Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Are Persons Bodies?', 'Twilight of the Idols' and 'The Enneads'

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3 ideas

28. God / B. Proving God / 2. Proofs of Reason / b. Ontological Proof critique
The supreme general but empty concepts must be compatible, and hence we get 'God' [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: The supreme concepts of philosophers cannot be incommensurate with one another, be incompatible with one another... Thus they acquired their stupendous concept 'God'.... The last, thinnest, emptiest is placed as the first, as cause in itself.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.4)
28. God / B. Proving God / 3. Proofs of Evidence / b. Teleological Proof
Soul is author of all of life, and of the stars, and it gives them law and movement [Plotinus]
     Full Idea: Soul is the author of all living things, ...it has breathed life into them all, whatever is nourished by earth and sea, the divine stars in the sky; ...it is the principle distinct from all of these to which it gives law and movement and life.
     From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.02)
     A reaction: This seems to derive from Anaxagoras, who is mentioned by Plotinus. The soul he refers to his not the same as our concept of God. Note the word 'law', which I am guessing is nomos. Not, I think, modern laws of nature, but closer to guidelines.
28. God / C. Attitudes to God / 5. Atheism
By denying God we deny human accountability, and thus we redeem the world [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: We deny God; in denying God we deny accountability; only by doing that do we redeem the world.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 5.8)