4 ideas
| 19395 | Philosophy is sanctified, because it flows from God [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is sanctified by having its streams flow from the fountain of God's attributes. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (A General Principle to Explain Laws of Nature [1687], p.69) |
| 14380 | The distinction between necessary and essential properties can be ignored [Rocca] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers distinguish between necessary properties and essential properties. This distinction is irrelevant to my purposes. Following Yablo, I shall ignore this distinction in what follows. | |
| From: Michael della Rocca (Essentialists and Essentialism [1996], I n1) | |
| A reaction: This is two years after Kit Fine's seminal paper suggesting the distinction is real. The first step towards a good metaphysics is to realise that Della Rocca and Yablo have made a horrible mistake. |
| 19394 | Inequality can be brought infinitely close to equality [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Equality may be considered as an infinitely small inequality, and we may make inequality approach equality as much as we wish. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (A General Principle to Explain Laws of Nature [1687], p.67) | |
| A reaction: An interesting response to David Lewis's brusque dismissal of the problem of identity, as all-or-nothing...end of story. |
| 18545 | The disinterested attitude of the judge is the hallmark of a judgement of beauty [Shaftesbury, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Shaftesbury explained the peculiar features of the judgement of beauty in terms of the disinterested attitude of the judge. | |
| From: report of 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (Characteristics [1711]) by Roger Scruton - Beauty: a very short introduction 1 | |
| A reaction: Good. I take our vocabulary to mark a distinction between expressions of subjective preference, and expressions of what aspire to be objective facts. 'I love this' versus 'this is good or beautiful'. |