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4 ideas
23234 | I cannot change the nature which has been determined for me [Fichte] |
Full Idea: I cannot will the intention of making myself something other than what I am determined to be by nature, for I don't make myself at all but nature makes me and whatever I become. | |
From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
A reaction: I take this to be a lot more accurate than Sartre's claim that we can re-make ourselves, but Fichte doesn't seem quite right. Don't I get any credit at all if I give up smoking, or train myself to treat someone more sympathetically? |
23239 | The self is, apart from outward behaviour, a drive in your nature [Fichte] |
Full Idea: This 'you' for which you show such a lively interest is, so far as it is not overt behaviour, at least a drive in your own peculiar nature. | |
From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
A reaction: I assume this use of 'drive' is the origin of Nietzsche's picture of such things, focused on the basic will to power. I like Fichte's emphasis on active forces as the basis of nature. |
4581 | Virtues and vices are like secondary qualities in perception, found in observers, not objects [Hume] |
Full Idea: Vice and virtue may be compared to sounds, colours, heat and cold, which, according to modern philosophy, are not qualities in objects but perceptions in the mind. | |
From: David Hume (Letters [1739], to Hutcheson 1740) | |
A reaction: Very revealing about the origin of the is/ought idea, but this is an assertion rather than an argument. Most Greeks treat value as a primary quality of things (e.g. life, harmony, beauty, health). |
23238 | If life lacks love it becomes destruction [Fichte] |
Full Idea: Only in love is there life; without it there is death and annihilation. | |
From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
A reaction: He gives not context of justification for this sudden claim. Watching from a melancholy distance the current 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, I take this idea to be a profound truth. If you let go of love, you float away down a dark stream. |