display all the ideas for this combination of texts
4 ideas
1771 | When shown seven versions of the mowing argument, he paid twice the asking price for them [Zeno of Citium, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: When shown seven species of dialectic in the mowing argument, he asked the price, and when told 'a hundred drachmas', he gave two hundred, so devoted was he to learning. | |
From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.Ze.20 | |
A reaction: Wonderful. I have a watertight proof that pleasure is not the good, which I will auction on the internet. |
22519 | Philosophers are revealed by their fears [Billington] |
Full Idea: To understand any philosopher, ask 'What are they afraid of?'. | |
From: Ray Billington (talk [2010]) | |
A reaction: Yes! So... Plato - disorder. Aristotle - ignorance. Augustine - sin. Descartes - uncertainty. Spinoza - fragmentation. Leibniz - superficiality. Hume - speculation. Bentham - egotism. Kant - self-deception. Nietzsche - nihilism. Russell - imprecision. |
20770 | Philosophy has three parts, studying nature, character, and rational discourse [Zeno of Citium, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: They say that philosophical theory is tripartite. For one part of it concerns nature [i.e. physics], another concerns character [i.e. ethics], and another concerns rational discourse [i.e. logic] | |
From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.39 | |
A reaction: Surely 'nature' included biology, and shouldn't be glossed as 'physics'? And I presume that 'rational discourse' is 'logos', rather than 'logic'. Interesting to see that ethics just is the study of character (and not of good and bad actions). |
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. |