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Single Idea 74

[filed under theme 10. Modality / C. Sources of Modality / 2. Necessity as Primitive ]

Full Idea

One thing is denied even to God: to make what has been done undone again.

Gist of Idea

Even God could not undo what has been done

Source

Agathon (plays (frags) [c.410 BCE]), quoted by Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics 1139b09

Book Ref

Aristotle: 'Ethics (Nicomachean)', ed/tr. ThomsonJ A K/TredennickH [Penguin 1976], p.206


A Reaction

a quotation - cf the Euthyphro Question


The 3 ideas with the same theme [necessities are self-justifying or self-evident]:

Even God could not undo what has been done [Agathon]
Some necessary truths are brute, and others derive from final causes [Leibniz]
Necessity and possibility are fundamental, and there can be no reductive analysis of them [Stalnaker]