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Ideas for 'Theaetetus', 'Logological Fragments I' and 'The Tarskian Turn'

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6 ideas

1. Philosophy / C. History of Philosophy / 1. History of Philosophy
19579 The history of philosophy is just experiments in how to do philosophy [Novalis]
     Full Idea: The history of philosophy up to now is nothing but a history of attempts to discover how to do philosophy.
     From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 01)
     A reaction: I take post-Fregean analytic metaphysics to be another experiment in how to do philosophy. I suspect that the experiment of Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida etc has been a failure.
1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 1. Philosophy
19583 Philosophy only begins when it studies itself [Novalis]
     Full Idea: All philosophy begins where philosophizing philosophises itself.
     From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 79)
     A reaction: The modern trend for doing metaphilosophy strikes me as wholly admirable, though I suspect that the enemies of philosophy (who are legion) see it as a decadence.
1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 3. Philosophy Defined
15357 Philosophy is the most general intellectual discipline [Horsten]
     Full Idea: Philosophy is the most general intellectual discipline.
     From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 05.1)
     A reaction: Very simple, but exactly how I see the subject. It is continuous with the sciences, and tries to give an account of nature, but operating at an extreme level of generality. It must respect the findings of science, but offer bold interpretations.
1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 7. Despair over Philosophy
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.
1. Philosophy / F. Analytic Philosophy / 2. Analysis by Division
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)