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| 19423 | By an 'idea' I mean not an actual thought, but the resources we can draw on to think [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: What I mean by an idea is not a certain act of thinking, but a power or faculty such that we have an idea of a thing even if we are not thinking about it but know that we can think it when the occasion arises. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (What is an Idea? [1676], p.281) | |
| A reaction: 'Idea' tends to be used in the seventeenth century to mean an actual mental event. It is because Leibniz believes in the unconscious mind that he can offer this rather different, and probably superior, notion of an 'idea'. |