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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.
Gist of Idea
Desire for perfection is an illness, if it turns against what is imperfect
Source
Novalis (General Draft [1799], 33)
Book Ref
Novalis: 'Philosophical Writings', ed/tr. Stoljar,M.M. [SUNY 1997], p.131
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.
Related Idea
Idea 19594 General statements about nature are not valid [Novalis]
| 9791 | Science is more accurate when it is prior and simpler, especially without magnitude or movement [Aristotle] |
| 22746 | If we try to conceive of a line with no breadth, it ceases to exist, and so has no length [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 10500 | No one denies that a line has width, but we can just attend to its length [Arnauld,A/Nicole,P] |
| 19591 | Desire for perfection is an illness, if it turns against what is imperfect [Novalis] |
| 22591 | We know perfection when we see what is imperfect [Murdoch] |
| 13600 | The point of models in theories is not to idealise, but to focus on what is essential [Ellis] |
| 15868 | Idealisation idealises all of a thing's properties, but abstraction leaves some of them out [Harré] |
| 18075 | Idealisation trades off accuracy for simplicity, in varying degrees [Kitcher] |
| 18206 | Science idealises the earth's surface, the oceans, continuities, and liquids [Maddy] |