display all the ideas for this combination of texts
5 ideas
7189 | Maybe there are only subjects, and 'objects' result from relations between subjects [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The subject alone is demonstrable: hypothesis - that there are only subjects - that 'object' is only a kind of effect of subject upon subject...a mode of the subject. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 09[106]) | |
A reaction: This is an ultimate implication of 'perspectivism'. Elsewhere, though, (Idea 7183) he challenges the ontological status of 'subjects', suggesting that even they are purely fictional. Nietzsche wanted to relativism everything, but kept clutching lifebelts. |
16058 | Dion and Theon coexist, but Theon lacks a foot. If Dion loses a foot, he ousts Theon? [Chrysippus, by Philo of Alexandria] |
Full Idea: If two individuals occupied one substance …let one individual (Dion) be thought of as whole-limbed, the other (Theon) as minus one foot. Then let one of Dion's feet be amputated. Theon is the stronger candidate to have perished. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Philo (Alex) - On the Eternity of the World 48 | |
A reaction: [SVF 2.397 - from Chrysippus's lost 'On the Growing Argument'] This is the original of Tibbles the Cat. Dion must persist to change, and then ousts Theon (it seems). Philo protests at Theon ceasing to exist when nothing has happened to him. |
12697 | Indivisibles are not parts, but the extrema of parts [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: Indivisibles are not parts, but the extrema of parts. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Pacidius Philalethi dialogue [1676], A6.3.565-6), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 1 | |
A reaction: This is incipient monadology, that the bottom level of division ceases to be parts of a thing, and arrives at a different order of entity, to explain the parts of things. Leibniz denies that this subdivision comes down to points. |
7161 | The essence of a thing is only an opinion about the 'thing' [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The essence of a thing is only an opinion about the 'thing'. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[150]) | |
A reaction: Nietzsche seems sympathetic to essentialism about natural laws (based on 'power'), but this is the classic rejection of Aristotelian essences, because they are unknowable or unprovable. Personally I think scientists are revealing essences. |
16059 | Change of matter doesn't destroy identity - in Dion and Theon change is a condition of identity [Chrysippus, by Long/Sedley] |
Full Idea: The Growing Argument said any change of matter is a change of identity. Chrysippus presents it with a case (Dion and Theon) where material diminution is the necessary condition of enduring identity, since the diminished footless Dion survives. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by AA Long / DN Sedley - Hellenic Philosophers commentary 28:175 | |
A reaction: [The example, in Idea 16058, is the original of Tibbles the Cat] This is a lovely bold idea which I haven't met in the modern discussions - that identity actually requires change. The concept of identity is meaningless without change? |