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Single Idea 6932

[filed under theme 11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 4. Solipsism ]

Full Idea

Only through communication and conversation between man and man do ideas arise; not alone, but only with others, does one reach notions and reason in general.

Gist of Idea

Ideas arise through communication, and reason is reached through community

Source

Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §41)

Book Ref

Feuerbach,Ludwig: 'Principles of the Philosophy of the Future', ed/tr. Vogel,M [Hackett 1986], p.58


A Reaction

This is a strikingly modern view of the solipsism problem, and is close in spirit to Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument (Ideas 4143 +4158). Feuerbach is interested in universals rather than rules. I prefer Feuerbach.

Related Ideas

Idea 4143 One cannot obey a rule 'privately', because that is a practice, not the same as thinking one is obeying [Wittgenstein]

Idea 4158 An 'inner process' stands in need of outward criteria [Wittgenstein]


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

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