display all the ideas for this combination of texts
8 ideas
| 20359 | The nature of being, of things, is much easier to understand than is becoming [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The doctrine of being, of things, of all sorts of fixed unities is a hundred times easier than the doctrine of becoming, of development. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §238) | |
| A reaction: I don't know if he intended it, but this is a fierce shaft hurled at Aristotle, who gives a wonderful essentialist account of the nature of things, but can offer nothing more on becoming than the doctrine of potentiality and actuality. |
| 7696 | Leibniz first asked 'why is there something rather than nothing?' [Leibniz, by Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: The historical honour of having first raised the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" belongs to Leibniz. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (On the Ultimate Origination of Things [1697]) by Dale Jacquette - Ontology Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: I presume that people before Leibniz may well have had the thought, but not bothered to even articulate it, because there seemed nothing to say by way of answer, other than some reference to the inscrutable will of God. |
| 19341 | There must be a straining towards existence in the essence of all possible things [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Since something rather than nothing exists, there is a certain urge for existence, or (so to speak) a straining toward existence in possible things or in possibility or essence itself; in a word, essence in and of itself strives for existence. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (On the Ultimate Origination of Things [1697], p.150) | |
| A reaction: Thus 'essence precedes existence'. Not sure I understand this, but at least it places an active power at the root of everything (though Leibniz probably sees that as divine). The Big Bang triggered by a 'quantum fluctuation'? |
| 19428 | Because something does exist, there must be a drive in possible things towards existence [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: From the very fact that something exists rather than nothing, we recognise that there is in possible things, that is, in the very possibility or essence, a certain exigent need of existence, and, so to speak, some claim to existence. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (On the Ultimate Origination of Things [1697], p.347) | |
| A reaction: I love the fact that Leibniz tried to explain why there is something rather than nothing. Bede Rundle and Dale Jacquette are similar heroes. As Leibniz tells us, contradictions have no claim to existence, but non-contradictions do. |
| 4525 | There are no facts in themselves, only interpretations [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Against positivism, which halts at phenomena, and says "there are only facts", I would say: No, facts is precisely what there is not, only interpretations. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §481) | |
| A reaction: A cornerstone of relativism is the denial of facts. A cornerstone of realism is the affirmation of facts. Personally, I affirm facts. |
| 4543 | There are no 'facts-in-themselves', since a sense must be projected into them to make them 'facts' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There are no 'facts-in-themselves', for a sense must always be projected into them before they can be 'facts'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §556) | |
| A reaction: The relativist (and anti-realist) view. Any attempt at taking this proposal seriously induces a hopeless vertigo, a well known consequence of reading Nietzsche. I don't believe this. It is not to my taste. |
| 15730 | Extreme nominalists say all classification is arbitrary convention [Quinton] |
| Full Idea: Pure, extreme nominalism sees all classification as the product of arbitrary convention. | |
| From: Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat') | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure what the word 'arbitrary' is doing there. Nominalists are not daft, and if they can classify any way they like, they are not likely to choose an 'arbitrary' system. Pragmatism tells the right story here. |
| 4484 | Nihilism results from valuing the world by the 'categories of reason', because that is fiction [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The faith in the categories of reason is the cause of nihilism; we have measured the value of the world according to categories that refer to a purely fictitious world. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §12B) | |
| A reaction: Presumably this refers to Kant, whose dogmatic assertions about the structure of human reason are as open to objection as those of Freud. Nietzsche may have a very profound truth here. |