as well as to particular names. It seem to hinge on an internal structure being baptised, despite ignorance of what that structure is. Cf nominal essence? 'Tiger' denotes their essence? |
| 7252 | A tyrant exploits Christians because they don't value this life, and are made to be slaves [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The Christian spirit is too favourable to tyranny for tyranny not to take advantage of it. True Christians are made to be slaves; they know it and hardly care; this short life has too little value in their eyes. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], IV.8) | |
| A reaction: This is strikingly close to Nietzsche's verdict on Christianity, that it is the essence of slave morality. It has certainly been my experience that Christians tend to be much more reluctant than other people to stand up to authority. |