display all the ideas for this combination of texts
4 ideas
7910 | Pursue truth with the urgency of someone whose clothes are on fire [Ashvaghosha] |
Full Idea: As though your turban or your clothes were on fire, so with a sense of urgency should you apply your intellect to the comprehension of the truths. | |
From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI) | |
A reaction: The best philosophers need no such urging. I retain a romantic view that we should be 'natural' in these things. See Plato's views in Idea 2153 and 1638. However, maybe I should be confronted with this quotation every morning when I awake. |
23881 | All thought about values is philosophical, and thought about anything else is not philosophy [Weil] |
Full Idea: All reflections bearing on the notion of value and on the hierarchy of values is philosophical; all efforts of thought bearing on anything other than value are, if one examines them closely, foreign to philosophy. | |
From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Value [1941], p.30) | |
A reaction: If nothing else proves that Weil is a platonist, this does. She, of course, has a transcendent and religious view of values, whereas I just see them as concepts which embody what is important. That said, I'm not far off agreeing with this. |
23885 | Philosophy aims to change the soul, not to accumulate knowledge [Weil] |
Full Idea: Philosophy does not consist in accumulating knowledge, as science does, but in changing the whole soul. | |
From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Value [1941], p.33) | |
A reaction: I agree, roughly. In the sense that philosophy is a much more personal matter than any pure pursuit of knowledge, such as geology. Though a life in geology could change your soul. Not just any old change, of course…. |
23886 | Systems are not unique to each philosopher. The platonist tradition is old and continuous [Weil] |
Full Idea: People believe that every philosopher has a system that contradicts all the others! But there is a tradition, genuinely philosophical, that is as old as humanity itself. …Plato is the most perfect representative of this tradition. | |
From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Value [1941], p.33) | |
A reaction: I see roughly two traditions. If you believe in transcendence you follow Plato, like Simone. If you are a naturalist (like me) you follow Aristotle. A third tradition might be much more sceptical. |