display all the ideas for this combination of texts
3 ideas
| 23890 | For Plato true wisdom is supernatural [Plato, by Weil] |
| Full Idea: It is evident that Plato regards true wisdom as something supernatural. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Simone Weil - God in Plato p.61 | |
| A reaction: Taken literally, I assume this is wrong, but we can empathise with the thought. Wisdom has the feeling of rising above the level of mere knowledge, to achieve the overview I associate with philosophy. |
| 21875 | The wisdom of a free man is a meditation on life, not on death [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation on life, not on death. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 67) | |
| A reaction: Life and death are not so easy to separate. You could hardly be wise about life if you didn't incorporate its finite duration into your wisdom. |
| 17230 | If we are not wholly wise, we should live by good rules and maxims [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The best thing we can do, so long as we lack a perfect knowledge of our feelings, is to conceive a right rule of life, or sure maxims of life - to commit these to memory, and constantly apply these to particular cases. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 10) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the role of folk wisdom - to try to plant guidance in the heads of the not-so-wise. |