20379
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Reason is just another organic drive, developing late, and fighting for equality [Nietzsche]
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Full Idea:
Reason is a support organ that slowly develops itself, ...and emancipates itself slowly to equal rights with the organic drives - so that reason (belief and knowledge) fights with the drives, as itself a new drive, very late come to preponderance.
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From:
Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 9/11[243]), quoted by John Richardson - Nietzsche's System 4.3.2 n55
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A reaction:
A very powerful and fascinating idea. There is a silly post-modern tendency to think that Nietzsche denegrates and trivialises reason because of remarks like this, but he takes ranking the drives to be the supreme activity. I rank reason high.
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8200
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Aristotelian definitions aim to give the essential properties of the thing defined [Aristotle, by Quine]
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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.
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From:
report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Willard Quine - Vagaries of Definition p.51
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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'.
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