Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'The Vocation of Man' and 'Non-Monotonic Logic'

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3 ideas

20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 2. Willed Action / a. Will to Act
The will is awareness of one of our inner natural forces [Fichte]
     Full Idea: To will is to be immediately conscious of the activity of one of our inner natural forces.
     From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1)
     A reaction: A more Nietzschean view would be that to will is to be conscious of the victor among our inner natural drives. It can't just be awareness of one force, because the will feels conflicts.
20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 2. Willed Action / d. Weakness of will
Passions are judgements; greed thinks money is honorable, and likewise drinking and lust [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Chrysippus says (in his On Passions) that the passions are judgements; for greed is a supposition that money is honorable, and similarly for drunkennes and wantonness and others.
     From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.111
     A reaction: This is an endorsement of Socrates's intellectualist reading of weakness of will, as against Aristotle's assigning it to overpowering passions.
20. Action / C. Motives for Action / 5. Action Dilemmas / c. Omissions
The highest degree of morality performs all that is appropriate, omitting nothing [Chrysippus]
     Full Idea: He who makes moral progress to the highest degree performs all the appropriate actions in all circumstances, and omits none.
     From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Sophocles - Sophocles' Electra 4.39.22
     A reaction: Hence concerns about omission as well as commission in the practice of ethics can be seen in the light of character and virtue. The world is fully of nice people who act well, but don't do so well on omissions. Car drivers, for example.