50 ideas
| 19579 | The history of philosophy is just experiments in how to do philosophy [Novalis] |
| 19583 | Philosophy only begins when it studies itself [Novalis] |
| 22026 | Philosophy is homesickness - the urge to be at home everywhere [Novalis] |
| 19588 | The highest aim of philosophy is to combine all philosophies into a unity [Novalis] |
| 19598 | Philosophy relies on our whole system of learning, and can thus never be complete [Novalis] |
| 19586 | Philosophers feed on problems, hoping they are digestible, and spiced with paradox [Novalis] |
| 19587 | Philosophy aims to produce a priori an absolute and artistic world system [Novalis] |
| 19574 | If man sacrifices truth he sacrifices himself, by acting against his own convictions [Novalis] |
| 19571 | Delusion and truth differ in their life functions [Novalis] |
| 19597 | Logic (the theory of relations) should be applied to mathematics [Novalis] |
| 19581 | A problem is a solid mass, which the mind must break up [Novalis] |
| 1553 | No perceptible object is truly straight or curved [Protagoras] |
| 19584 | Whoever first counted to two must have seen the possibility of infinite counting [Novalis] |
| 22025 | Novalis thought self-consciousness cannot disclose 'being', because we are temporal creatures [Novalis, by Pinkard] |
| 19575 | Refinement of senses increasingly distinguishes individuals [Novalis] |
| 1549 | Everything that exists consists in being perceived [Protagoras] |
| 22067 | Poetry is true idealism, and the self-consciousness of the universe [Novalis] |
| 19572 | Experiences tests reason, and reason tests experience [Novalis] |
| 19590 | Empiricists are passive thinkers, given their philosophy by the external world and fate [Novalis] |
| 1545 | Protagoras was the first to claim that there are two contradictory arguments about everything [Protagoras, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 1547 | Man is the measure of all things - of things that are, and of things that are not [Protagoras] |
| 3305 | There is no more purely metaphysical doctrine than Protagorean relativism [Benardete,JA on Protagoras] |
| 3313 | If my hot wind is your cold wind, then wind is neither hot nor cold, and so not as cold as itself [Benardete,JA on Protagoras] |
| 3317 | You can only state the problem of the relative warmth of an object by agreeing on the underlying object [Benardete,JA on Protagoras] |
| 247 | God is "the measure of all things", more than any man [Plato on Protagoras] |
| 606 | Protagoras absurdly thought that the knowing or perceiving man is 'the measure of all things' [Aristotle on Protagoras] |
| 612 | Relativists think if you poke your eye and see double, there must be two things [Aristotle on Protagoras] |
| 19594 | General statements about nature are not valid [Novalis] |
| 20653 | Six reduction levels: groups, lives, cells, molecules, atoms, particles [Putnam/Oppenheim, by Watson] |
| 19591 | Desire for perfection is an illness, if it turns against what is imperfect [Novalis] |
| 19596 | The whole body is involved in the formation of thoughts [Novalis] |
| 19573 | The seat of the soul is where our inner and outer worlds interpenetrate [Novalis] |
| 19577 | Everything is a chaotic unity, then we abstract, then we reunify the world into a free alliance [Novalis] |
| 19585 | Every person has his own language [Novalis] |
| 19578 | Only self-illuminated perfect individuals are beautiful [Novalis] |
| 19582 | Morality and philosophy are mutually dependent [Novalis] |
| 6016 | Early sophists thought convention improved nature; later they said nature was diminished by it [Protagoras, by Miller,FD] |
| 1580 | For Protagoras the only bad behaviour is that which interferes with social harmony [Protagoras, by Roochnik] |
| 205 | Protagoras contradicts himself by saying virtue is teachable, but then that it is not knowledge [Plato on Protagoras] |
| 22027 | Life isn't given to us like a novel - we write the novel [Novalis] |
| 19589 | The whole point of a monarch is that we accept them as a higher-born, ideal person [Novalis] |
| 1659 | Protagoras seems to have made the huge move of separating punishment from revenge [Protagoras, by Vlastos] |
| 532 | Successful education must go deep into the soul [Protagoras] |
| 1552 | He spent public money on education, as it benefits the individual and the state [Protagoras, by Diodorus of Sicily] |
| 19580 | If the pupil really yearns for the truth, they only need a hint [Novalis] |
| 19593 | Persons are shaped by a life history; splendid persons are shaped by world history [Novalis] |
| 19595 | Nature is a whole, and its individual parts cannot be wholly understood [Novalis] |
| 19592 | The basic relations of nature are musical [Novalis] |
| 1551 | He said he didn't know whether there are gods - but this is the same as atheism [Diogenes of Oen. on Protagoras] |
| 19576 | Religion needs an intermediary, because none of us can connect directly to a godhead [Novalis] |