Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense' and 'Sets and Numbers'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


1 idea

15. Nature of Minds / C. Capacities of Minds / 3. Abstraction by mind
Leaves are unequal, but we form the concept 'leaf' by discarding their individual differences [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Every concept arises through the setting equal of the unequal. Just as it is certain that one leaf is never wholly equal to another, so it is certain that the concept leaf is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense [1872]), quoted by John Richardson - Nietzsche's System 2.1.1 n28
     A reaction: Nietzsche adds an interesting aspect to psychological abstraction, of abstracting away the differences between things, which we might label as the (further) capacity for Equalisation. If two cars differ only in a blemish, we abstract away the blemish.