Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'Intro to 'Modality and Tense'' and 'works'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


7 ideas

7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / c. Becoming
The dialectical opposition of being and nothing is resolved in passing to the concept of becoming [Hegel, by Scruton]
     Full Idea: The concept of being contains within itself it own negation - nothing - and the dialectical opposition between these two concepts is resolved only in the passage to a new concept, becoming, which contains the truth of the passage from nothing to being.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.12
     A reaction: The idea that one concept 'contains' another, or that an opposition could be 'resolved' by a new concept, sounds doubtful to me. For most analytical philosophers, and for Aristotle, oppositions are contradictions, and cannot and should not be 'resolved'.
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 5. Reason for Existence
Hegel gives an ontological proof of the existence of everything [Hegel, by Scruton]
     Full Idea: It would not be unfair to say that Hegel's metaphysics consists of an ontological proof of the existence of everything.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.12
     A reaction: This is so gloriously far from David Hume that we must all find some appeal in it. The next question would be whether necessary existence has been proved. If so, given death, decay and entropy, what is it that has to exist? 2nd Law of Thermodynamics?
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 7. Abstract/Concrete / a. Abstract/concrete
Possible objects are abstract; actual concrete objects are possible; so abstract/concrete are compatible [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: If it is in the nature of a possible object to be abstract, this is presumably a property it has in any possible circumstance in which it is actual. If it is actual it is also concrete. So the property of being abstract and concrete are not incompatible.
     From: Kit Fine (Intro to 'Modality and Tense' [2005], p.14)
     A reaction: A rather startling and powerful idea. What of the definition of an abstract object as one which is not in space-time, and lacks causal powers? Could it be that abstraction is a projection of our minds, onto concepts or objects?
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 3. Reality
A non-standard realism, with no privileged standpoint, might challenge its absoluteness or coherence [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: By challenging the assumption that reality is 'absolute' (not relative to a standpoint), or that reality is 'coherent' (it is of a piece, from one standpoint), one accepts worldly facts without a privilege standpoint. I call this 'non-standard' realism.
     From: Kit Fine (Intro to 'Modality and Tense' [2005], p.15)
     A reaction: Fine's essay 'Tense and Reality' explores his proposal. I'm not drawn to either of his challenges. I have always taken as articles of faith that there could be a God's Eye view of all of reality, and that everything coheres, independent of our view.
7. Existence / E. Categories / 4. Category Realism
For Hegel, categories shift their form in the course of history [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: For Hegel, the categories of thought are not fixed, eternal forms that remain unchanged throughout history, but are concepts that alter their meaning in history.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 01
     A reaction: This results from a critique of Kant's rather rigid view of categories. This idea is very influential, and certainly counts among Hegel's better ideas.
Our concepts and categories disclose the world, because we are part of the world [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: For Hegel, the structure of our concepts and categories is identical with, and thus discloses, the structure of the world itself, because we ourselves are born into and so share the character of the world we encounter.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 01
     A reaction: This is a reasonable speculation, but it makes more sense in the context of natural selection, and an empiricist theory of concepts.
7. Existence / E. Categories / 5. Category Anti-Realism
Hegel said Kant's fixed categories actually vary with culture and era [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: Hegel's disagreement with Kant is that categories are not unambiguously universal forms of human understanding, but are conceived in subtly different ways in different cultures and in different historical epochs.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Stephen Houlgate - Hegel p.95
     A reaction: This may be Hegel's most influential idea. Though he hoped that categories would contain truth, by arising untrammelled from reason, and thereby matching reality. His successors seem to have given up on that hope, and settled for relativism.