display all the ideas for this combination of texts
11 ideas
| 24086 | The goal is to settle human beings, like other animals, but humans are still changeable [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Obviously the goal is to make human beings as steady and firm as most animal species; they have adapted to the conditions of the earth etc. and do not change essentially. The human being is still changeable - is still becoming. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[044]) | |
| A reaction: I favour an Aristotelian view, based on the flourishing of human nature, but this thought obviously challenges such a view. Great changes to a culture can make some difference to the apparent nature of people. |
| 22229 | Existentialists says that cowards and heroes make themselves [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: What the existentialist says is that the coward makes himself cowardly, that the hero makes himself heroic. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism and Humanism [1945], p.35), quoted by Christine Daigle - Jean-Paul Sartre 2.3 | |
| A reaction: A nice statement of the existential plasticity of the self, in opposition to the much stronger concept of human nature in Aristotle (who nevertheless believes you can acquire virtues and vices). |
| 24123 | My eternal recurrence is opposed to feeling fragmented and imperfect [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I held up eternal recurrence against the numbing feeling of general disintegration and imperfection. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 24[28]) | |
| A reaction: I've heard people say that they think Nietzsche was a nihilist. This is nonsense. His whole career was an opposition to nihilism. His excitement over the idea of recurrence is that he sees a real answer to nihilism. You have to value a recurring life. |
| 3842 | Existence before essence (or begin with the subjective) [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: Existentialism says that existence comes before essence - or, if you will, that we must begin from the subjective. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism and Humanism [1945], p.26) |
| 6868 | 'Existence precedes essence' means we have no pre-existing self, but create it through existence [Sartre, by Le Poidevin] |
| Full Idea: I take 'existence precedes essence' to mean that we do not have a pre-existing self, which organises our behaviour, but rather that we create our self as we go along, through our existence and activities. | |
| From: report of Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism and Humanism [1945]) by Robin Le Poidevin - Interview with Baggini and Stangroom p.222 | |
| A reaction: The direct opponent of this is Aristotle, who builds his ethics on a fairly fixed human nature, but even he agrees that we mould our moral characters through our activities, in a circular way. There are not, though, infinite possibilities in mankind. |
| 3844 | Existentialism says man is whatever he makes of himself [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. This is the first principle of existentialism. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism and Humanism [1945], p.28) |
| 20754 | It is dishonest to offer passions as an excuse [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: Every man who takes refuge behind the excuse of his passions is a dishonest man. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism and Humanism [1945], p.305), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 5 'Core' | |
| A reaction: To say 'my passion was so strong that I was too weak to resist it' doesn't sound prima facie dishonest. Sartre's idea is more of an exhortation than a fact, and sounds rather old fashioned and puritan. Do my reasons constitutes excuses? |
| 6571 | When a man must choose between his mother and the Resistance, no theory can help [Sartre, by Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: When a young man must choose between his bereft mother and the French Resistance, Sartre says no moral theory is capable of resolving the dilemma; the man must act on his own, and in the process define his moral character. | |
| From: report of Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism and Humanism [1945], p.35-9) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: Fogelin agrees, but rejects Sartre's claim that all morality is like this. I agree with Fogelin. However, what I like is the idea of 'defining one's moral character' by choices, but that is because it endorses the views of Aristotle (e.g. Idea 4394). |
| 3851 | If I do not choose, that is still a choice [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: If I do not choose, that is still a choice. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism and Humanism [1945], p.48) |
| 24088 | See our present lives as eternal! Religions see it as fleeting, and aim at some different life [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Let us press the image of eternity on our life! This thought contains more than all religions that despise this life as fleeting and taught us to look toward an unspecified different life. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[159]) | |
| A reaction: This is the best statement of the idea of eternal recurrence I have so far found. His ideal is to design a life for ourselves which we would be happy to see endlessly repeated. A lot of thought would have to go into that! |
| 24119 | The eternal return of wastefulness is a terrible thought [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The most terrible thought of an eternal return of wastefulness. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 20[02]) | |
| A reaction: This illuminates quite well his notion of eternal recurrence. Not only what you would do in an eternally recurring life, but what you would avoid. |