69 ideas
| 19579 | The history of philosophy is just experiments in how to do philosophy [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: The history of philosophy up to now is nothing but a history of attempts to discover how to do philosophy. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 01) | |
| A reaction: I take post-Fregean analytic metaphysics to be another experiment in how to do philosophy. I suspect that the experiment of Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida etc has been a failure. |
| 19583 | Philosophy only begins when it studies itself [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: All philosophy begins where philosophizing philosophises itself. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 79) | |
| A reaction: The modern trend for doing metaphilosophy strikes me as wholly admirable, though I suspect that the enemies of philosophy (who are legion) see it as a decadence. |
| 22026 | Philosophy is homesickness - the urge to be at home everywhere [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is actually homesickness - the urge to be everywhere at home. | |
| From: Novalis (General Draft [1799], 45) | |
| A reaction: The idea of home [heimat] is powerful in German culture. The point of romanticism was seen as largely concerning restless souls like Byron and his heroes, who do not feel at home. Hence ironic detachment. |
| 19588 | The highest aim of philosophy is to combine all philosophies into a unity [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: He attains the maximum of a philosopher who combines all philosophies into a single philosophy | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments II [1798], 31) | |
| A reaction: I have found the epigraph for my big book! Recently a few narrowly analytical philosophers have attempted big books about everything (Sider, Heil, Chalmers), and they get a huge round of applause from me. |
| 19598 | Philosophy relies on our whole system of learning, and can thus never be complete [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Now all learning is connected - thus philosophy will never be complete. Only in the complete system of all learning will philosophy be truly visible. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments II [1798], 39) | |
| A reaction: Philosophy is evidently the unifying subject, which reveals the point of all the other subjects. It matches my maxim that 'science is the servant of philosophy'. |
| 19586 | Philosophers feed on problems, hoping they are digestible, and spiced with paradox [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: The philosopher lives on problems as the human being does on food. An insoluble problem is an indigestible food. What spice is to food, the paradoxical is to problems. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments II [1798], 09) | |
| A reaction: Novalis would presumably have disliked Hegel's dialectic, where the best food seems to be the indigestible. |
| 19587 | Philosophy aims to produce a priori an absolute and artistic world system [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy ...is the art of producing all our conceptions according to an absolute, artistic idea and of developing the thought of a world system a priori out of the depths of our spirit. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments II [1798], 19) | |
| A reaction: A lovely statement of the dream of building world systems by pure thought - embodying perfectly the view of philosophy despised by logical positivists and modern logical metaphysicians. The Novalis view will never die! I like 'artistic'. |
| 19574 | If man sacrifices truth he sacrifices himself, by acting against his own convictions [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Man has his being in truth - if he sacrifices truth he sacrifices himself. Whoever betrays truth betrays himself. It is not a question of lying - but of acting against one's conviction. | |
| From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 038) | |
| A reaction: Does he condone lying here, as long as you don't believe the lie? We would call it loss of integrity. |
| 19571 | Delusion and truth differ in their life functions [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: The distinction between delusion and truth lies in the difference in their life functions. | |
| From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 008) | |
| A reaction: Pure pragmatism, it seems. We might expect doubts about objective truth from a leading light of the Romantic movement. |
| 3750 | "It is true that x" means no more than x [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: It is evident that "It is true that Caesar was murdered" means no more than that Caesar was murdered. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (Facts and Propositions [1927]) | |
| A reaction: At the very least, saying it is true adds emphasis. One sentence is about Caesar, the other about a proposal concerning Caesar, so they can't quite be the same. Note Frege's priority in making this suggestion. |
| 13430 | Infinity: there is an infinity of distinguishable individuals [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: The Axiom of Infinity means that there are an infinity of distinguishable individuals, which is an empirical proposition. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (The Foundations of Mathematics [1925], §5) | |
| A reaction: The Axiom sounds absurd, as a part of a logical system, but Ramsey ends up defending it. Logical tautologies, which seem to be obviously true, are rendered absurd if they don't refer to any objects, and some of them refer to infinities of objects. |
| 13428 | Reducibility: to every non-elementary function there is an equivalent elementary function [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: The Axiom of Reducibility asserted that to every non-elementary function there is an equivalent elementary function [note: two functions are equivalent when the same arguments render them both true or both false]. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (The Foundations of Mathematics [1925], §2) | |
| A reaction: Ramsey in the business of showing that this axiom from Russell and Whitehead is not needed. He says that the axiom seems to be needed for induction and for Dedekind cuts. Since the cuts rest on it, and it is weak, Ramsey says it must go. |
| 19597 | Logic (the theory of relations) should be applied to mathematics [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Ought not logic, the theory of relations, be applied to mathematics? | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments II [1798], 38) | |
| A reaction: Bolzano was 19 when his was written. I presume Novalis would have been excited by set theory (even though he was a hyper-romantic). |
| 13427 | Either 'a = b' vacuously names the same thing, or absurdly names different things [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: In 'a = b' either 'a' and 'b' are names of the same thing, in which case the proposition says nothing, or of different things, in which case it is absurd. In neither case is it an assertion of a fact; it only asserts when a or b are descriptions. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (The Foundations of Mathematics [1925], §1) | |
| A reaction: This is essentially Frege's problem with Hesperus and Phosphorus. How can identities be informative? So 2+2=4 is extensionally vacuous, but informative because they are different descriptions. |
| 13134 | We negate predicates but do not negate names [Westerhoff] |
| Full Idea: We negate predicates but do not negate names. | |
| From: Jan Westerhoff (Ontological Categories [2005], §88) | |
| A reaction: This is a point for anyone like Ramsey who wants to collapse the distinction between particulars and universals, or singular terms and their predicates. |
| 13334 | Contradictions are either purely logical or mathematical, or they involved thought and language [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: Group A consists of contradictions which would occur in a logical or mathematical system, involving terms such as class or number. Group B contradictions are not purely logical, and contain some reference to thought, language or symbolism. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (The Foundations of Mathematics [1925], p.171), quoted by Graham Priest - The Structure of Paradoxes of Self-Reference 1 | |
| A reaction: This has become the orthodox division of all paradoxes, but the division is challenged by Priest (Idea 13373). He suggests that we now realise (post-Tarski?) that language is more involved in logic and mathematics than we thought. |
| 19581 | A problem is a solid mass, which the mind must break up [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: A problem is a solid, synthetic mass which is broken up by means of the penetrating power of the mind. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 04) |
| 19584 | Whoever first counted to two must have seen the possibility of infinite counting [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Whoever first understood how to count to two, even if he still found it difficult to keep on counting, saw nonetheless the possibility of infinite counting according to the same laws. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 84) | |
| A reaction: Presumably it is the discerning of the 'law' which triggers this. Is the key concept 'addition' or 'successor' (or are those the same?). |
| 6409 | The 'simple theory of types' distinguishes levels among properties [Ramsey, by Grayling] |
| Full Idea: The idea that there should be something like a distinction of levels among properties is captured in Ramsey's 'simple theory of types'. | |
| From: report of Frank P. Ramsey (works [1928]) by A.C. Grayling - Russell | |
| A reaction: I merely report this, though it is not immediately obvious how anyone would decide which 'level' a type belonged on. |
| 13426 | Formalists neglect content, but the logicists have focused on generalizations, and neglected form [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: The formalists neglected the content altogether and made mathematics meaningless, but the logicians neglected the form and made mathematics consist of any true generalisations; only by taking account of both sides can we obtain an adequate theory. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (The Foundations of Mathematics [1925], §1) | |
| A reaction: He says mathematics is 'tautological generalizations'. It is a criticism of modern structuralism that it overemphasises form, and fails to pay attention to the meaning of the concepts which stand at the 'nodes' of the structure. |
| 13425 | Formalism is hopeless, because it focuses on propositions and ignores concepts [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: The hopelessly inadequate formalist theory is, to some extent, the result of considering only the propositions of mathematics and neglecting the analysis of its concepts. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (The Foundations of Mathematics [1925], §1) | |
| A reaction: You'll have to read Ramsey to see how this thought pans out, but it at least gives a pointer to how to go about addressing the question. |
| 22025 | Novalis thought self-consciousness cannot disclose 'being', because we are temporal creatures [Novalis, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Novalis came to think that the kind of existence , or 'being', that is disclosed in self-consciousness remains, as it were, forever out of our reach because of the kind of temporal creatures we are. | |
| From: report of Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 06 | |
| A reaction: It looks here as if Novalis kicked Heidegger's Dasein into the long grass before it even got started, but maybe they have different notions of 'being', with Novalis seeking timeless being, and Heidegger, influenced by Bergson, accepting temporality. |
| 13117 | How far down before we are too specialised to have a category? [Westerhoff] |
| Full Idea: How far down are we allowed to go before the categories become too special to qualify as ontological categories? | |
| From: Jan Westerhoff (Ontological Categories [2005], Intro) | |
| A reaction: A very nice question, because we can't deny a category to a set with only one member, otherwise the last surviving dodo would not have been a dodo. |
| 13116 | Maybe objects in the same category have the same criteria of identity [Westerhoff] |
| Full Idea: There is an idea that objects belonging to the same category have the same criteria of identity. This view was first explicitly endorsed by Frege (1884), and was later systematized by Dummett (1981). | |
| From: Jan Westerhoff (Ontological Categories [2005], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This approach is based on identity between equivalence classes. Westerhoff says it means, implausibly, that the resulting categories cannot share properties. |
| 13118 | Categories are base-sets which are used to construct states of affairs [Westerhoff] |
| Full Idea: My fundamental idea is that 'form-sets' are intersubstitutable constituents of states of affairs with the same form, and 'base-sets' are special form-sets which can be used to construct other form-sets. Ontological categories are the base-sets. | |
| From: Jan Westerhoff (Ontological Categories [2005], Intro) | |
| A reaction: The spirit of this is, of course, to try to achieve the kind of rigour that is expected in contemporary professional philosophy, by aiming for some sort of axiom-system that is related to a well established precise discipline like set theory. Maybe. |
| 13125 | Categories are held to explain why some substitutions give falsehood, and others meaninglessness [Westerhoff] |
| Full Idea: It is usually assumed of ontological categories that they can explain why certain substitutions make a statement false ('prime' for 'odd'), while others make it meaningless ('sweet' for 'odd', of numbers). | |
| From: Jan Westerhoff (Ontological Categories [2005], §05) | |
| A reaction: So there is a strong link between big ontological questions, and Ryle's famous identification of the 'category mistake'. The phenomenon of the category mistake is undeniable, and should make us sympathetic to the idea of categories. |
| 13126 | Categories systematize our intuitions about generality, substitutability, and identity [Westerhoff] |
| Full Idea: Systems of ontological categories are systematizations of our intuitions about generality, intersubstitutability, and identity. | |
| From: Jan Westerhoff (Ontological Categories [2005], §23) | |
| A reaction: I think we might be able to concede this without conceding the relativism about categories which Westerhoff espouses. I would claim that our 'intuitions' are pretty accurate about the joints of nature, and hence accurate about these criteria. |
| 13130 | Categories as generalities don't give a criterion for a low-level cut-off point [Westerhoff] |
| Full Idea: Categories in terms of generality, dependence and containment are unsatisfactory because of the 'cut-off point problem': they don't give an account of how far down the order we can go and be sure we are still dealing with categories. | |
| From: Jan Westerhoff (Ontological Categories [2005], §27) | |
| A reaction: I don't see why this should be a devastating objection to any theory. I have a very clear notion of a human being, but a very hazy notion of how far back towards its conception a human being extends. |
| 13124 | Categories can be ordered by both containment and generality [Westerhoff] |
| Full Idea: Categories are usually not assumed to be ordered by containment, but also be generality. | |
| From: Jan Westerhoff (Ontological Categories [2005], §02) | |
| A reaction: I much prefer generality, which is responsive to the full picture, whereas containment seems to appeal too much to the orderly and formalised mind. Containments overlap, so we can't dream of a perfectly neat system. |
| 13131 | The aim is that everything should belong in some ontological category or other [Westerhoff] |
| Full Idea: It seems to be one of the central points of constructing systems of ontological categories that everything can be placed in some category or other. | |
| From: Jan Westerhoff (Ontological Categories [2005], §49) | |
| A reaction: After initial resistance to this, I suppose I have to give in. The phoenix (a unique mythological bird) is called a 'phoenix', though it might just be called 'John' (cf. God). If there were another phoenix, we would know how to categorise it. |
| 13123 | All systems have properties and relations, and most have individuals, abstracta, sets and events [Westerhoff] |
| Full Idea: Surveyed ontological systems show overlaps: properties and relations turn up in every system; individuals form part of five systems; abstracta, collections/sets and events are in four; facts are in two. | |
| From: Jan Westerhoff (Ontological Categories [2005], §02) | |
| A reaction: Westerhoff is a hero for doing such a useful survey. Of course, Quine challenges properties, and relations are commonly given a reductive analysis. Individuals can be challenged, and abstracta reduced. Sets are fictions. Events or facts? Etc. |
| 13115 | Ontological categories are like formal axioms, not unique and with necessary membership [Westerhoff] |
| Full Idea: I deny the absolutism of a unique system of ontological categories and the essentialist view of membership in ontological categories as necessary features. ...I regard ontological categories as similar to axioms of formalized theories. | |
| From: Jan Westerhoff (Ontological Categories [2005], Intro) | |
| A reaction: The point is that modern axioms are not fundamental self-evident truths, but an economic set of basic statements from which some system can be derived. There may be no unique set of axioms for a formal system. |
| 13119 | Categories merely systematise, and are not intrinsic to objects [Westerhoff] |
| Full Idea: My conclusion is that categories are relativistic, used for systematization, and that it is not an intrinsic feature of an object to belong to a category, and that there is no fundamental distinction between individuals and properties. | |
| From: Jan Westerhoff (Ontological Categories [2005], Intro) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] He calls his second conclusion 'anti-essentialist', but I think we can still get an account of (explanatory) essence while agreeing with his relativised view of categories. Wiggins might be his main opponent. |
| 13135 | A thing's ontological category depends on what else exists, so it is contingent [Westerhoff] |
| Full Idea: What ontological category a thing belongs to is not dependent on its inner nature, but dependent on what other things there are in the world, and this is a contingent matter. | |
| From: Jan Westerhoff (Ontological Categories [2005], §89) | |
| A reaction: This is aimed at those, like Wiggins, who claim that category is essential to a thing, and there is no possible world in which that things could belong to another category. Sounds good, till you try to come up with examples. |
| 8495 | The distinction between particulars and universals is a mistake made because of language [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: The whole theory of particulars and universals is due to mistaking for a fundamental characteristic of reality what is merely a characteristic of language. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (Universals [1925], p.13) | |
| A reaction: [Fraser MacBride has pursued this idea] It is rather difficult to deny the existence of particulars, in the sense of actual objects, so this appears to make Ramsey a straightforward nominalist, of some sort or other. |
| 8493 | We could make universals collections of particulars, or particulars collections of their qualities [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: The two obvious methods of abolishing the distinction between particulars and universals are by holding either that universals are collections of particulars, or that particulars are collections of their qualities. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (Universals [1925], p.8) | |
| A reaction: Ramsey proposes an error theory, arising out of language. Quine seems to offer another attempt, making objects and predication unanalysable and basic. Abstract reference seems to make the strongest claim to separate out the universals. |
| 8494 | Obviously 'Socrates is wise' and 'Socrates has wisdom' express the same fact [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: It seems to me as clear as anything can be in philosophy that the two sentences 'Socrates is wise' and 'wisdom is a characteristic of Socrates' assert the same fact and express the same proposition. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (Universals [1925], p.12) | |
| A reaction: Could be challenged. One says Socrates is just the way he is, the other says he is attached to an abstract entity greater than himself. The squabble over universals has become a squabble over logical form. Finding logical form needs metaphysics! |
| 19575 | Refinement of senses increasingly distinguishes individuals [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: The more our senses are refined, the more capable they become of distinguishing between individuals. The highest sense would be the highest receptivity to particularity in human nature. | |
| From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 072) | |
| A reaction: I adore this idea!! It goes into the collection of support I am building for individual essences, against the absurd idea of kinds as essences (when they are actually categorisations). It also accompanies particularism in ethics. |
| 13129 | Essential kinds may be too specific to provide ontological categories [Westerhoff] |
| Full Idea: Essential kinds can be very specific, and arguably too specific for the purposes of ontological categories. | |
| From: Jan Westerhoff (Ontological Categories [2005], §27) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. There doesn't seem to be any precise guideline as to how specific an essential kind might be. In scientific essentialism, each of the isotopes of tin has a distinct essence, but why should they not be categories |
| 13766 | 'If' is the same as 'given that', so the degrees of belief should conform to probability theory [Ramsey, by Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: Ramsey suggested that 'if', 'given that' and 'on the supposition that' come to the same thing, and that the degrees of belief in the antecedent should then conform to probability theory. | |
| From: report of Frank P. Ramsey (Truth and Probability [1926]) by Frank P. Ramsey - Law and Causality B | |
| A reaction: [compressed] |
| 10993 | Ramsey's Test: believe the consequent if you believe the antecedent [Ramsey, by Read] |
| Full Idea: Ramsey's Test for conditionals is that a conditional should be believed if a belief in its antecedent would commit one to believing its consequent. | |
| From: report of Frank P. Ramsey (Law and Causality [1928]) by Stephen Read - Thinking About Logic Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: A rather pragmatic approach to conditionals |
| 14279 | Asking 'If p, will q?' when p is uncertain, then first add p hypothetically to your knowledge [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: If two people are arguing 'If p, will q?' and are both in doubt as to p, they are adding p hypothetically to their stock of knowledge, and arguing on that basis about q; ...they are fixing their degrees of belief in q given p. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (Law and Causality [1928], B 155 n) | |
| A reaction: This has become famous as the 'Ramsey Test'. Bennett emphasises that he is not saying that you should actually believe p - you are just trying it for size. The presupposition approach to conditionals seems attractive. Edgington likes 'degrees'. |
| 3212 | Beliefs are maps by which we steer [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: Beliefs are maps by which we steer. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (works [1928]), quoted by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind p.259 n5 |
| 22328 | I just confront the evidence, and let it act on me [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: I can but put the evidence before me, and let it act on my mind. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (The Foundations of Mathematics [1925], p.202), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 70 'Deg' | |
| A reaction: Potter calls this observation 'downbeat', but I am an enthusiastic fan. It is roughly my view of both concept formation and of knowledge. You soak up the world, and respond appropriately. The trick is in the selection of evidence to confront. |
| 22067 | Poetry is true idealism, and the self-consciousness of the universe [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Poetry is true idealism - contemplation of the world as contemplation of a large mind - self-consciousness of the universe. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], vol 3 p.640), quoted by Ernst Behler - Early German Romanticism | |
| A reaction: It looks like the step from Fichte's idealism to the Absolute is poetry, which embraces the ultimate Spinozan substance through imagination. Or something... |
| 19572 | Experiences tests reason, and reason tests experience [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Experience is the test of the rational - and vice versa. | |
| From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 010) | |
| A reaction: A wonderful remark. Surely we can't ignore our need to test claims of pure logic by filling in the variables with concrete instances, to assess validity? And philosophy without examples is doomed to be abstract waffle. Coherence is the combined aim. |
| 19590 | Empiricists are passive thinkers, given their philosophy by the external world and fate [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: An empiricist is one whose way of thinking is an effect of the external world and of fate - the passive thinker - to whom his philosophy is given. | |
| From: Novalis (Teplitz Fragments [1798], 33) | |
| A reaction: Novalis goes on to enthuse about 'magical idealism', so he rejects empiricism. This is an early attack on the Myth of the Given, found in Sellars and McDowell. |
| 22325 | A belief is knowledge if it is true, certain and obtained by a reliable process [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: I have always said that a belief was knowledge if it was 1) true, ii) certain, iii) obtained by a reliable process. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (The Foundations of Mathematics [1925], p.258), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 66 'Rel' | |
| A reaction: Not sure why it has to be 'certain' as well as 'true'. It seems that 'true' is objective, and 'certain' subjective. I think I know lots of things of which I am not fully certain. Reliabilism long preceded Alvin Goldman. |
| 19724 | Belief is knowledge if it is true, certain, and obtained by a reliable process [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: I have always said that a belief was knowledge if it was (i) true, (ii) certain, (iii) obtained by a reliable process. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (Knowledge [1929]), quoted by Juan Comesaņa - Reliabilism 2 | |
| A reaction: Remarkable to be addressing the Gettier problem at that date, but Russell had flirted with the problem. Ramsey says the production of the belief must be reliable, rather than the justification for the belief. Note that he wants certainty. |
| 19594 | General statements about nature are not valid [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: General statements are not valid in the study of nature. | |
| From: Novalis (Last Fragments [1800], 17) | |
| A reaction: This is his striking obsession with the particularity and fine detail of nature. Alexander von Humbolt was exploring nature in S.America in this year. It sounds wrong about physics, but possibly right about biology. |
| 6894 | Mental terms can be replaced in a sentence by a variable and an existential quantifier [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: Ramsey Sentences are his technique for eliminating theoretical terms in science (and can be applied to mental terms, or to social rights); a term in a sentence is replaced by a variable and an existential quantifier. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (Law and Causality [1928]), quoted by Thomas Mautner - Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy p.469 | |
| A reaction: The technique is used by functionalists and results in a sort of eliminativism. The intrinsic nature of mental states is eliminated, because everything worth saying can be expressed in terms of functional/causal role. Sounds wrong to me. |
| 19143 | Ramsey gave axioms for an uncertain agent to decide their preferences [Ramsey, by Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Ramsey gave an axiomatic treatment of preference in the face of uncertainty, when applied to a particular agent. | |
| From: report of Frank P. Ramsey (Truth and Probability [1926]) by Donald Davidson - Truth and Predication 2 | |
| A reaction: This is evidently the beginnings of Bayesian decision theory. |
| 19591 | Desire for perfection is an illness, if it turns against what is imperfect [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: An absolute drive toward perfection and completeness is an illness, as soon as it shows itself to be destructive and averse toward the imperfect, the incomplete. | |
| From: Novalis (General Draft [1799], 33) | |
| A reaction: Deep and true! Novalis seems to be a particularist - hanging on to the fine detail of life, rather than being immersed in the theory. These are the philosophers who also turn to literature. |
| 19596 | The whole body is involved in the formation of thoughts [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: In the formation of thoughts all parts of the body seem to me to be working together. | |
| From: Novalis (Last Fragments [1800], 20) | |
| A reaction: I can only think that Spinoza must be behind this thought, or La Mettrie. It seems a strikingly unusual intuition for its time, when almost everyone takes a spiritual sort of dualism for granted. |
| 19573 | The seat of the soul is where our inner and outer worlds interpenetrate [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: The seat of the soul is the point where the inner and the outer worlds touch. Wherever they penetrate each other - it is there at every point of penetration. | |
| From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 020) | |
| A reaction: I surmise that Spinoza's dual-aspect monism is behind this interesting remark. See the related idea from Schopenhauer. |
| 19577 | Everything is a chaotic unity, then we abstract, then we reunify the world into a free alliance [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Before abstraction everything is one - but one as chaos is - after abstraction everything is again unified - but in a free alliance of independent, self-determined beings. A crowd has become a society - a chaos is transformed into a manifold world. | |
| From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 094) | |
| A reaction: Personally I take (unfashionably) psychological abstraction to one of the key foundations of human thought, so I love this idea, which gives a huge picture of how the abstracting mind relates to reality. |
| 18818 | Sentence meaning is given by the actions to which it would lead [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: The meaning of a sentence is to be defined by reference to the actions to which asserting it would lead. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (Facts and Propositions [1927], p.51), quoted by Ian Rumfitt - The Boundary Stones of Thought | |
| A reaction: I find this idea quite bizarre. Most sentences have no connection to any action or behavior at all. Do we have to ingeniously contrive some possible action? That is the worst sort of behaviourism. See context - Ramsey wasn't stupid! |
| 19585 | Every person has his own language [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Every person has his own language. Language is the expression of the spirit. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 91) | |
| A reaction: Nice to see someone enthusiastically affirming what was later famously denied, and maybe even disproved. |
| 19578 | Only self-illuminated perfect individuals are beautiful [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Everything beautiful is a self-illuminated, perfect individual. | |
| From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 101) | |
| A reaction: It is a commonplace to describe something beautiful as being 'perfect'. Unfinished masterpieces are interesting exceptions. Are only 'individuals' beautiful? Is unity a necessary condition of beauty? Bad art fails to be self-illuminated. |
| 19582 | Morality and philosophy are mutually dependent [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Without philosophy there is no true morality, and without morality no philosophy. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 21) | |
| A reaction: Challenging! Maybe unthinking people drift in a sea of vague untethered morality, and people who seem to have a genuine moral strength are always rooted in some sort of philosophy. Maybe. Is the passion for philosophy a moral passion? |
| 22027 | Life isn't given to us like a novel - we write the novel [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Life must not be a novel that is given to us, but one that is made by us. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 99) | |
| A reaction: The roots of existentialism are in the Romantic movement. Sartre seems to have taken this idea literally. |
| 19589 | The whole point of a monarch is that we accept them as a higher-born, ideal person [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: The distinguishing character of the monarchy lies precisely in the fact of belief in a higher-born person, of voluntary acceptance of an ideal person. I cannot choose a leader from among my peers. | |
| From: Novalis (Fath and Love, or the King and Queen [1798], 18) | |
| A reaction: Novalis was passionately devoted to the new king and queen of Prussia, only a few years after the French Revolution. This attitude seems to me unchanged among monarchists in present day Britain. Genetics has undermined 'higher-born'. |
| 19580 | If the pupil really yearns for the truth, they only need a hint [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: If a pupil genuinely desires truth is requires only a hint to show him how to find what he is seeking. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 02) | |
| A reaction: The tricky job for the teacher or supervisor is assessing whether the pupil genuinely desires truth, or needs motivating. |
| 19593 | Persons are shaped by a life history; splendid persons are shaped by world history [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: What is it that shapes a person if not his life history? And in the same way a splendid person is shaped by nothing other than world history. Many people live better in the past and in the future than in the present. | |
| From: Novalis (Last Fragments [1800], 15) | |
| A reaction: Clearly there is a lot to be said for splendid people who live entirely in the present (such as jazz musicians). Some people do have an awesomely wide historical perspective on their immediate lives. Palaeontology is not the master discipline though! |
| 19595 | Nature is a whole, and its individual parts cannot be wholly understood [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Nature is a whole - in which each part in itself can never be wholly understood. | |
| From: Novalis (Last Fragments [1800], 18) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't seem right when studying some item in a laboratory, but it seems undeniable when you consider the history and future of each item. |
| 19592 | The basic relations of nature are musical [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Musical relations seem to me to be actually the basic relations of nature. | |
| From: Novalis (Last Fragments [1800], 10) | |
| A reaction: Novalis shows no signs of being a pythagorean, and then suddenly comes out with this. I suppose if you love music, this thought should float into your mind at regular intervals, because the power of music is so strong. Does he mean ratios? |
| 9420 | Causal laws result from the simplest axioms of a complete deductive system [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: Causal laws are consequences of those propositions which we should take as axioms if we knew everything and organized it as simply as possible in a deductive system. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (Law and Causality [1928], §B) | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 9418. |
| 9418 | All knowledge needs systematizing, and the axioms would be the laws of nature [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: Even if we knew everything, we should still want to systematize our knowledge as a deductive system, and the general axioms in that system would be the fundamental laws of nature. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (Law and Causality [1928], §A) | |
| A reaction: This is the Mill-Ramsey-Lewis view. Cf. Idea 9420. |
| 19576 | Religion needs an intermediary, because none of us can connect directly to a godhead [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Nothing is more indispensable for true religious feeling than an intermediary - which connects us to the godhead. The human being is absolutely incapable of sustaining an immediate relation with this. | |
| From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 073) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a defence of priests and organised religion, and an implied attack on protestants who give centrality to private prayer and conscience. |