display all the ideas for this combination of texts
4 ideas
| 15851 | Parts must belong to a created thing with a distinct form [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The part would not be the part of many things or all, but of some one character ['ideas'] and of some one thing, which we call a 'whole', since it has come to be one complete [perfected] thing composed [created] of all. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 157d) | |
| A reaction: A serious shot by Plato at what identity is. Harte quotes it (125) and shows that 'character' is Gk 'idea', and 'composed' will translate as 'created'. 'Form' links this Platonic passage to Aristotle's hylomorphism. |
| 5550 | A substance could exist as a subject, but not as a mere predicate [Kant] |
| Full Idea: A substance is something that could exist as a subject but never as a mere predicate. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B149) | |
| A reaction: Interesting to see Kant asserting the idea of substance a century after many philosophers thought they had dispensed with this Aristotelian notion (e.g. Ideas 3628 and Idea 2714). It has crept back into modern metaphysics too (e.g. in Wiggins). |
| 21451 | All appearances need substance, as that which persists through change [Kant] |
| Full Idea: All appearances contain that which persists (substance) as the object itself, and that which can change as its mere determination (i.e. the way in which the object exists). ...[2nd ed] In all change of appearances substance persists. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B224/A182) | |
| A reaction: This is a full-blooded commitment by Kant to the traditional Aristotelian concept of a substance which endures through the change in its accidental features. Though in Kant's case the commitment is 'transcendental', not realist. |
| 5564 | Substance must exist, as the persisting substratum of the process of change [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Since all effect consists in that which happens, consequently in the changeable, which indicates succession in time, the ultimate subject of the changeable is therefore that which persists, as the substratum of everything that changes, i.e. the substance. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B250/A205) | |
| A reaction: The idea that 'something' changes seems to involve a commitment to substances, but not if one thing is replaced by another. It is not clear that the abandonment of the concept of substance leads to a total collapse of our metaphysics. |