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Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Whitehead: process and cosmology' and 'Introduction to the Philosophy of History'

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5 ideas

1. Philosophy / A. Wisdom / 1. Nature of Wisdom

9199	Wisdom for one instant is as good as wisdom for eternity [Chrysippus]
	Full Idea: If a person has wisdom for one instant, he is no less happy than he who possesses it for eternity.
	From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Pierre Hadot - Philosophy as a way of life 8
	A reaction: [Hadot quotes Plutarch 'On Common Conceptions' 8,1062a] This makes it sound awfully like some sort of Buddhist 'enlightenment', which strikes like lightning. He does wisdom recognise itself - by a warm glow, or by the cautious thought that got you there?

1. Philosophy / A. Wisdom / 2. Wise People

20853	Wise men should try to participate in politics, since they are a good influence [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius]
	Full Idea: The wise man will participate in politics unless something prevents him, for he will restrain vice and promote virtue.
	From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.121
	A reaction: [from lost On Ways of Life Bk 1] We have made modern politics so hostile for its participants, thanks to cruel media pressure, that the best people now run a mile from it. Disastrous.

1. Philosophy / C. History of Philosophy / 4. Later European Philosophy / d. Nineteenth century philosophy

20109	Hegel inserted society and history between the God-world, man-nature, man-being binary pairs [Hegel, by Safranski]
	Full Idea: Before Hegel, people thought in binary oppositions of God and the world, man and nature, man and being. After Hegel an intervening world of society and history was inserted between these pairs.
	From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Introduction to the Philosophy of History [1840]) by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 05
	A reaction: This is what Popper later called 'World Three'. This might be seen as the start of what we islanders call 'continental' philosophy, which we have largely ignored. Analytic philosophy only discovered this through philosophy of language.

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 4. Divisions of Philosophy

20772	Three branches of philosophy: first logic, second ethics, third physics (which ends with theology) [Chrysippus]
	Full Idea: There are three kinds of philosophical theorems, logical, ethical, and physical; of these the logic should be placed first, ethics second, and physics third (and theology is the final topic in physics).
	From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1035a
	A reaction: [in his lost 'On Lives' Bk 4] 'Theology is the final topic in physics'! That should create a stir in theology departments. Is this an order of study, or of importance? You come to theology right at the end of your studies.

1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 3. Metaphysical Systems

15390	Metaphysics attempts to give an account of everything, in terms of categories and principles [Simons]
	Full Idea: Metaphysics, the noblest of philosophic enterprises, is an attempt to give an account of everything. ...Its job is to provide a universal framework (of categories and principles) within which anything whatever can take its place.
	From: Peter Simons (Whitehead: process and cosmology [2009], 'Speculative')
	A reaction: Bravo! I take metaphysics to be entirely continuous with science, but operating entirely at the highest level of generality. See Westerhoff on categories, though. The enterprise may not be going too well.