Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works', 'Vagueness: a global approach' and 'The Will to Power (notebooks)'

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3 ideas

18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 3. Emotions / b. Types of emotion
Passions are ranked, as if they are non-rational and animal pleasure seeking [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: The whole conception of an order of rank among the passions: as if it were the right and normal thing to be guided by reason - with the passions as abnormal, dangerous, semi-animal …and nothing other than desires for pleasure.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §387)
     A reaction: This thought of Nietzsche's seems to be very important, because the Enlightenment relegation of passions was inherited from Christianity, and dominated European culture (and Buddhism too, I think).
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 3. Emotions / f. Emotion and reason
We fail to see that reason is a network of passions, and every passion contains some reason [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: The misunderstanding of passion and reason, as if the latter were an independent entity and not rather a system of relations between various passions and desires; and as if every passion did not possess its quantum of reason.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §387)
     A reaction: This seems to me a much more accurate account of the relation of reason and passion than almost anything in earlier philosophy (though Aristotle is quite good on it). I am retraining myself to see my mental life in this way.
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 5. Rationality / c. Animal rationality
Aristotle and the Stoics denied rationality to animals, while Platonists affirmed it [Aristotle, by Sorabji]
     Full Idea: Aristotle, and also the Stoics, denied rationality to animals. …The Platonists, the Pythagoreans, and some more independent Aristotelians, did grant reason and intellect to animals.
     From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Richard Sorabji - Rationality 'Denial'
     A reaction: This is not the same as affirming or denying their consciousness. The debate depends on how rationality is conceived.