display all the ideas for this combination of texts
14 ideas
| 5967 | People need nothing except corn and water [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Chrysippus praises ad nauseam the lines "For what need mortals save two things alone,/ Demeter's grain and draughts of water clear". | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1043e | |
| A reaction: "Oh, reason not the need!" says King Lear. The remark shows the close affinity of stoicism and cynicism, as the famous story of Diogenes is that he threw away his drinking cup when he realised you could drink with your hands. |
| 5966 | All virtue is good, but not always praised (as in not lusting after someone ugly) [Chrysippus] |
| Full Idea: Although deeds done in accordance with virtue are congenial, not all are cited as examples, such as courageously extending one's finger, or continently abstaining from a half-dead old woman, or not immediately agreeing that three is four. | |
| From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE], fr 211), quoted by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1038f | |
| A reaction: Presumably the point (so elegantly expressed - what a shame we have lost most of Chrysippus) is that virtue comes in degrees, even though its value is an absolute. The same has been said (by Russell and Bonjour) about self-evidence. |
| 20855 | Chrysippus says virtue can be lost (though Cleanthes says it is too secure for that) [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Chrysippus says that virtue can be lost, owing to drunkenness and excess of black bile, whereas Cleanthes says it cannot, because it consists in secure intellectual grasps, and it is worth choosing for its own sake. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.127 | |
| A reaction: Succumbing to drunkenness looks like evidence that you were not truly virtuous. Mental illness is something else. On the whole I agree the Cleanthes. |
| 5970 | Chrysippus says nothing is blameworthy, as everything conforms with the best nature [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Chrysippus has often written on the theme that there is nothing reprehensible or blameworthy in the universe since all things are accomplished in conformity with the best nature. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1051b | |
| A reaction: This is Leibniz's "best of all possible worlds", but deriving the idea from the rightness of nature rather than the perfection of God. Chrysippus has a more plausible ground than Leibniz, as for him nasty things follow from conscious choice. |
| 7165 | Virtue is wasteful, as it reduces us all to being one another's nurse [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Nothing would be more expensive than virtue: for in the end it would give us the earth as an infirmary, and 'Everyone to be everyone else's nurse' would be the pinnacle of wisdom. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 04[7]) | |
| A reaction: Once again, I think that Nietzsche does not understand Aristotelian virtue theory. This attacks Christian virtue (his bête noir), with its emphasis on compassion and humility. A truly virtuous person is more likely to be an artist/politician/philosopher. |
| 7193 | Virtue for everyone removes its charm of being exceptional and aristocratic [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The preachers of virtue are its worst enemies. For they teach virtue as an ideal for everyone; they take from virtue the charm of the rare, the inimitable, the exceptional and unaverage - its aristocratic magic. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 10[109]) | |
| A reaction: At last I think I have found why Nietzsche disliked Aristotle, who makes elementary 'phronesis' (practical reason) a sufficient intellectual endowment to achieve virtue, with no need of more than moderate wealth or power. I prefer Aristotle. |
| 7191 | What does not kill us makes us stronger [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What does not kill us makes us stronger. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 10[87]) | |
| A reaction: A famous remark! Actually, of course, a very stressful human life tends to be much shorter than a comfortable one, but Nietzsche wouldn't equate strength with longevity. Nowadays we are all a bunch of softies. |
| 7151 | Courage, compassion, insight, solitude are the virtues, with courtesy a necessary vice [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Our four cardinal virtues: courage, compassion, insight and solitude - they would be unbearable to themselves if they hadn't forged an alliance with a cheerful and mischievous vice called 'courtesy'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[13]) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche was wonderfully wicked. I struggle (with Aristotle) to see how a naturally social creature can have solitude as a virtue. It is startling to see Nietzsche naming compassion as a virtue, but how ironic is the whole remark? |
| 7185 | Replace the categorical imperative by the natural imperative [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Replacement of the categorical imperative by the natural imperative. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 09[27]) | |
| A reaction: This places Nietzsche rather firmly with evolutionary psychologists (who see morality in evolutionary terms), which he probably would not like. I just don't believe we are helpless victims of nature, and nor must we endorse what it asks of us. |
| 7164 | Not feeling harnessed to a system of 'ends' is a wonderful feeling of freedom [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What a sensation of freedom it is to feel, as we freed spirits feel, that we are not harnessed up to a system of 'ends'! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[206]) | |
| A reaction: Given his view that we are utterly dominated by the 'will to power', I am beginning to wonder in what sense we could ever be 'free'. If my happiness is an 'illusion' (Idea 7159), then I retaliate by saying that his freedom is also an illusion. |
| 7198 | Nihilism results from measuring the world by our categories which are purely invented [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Belief in the categories of reason is the cause of nihilism - we have measured the value of the world against categories that refer to a purely invented world. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 11[99]) | |
| A reaction: What a remarkable thought! He will have Kant especially in mind. The implication is that we might avoid nihilism by creating more accurate categories, but Nietzsche, as relativist, thinks that is impossible (Ideas 7174, 7175). Nihilism is our fate. |
| 7150 | By developing herd virtues man fixes what has up to now been the 'unfixed animal' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Men's increasing morality allows them to fancy they can rise to the rank of 'gods', whereas in fact they sink; by cultivating the virtues by which a herd can flourish, they develop the herd animal, and 'fix' what has up to now been the 'unfixed animal'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[13]) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] More than any other remark, this explains the sense of distress found in all of later Nietzsche. If he is right, it looks even more true now than in 1886, because of the globalisation of culture. I think he is right. |
| 7177 | Virtues from outside are dangerous, and they should come from within [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The virtues are as dangerous as the vices, to the extent that one allows them to rule as authority and law from outside instead of generating them from within oneself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 07[6]) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche was a romantic, who thought things only have worth if they are authentic, individual, autonomous, original. Existentialism is the last fling of romanticism, and expresses an adolescent yearning for 'freedom'. From what? |
| 7172 | Existence without meaning or goal or end, eternally recurring, is a terrible thought [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Let us think this thought in its most terrible form: existence as it is, without meaning or goal, but inevitably recurring, without any finale into nothingness: 'eternal recurrence'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 05[71].6) | |
| A reaction: I take this in a positive spirit - that if you wish to live well you should create a life which you could endure and enjoy, even if it recurred eternally. But that might be rather conservative rather than exciting, if we always avoided giving offence. |