Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Law,Liberty and Morality' and 'Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82'

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3 ideas

19. Language / D. Propositions / 1. Propositions
A proposition is what can be asserted or denied on its own [Chrysippus]
     Full Idea: A proposition is what can be asserted or denied on its own, for example, 'It is day' or 'Dion is walking'.
     From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.65
     A reaction: Note the phrase 'on its own'. If you say 'it is day and Dion is walking', that can't be denied on its own, because first the two halves must each be evaluated, so presumably that doesn't count as a stoic proposition.
19. Language / F. Communication / 1. Rhetoric
Great orators lead their arguments, rather than following them [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: For me there are no true orators and super-orators unless they can convince the arguments themselves to run after them.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 22[01])
     A reaction: I translate this as great orators generating the mere appearance of good arguments. Both reason and feeling must be irrationally swept along. Nice.
19. Language / F. Communication / 5. Pragmatics / b. Implicature
The pragmatics of language is more comprehensible than the meaning [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: The most comprehensible part of language is not the word itself, but rather tone, force, modulation, tempo, with which a series of words is spoken.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 3[296])
     A reaction: He exaggerates. If you watch someone talking vociferously in an unknown foreign language, the feeling of the exchange is obvious, but the content is quite unknown. I see his point that we underestimate body language etc.