| 24146 | All the major problems were formulated before Socrates [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: All the major problems were formulated before Socrates. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 26[064]) | |
| A reaction: So much for it all being 'footnotes to Plato'! Nietzsche's lectures on the pre-Socratics are in print. Given how little survives, this idea is surprising. Nietzsche knew enough to infer a lot of what is lost. |
| 24142 | What matters is how humans can be developed [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What can be made out of humans: this is what matters to superior human beings. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[435]) | |
| A reaction: That seems to sum up the main aim of Nietzsche's philosophy. What would we then do if the aim was somehow achieved? Does he seriously think that one magnificent ubermensch could achieve this aim? |
| 24143 | Thinkers might agree some provisional truths, as methodological assumptions [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It is sufficient if we [thinkers] come to agree about a totality of methodological presuppositions - about 'provisional truths' that we want to use as a guideline for our work. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[449]) | |
| A reaction: Descartes attempted this. Maybe Frege is another attempt. Husserl, perhaps? Parmenides? Hume? Lewis? It is hard to imagine Nietzsche joining in a professional consensus! He has just rejected systems. |
| 24069 | Much metaphysical debate concerns what is fundamental, rather than what exists [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Some of the most important debates in metaphysics or ontology do not concern existential questions, but focus on questions of fundamentality. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (Form, Matter and Substance [2018], 5 Intro) | |
| A reaction: In modern times we have added the structure of existence to the mere ontological catalogue, and this idea makes another important addition to our concept of metaphysics. She gives disagreement over tropes as an example. |
| 24125 | Aristotle enjoyed the sham generalities of a system, as the peak of happiness! [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle probably had his best moments when he coldly and clearly (and joyfully) enjoyed the sensual sham of the highest generalities. To perceive the world as a system, and as the pinnacle of human happiness: how the schematic mind betrays itself then! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[017]) | |
| A reaction: Painful, this. One of my heroes laughing at the other one. I love systems, and love John Richardson's suggestion that Nietzsche was very systematice, despite his protestations. |
| 24147 | Thoughts are uncertain, and are just occasions for interpretation [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: A thought is not taken to be immediately certain, but rather a sign, a question mark. That each thought is initially ambiguous and fluctuating, and is in itself only an occasion for multiple interpretations …is experienced by every deep observer. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 26[092]) | |
| A reaction: This idea makes me a little more sympathetic to the hermeneutic view of philosophy, as endless interpretations. I assumed it only referred to texts. A thought is not a done deal, but an occasion for further thought. He says the same of feelings. |
| 24047 | An account is either a definition or a demonstration [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Every account is either a definition or a demonstration. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 407a24) | |
| A reaction: That is, it is either a summary of the thing's essential nature, or it is a proof of some natural fact, starting from first principles. |
| 24084 | Seeing with other eyes is more egoism, but exploring other perspectives leads to objectivity [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Wanting to know things as they are - that alone is the good inclination: not seeing ..with other eyes; that would be merely a change of place of egoistic seeing. …Practise at seeing with other eyes, and without human relationships, hence objectively! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[013]) | |
| A reaction: That Nietzsche thinks we should try to see things objectively will come as a bit of a shock to those who have him catalogued among the relativists. It's clear from other writings that he thinks (rightly) that perfect objectivity is unattainable. |
| 24052 | From one thing alone we can infer its contrary [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: One member of a pair of contraries is sufficient to discern both itself and its opposite. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 411a02) | |
| A reaction: This obviously requires prior knowledge of what the opposite is. He says you can infer the crooked from the straight. You can hardly use light in isolation to infer dark [see DA 418b17]. What's the opposite of a pig? |
| 24114 | The pain in truth is when it destroys a belief [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The truth hurts because it destroys a belief: not in itself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 9[48]) | |
| A reaction: There are hideous events, about which it can be dreadful to learn the truth, but the unpleasantness is in the fact, not in the truth of the fact. So, yes. |
| 24092 | I tell the truth, even if it is repulsive [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: As a man I tell the truth, even the repulsive ones. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 12[86]) | |
| A reaction: I wonder if even Nietzsche had his limits. He is quite coy about sexual matters, for example, before Freud and various sexual revolutions. To ruthlessly tell difficult truths strikes me as a scientific approach to the world. |
| 24082 | Is the will to truth the desire to avoid deception? [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: This unconditional will to truth: what is it? Is it the will not to let oneself be deceived? Is it the will not to deceive? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §344) | |
| A reaction: He is hunting for the evolutionary origin of the love of truth, in the needs of a community. In that sense, I would have thought it was just the pressure to get the facts right, because error is dangerous. Nice thought, though. |
| 24075 | Convictions, more than lies, are the great enemy of truth [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 483) | |
| A reaction: Love this one. Especially in western democracies in the 2020s. If we value truth, we must be fallibilists. |
| 24104 | We don't create logic, time and space! The mind obeys laws because they are true [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: That which is logical, time, space would have to be produced by us: nonsense! When the mind obeys its own laws, this because they are actually true, true in themselves! …An error with respect to these truths avenges itself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[023]) | |
| A reaction: So much for those who see Nietzsche as the embodiment of relativism. This is Nietzsche standing up to what I increasingly see as the pernicious influence of Kant. I agree with Nietzsche. Relations with the world keep our logic honest. |
| 24137 | Mathematics is just accurate inferences from definitions, and doesn't involve objects [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Mathematics contains axioms (definitions) and conclusions from definitions. Its objects do not exist. The truth of its conclusions rests on the accuracy of logical thought. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[307]) | |
| A reaction: Not suprising to find Nietzsche defying platonism. This is evidence that he was a systematic philosopher, who knew mathematics could be a challenge to his naturalism. |
| 24036 | I can only see the proportion of two to three if there is a common measure - their unity [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: I do not recognise what the proportion of magnitude is between two and three, unless I consider a third term, namely unity, which is the common measure of the one and the other. | |
| From: René Descartes (Rules for the Direction of the Mind [1628], 14) | |
| A reaction: A striking defence of the concept of the need for the unit in arithmetic. To say 'three is half as big again', you must be discussing the same size of 'half' in each instance. |
| 24112 | To think about being we must have an opinion about what it is [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We are in the process of figuring out the being of things: consequently we must already have an opinion as to what being is. This can be an error! E.g., I. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 9[41]) | |
| A reaction: The point of 'I' is that we unquestioningly think the self is a given aspect of being, as in Descartes. |
| 24131 | There is no 'being'; it is just the opposition to nothingness [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: 'Being' is unprovable, because there is no 'being'. The concept of being is formed out of the opposition to 'nothingness'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[185]) | |
| A reaction: Presumably a comment on Hegel's most basic idea. I find both thoughts bewildering. 'Being' is just a generalised (and unhelpful) way of referring to the self-evident existence of stuff. |
| 24057 | What is prior is always potentially present in what is next in order [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What is prior is always potentially present in what is next in order … - for example, the triangle in the quadrilateral, or the nutritive part of animate things in the perceptual part. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 414a28) | |
| A reaction: 'Prior' seems to be a value for Aristotle, which is never present in modern discussions of ontological relations and structure. Priority tracks back to first principles. |
| 24151 | I only want thinking that is anchored in body, senses and earth [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I am not interested …in ways of thinking that are not anchored in the body and the senses and in the earth. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 26[352]) | |
| A reaction: Exhibit A for Nietzsche as Naturalist. Indeed, this could be a manifesto for the whole school. I totally and completely and utterly agree with Nietzsche's assertion!. I see the 'anchor' as two-way: thought connects to earth, and thought arises from it. |
| 24065 | Structured wholes are united by the teamwork needed for their capacities [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: A structured whole derives its unity from the way in which its parts interact with other parts to allow both the whole and its parts to manifest those of their capacities which require 'team work' among the parts. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (Form, Matter and Substance [2018], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is a culminating thesis of her book. She defends it at length. It looks like a nice theory for things which are lucky enough to have capacities involving teamwork. Does this mean a pebble can't be unified? She wants a dynamic view. |
| 24058 | The substance is the cause of a thing's being [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The cause of its being for everything is its substance. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 415b12) | |
| A reaction: It sounds as if 'substance' here means essence. We no longer see the cause of something's being as intrinsic to the thing. Only previous causes produce things. The 'form' must be the intrinsic cause of being. |
| 24055 | Matter is potential, form is actual [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Matter is potentiality, whereas form is actuality. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 412a09) | |
| A reaction: Plato said mud has no Form. What did Aristotle think of that? I only ask because to me mud looks like unformed actuality. |
| 24040 | Scientists explain anger by the matter, dialecticians by the form and the account [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: For a dialectician anger is a desire for retaliation or something like that, where for a natural scientist it is a boiling of the blood and hoot stuff around the heart. The scientist gives the matter, where the dialectician give the form and the account. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 403a30) | |
| A reaction: A nice illumination of hylomorphism. Notice that the dialectician also give the account [logos]. |
| 24066 | The form explains kind, structure, unity and activity [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Hylomorphists tend to agree that the form (rather than matter) explains 1) kind membership, 2) structure, 3) unity, 4) characteristic activities. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (Form, Matter and Substance [2018], 3.2.1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed; she explains each of them] Personally I would add continuity through change (statue/clay). Glad to see that kind membership is not part of the form. And what about explaining observed properties? Does form=essence? |
| 24089 | Essences are fictions needed for beings who represent things [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The true essence of things is a fiction of representing being, without which being is unable to represent. 11[330] Thinking must assert substance and identity because a knowing of complete flux is impossible. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[329]) | |
| A reaction: I have defended (in my PhD) the thesis that the concept of essence is required for explanation. Do animals need the concept of essence in order to represent? I think people and animals ascribe essential natures to most things. |
| 24067 | Hylomorphic compounds need an individual form for transworld identity [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: It is difficult to see how forms could serve as cross-world identity principles for hylomorphic compounds, unless these forms are particular or individual entities. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (Form, Matter and Substance [2018], 3.4.3) | |
| A reaction: This is a key part of her objection to treating the form as universal or generic. I agree with her view. |
| 24077 | Necessity is thought to require an event, but is only an after-effect of the event [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Necessity is supposed to be the cause of something coming to be: in truth it is often only an effect of what has come to be. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §205) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like an account of the traditional idea of destiny - which sees inevitability in some major event, which was previously unpredictable. |
| 24054 | Everything has a probability, something will happen, and probabilities add up [PG] |
| Full Idea: The three Kolgorov axioms of probability: the probability of an event is a non-negative real number; it is certain that one of the 'elementary events' will occur; and the unity of probabilities is the sum of probability of parts ('additivity'). | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
| A reaction: [My attempt to verbalise them; they are normally expressed in terms of set theory]. Got this from a talk handout, and Wikipedia. |
| 24150 | We can only understand through concepts, which subsume particulars in generalities [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We have only one form of understanding - concept, the more general case that subsumes the particular case. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 26[156]) | |
| A reaction: This is precisely Aristotle's problem with scientific explanation - that we aim to understand each particular, but accounts and definitions have to be expressed with universals. |
| 24138 | Strongly believed a priori is not certain; it may just be a feature of our existence [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What we believe the most, everything a priori, is not for that reason more certain, just because it is so strongly believed. Rather, it is perhaps a consequence of the condition for the existence of our species. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[307]) | |
| A reaction: This is in defiance of Leibniz and Kant. His proposed explanation is not very convincing. Russell agreed with Nietzsche. |
| 24130 | An affirmative belief is present in every basic sense impression [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Belief is already present in every sense impression going back to the very moment it begins: and kind of Yes-saying first intellectual activity! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[168]) | |
| A reaction: He seems right that there is an intrinsic commitment to believing sense impressions, even in animals. Presumably more of a default setting than an intellectual choice. |
| 24115 | There is no proof that we forget things - only that we can't recall [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: That forgetting exists has never yet been demonstrated, but only that many things do not occur to us when we want them to. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 12[1]123) | |
| A reaction: There is now quite a lot of evidence that there innumerable memories buried in that mind that we seem unable to directly recall. He is right that we can hardly demonstrate this negative fact. |
| 24124 | We now have innumerable perspectives to draw on [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We have been granted perspectives in all directions, broader than any humans have ever been granted, everywhere we look there is no end in sight. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[013]) | |
| A reaction: Clearly perspectivism is not the simple relativism of being trapped in our own private perspective. What strikes me as missing from Nietzsche's brief thoughts is the question of consensus, and even rational and objective consensus. |
| 24083 | It would be absurd to say we are only permitted our own single perspective [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I think today we are at least far removed from the ridiculous immodesty of decreeing from our corner that one is permitted to have perspectives only from this corner. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §374) | |
| A reaction: He goes on to speculate about the possibility of infinite perspectives, most of them unknowable to us. But Nietzsche was not a simple relativism. The obvious concept needed to accompany a many-perspectives view is consensus. |
| 24048 | Demonstrations move from starting-points to deduced conclusions [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Demonstrations are both from a starting-point and have a sort of end, namely the deduction or the conclusion. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 407a25) | |
| A reaction: A starting point has to be a first principle [arché]. It has been observed that Aristotle explains demonstration very carefully, but rarely does it in his writings. |
| 24068 | Demonstration is more than entailment, as the explanatory order must match the causal order [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's demonstration encompasses more than deductive entailment, in that the explanatory order of priority represented in a successful demonstration must mirror precisely the causal order of priority in the phenomena in question. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - Form, Matter and Substance 4.5 | |
| A reaction: Interesting. I presume this is correct, but is not an aspect I had registered. In Metaphysics his essentialist explanations are causal, so it all hangs together. |
| 24051 | Soul is seen as what moves, or what is least physical, or a combination of elements [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Three ways have been handed down in which people define the soul: what is most capable of moving things, since it moves itself; or a body which is the most fine-grained and least corporeal; or that it is composed of the elements. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 409b19) | |
| A reaction: A nice example of Aristotle beginning an investigation by idenfying the main explanations which have been 'handed down' from previous generations. These three aren't really in competition, and might all be true. |
| 24046 | Understanding is impossible, if it involves the understanding having parts [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: How could a spatial understanding understand anything? Wiil it do so with parts, seen as magnitudes or as points? If it is points, the understanding will never get through them all. If magnitudes, it will understand things an unlimited number of times. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 407a09) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a strong commitment to the idea that the mind is not physical because it is necessarily non-spatial. |
| 24053 | If a soul have parts, what unites them? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What is it that holds the soul together, if it by nature has parts? For surely it cannot be the body. For it seems on the contrary that it is rather the soul that holds the body together? | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 411b05) | |
| A reaction: This is the hylomorphic view of a human, that the soul is the form that give unity to the matter. To do the job, presumably the form or soul need an intrinsic unity of its own, and hence cannot have parts. Apart from the need for unifying glue. |
| 24090 | Our inclinations would not conflict if we were a unity; we imagine unity for our multiplicity [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: How is it that we satisfy our stronger inclinations at the expense of our weaker inclinations? - In itself, if we were a unity, this split could not exist. In fact we are a multiplicity that has imagined a unity for itself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 12[35]) | |
| A reaction: Plato had the same thought, but stopped at three parts, rather than a multiplicity. What Nietzsche fails to say, I think, is that this 'imagined' unity of the mind is not optional, and obviously has a real link to the one body and the one life. |
| 24061 | If we divide the mind up according to its capacities, there are a lot of them [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: For those who divide the soul into parts, and divide and separate them in accord with their capacities, the parts turn out to be very many. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 433a32) | |
| A reaction: I accept the warning. The capacities which interest me are those which seem to generate our basic ontology, but if the capacities become fine-grained, they are legion. |
| 24145 | Mind is a mechanism of abstraction and simplification, aimed at control [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The entire cognitive mechanism is a mechanism of abstraction and simplification - not aimed at knowing, but taking control of things. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 26[061]) | |
| A reaction: It is my view that we can explain our metaphysics in this way, though I am more realist than Nietzsche, because I think the world has created these capacities within us, so they fit the world. To control, you must know. |
| 24062 | Self-moving animals must have desires, and that entails having imagination [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If an animal has a desiring part, it is capable of moving itself. A desiring part, however, cannot exist without an imagination, and all imagination is either rationally calculative or perceptual. Hence in the latter the other animals also have a share. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 433b27) | |
| A reaction: Maybe if you asked people whether other animals are imaginative they would say no, but this argument is strong support for the positive view. |
| 24144 | A cognitive mechanism wanting to know itself is absurd! [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: A cognitive mechanism that wants to know itself!! We definitely should have moved beyond this absurd goal! (The stomach that consumes itself! -) | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 26[018]) | |
| A reaction: We see his point, but Nietzsche learns a huge amount about himself by introspection. To know the Self is a cat chasing its tail. I don't have to leave England to study England. |
| 24139 | A 'person' is just one possible abstraction from a bundle of qualities [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Individuals contain many more persons than they think. 'Person' is merely a point of emphasis, synopsis of characteristics and qualities | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[363]) | |
| A reaction: He makes similar remarks abour character. For Locke 'person'' is a forensic and legal concept, and so must be enduring and unique. |
| 24099 | We contain many minds, which fight for the 'I' of the mind [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Many minds are housed within humans like creatures of the sea - they battle one another for the mind 'I'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 4[207]) | |
| A reaction: I am happy to use the word 'I' for the sense of central control of focus and choice, but there doesn's seem to be an actual organ of the Self, so it is a fiction, but one which reflects the general picture of what happens. I can pick a drive to foster. |
| 24133 | I have perfected fatalism, as recurrence and denial of the will [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I have perfected fatalism, through eternal recurrence and preexistence, and through the elimination of the concept 'will'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[214]) | |
| A reaction: 'Amor fati' - love of fate - was his oft repeated slogan. We can all understand 'go with the flow', but I'm not sure about anything more universal than that. |
| 24152 | Fate is inspiring, if you understand you are part of it [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Fate is an inspiring thought for those who understand that they are part of it. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 26[442]) | |
| A reaction: Sounds a bit like the Niagara Falls being inspiring if you are being swept over it. I find the possibility of fatalism neutral, rather than inspiring. |
| 24056 | The soul (or parts of it) is not separable from the body [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: That the soul is not separable from the body - or that certain parts of it are not, if it naturally has parts - is quite clear. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 413a04) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't make him a physicalist. I've seen him described in modern terms as a functionalist, but that makes the mind abstract and the body concrete. Perhaps he is an 'Integrationist' (as Descartes might be in his 'pilot' passage). |
| 24039 | All the emotions seem to involve the body, simultaneously with the feeling [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The affections of the soul - spiritedness, fear, pity, confidence, joy, loving, hating - would all seem to involve the body, since at the same time as these the body is affected in a certain way. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 403a16) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle was not a physicalist, but this resembles the pilot-in-the-ship passage in Descartes, accepting the very close links. |
| 24050 | If soul is separate from body, why does it die when the body dies? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If the soul is something distinct from the mixture, why then are the being for flesh and for the other parts of the animal destroyed at the same time? | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 408a25) | |
| A reaction: An obvious response to this reasonable question is to say that we see the body die, but not the soul, so the soul doesn't die. The problem is then to find some evidence for the soul's continued existence. |
| 24049 | Thinkers place the soul within the body, but never explain how they are attached [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There is another absurdity which follows, …since they attach the soul to a body, and place it in the body, without further determining the cause due to which this attachment comes about. …Yet this seems necessary, because this association produces action. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 407b14) | |
| A reaction: A clear statement of the interaction objection to full substance dualism. Critics say that dualists have to invoke a 'miracle' at this point. |
| 24042 | The older Diogenes said the soul is air, made of the smallest particles [Diogenes of Apollonia] |
| Full Idea: Diogenes [of Apollonia] took the soul to be air, thnking that of all things air is composed of the smallest particles and is a starting point. | |
| From: Diogenes (Apoll) (fragments/reports [c.440 BCE], DK 64), quoted by Aristotle - De Anima 405a21 | |
| A reaction: This suggests that Diogenes of Apollonia was an atomist, if the soul is made of particles. See also Met 984a5, which says Anaxagoras had the same view. |
| 24041 | Democritus says spherical atoms are fire, and constitute the soul [psuche] [Democritus, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Democritus says the soul is a sort of fire. For the shapes and atoms are unlimitied and those that are spherical he says are fire and soul - which are like the motes in the air when sunbeams come through the window. | |
| From: report of Democritus (fragments/reports [c.431 BCE], DK 67-68) by Aristotle - De Anima 403b31 | |
| A reaction: It's hard to see why the spherical atoms should be fire. Maybe because they move together quickly and easily. …At 404a5 Aristotle agrees with me! |
| 24078 | Thoughts cannot be fully reproduced in words [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Even one's thoughts one cannot reproduce entirely in words. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §244) | |
| A reaction: I suppose this is the germ of Derrida, who seems to see little connection between thought and speech. I take this idea to be entirely correct. Our simplistic view of language reduces the fluidity and many dimensions of thought to a pile of lego bricks. |
| 24102 | Thoughts are signs (just as words are) [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Thoughts are merely signs, as words are signs for thoughts. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 5[1]272) | |
| A reaction: The obvious question he invites is 'signs of what?'. His point must be that most thinking is both non-verbal and non-conscious, which he took to be true even of intellectual thought. I sympathise with his view. |
| 24081 | Most of our intellectual activity is unconscious [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Only now is the truth dawning on us that the biggest part by far of our intellectual activity takes place unconsciously, and unfelt by us. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §333) | |
| A reaction: Note that this is 'intellectual activity', and just the hidden rumblings of instincts and emotions. I think he is right. Philosophers want to verbalise everything, but I don't think the main insights of philosophical thinking are verbal. |
| 24129 | We start with images, then words, and then concepts, to which emotions attach [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Images first, the words applied to images. Finally concepts, not possible until there are words a summary of many images. When see similar images for which there is one word - this weak emotion is the common element, the foundation of the concept. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[168]) | |
| A reaction: Unusual to have an account of the origin of concepts in 1884. His theory entails that animals can't have concepts, but presumably they can combine images, and hence recognise things. I think he is wrong, but interestng. Mental files. |
| 24120 | Great orators lead their arguments, rather than following them [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: For me there are no true orators and super-orators unless they can convince the arguments themselves to run after them. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 22[01]) | |
| A reaction: I translate this as great orators generating the mere appearance of good arguments. Both reason and feeling must be irrationally swept along. Nice. |
| 24097 | The pragmatics of language is more comprehensible than the meaning [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The most comprehensible part of language is not the word itself, but rather tone, force, modulation, tempo, with which a series of words is spoken. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 3[296]) | |
| A reaction: He exaggerates. If you watch someone talking vociferously in an unknown foreign language, the feeling of the exchange is obvious, but the content is quite unknown. I see his point that we underestimate body language etc. |
| 24108 | Actions are just a release of force. They seize on something, which becomes the purpose [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What is the source of actions? For what purpose? …People do not act for happiness, utility or pleasure. Rather, a certain amount of force is released. Seizes on something on which it can vent itself. 'Goal' and 'purpose' are the means for this process. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[077]) | |
| A reaction: Surprised at how little Nietzsche is discussed in modern theoretical accounts of action. I'm not sure what the evolutionary value might be of a blind force that produces action before its purpose has been decided. Not convinced. What triggers the force? |
| 24105 | Drives make us feel non-feelings; Will is the effect of those feelings [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: 'Drive' is only a translation from the language of nonfeeling into the language of feeling. 'Will' is what is communicated to our feelings as a result of that process - in other words an effect, and not the beginning and cause. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[025]) | |
| A reaction: This shows the link between his central idea of 'drives' in psychology, and the actions that result. Effectively this makes all our actions arise from the unconscious. Intention and choice are effectively epiphenomena. |
| 24060 | Self-controlled follow understanding, when it is opposed to desires [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Self-controlled people, even when they desire and have an appetite for things, do not do these things for which they have the desire, but instead follow the understanding. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 433a06) | |
| A reaction: If modern discussions would stop talking of 'weakness of will', and talk instead of 'control' and its lack, the whole issue would become clearer. Akrasia is then seen, for example, as an action of the whole person, not of some defective part. |
| 24117 | We need lower and higher drives, but they must be under firm control [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: All lower drives must be present and have fresh force if the highest ones want to exist and exist in abundance: but control of the whole must be in firm hands! otherwise the danger is too great. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 14[03]) | |
| A reaction: This is unusual, because he speaks of the Self as little more than the currently dominant drive, but here he postulates a controller of the drives, a ringmaster. A-krasia means lack of control. Nietzsche wants en-krateia. |
| 24113 | Our motives don't explain our actions [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Human actions can in no way be explained by reference to human motives. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 9[43]) | |
| A reaction: He takes motives to come after the event. His view seems to be that our actions are deeply inexplicable. But if we explain why we performed some action, are we all and always lying? We give reasons, even if we don't know the source of the reasons. |
| 24127 | Judging actions by intentions - like judging painters by their thoughts! [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: To judge people by intentions! That would be like classifying artists, not according to their paintings, but according to their visions! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[119]) | |
| A reaction: What is wrong is to judge an action by any simple single principle. Our nuanced attitude to excuses shows the true complexity of it. 'I didn't mean to do that'. |
| 24087 | People who miss beauty seek the sublime, where even the ugly shows its 'beauty' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Whoever does to achieve the beautiful seeks the wildly sublime, because there even the ugly can show its 'beauty'. Likewise we seek the wildly sublime morality. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[049]) | |
| A reaction: Is the 'we' here Nietzsche, or the herd? The former, I guess, since some the values he likes seem rather ugly to me. He is a fan of war, for example. I'm guessing that massive destruction is sublime but ugly. |
| 24091 | The sublimity of nature which dwarfs us was a human creation [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: This beauty and sublimity of nature, before which every human being seems small, was first imposed on nature by us. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 12[38]) | |
| A reaction: I was struck when I was 10 with how indifferent to a landscape I was, when my mother told me it was 'beautiful'. Five years later I saw it differently. I assume nature is not intrinsically sublime. Dwarfed by our own concept is a bit odd. |
| 24093 | We can aspire to greatness by creating new functions for ourselves [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: To see the new greatness not above oneself, not outside oneself, but to make a new function from it. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 13[19]) | |
| A reaction: Thus we might combine the Aristotelian and the existentialist views! Do we discover our function or invent it? Anyone who acquires an expertise is creating a new function for themselves, presumably with a high value. |
| 24121 | Greeks might see modern analysis of what is human as impious [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps a Greek would experience the way we have delved deeply in uncovering what is human to be an impiety against nature, a shameless act. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 34[01]) | |
| A reaction: Three instances come to mind: Vesalius, Kant and Darwin. That is, anatomical dissection, deep and critical introspection, and natural selection. Human dissection was certainly a Greek taboo. |
| 24107 | Once a drive controls the intellect, it rules, and sets the goals [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Once it has taken control of the intellect, every single human drive probably demands to be recognised as the ultimate lord and goal-setter of all human matters. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[057]) | |
| A reaction: This is the best line of attack against the view I like, that human values arise out of the central functions of human nature. It is roughly the existential objection. Is all intellect controlled by some drive, or can intellect seize control of a drive? |
| 24076 | A morality ranks human drives and actions, for the sake of the herd, and subordinating individuals [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Whenever we encounter a morality we find an estimation and order of rank of human drives and actions. These are always the expression of the needs of a community and herd. The individual is valued only as a function of the herd. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §116) | |
| A reaction: A particularly clear summary of Nietzsche's understanding of modern morality (which he rejects). I tend to see values as what is important, but Nietzsche sees them as a ranking. Could be both. I see the individualism here as existentialist. |
| 24149 | Values need a perspective, of preserving some aspect of life [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: All value judgements involve a particular perspective: preservation of the individual, a community, a race, a state, a church, a belief, a culture. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 26[119]) | |
| A reaction: This chimes in with my Aristotelian view of value, as arising out of the thing valued, rather than descending on it from outside. I think more than mere 'preservaation' is at stake. Fostering, cherishing. |
| 24085 | For absolute morality a goal for mankind is needed [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I deny absolute morality because I do not know an absolute goal of mankind. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[037]) | |
| A reaction: Christianity dreams of union of souls with God (clustering around God like goldfish to food, according to Dante). That is an absolute goal, justifying an absolute morality. If Aristotelians could identify human nature, its flourishing might be absolute. |
| 24101 | We always assign values, but we may not value those values [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible to live without assigning value: but it is possible to live without assigning value to what you value. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 5[1]186) | |
| A reaction: True. In my terminology, we can't live without thinking some things are more important than others. But that is compatible with not assigning much importance to anything. |
| 24148 | If you love something, it is connected with everything, so all must be affirmed as good [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: To appreciate and love anything, I must understand it as absolutely necessarily connected with everything that is - therefore I must affirm the goodness of all existence for its own sake. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 26[117]) | |
| A reaction: For those of you out there imagining that Nietzsche was a nihilist…… It's a plausible idea. You could hardly love your dog, but hate the whole universe. A true misanthrope would struggle to love one exceptional person. |
| 24135 | Egoism should not assume that all egos are equal [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Egoism! But no one has ever asked: what kind of ego! Instead, every person automatically assumes that the ego of every ego is equal. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[287]) | |
| A reaction: This is his first step in his defence of some form of egoism. Presumably 'higher' people should be egoists, and the rest should join the herd. |
| 24094 | Humans are vividly aware of short-term effects, and almost ignorant of the long-term ones [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: How weakly human beings feel responsible for their indirect and distant effects! And how cruelly and exaggeratedly the closest effect that we exert pounces on us - the effect we see, for which our myopic vision is still just sharp enough! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 15[11]) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as both accurate and important, because consequentialist ethics is largely committed to judging by a very distorted image of their own objective. |
| 24111 | Happiness is the active equilibrium of our drives [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Happiness would be the equilibrium of the triggering activities of all the drives. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[260]) | |
| A reaction: For Nietzsche, only the 'highest' sort of human being could achieve such happiness. I can certainly see that there is happiness when a person is fully focused on something that seems worth doing. |
| 24109 | Actual morality is more complicated and subtle than theory (which gets paralysed) [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Actual morality is infinitely more subtle, more complicated, more thoughtful than theoretical morality: the latter still stands awkward and embarrassed at the starting point. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[202]) | |
| A reaction: Glad to find an explicit endorsement of particularism in Nietzsche, since so much of his discussion points that way. |
| 24132 | After Socrates virtue is misunderstood, as good for all, not for individuals [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: From Socrates onwards arete [virtue] is misunderstood - first it had to reestablish itself over and over, and yet it did not want to do this on an individual basis! But rather tyrannically 'good for all!'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[208]) | |
| A reaction: Why not both? The virtues of a good citizen can't be private, but we are all allowed to develop virtues that concern us alone. |
| 24126 | We contain multitudes of characters, which can brought into the open [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There is a multitude of characters hidden within each one of us: and attempts should be made to allow some of them to appear. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[021]) | |
| A reaction: So character is not fate, contrary to Heraclitus (his hero). We are more inclined now to see varied characters as social roles (as in Irving Goffman). This idea challenges it, with our intrinsic nature containing variety. |
| 24110 | Some things we would never do, even for the highest ideals [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There are actions that we will never allow ourselves to engage in, not even as a means to the noblest end e.g., betraying a friend. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[241]) | |
| A reaction: Jean Genet made a point of betraying his friends. I wonder why Nietzsche thinks we should not betray our friends? Being Nietzsche, he will certainly have asked the question. |
| 24103 | You should not want too many virtues; one is enough [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: You should not want to have too many virtues. One virtue is already a lot of virtue. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 5[18]) | |
| A reaction: A typically challenging thought from the great maverick of philosophy. Which virtue would you choose? Do some virtues entail further virtues? |
| 24106 | Talk of 'utility' presupposes that what is useful to people has been defined [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: All this chat about 'utility' already presupposes that what is useful to people has been defined: in other words, useful for what! i.e. the people's purposes are already taken for granted. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[030]) | |
| A reaction: When they stopped talking about utility they talked instead about 'benefit', but the same objection applies. This is the problem of paternalism in Utilitarianism, which leads to Preference Utilitarianism, which probably doesn't help. |
| 24086 | The goal is to settle human beings, like other animals, but humans are still changeable [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Obviously the goal is to make human beings as steady and firm as most animal species; they have adapted to the conditions of the earth etc. and do not change essentially. The human being is still changeable - is still becoming. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[044]) | |
| A reaction: I favour an Aristotelian view, based on the flourishing of human nature, but this thought obviously challenges such a view. Great changes to a culture can make some difference to the apparent nature of people. |
| 24080 | We should give style to our character - by applying an artistic plan to its strengths and weaknesses [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One thing is essential - 'giving style' to one's character. It is practised by the one who surveys everything that his nature offers in strengths and weaknesses, and subjects it to an artistic plan until each thing appears as art and reason. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §290) | |
| A reaction: Clearly existentialist, in its proposal to change one's own character. I invite the reader to consider applying this to themselves - and I submit that it is an impossible project. Nice thought, though. |
| 24123 | My eternal recurrence is opposed to feeling fragmented and imperfect [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I held up eternal recurrence against the numbing feeling of general disintegration and imperfection. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 24[28]) | |
| A reaction: I've heard people say that they think Nietzsche was a nihilist. This is nonsense. His whole career was an opposition to nihilism. His excitement over the idea of recurrence is that he sees a real answer to nihilism. You have to value a recurring life. |
| 24079 | The best life is the dangerous life [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The secret of harvesting the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from existence is: live dangerously! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §283) | |
| A reaction: I treasured this quotation when I was 17, but failed to live up to it. |
| 24088 | See our present lives as eternal! Religions see it as fleeting, and aim at some different life [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Let us press the image of eternity on our life! This thought contains more than all religions that despise this life as fleeting and taught us to look toward an unspecified different life. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[159]) | |
| A reaction: This is the best statement of the idea of eternal recurrence I have so far found. His ideal is to design a life for ourselves which we would be happy to see endlessly repeated. A lot of thought would have to go into that! |
| 24119 | The eternal return of wastefulness is a terrible thought [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The most terrible thought of an eternal return of wastefulness. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 20[02]) | |
| A reaction: This illuminates quite well his notion of eternal recurrence. Not only what you would do in an eternally recurring life, but what you would avoid. |
| 24136 | Who can endure the thought of eternal recurrence? [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I conduct the great test: who will endure the thought of eternal recurrence? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[290]) | |
| A reaction: He sometimes talks as if eternal recurrence were a cosmic fact, but we should definitely ignore that. This idea captures his idea best, I think - that we should try to live with the prospect of recurrence always in mind. A type of existentialism. |
| 24154 | If you want one experience repeated, you must want all of them [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Whoever wants to have a single experience again must want all of them again. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 29[054]) | |
| A reaction: Nehemas says this is the main factual commitment of eternal recurrence (and certainly not that global recurrence actually occurs). It might be expressed in terms of possible worlds. We yearn for recurrence, then dread it? |
| 24153 | Humans are determined by community, so its preservation is their most valued drive [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: If a community is what absolutely determines the nature of humans, then the drive that allows the community to be preserved will be most forcefully developed in them. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 27[030]) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche was a loner, who despised 'the herd' and its dull 'good and evil', but humans are obviously social creatures, who need to raise families, so it seems perverse to despise the values this requires. Note the Marxist view of human nature. |
| 24073 | Capitalists use their exceptional power to impose their own rules, and make the state their ally [Davies,W] |
| Full Idea: Capitalists exploit their unrivalled control over time and space in order to impose their rules on everyone else. …It triumphed late, only becoming dominant in the 19th century, when it had conscripted the state as its ally. | |
| From: William Davies (Review of 'The Price is Wrong' by B.Christophers [2024], 24-04-04) | |
| A reaction: This so very much makes sense of the modern world. Nowadays capitalists are so wealthy that the state has largely become their pawn, rather than their ally. Populist leaders are their puppets (and are well rewarded). |
| 24071 | Markets are transparent, with known prices and activity, and minimal profits [Davies,W] |
| Full Idea: Markets are characterised by transparency. Prices are public, and all relevant activity is visible to everyone. And because of competition, profits are minimal, little more than a 'wage' for the seller. | |
| From: William Davies (Review of 'The Price is Wrong' by B.Christophers [2024], 24-04-04) | |
| A reaction: This account, from Braudel, is to distinguish markets from capitalism. |
| 24070 | Economies have material, economic and capitalist layers [Davies,W] |
| Full Idea: Braudel's economic history has three layers. At the bottom is material life of consumption, production, reproduction. Next is economic life of markets, of equals in exchange and competition. Top is capitalism, of opacity, monopoly, power, high profits. | |
| From: William Davies (Review of 'The Price is Wrong' by B.Christophers [2024], 24-04-04) | |
| A reaction: The point Davies emphasises here is the sharp distinction between the market economy and capitalism. |
| 24072 | Capitalism is the anti-market, with opacity, monopolies, powers, exceptional profits and wealth [Davies,W] |
| Full Idea: Braudel sees capitalism as the 'anti-market': a world of opacity, monopoly, concentration of power and wealth, and the exceptional profits that can be achieved only by escaping the norms of 'economic life'. | |
| From: William Davies (Review of 'The Price is Wrong' by B.Christophers [2024], 24-04-04) | |
| A reaction: Given all the talk about the wonders of the 'free market' from right-wingers, this passage came as a revelation to me. Capitalists all dream of a monopoly, which is precisely the destruction of a market. |
| 24074 | Capitalism must mainly rely either on the labour market, or on the financial markets [Davies,W] |
| Full Idea: According to Marxists, the one market capitalism cannot do without is the labour market, which creates saleable things. Others, influenced by Keynes, emphasise financial markets, where pieces of paper change hands on expectation of their value. | |
| From: William Davies (Review of 'The Price is Wrong' by B.Christophers [2024], 24-04-04) | |
| A reaction: Modern Britain fits the Keynesian account much better, given its low production, and very active (until recently) London financial market. |
| 24134 | There is always slavery, whether we like it or not [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: In truth there is always slavery - whether you want it or not; e.g. Prussian officials. Scholars. Monks. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[225]) | |
| A reaction: Not very persuasive examples. Monks are free to join and to leave. Maybe a lot of marriages are close to slavery for one side (usually the woman). Strict slavery has almost ceased in western civilisation (I think!). Nietzsche saw 'the herd' as slaves. |
| 24116 | Justice says people are not equal, and should become increasingly unequal [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: People are not equal: thus speaks justice. …Humans should keep becoming ever more unequal. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 12[43]) | |
| A reaction: Important to add a little dash of Nietzsche to the widespread modern mantras about equality. We must at least question the extent to which equality should be our aim. (Personally I am an egalitarian liberal). |
| 24098 | Reasons that justify punishment can also justify the crime [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The reasons used to justify the punishment for a crime can also be used to justify the crime. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 3[312]) | |
| A reaction: A splendid observation, even if it is not wholly true. The justification of capital punishment appeals in some way to the whole of society, but a murderer could hardly do that. |
| 24118 | Do away with punishment. Counter-retribution is as bad as the crime [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: My programme: do away with punishment: for us. Counter-retribution is nonsense. (If something is evil, then whoever performs the counter-retribution is certainly committing the same evil). | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 16[17]) | |
| A reaction: Note that he seems to have a perfectly orthodox concept of 'evil' here. I don't think he ever suggested a strategy to replace punishment. |
| 24100 | If you don't want war, remove your borders; but you set up borders because you want war [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: You are waging war? You fear your neighbour? So remove the border markers: then you will have no more neighbours. But you want war: and that's why you set up the border markers in the first place. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 5[1]145) | |
| A reaction: The only reason to demarcate some territory is to keep other people out of it, which is a first act of gentle hostility. The European Union is trying to gradually dismantle the borders. Nietzsche had a creepy liking for war. |
| 24095 | Our growth is too subtle to perceive, and long events are too slow for us to grasp [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The slowness of the events in the history of human beings is not suited to the human sense of time - and the subtlety and smallness of all growth defies human vision. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 15[41]) | |
| A reaction: The only way we can study history is by 'periods'. It is as if English history has its slate wiped clean in 1066, 1485, 1603 and 1689. All historians know that the reality of it all is totally beyond our grasp. |
| 24128 | After history following God, or a people, or an idea, we now see it in terms of animals [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Earlier we sought God's intentions in history: then an unconscious purposefulness, in a people or an idea. Only recently are we considering the history of animals, and the first insight is that no plan has so far existed. Coincidences have been dominant. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[127]) | |
| A reaction: Not a Whig historian then! Presumably Hegel is his main target. In 2024 there is a definite feeling that western democracies are regressing. |
| 24140 | Cause and effect is a hypothesis, based on our supposed willing of actions [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Cause and effect is not a truth but rather a hypothesis - and indeed the one which we use to anthropomorphise the world for ourselves, bringing it in closer proximity to our feelings ('willing' is projected into it). | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[371]) | |
| A reaction: That is (I think), we read the gap between thought and action onto natural external events, dividing them up. We treat the flow of events as if they were agent causation. Modern theories seem close to Nietzsche's unified view. |
| 24044 | Movement can be intrinsic (like a ship) or relative (like its sailors) [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is not necessary for what moves things to be itself moving. For a thing can be moving in two ways - with reference to something else, or intrinsically. A ship is moving intrinsically, but sailors move because they are in something that is moving. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 406a03) | |
| A reaction: I love the way that Aristotle is desperate to explain the puzzle of movement, yet we just take it for granted. Very illuminating about puzzles. Newton's First Law of Motion. |
| 24045 | Movement is spatial, alteration, withering or growth [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There a four sorts of movement - spatial movement, alteration, withering and growth. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 406a12) | |
| A reaction: Large parts of Aristotle's writings attempt to explain these four. |
| 24064 | If something is pushed, it pushes back [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What has pushed something else makes the latter push as well. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 435b30) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle seems to have spotted that this is intrinsic to massive bodies, and is not just friction etc. Newton adds a vector to Aristotle's insight. |
| 24059 | Democritus is wrong: in a void we wouldn't see a distant ant in exact detail [Aristotle on Democritus] |
| Full Idea: Democritus did not speak correctly in supposing that if the intermediate space became a void, we would see an ant in exact detail if it were up in the heaven. …If the intermediate space became a void, rather nothing would be seen at all. | |
| From: comment on Democritus (fragments/reports [c.431 BCE]) by Aristotle - De Anima 419a15 | |
| A reaction: Depends what you mean by void, but Aristotle is nearer the truth. Is vision clearer in outer space than in our higher atmosphere? |
| 24096 | Unlike time, space is subjective. Empty space was assumed, but it doesn't exist [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Space, like matter, is a subjective form. Time is not. Space first emerged through the assumption of empty space. This doesn't exist. Force is everything. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 1[003]) | |
| A reaction: I would think modern physics endorses his opinion of space. The original atomists proposed a 'void', to prevent traffic jams of atoms. Now we see space as fields, so it is never empty. |
| 24141 | Having a sense of time presupposes absolute time [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Our derivation of the sense of time etc. still presupposes time as absolute. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[406]) | |
| A reaction: 'Etc.'? I suppose this is meant to pre-empt whatever Bergson might have been planning to say. The idea that time actually is subjective strikes as very wrong. Whether physicists can reduce time to something else is above my pay scale. |
| 24063 | What is born has growth, a prime, and a withering away [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What has been born must have growth, a prime of life, and a time of withering away. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 434a23) | |
| A reaction: Modern biologists don't seem much interested in the 'prime of life', but for Aristotle it is crucial, as the fulfilment of a thing's essential nature. Nietzsche would probably agree with Aristotle on this. We dread seeing one period of life as 'superior'. |
| 24122 | Life is forces conjoined by nutrition, to produce resistance, arrangement and value [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: A multiplicity of forces, conjoined through a common nutritive process, is what we call 'life'. All so-called feeling, representing, thinking is part of this nutritive process to enable resistance to other forces, and arrangement, and an evaluation. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 24[14]) | |
| A reaction: [compressed at the end] Since no one else seems able to define life, this is quite a good attempt. Life is certainly a sort of unification of active energies, which than share goals. |
| 24037 | We all assume immortality is impossible [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We do not wish for impossible things - for immortality, for instance. | |
| From: Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1111b22) | |
| A reaction: Obviously this primarily means physical immortality, in contrast to the immortal gods, though Aristotle doesn't seem to believe that humans have an immortal part. |
| 24043 | Soul must be immortal, since it continually moves, like the heavens [Alcmaeon, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Alcmaeon says that the soul is immortal because it resembles immortal things and that this affection belongs to it because it is always in movement, like divine things, such the moon, the sun, the stars and the whole heaven. | |
| From: report of Alcmaeon (fragments/reports [c.490 BCE], DK 24) by Aristotle - De Anima 405a30 | |
| A reaction: Hm. Fish and rivers seem to be continually moving too. Presumably we are like gods, but then Greek gods seem awfully like humans. I don't know the history of belief in immortality; an interesting topic. |