Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Concerning the Author', 'Proslogion' and 'Phenomenology of Spirit'

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6 ideas

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 1. Philosophy
Philosophy moves essentially in the element of universality [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Philosophy moves essentially in the element of universality.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 01)
     A reaction: I would take this to be uncontroversially correct. An interesting test case is applied ethics, which seems embedded in current cultural practices. I would always take it to be searching for what is universal in each situation.
1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 5. Aims of Philosophy / b. Philosophy as transcendent
Philosophy aims to reveal the necessity and rationality of the categories of nature and spirit [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: For Hegel, philosophy's principal task is to disclose the enduring necessity and rationality of the categories and forms of nature and spirit that it examines.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 4 'Phenomenology'
     A reaction: The idea that a miserable little evolved and transient mammal on a tiny planet has direct insight into the necessities and categories of nature and spirit looks a shade optimistic to me. You have to admire the ambition, though.
1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 7. Against Metaphysics
The demonstrations of the metaphysicians are all moonshine [Peirce]
     Full Idea: The demonstrations of the metaphysicians are all moonshine.
     From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Concerning the Author [1897], p.2)
1. Philosophy / G. Scientific Philosophy / 3. Scientism
Without philosophy, science is barren and futile [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Let other sciences try to argue as much as they like without philosophy - without it they can have in them neither life, Spirit, nor truth.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 67)
     A reaction: To be pinned up in every physics laboratory in the world. On the whole I agree with this. My slogan is 'science is the servant of philosophy'. An unphilosophical scientist is just a technologist, an artisan.
I am saturated with the spirit of physical science [Peirce]
     Full Idea: I am saturated, through and through, with the spirit of the physical sciences.
     From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Concerning the Author [1897], p.1)
1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 1. Continental Philosophy
Truth does not appear by asserting reasons and then counter-reasons [Hegel]
     Full Idea: It is not difficult to see that the way of asserting a proposition, adducing reasons for it, and in the same way refuting its opposite by reasons, is not the form in which truth can appear.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], p.28), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - Hegel p.100
     A reaction: This is a pretty good description of the way Plato and Aristotle do philosophy, so this idea, which must be a founding idea for the 'continental school', is extremely radical. Personally I identify rationality with believing things for good reasons.