Combining Texts

Ideas for 'The Fixation of Belief', 'The Ethics' and 'Does Ontology Rest on a Mistake?'

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4 ideas

2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 3. Pure Reason
Reason only explains what is universal, so it is timeless, under a certain form of eternity [Spinoza]
     Full Idea: The foundations of reason are notions which explain those things which are common to all, and these things explain the essence of no individual thing, and must therefore be conceived without any relation to time, but under a certain form of eternity.
     From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 44)
     A reaction: You have to be totally inspired by this even if you totally disagree with it.
Reason perceives things under a certain form of eternity [Spinoza]
     Full Idea: It is in the nature of reason to perceive things under a certain form of eternity ('sub quadam aeternitatis specie').
     From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 44)
     A reaction: A wonderful, and justly famous, remark. If you don't feel the force (and poetry!) of this, you aren't a philosopher. It is not only appealing, but I don't see how it can fail to be true. Try producing good reasons which only have temporary force.
2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 4. Aims of Reason
Reason aims to discover the unknown by thinking about the known [Peirce]
     Full Idea: The object of reasoning is to find out, from the consideration of what we already know, something else which we do not know.
     From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p. 7)
     A reaction: I defy anyone to come up with a better definition of reasoning than that. The emphasis is on knowledge rather than truth, which you would expect from a pragmatist. …Actually the definition doesn't cover conditional reasoning terribly well.
In so far as men live according to reason, they will agree with one another [Spinoza]
     Full Idea: Men necessarily always agree with one another in so far as they live according to the guidance of reason.
     From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 35)
     A reaction: I think this was my earliest motivation for getting interested in philosophy. Oddly, the Socratic tradition of philosophy is to challenge and criticise, but the aim is agreement. I sort of believe this idea, despite its wild idealism.