more on this theme     |     more from this thinker

Single Idea 6918

[filed under theme 1. Philosophy / F. Analytic Philosophy / 5. Linguistic Analysis ]

Full Idea

Philosophy need not care about the conceptions that common usage or misuse attaches to a name; philosophy, however, has to bind itself to the determined nature of things, whose signs are names.

Gist of Idea

Philosophy should not focus on names, but on the determined nature of things

Source

Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §23)

Book Ref

Feuerbach,Ludwig: 'Principles of the Philosophy of the Future', ed/tr. Vogel,M [Hackett 1986], p.38

A Reaction

I like this attempt to nip ordinary language philosophy in the bud. Indeed I like the notion of philosophy binding itself to the 'determined nature of things' (which sound like essences to me), rather than to their names or descriptions.

The 24 ideas from 'Principles of Philosophy of the Future'

6902 Catholicism concerns God in himself, Protestantism what God is for man [Feuerbach]
6903 If God is only an object for man, then only the essence of man is revealed in God [Feuerbach]
6905 Absolute idealism is the realized divine mind of Leibnizian theism [Feuerbach]
6904 Modern philosophy begins with Descartes' abstraction from sensation and matter [Feuerbach]
6908 Consciousness is absolute reality, and everything exists through consciousness [Feuerbach]
6911 God is for us a mere empty idea, which we fill with our own ego and essence [Feuerbach]
6913 God's existence cannot be separated from essence and concept, which can only be thought as existing [Feuerbach]
6918 Philosophy should not focus on names, but on the determined nature of things [Feuerbach]
6919 Absolute thought remains in another world from being [Feuerbach]
6920 Being posits essence, and my essence is my being [Feuerbach]
6921 Particularity belongs to being, whereas generality belongs to thought [Feuerbach]
6924 Plotinus was ashamed to have a body [Feuerbach]
6923 God is what man would like to be [Feuerbach]
6925 The new philosophy thinks of the concrete in a concrete (not a abstract) manner [Feuerbach]
6927 If you love nothing, it doesn't matter whether something exists or not [Feuerbach]
6926 The only true being is of the senses, perception, feeling and love [Feuerbach]
6928 Only that which can be an object of religion is an object of philosophy [Feuerbach]
6931 Empiricism is right about ideas, but forgets man himself as one of our objects [Feuerbach]
6932 Ideas arise through communication, and reason is reached through community [Feuerbach]
6933 The laws of reality are also the laws of thought [Feuerbach]
6935 In man the lowest senses of smell and taste elevate themselves to intellectual acts [Feuerbach]
6934 Man is not a particular being, like animals, but a universal being [Feuerbach]
6936 The essence of man is in community, but with distinct individuals [Feuerbach]
19457 Being is what is undetermined, and hence indistinguishable [Feuerbach]