display all the ideas for this combination of texts
14 ideas
| 1571 | 'Logos' ranges from thought/reasoning, to words, to rational structures outside thought [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Logos can mean i) a thought or reasoning, ii) the word which expresses a thought, iii) a rational structure outside human thought. These meanings give 'logos' an extraordinary range. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], Intro. 12) |
| 1572 | In the seventeenth century the only acceptable form of logos was technical knowledge [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: In the seventeenth century only a certain type of logos was deemed legitimate, namely that identified with technical knowledge (or 'techné'). | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], Intro. 15) |
| 1573 | The hallmark of a person with logos is that they give reasons why one opinion is superior to another [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: What is supposed to identify the person of logos from the one without is the commitment to giving reasons explaining why one opinion is superior to another. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], Intro. 17) |
| 1592 | Logos cannot refute the relativist, and so must admit that it too is a matter of desire (for truth and agreement) [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Logos cannot refute the radical, consistent and self-conscious relativist. Therefore it must admit that, like the relativist, it itself is essentially a matter of desire. It wants to say what is right and wrong, true and false, and for others to agree. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.108) |
| 1593 | Human desire has an ordered structure, with logos at the pinnacle [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Human desire has an ordered structure, with logos at the pinnacle. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.109) |
| 1603 | Logos is not unconditionally good, but good if there is another person willing to engage with it [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Logos is not unconditionally good, but good contingent on there being some other person (out there) who is willing to talk with logos, to approach it even as an opponent. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.175) |
| 1575 | For Aristotle logos is essentially the ability to talk rationally about questions of value [Roochnik on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle logos is the ability to speak rationally about, with the hope of attaining knowledge, questions of value. | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.26 |
| 1589 | Aristotle is the supreme optimist about the ability of logos to explain nature [Roochnik on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle is the great theoretician who articulates a vision of a world in which natural and stable structures can be rationally discovered. His is the most optimistic and richest view of the possibilities of logos | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.95 |
| 1598 | We prefer reason or poetry according to whether basics are intelligible or not [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Is the arché (basis) intelligible, or is it chaos? Upon this question hinges all, for answering it determines whether poetry or logos is the form of human speech that best does justice to the world. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.139) |
| 1584 | Modern science, by aiming for clarity about the external world, has abandoned rationality in the human world [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: The modern scientific world view, with all its hope for clarity and precision, has a flipside, …which is its abandonment of rationality in the world of human significance. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.74) |
| 1591 | Unfortunately for reason, argument can't be used to establish the value of argument [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Unfortunately for the logos there is no argument that can, without begging the question, establish the goodness of argumentation. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.106) |
| 1599 | Attempts to suspend all presuppositions are hopeless, because a common ground must be agreed for the process [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: To debate about suspending all our presuppositions requires a common ground which, upon being established, immediately renders the debate superfluous. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.144) |
| 8200 | Aristotelian definitions aim to give the essential properties of the thing defined [Aristotle, by Quine] |
| Full Idea: A real definition, according to the Aristotelian tradition, gives the essence of the kind of thing defined. Man is defined as a rational animal, and thus rationality and animality are of the essence of each of us. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Willard Quine - Vagaries of Definition p.51 | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 4385. Personally I prefer the Aristotelian approach, but we may have to say 'We cannot identify the essence of x, and so x cannot be defined'. Compare 'his mood was hard to define' with 'his mood was hostile'. |
| 4385 | Aristotelian definition involves first stating the genus, then the differentia of the thing [Aristotle, by Urmson] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle, to give a definition one must first state the genus and then the differentia of the kind of thing to be defined. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by J.O. Urmson - Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean p.157 | |
| A reaction: Presumably a modern definition would just be a list of properties, but Aristotle seeks the substance. How does he define a genus? - by placing it in a further genus? |