display all the ideas for this combination of texts
5 ideas
| 20383 | The wisest man is full of contradictions, and attuned to other people, with occasional harmony [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The wisest man would be the one richest in contradictions, who has, as it were, antennae for all types of men - as well as his great moments of grand harmony - a rare accident even in us! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §259) | |
| A reaction: By 'us' does he mean himself? Whether the rest of us thought such a person to be wise would depend on whether we met them on a contradictory or a harmonious day. Permanent harmony should be viewed with suspicion. |
| 4520 | I don't want to persuade anyone to be a philosopher; they should be rare plants [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I do not wish to persuade anyone to philosophy: it is inevitable, it perhaps also desirable, that the philosopher should be a rare plant. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §420) | |
| A reaction: My immediate reaction is disagreement, but 'what if everybody' became a philosopher. The fear is that philosophy paralyses action, but it need not. Good philosophy is time-consuming. History would come to an end. The excitement of medieval history! |
| 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. |
| 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) |