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Ideas for 'works', 'works' and 'Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology'

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3 ideas

2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 1. On Reason
For clear questions posed by reason, reason can also find clear answers [Gödel]
     Full Idea: I uphold the belief that for clear questions posed by reason, reason can also find clear answers.
     From: Kurt Gödel (works [1930]), quoted by Peter Koellner - On the Question of Absolute Undecidability 1.5
     A reaction: [written in 1961] This contradicts the implication normally taken from his much earlier Incompleteness Theorems.
2. Reason / C. Styles of Reason / 1. Dialectic
Two contradictories force us to find a relation which will correlate them [Plato, by Weil]
     Full Idea: Where contradictions appear there is a correlation of contraries, which is relation. If a contradiction is imposed on the intelligence, it is forced to think of a relation to transform the contradiction into a correlation, which draws the soul higher.
     From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Simone Weil - God in Plato p.70
     A reaction: A much better account of the dialectic than anything I have yet seen in Hegel. For the first time I see some sense in it. A contradiction is not a falsehood, and it must be addressed rather than side-stepped. A kink in the system, that needs ironing.
2. Reason / D. Definition / 13. Against Definition
The use of mathematical-style definitions in philosophy is fruitless and harmful [Husserl]
     Full Idea: Definition cannot take the same form in philosophy as it does in mathematics; the imitation of mathematical procedure is invariably in this respect not only unfruitful, but perverse and most harmful in its consequences.
     From: Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913], Intro)
     A reaction: A hundred years of analytic philosophy has entirely ignored this warning. My heart has always sunk when I read '=def...' in a philosophy article (which is usually American). The illusion of rigour.