Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works', 'Human, All Too Human' and 'The Idea of Overlapping Consensus'

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2 ideas

26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 1. Laws of Nature
In religious thought nature is a complex of arbitrary acts by conscious beings [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: In the mind of religious men, all nature is the sum of actions of conscious and intentioned beings, an enormous complex of arbitrary acts.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 111)
     A reaction: This is the beginning of the process, I think, which then sees the gods as dictating through laws, and then the laws themselves doing the dictating, then seeing the laws as inhering in nature - and finally realising there aren't any laws!
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 11. Against Laws of Nature
Modern man wants laws of nature in order to submit to them [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: In present times, man wishes to understand the lawfulness of nature in order to submit to it.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 111)
     A reaction: They don't make philosophers like Nietzsche any more (or at least, in the analytic tradition I am following!). No one who is trying to give an analysis of the laws of nature has any interest in why we are so keen to find them. Stoics 'live by nature'.