display all the ideas for this combination of texts
9 ideas
| 19073 | True philosophy aims at absolute unity, while our understanding sees only separation [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Everything deserving the name of philosophy has constantly been based on the consciousness of an absolute unity, where the understanding sees and accepts only separation. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §213) | |
| A reaction: Puzzled by the role of 'understanding' here. I tend to cite that as the highest aspiration of philosophy. Hegel seems to offer a higher understanding of unity, and a weaker analytic understanding, which is part of our limited psychology. |
| 15624 | Free thinking has no presuppositions [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Thinking that is free is without presuppositions. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §41 Add1) | |
| A reaction: Fat chance, I would have thought. Hegel's project was indeed to try to get right to the bottom of the presuppositions. My picture is always of holding one thing presupposed while you examine another, and then switching to other presuppositions. |
| 2056 | Philosophers are always switching direction to something more interesting [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers are always ready to change direction, if a topic crops up which is more attractive than the one to hand. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 172d) | |
| A reaction: Which sounds trivial, but it may be what God does. |
| 15631 | The ideal of reason is the unification of abstract identity (or 'concept') and being [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Abstract identity (which is what here is also called 'concept') and being are the two moments that reason seeks to unify; this unification is the Ideal of reason. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §49) | |
| A reaction: Not sure I understand this, but I connect it to Aristotle's approach to the problem of being, which was to abandon the head-on approach, and aim to understand the identities of particulars and kinds. |
| 15612 | Older metaphysics naively assumed that thought grasped things in themselves [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The older metaphysics has the naïve presupposition that thinking grasps what things are in-themselves, that things only are what they genuinely are when they are captured in thought. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §28 Add) | |
| A reaction: His 'older' metaphysics is prior to Kant's critique. The less naïve version is more aware of antinomies and dialectical conflicts within thought. |
| 21768 | Logic is metaphysics, the science of things grasped in thoughts [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Logic coincides with metaphysics, with the science of things grasped in thoughts. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §24), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 02 'Logic' | |
| A reaction: Not a very clear definition, given that thinking about a table appears to be a 'thing grasped in thought'. Presumably it refers to things which can only be grasped in thought, which seems to make it entirely a priori. |
| 2086 | Understanding mainly involves knowing the elements, not their combinations [Plato] |
| Full Idea: A perfect grasp of any subject depends far more on knowing elements than on knowing complexes. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 206b) |
| 2083 | Either a syllable is its letters (making parts as knowable as whole) or it isn't (meaning it has no parts) [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Either a syllable is not the same as its letters, in which case it cannot have the letters as parts of itself, or it is the same as its letters, in which case these basic elements are just as knowable as it is. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 205b) |
| 21984 | We must break up the rigidity that our understanding has imposed [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The battle of reason is the struggle to break up the rigidity to which the understanding has reduced everything. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], I §80Z p.115), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.7 | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a combination of Nietzsche and later Wittgenstein, and may be one of the ideas that launches 'continental' philosophy. Recent French thinkers talk continually of 'liberation'. |