|
23392
|
The Dao (Way) first means the road, and comes to mean the right way to live [Norden]
|
|
Full Idea:
The 'Dao' (tr 'Way) has five meanings: 1) path or road, 2) mode of doing something, 3) account of how to do something, 4) the right way to live, and 5) the ultimate metaphysical entity responsible for nature, and how it should be.
|
|
From:
Bryan van Norden (Intro to Classical Chinese Philosophy [2011], 1.III)
|
|
A reaction:
[compressed] So it is essentially metaphorical, just like the English 'way to do a thing'. Number 5 seems a rather large leap from the others, and most discussion seems to centre on number 4. The Chinese hoped for consensus on the Dao.
|
|
23408
|
The hermeneutic circle is either within the text, or between text and biased reader [Norden]
|
|
Full Idea:
The first type of hermeneutic circle operates inside the text, studying relationships between sentences. …The second type is between the text and the reader, …who brings assumptions about what it means.
|
|
From:
Bryan van Norden (Intro to Classical Chinese Philosophy [2011], App A.I)
|
|
A reaction:
The first kind is an essential aspect of reading well. Readers are biased, but I get very tired of those who do nothing but search for bias, and ignore the truth a text has to offer. If everything is bias, intellectual life is dead.
|
|
16657
|
Substance, Quantity and Quality are real; other categories depend on those three [Henry of Ghent]
|
|
Full Idea:
Among creatures there are only three 'res' belong to the three first categories: Substance, Quantity and Quality. All other are aspects [rationes] and intellectual concepts with respect to them, with reality only as grounded on the res of those three.
|
|
From:
Henry of Ghent (Quodlibeta [1284], VII:1-2), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 12.3
|
|
A reaction:
Pasnau connects with the 'arrangement of being', giving an 'ontologically innocent' structure to reality. That seems to be what we all want, if only we could work out the ontologically guilty bit.
|
|
16645
|
Accidents are diminished beings, because they are dispositions of substance (unqualified being) [Henry of Ghent]
|
|
Full Idea:
Accidents are beings only in a qualified and diminished sense, because they are not called beings, nor are they beings, except because they are dispositions of an unqualified being, a substance.
|
|
From:
Henry of Ghent (Quodlibeta [1284], XV.5), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 10.4
|
|
A reaction:
This is aimed to 'half' detach the accidents (as the Eucharist requires). Later scholastics detached them completely. Late scholastics seem to have drifted back to Henry's view. The equivocal use of 'being' here was challenged later.
|
|
22012
|
Kant says things-in-themselves cause sensations, but then makes causation transcendental! [Henry of Ghent, by Pinkard]
|
|
Full Idea:
Kant claimed that things-in-themselves caused our sensations; but causality was a transcendental condition of experience, not a property of things-in-themselves, so the great Kant had contradicted himself.
|
|
From:
report of Henry of Ghent (Quodlibeta [1284], Supplement) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 04
|
|
A reaction:
This early objection by the conservative Jacobi (who disliked Enlightenment rational religion) is the key to the dispute over whether Kant is an idealist. Kant denied being an idealist, but how can he be, if this idea is correct?
|