display all the ideas for this combination of texts
5 ideas
| 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. |
| 18233 | Contemplation is final because it is an activity which is not a process [Korsgaard] |
| Full Idea: It is because contemplation is an activity that is not also a process that Aristotle identifies it as the most final good. | |
| From: Christine M. Korsgaard (Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value [1986], 8 'Activity') | |
| A reaction: Quite a helpful way of labelling what Aristotle has in mind. So should we not aspire to be involved in processes, except reluctantly? I take the mind itself to be a process, so that may be difficult! |
| 18226 | For Aristotle, contemplation consists purely of understanding [Korsgaard] |
| Full Idea: Contemplation, as Aristotle understand it, is not research or inquiry, but an activity that ensues on these: an activity that consists in understanding. | |
| From: Christine M. Korsgaard (Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value [1986], 8 'Aristotle') | |
| A reaction: Fairly obvious, when you read the last part of 'Ethics', but helpful in grasping Aristotle, because understanding is the objective of 'Posterior Analytics' and 'Metaphysics', so he tells you how to achieve the ideal moral state. |