display all the ideas for this combination of texts
10 ideas
| 13787 | Doesn't each thing have an essence, just as it has other qualities? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Don't you think that just as each thing has a colour or some of those other qualities we mentioned, it also has a being or essence? | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 423e) | |
| A reaction: The Greek here seems to be 'ousia', which I increasingly think should be translated as 'distinct identity', rather than as 'existence' or as 'essence'. Maybe the philosophical term 'haecceity' captures it best. |
| 19349 | The complete notion of a substance implies all of its predicates or attributes [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The nature of an individual substance or of a complete being is to have a notion so complete that it is sufficient to contain and to allow us to deduce from it all the predicates of the subject to which this notion is attributed. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], §8) | |
| A reaction: This is the unusual Leibnizian view of such things, which he takes to extremes. I think it depends on whether you are talking of predicates, or of real intrinsic properties. I don't see how what happens to a substance can be contained in the subject. |
| 7558 | Substances mirror God or the universe, each from its own viewpoint [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Each substance is like a whole world, and like a mirror of God, or indeed of the whole universe, which each one expresses in its own fashion. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686]), quoted by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Intro | |
| A reaction: Leibniz isn't a pantheist, so he does not identify God with the universe, so it is a bit revealing that substance could reflect either one or the other, and he doesn't seem to care which. In the end, for all the sophistication, he just made it up. |
| 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. |
| 16761 | Forms are of no value in physics, but are indispensable in metaphysics [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The consideration of forms serves no purpose in the details of physics and must not be used to explain particular phenomena. …but their misuse must not lead us to reject something which is so useful to metaphysics. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], 10), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 24.5 | |
| A reaction: This is a key test for the question of whether metaphysics is separate from science (as Leibniz and Pasnau think), or whether there is a continuum. Is 'substantial form' an illuminating way to undestand modern physics? |
| 13088 | Subjects include predicates, so full understanding of subjects reveals all the predicates [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The subject-term must always include the predicate-term, in such a way that the man who understood the notion of the subject perfectly would also judge that the predicate belongs to it. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], §8) | |
| A reaction: Sounds as if every sentence is analytic, but he doesn't mean that. He does, oddly, mean that if we fully understand the name 'Alexander', we understand his complete history, which is a bit silly, I'm afraid. Even God doesn't learn things just from names. |
| 13774 | Things don't have every attribute, and essence isn't private, so each thing has an essence [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If Euthydemus is wrong that everything always has every attribute simultaneously, or that being or essence is private for each person, then it is clear that things have some fixed being or essence of their own. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 386d) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure what 'being or essence' translates. If it translates 'ousia' then I wouldn't make too much of this remark from an essentialist point of view. |
| 13772 | Is the being or essence of each thing private to each person? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Is the being or essence of each of the things that are something private to each person, as Protagoras tells us? | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 385e) | |
| A reaction: This kind of drastic personal relativism about essences doesn't sound very plausible, but the idea that essences are private to each culture, or to each language, must certainly be taken seriously. |
| 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? |
| 13788 | If we made a perfect duplicate of Cratylus, there would be two Cratyluses [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Soc: Suppose we made a duplicate of everything you have and put it beside you; would there then be two Cratyluses, or Cratylus and an image of Cratylus? Crat: It seems to me, Socrates, that there would be two Cratyluses. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 432c) | |
| A reaction: Don't think that science fiction examples are a modern development in philosophy. Plato has just invented the Startrek transporter. The two Cratyluses are the two spheres in Max Black's famous example. |