284 ideas
21979 | Wisdom emerges at the end of a process [Hegel] |
19608 | Wisdom is just the last gasp of a dying civilization [Cioran] |
23064 | So-called wisdom is just pondering things instead of acting [Cioran] |
19624 | Intelligence only fully flourishes at the end of a historical period [Cioran] |
19599 | Ideas are neutral, but people fill them with passion and weakness [Cioran] |
19631 | The history of ideas (and deeds) occurs in a meaningless environment [Cioran] |
19645 | Some thinkers would have been just as dynamic, no matter when they had lived [Cioran] |
19629 | A nation gives expression to its sum of values, and is then exhausted [Cioran] |
19635 | Hegel produced modern optimism; he failed to grasp that consciousness never progresses [Hegel, by Cioran] |
8092 | Logic was merely a branch of rhetoric until the scientific 17th century [Devlin] |
8215 | Hegel was the last philosopher of the Book [Hegel, by Derrida] |
20109 | Hegel inserted society and history between the God-world, man-nature, man-being binary pairs [Hegel, by Safranski] |
8927 | Philosophy moves essentially in the element of universality [Hegel] |
22766 | Philosophy is exploration of the rational [Hegel] |
21757 | Philosophy is the conceptual essence of the shape of history [Hegel] |
21776 | Philosophy aims to reveal the necessity and rationality of the categories of nature and spirit [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
19073 | True philosophy aims at absolute unity, while our understanding sees only separation [Hegel] |
21753 | If we look at the world rationally, the world assumes a rational aspect [Hegel] |
15624 | Free thinking has no presuppositions [Hegel] |
19618 | I abandoned philosophy because it didn't acknowledge melancholy and human weakness [Cioran] |
19621 | Originality in philosophy is just the invention of terms [Cioran] |
19607 | The mind is superficial, only concerned with the arrangement of events, not their significance [Cioran] |
16011 | Hegel doesn't storm the heavens like the giants, but works his way up by syllogisms [Kierkegaard on Hegel] |
19638 | Metaphysics is a universalisation of physical anguish [Cioran] |
15631 | The ideal of reason is the unification of abstract identity (or 'concept') and being [Hegel] |
15612 | Older metaphysics naively assumed that thought grasped things in themselves [Hegel] |
5433 | For Hegel, things are incomplete, and contain external references in their own nature [Hegel, by Russell] |
19620 | Great systems of philosophy are just brilliant tautologies [Cioran] |
23072 | Systems are the worst despotism, in philosophy and in life [Cioran] |
21761 | If we start with indeterminate being, we arrive at being and nothing as a united pair [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
21764 | Thought about being leads to a string of other concepts, like becoming, quantity, specificity, causality... [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
21769 | We must start with absolute abstraction, with no presuppositions, so we start with pure being [Hegel] |
21768 | Logic is metaphysics, the science of things grasped in thoughts [Hegel] |
22077 | Metaphysics is the lattice which makes incoming material intelligible [Hegel] |
3301 | On the continent it is generally believed that metaphysics died with Hegel [Benardete,JA on Hegel] |
8935 | Without philosophy, science is barren and futile [Hegel] |
21984 | We must break up the rigidity that our understanding has imposed [Hegel] |
22082 | Truth does not appear by asserting reasons and then counter-reasons [Hegel] |
23075 | A text explained ceases to be a text [Cioran] |
7083 | Highest reason is aesthetic, and truth and good are subordinate to beauty [Hegel] |
21974 | The world seems rational to those who look at it rationally [Hegel] |
22081 | Let thought follow its own course, and don't interfere [Hegel] |
22037 | Objectivity is not by correspondence, but by the historical determined necessity of Geist [Hegel, by Pinkard] |
15626 | Categories create objective experience, but are too conditioned by things to actually grasp them [Hegel] |
22768 | Subjective and objective are not firmly opposed, but merge into one another [Hegel] |
22035 | The structure of reason is a social and historical achievement [Hegel, by Pinkard] |
8932 | Truth does not come from giving reasons for and against propositions [Hegel] |
19661 | Making sufficient reason an absolute devalues the principle of non-contradiction [Hegel, by Meillassoux] |
15616 | If truth is just non-contradiction, we must take care that our basic concepts aren't contradictory [Hegel] |
21983 | Being and nothing are the same and not the same, which is the identity of identity and non-identity [Hegel] |
21985 | The so-called world is filled with contradiction [Hegel] |
20952 | Rather than in three stages, Hegel presented his dialectic as 'negation of the negation' [Hegel, by Bowie] |
21766 | Dialectic is the instability of thoughts generating their opposite, and then new more complex thoughts [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
21978 | Hegel's dialectic is not thesis-antithesis-synthesis, but usually negation of negation of the negation [Hegel, by Moore,AW] |
15615 | Older metaphysics became dogmatic, by assuming opposed assertions must be true and false [Hegel] |
21767 | Dialectic is seen in popular proverbs like 'pride comes before a fall' [Hegel] |
15638 | Dialectic is the moving soul of scientific progression, the principle which binds science together [Hegel] |
15639 | Socratic dialectic is subjective, but Plato made it freely scientific and objective [Hegel] |
19630 | No great idea ever emerged from a dialogue [Cioran] |
19070 | Superficial truth is knowing how something is, which is consciousness of bare correctness [Hegel] |
21793 | Genuine truth is the resolution of the highest contradiction [Hegel] |
21795 | What I hold true must also be part of my feelings and character [Hegel] |
5644 | In Hegel's logic it is concepts (rather than judgements or propositions) which are true or false [Hegel, by Scruton] |
19072 | In the deeper sense of truth, to be untrue resembles being bad; badness is untrue to a thing's nature [Hegel] |
19636 | Truth is just an error insufficiently experienced [Cioran] |
19642 | Eventually every 'truth' is guaranteed by the police [Cioran] |
19071 | The deeper sense of truth is a thing matching the idea of what it ought to be [Hegel] |
7077 | The true is the whole [Hegel] |
8081 | 'No councillors are bankers' and 'All bankers are athletes' implies 'Some athletes are not councillors' [Devlin] |
8085 | Modern propositional inference replaces Aristotle's 19 syllogisms with modus ponens [Devlin] |
8086 | Predicate logic retains the axioms of propositional logic [Devlin] |
8091 | Situation theory is logic that takes account of context [Devlin] |
8087 | Golden ages: 1900-1960 for pure logic, and 1950-1985 for applied logic [Devlin] |
8089 | Montague's intensional logic incorporated the notion of meaning [Devlin] |
8082 | Where a conditional is purely formal, an implication implies a link between premise and conclusion [Devlin] |
21595 | Excluded middle is the maxim of definite understanding, but just produces contradictions [Hegel] |
8072 | Sentences of apparent identical form can have different contextual meanings [Devlin] |
23066 | Negation doesn't arise from reasoning, but from deep instincts [Cioran] |
21777 | Negation of negation doubles back into a self-relationship [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
19632 | An axiom has no more authority than a frenzy [Cioran] |
15628 | The idea that contradiction is essential to rational understanding is a key modern idea [Hegel] |
15629 | Tenderness for the world solves the antinomies; contradiction is in our reason, not in the essence of the world [Hegel] |
15630 | Antinomies are not just in four objects, but in all objects, all representations, all objects and all ideas [Hegel] |
8075 | Space and time are atomic in the arrow, and divisible in the tortoise [Devlin] |
5645 | The dialectical opposition of being and nothing is resolved in passing to the concept of becoming [Hegel, by Scruton] |
21762 | To grasp an existence, we must consider its non-existence [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
21977 | Nothing exists, as thinkable and expressible [Hegel] |
21760 | Thinking of nothing is not the same as simply not thinking [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
22772 | Personality overcomes subjective limitations and posits Dasein as its own [Hegel] |
23077 | The word 'being' is very tempting, but in fact means nothing at all [Cioran] |
5646 | Hegel gives an ontological proof of the existence of everything [Hegel, by Scruton] |
21765 | The ground of a thing is not another thing, but the first thing's substance or rational concept [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
22059 | Kant's thing-in-itself is just an abstraction from our knowledge; things only exist for us [Hegel, by Bowie] |
22083 | Hegel believe that the genuine categories reveal things in themselves [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
23068 | People who really believe anti-realism don't bother to prove it [Cioran] |
22078 | Even simple propositions about sensations are filled with categories [Hegel] |
15634 | Thought about particulars is done entirely through categories [Hegel] |
21755 | For Hegel, categories shift their form in the course of history [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
21754 | Our concepts and categories disclose the world, because we are part of the world [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
22079 | Hegel said Kant's fixed categories actually vary with culture and era [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
22080 | The nature of each category relates itself to another [Hegel] |
21981 | The one substance is formless without the mediation of dialectical concepts [Hegel] |
15637 | Essence is the essential self-positing unity of immediacy and mediation [Hegel] |
15613 | Real cognition grasps a thing from within itself, and is not satisfied with mere predicates [Hegel] |
21772 | In absolute knowing, the gap between object and oneself closes, producing certainty [Hegel] |
23078 | Opinions are fine, but having convictions means something has gone wrong [Cioran] |
23073 | Convictions are failures to study anything thoroughly [Cioran] |
15611 | I develop philosophical science from the simplest appearance of immediate consciousness [Hegel, by Hegel] |
15636 | The Cogito is at the very centre of the entire concern of modern philosophy [Hegel] |
20954 | The 'absolute idea' is when all the contradictions are exhausted [Hegel, by Bowie] |
8928 | The Absolute is not supposed to be comprehended, but felt and intuited [Hegel] |
8929 | In the Absolute everything is the same [Hegel] |
21774 | Genuine idealism is seeing the ideal structure of the world [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
21972 | Hegel, unlike Kant, said how things appear is the same as how things are [Hegel, by Moore,AW] |
22038 | Hegel's non-subjective idealism is the unity of subjective and objective viewpoints [Hegel, by Pinkard] |
22044 | Hegel claimed his system was about the world, but it only mapped conceptual interdependence [Pinkard on Hegel] |
21464 | The Absolute is the primitive system of concepts which are actualised [Hegel, by Gardner] |
22084 | Authentic thinking and reality have the same content [Hegel] |
21975 | The absolute idea is being, imperishable life, self-knowing truth, and all truth [Hegel] |
21976 | The absolute idea is the great unity of the infinite system of concepts [Hegel, by Moore,AW] |
8934 | Being is Thought [Hegel] |
22300 | Existence is just a set of relationships [Hegel] |
9225 | Hegel reputedly claimed to know a priori that there are five planets [Hegel, by Field,H] |
15609 | The sensible is distinguished from thought by being about singular things [Hegel] |
21773 | Experience is immediacy, unity, forces, self-awareness, reason, culture, absolute being [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
22033 | Hegel tried to avoid Kant's dualism of neutral intuitions and imposed concepts [Hegel, by Pinkard] |
15625 | Sense perception is secondary and dependent, while thought is independent and primitive [Hegel] |
15619 | Empiricism made particular knowledge possible, and blocked wild claims [Hegel] |
15620 | Empiricism contains the important idea that we should see knowledge for ourselves, and be part of it [Hegel] |
15622 | Empiricism unknowingly contains and uses a metaphysic, which underlies its categories [Hegel] |
15621 | Empiricism of the finite denies the supersensible, and can only think with formal abstraction [Hegel] |
15632 | The Humean view stops us thinking about perception, and finding universals and necessities in it [Hegel] |
21771 | Consciousness derives its criterion of knowledge from direct knowledge of its own being [Hegel] |
22058 | Hegel's 'absolute idea' is the interdependence of all truths to justify any of them [Hegel, by Bowie] |
15623 | Humean scepticism, unlike ancient Greek scepticism, accepts the truth of experience as basic [Hegel] |
22780 | It is a rejection of intellectual dignity to say that we cannot know the truth [Hegel] |
8088 | People still say the Hopi have no time concepts, despite Whorf's later denial [Devlin] |
19626 | Our instincts had to be blunted and diminished, to make way for consciousness! [Cioran] |
20741 | Consciousness is shaped dialectically, by opposing forces and concepts [Hegel, by Aho] |
21770 | Consciousness is both of objects, and of itself [Hegel] |
5647 | Hegel claims knowledge of self presupposes desire, and hence objects [Hegel, by Scruton] |
22770 | A person is a being which is aware of its own self-directed and free subjectivity [Hegel] |
5648 | For Hegel knowledge of self presupposes objects, and also a public and moral social world [Hegel, by Scruton] |
22788 | A human only become a somebody as a member of a social estate [Hegel] |
22792 | Individuals attain their right by discovering their self-consciousness in institutions [Hegel] |
21780 | A free will primarily wills its own freedoom [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
22040 | Freedom is produced by the activity of the mind, and is not intrinsically given [Hegel] |
23076 | If people always acted without words we would take them for robots [Cioran] |
15617 | In abstraction, beyond finitude, freedom and necessity must exist together [Hegel] |
22039 | Geist is distinct from nature, not as a substance, but because of its normativity [Hegel, by Pinkard] |
15608 | The act of thinking is the bringing forth of universals [Hegel] |
21986 | Hegel's system has a vast number of basic concepts [Hegel, by Moore,AW] |
20953 | Every concept depends on the counter-concepts of what it is not [Hegel, by Bowie] |
15607 | We don't think with concepts - we think the concepts [Hegel] |
15610 | Active thought about objects produces the universal, which is what is true and essential of it [Hegel] |
19633 | We use concepts to master our fears; saying 'death' releases us from confronting it [Cioran] |
23065 | If only we could write like a reptile, of endless sensations and no concepts! [Cioran] |
8073 | How do we parse 'time flies like an arrow' and 'fruit flies like an apple'? [Devlin] |
8076 | The distinction between sentences and abstract propositions is crucial in logic [Devlin] |
21763 | When we explicate the category of being, we watch a new category emerge [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
22769 | The concept of the will is the free will which wills its freedom [Hegel] |
21787 | Evil enters a good will when we believe we are doing right, but allow no criticism of our choice [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
19615 | I want to suppress in myself the normal reasons people have for action [Cioran] |
23071 | We could only be responsible if we had consented before birth to who we are [Cioran] |
18549 | Nineteenth century aesthetics focused on art rather than nature (thanks to Hegel) [Hegel, by Scruton] |
22043 | Hegel largely ignores aesthetic pleasure, taste and beauty, and focuses on the meaning of artworks [Hegel, by Pinkard] |
22042 | Natural beauty is unimportant, because it doesn't show human freedom [Hegel, by Pinkard] |
23070 | We morally dissolve if we spend time with excessive beauty [Cioran] |
20413 | For Hegel the importance of art concerns the culture, not the individual [Hegel, by Eldridge] |
20394 | The purpose of art is to reveal to Spirit its own nature [Hegel, by Davies,S] |
21794 | The main purpose of art is to express the unity of human life [Hegel] |
20415 | Art forms a bridge between the sensuous world and the world of pure thought [Hegel] |
19628 | At a civilisation's peak values are all that matters, and people unconsciously live by them [Cioran] |
21786 | Conscience is the right of the self to know what is right and obligatory, and thus make them true [Hegel] |
21796 | Man is God if he raises himself, by denying his nature and finitude [Hegel] |
19646 | Values don't accumulate; they are ruthlessly replaced [Cioran] |
22784 | Love is ethical life in its natural form [Hegel] |
19614 | Lovers are hateful, apart from their hovering awareness of death [Cioran] |
23274 | World history has no room for happiness [Hegel] |
8029 | You can't have a morality which is supplied by the individual, but is also genuinely universal [Hegel, by MacIntyre] |
22771 | Be a person, and respect other persons [Hegel] |
22051 | The categorical imperative lacks roots in a historical culture [Hegel, by Bowie] |
22781 | The categorical imperative is fine if you already have a set of moral principles [Hegel] |
19634 | Man is never himself; he always aims at less than life, or more than life [Cioran] |
19619 | To live authentically, we must see that philosophy is totally useless [Cioran] |
22779 | The good is realised freedom [Hegel] |
21758 | Humans have no fixed identity, but produce and reveal their shifting identity in history [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
19622 | The pointlessness of our motives and irrelevance of our gestures reveals our vacuity [Cioran] |
19617 | Evidence suggests that humans do not have a purpose [Cioran] |
19612 | The universe is dirty and fragile, as if a scandal in nothingness had produced its matter [Cioran] |
19604 | Unlike other creatures, mankind seems lost in nature [Cioran] |
19606 | We can only live because our imagination and memory are poor [Cioran] |
19601 | Life is now more dreaded than death [Cioran] |
23074 | In anxiety people cling to what reinforces it, because it is a deep need [Cioran] |
19640 | No one is brave enough to say they don't want to do anything; we despise such a view [Cioran] |
19602 | You are stuck in the past if you don't know boredom [Cioran] |
19644 | History is the bloody rejection of boredom [Cioran] |
23069 | Fear cures boredom, because it is stronger [Cioran] |
19641 | If you lack beliefs, boredom is your martyrdom [Cioran] |
23062 | It is better to watch the hours pass, than trying to fill them [Cioran] |
8930 | The in-itself must become for-itself, which requires self-consciousness [Hegel] |
23275 | The state of nature is one of untamed brutality [Hegel] |
20414 | Hegel's Absolute Spirit is the union of human rational activity at a moment, and whatever that sustains [Hegel, by Eldridge] |
22787 | The family is the first basis of the state, but estates are a necessary second [Hegel] |
23276 | The soul of the people is an organisation of its members which produces an essential unity [Hegel] |
22790 | We cannot assert rights which are unnatural [Hegel] |
21785 | We are only free, with rights, if we claim our freedom, and there are no natural rights [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
22767 | I aim to portray the state as a rational entity [Hegel] |
22789 | Society draws people, and requires their work, making them wholly dependent on it [Hegel] |
22791 | The state is the march of God in the world [Hegel] |
19613 | It is pointless to refuse or accept the social order; we must endure it like the weather [Cioran] |
3909 | Society isn’t founded on a contract, since contracts presuppose a society [Hegel, by Scruton] |
22778 | Individuals can't leave the state, because they are natural citizens, and humans require a state [Hegel] |
22794 | A fully developed state is conscious and knows what it wills [Hegel] |
22799 | The people do not have the ability to know the general will [Hegel] |
22801 | The great man of the ages is the one who reveals and accomplishes the will of his time [Hegel] |
22796 | A constitution embodies a nation's rights and condition [Hegel] |
22777 | Individuals must dedicate themselves to the ethical whole, and give their lives when asked [Hegel] |
21791 | Social groups must focus on the state, which must in turn respect their inclusion and their will [Hegel] |
22795 | People can achieve respect for their state by insight into its essence [Hegel] |
19627 | Opportunists can save a nation, and heroes can ruin it [Cioran] |
21756 | All revolutions result from spirit changing its categories, to achieve a deeper understanding [Hegel] |
21988 | In the 1840s Hegel seemed to defend society being right as it is, as a manifestation of Mind [Hegel, by Singer] |
22800 | Majority rule means obligations can be imposed on me [Hegel] |
21792 | The state should reflect all interests, and not just popular will, or a popular party [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
22041 | Representatives by region ignores whether they care about the national interest [Hegel, by Pinkard] |
22797 | In modern states an individual's actions should be their choice [Hegel] |
23272 | The human race matters, and individuals have little importance [Hegel] |
22034 | Modern life needs individuality, but must recognise that human agency is social [Hegel, by Pinkard] |
21790 | Moral individuals become ethical when they see the social aspect of a matter [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
8030 | For Hegel, the moral life can only be led within a certain type of community [Hegel, by MacIntyre] |
8936 | Human nature only really exists in an achieved community of minds [Hegel] |
22785 | Even educated women are unsuited to science, philosophy, art and government [Hegel] |
23273 | In a good state the goal of the citizens and of the whole state are united [Hegel] |
21789 | Slaves have no duties because they have no rights [Hegel] |
22776 | Slaves are partly responsible for their own condition [Hegel] |
21783 | State slavery is a phase of education, moving towards a full culture [Hegel] |
21784 | Slavery is unjust, because humanity is essentially free [Hegel] |
21778 | True liberal freedom is to pursue something, while being free to cease the pursuit [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
21779 | People assume they are free, but the options available are not under their control [Hegel] |
23271 | The goal of the world is Spirit's consciousness and enactment of freedom [Hegel] |
22085 | Freedom requires us to submit to a family, or a corporation, or a state [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
22798 | Money is the best way to achieve just equality [Hegel] |
22783 | Rights imply duties, and duties imply rights [Hegel] |
21781 | The absolute right is the right to have rights [Hegel] |
21782 | Man has an absolute right to appropriate things [Hegel] |
22773 | Because only human beings can own property, everything else can become our property [Hegel] |
22774 | A community does not have the property-owning rights that a person has [Hegel] |
22775 | The owner of a thing is obviously the first person to freely take possession of it [Hegel] |
22802 | Wars add strength to a nation, and cure internal dissension [Hegel] |
19625 | The ideal is to impose a religion by force, and then live in doubt about its beliefs [Cioran] |
22786 | Children need discipline, to break their self-will and eradicate sensuousness [Hegel] |
21987 | History is the progress of the consciousness of freedom [Hegel] |
23270 | We should all agree that there is reason in history [Hegel] |
19605 | Despite endless suggestions, no one has found a goal for history [Cioran] |
19637 | History is wonderfully devoid of meaning [Cioran] |
19610 | Religions see suicide as insubordination [Cioran] |
19611 | No one has ever found a good argument against suicide [Cioran] |
19609 | If you have not contemplated suicide, you are a miserable worm [Cioran] |
23067 | Suicide is pointless, because it always comes too late [Cioran] |
19639 | We all need sexual secrets! [Cioran] |
4347 | When man wills the natural, it is no longer natural [Hegel] |
15614 | Old metaphysics tried to grasp eternal truths through causal events, which is impossible [Hegel] |
8931 | The movement of pure essences constitutes the nature of scientific method [Hegel] |
8933 | Science confronts the inner necessities of objects [Hegel] |
15635 | The older conception of God was emptied of human features, to make it worthy of the Infinite [Hegel] |
21980 | God is the absolute thing, and also the absolute person [Hegel] |
15618 | If God is the abstract of Supremely Real Essence, then God is a mere Beyond, and unknowable [Hegel] |
21775 | The God of revealed religion can only be understood through pure speculative knowledge [Hegel] |
15633 | We establish unification of the Ideal by the ontological proof, deriving being from abstraction of thinking [Hegel] |
4188 | Hegel's entire philosophy is nothing but a monstrous amplification of the ontological proof [Schopenhauer on Hegel] |
6917 | God is the essence of thought, abstracted from the thinker [Hegel, by Feuerbach] |
19603 | Why is God so boring, and why does God resemble humanity so little? [Cioran] |
6915 | Hegel made the last attempt to restore Christianity, which philosophy had destroyed [Hegel, by Feuerbach] |
6686 | Hegel said he was offering an encyclopaedic rationalisation of Christianity [Hegel, by Graham] |
21798 | To universalise 'give everything to the poor' leads to absurdity [Hegel] |
19616 | As the perfect wisdom of detachment, philosophy offers no rivals to Taoism [Cioran] |
22782 | To have pagan beliefs and be a pagan are quite different [Hegel] |
22793 | Some religions lead to harsh servitude and the debasement of human beings [Hegel] |
19600 | When man abandons religion, he then follows new fake gods and mythologies [Cioran] |
19643 | A religion needs to motivate killings, and cannot tolerate rivals [Cioran] |
21797 | Immortality does not come at a later time, but when pure knowing Spirit fully grasps the universal [Hegel] |
23063 | The first man obviously found paradise unendurable [Cioran] |
19623 | Circles of hell are ridiculous; all that matters is to be there [Cioran] |