Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works (fragments)', 'Phenomenology of Spirit' and 'Parthood and Identity across Time'

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4 ideas

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 1. Philosophy
When shown seven versions of the mowing argument, he paid twice the asking price for them [Zeno of Citium, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: When shown seven species of dialectic in the mowing argument, he asked the price, and when told 'a hundred drachmas', he gave two hundred, so devoted was he to learning.
     From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.Ze.20
     A reaction: Wonderful. I have a watertight proof that pleasure is not the good, which I will auction on the internet.
Philosophy moves essentially in the element of universality [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Philosophy moves essentially in the element of universality.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 01)
     A reaction: I would take this to be uncontroversially correct. An interesting test case is applied ethics, which seems embedded in current cultural practices. I would always take it to be searching for what is universal in each situation.
1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 4. Divisions of Philosophy
Philosophy has three parts, studying nature, character, and rational discourse [Zeno of Citium, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: They say that philosophical theory is tripartite. For one part of it concerns nature [i.e. physics], another concerns character [i.e. ethics], and another concerns rational discourse [i.e. logic]
     From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.39
     A reaction: Surely 'nature' included biology, and shouldn't be glossed as 'physics'? And I presume that 'rational discourse' is 'logos', rather than 'logic'. Interesting to see that ethics just is the study of character (and not of good and bad actions).
1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 5. Aims of Philosophy / b. Philosophy as transcendent
Philosophy aims to reveal the necessity and rationality of the categories of nature and spirit [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: For Hegel, philosophy's principal task is to disclose the enduring necessity and rationality of the categories and forms of nature and spirit that it examines.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 4 'Phenomenology'
     A reaction: The idea that a miserable little evolved and transient mammal on a tiny planet has direct insight into the necessities and categories of nature and spirit looks a shade optimistic to me. You have to admire the ambition, though.