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Ideas for 'works', 'Specimen inventorum' and 'Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82'

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2 ideas

18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 1. Thought
Thoughts are signs (just as words are) [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Thoughts are merely signs, as words are signs for thoughts.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 5[1]272)
     A reaction: The obvious question he invites is 'signs of what?'. His point must be that most thinking is both non-verbal and non-conscious, which he took to be true even of intellectual thought. I sympathise with his view.
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 3. Emotions / a. Nature of emotions
Freud said passions are pressures of some flowing hydraulic quantity [Freud, by Solomon]
     Full Idea: Freud argued that the passions in general …were the pressures of a yet unknown 'quantity' (which he simply designated 'Q'). He first thought this flowed through neurones, …and always couched the idea in the language of hydraulics.
     From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by Robert C. Solomon - The Passions 3.4
     A reaction: This is the main target of Solomon's criticism, because its imagery has become so widespread. It leads to talk of suppressing emotions, or sublimating them. However, it is not too different from Nietzsche's 'drives' or 'will to power'.