Combining Texts

Ideas for 'The Social Contract (tr Cress)', 'Rationality and Virtue' and 'Reflections on Value'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


2 ideas

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 3. Philosophy Defined
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.
1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 5. Aims of Philosophy / b. Philosophy as transcendent
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….