Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Aenesidemus' and 'Dawn (Daybreak)'

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3 ideas

16. Persons / C. Self-Awareness / 2. Knowing the Self
Things are the boundaries of humanity, so all things must be known, for self-knowledge [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Only when the human being has finally attained knowledge of all things will he have known himself. For things are merely the boundaries of the human being.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 048)
     A reaction: This seems to be a rather externalist view of the mind. If philosophy aims to disentangle mind from world then good knowledge of the world seems to be required.
Our knowledge of the many drives that constitute us is hopelessly incomplete [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: No matter how hard a person struggles for self-knowledge, nothing can be more incomplete than the image of all the drives taken together than constitute his being.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 119)
     A reaction: This gives the concept of personal identity that arises from the (later) doctrine of the 'will to power'. It is a bundle view of the self, but a bundle of drives rather than of percepts and mental events. His view is close to Hume's.
16. Persons / F. Free Will / 6. Determinism / a. Determinism
People used to think that outcomes were from God, rather than consequences of acts [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: People used to believe that the outcome of an action was not a consequence, but an independent, supplemental ingredient, namely God's. Is a greater confusion conceivable?
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 012)
     A reaction: Not sure how well documented or accurate this is, but Nietzsche was a great scholar, and it would explain the fatalism that runs through many older forms of society.