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2 ideas
| 20379 | Reason is just another organic drive, developing late, and fighting for equality [Nietzsche] |
| 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. | |
| 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 | |
| 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. |
| 14231 | We should always apply someone's theory of meaning to their own utterances [Liggins] |
| Full Idea: We should interpret philosophers as if their own theory of the meaning of their utterances were true, whether or not we agree with that theory. | |
| From: David Liggins (Nihilism without Self-Contradiction [2008], 8) | |
| A reaction: This seems to give legitimate grounds for some sorts of ad hominem objections. It would simply be an insult to a philosopher not to believe their theories, and then apply them to what they have said. This includes semantic theories. |