19 ideas
| 21959 | Metaphysics is the most general attempt to make sense of things [Moore,AW] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysics is the most general attempt to make sense of things. | |
| From: A.W. Moore (The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics [2012], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is the first sentence of Moore's book, and a touchstone idea all the way through. It stands up well, because it says enough without committing to too much. I have to agree with it. It implies explanation as the key. I like generality too. |
| 20744 | Phenomenologists say all experience is about something and is directed [Aho] |
| Full Idea: Phenomenologists agree that all experience has an intentional structure, that is, my experience is always about or of something; it is always directed towards an object. | |
| From: Kevin Aho (Existentialism: an introduction [2014], 2 'Phenomenology') | |
| A reaction: I am just beginning to grasp that the analytic debates about perception are a re-enactment of the Kantian debates about the thing-in-itself. This is the sort of idea you find in McDowell. Presumably the idea denies the Given, and raw sense-data. |
| 21793 | Genuine truth is the resolution of the highest contradiction [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The highest truth, truth as such, is the resolution of the highest opposition and contradiction. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826], I: 99), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 09 'Art' | |
| A reaction: Uneasy about the word 'highest', and the general Hegelian dream of 'resolving' contradictions, rather than just eliminating at least one component of them. No one else uses the word 'truth' like this. I suppose this Truth has a capital 'T'. |
| 21795 | What I hold true must also be part of my feelings and character [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Whatever I hold as true, whatever ought to be valid for me, must also be in my feeling, must belong to my being and character. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826], I: 97), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 09 'Philosophy' | |
| A reaction: I can see that truths do tend to become part of our character, but not that they ought to do so. I suppose I try to live my life enmeshed in the many truths which I have personally selected from the maelstrom of possibilities that engulf us. |
| 21958 | Appearances are nothing beyond representations, which is transcendental ideality [Moore,AW] |
| Full Idea: Appearances in general are nothing outside our representations, which is just what we mean by transcendental ideality. | |
| From: A.W. Moore (The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics [2012], B535/A507) |
| 20736 | Science has to abstract out the subjective attributes of things, focusing on what is objective [Aho] |
| Full Idea: Crucial to the scientific method is the ability to abstract out the subjective qualities that we give to things - such as beauty, meaning, purpose, and value - and focus only on the objective qualities of things, which can be measured and quantified. | |
| From: Kevin Aho (Existentialism: an introduction [2014], 1 'Emergence') | |
| A reaction: This seems to me exactly right. People who deny the primary/secondary distinction, like Hume, are usually correspondingly pessimistic about science. And Hume was wrong about that. |
| 18549 | Nineteenth century aesthetics focused on art rather than nature (thanks to Hegel) [Hegel, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Only In the course of the nineteenth century, and in the wake of Hegel's posthumously published lectures on aesthetics, did the topic of art come to replace that of natural beauty as the core subject-matter of aesthetics. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826], 5) by Roger Scruton - Beauty: a very short introduction |
| 22043 | Hegel largely ignores aesthetic pleasure, taste and beauty, and focuses on the meaning of artworks [Hegel, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Unlike his predecessors (including Kant), Hegel does not focus on aesthetic pleasure, nor on good taste, nor even on the nature and criteria for beauty. Instead he focuses on the meaning of artworks and their role in forming mankind's self-consciousness. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 11 | |
| A reaction: Personally I dislike over-intellectualising art. The aim of a work of art is to give a certain experience, not to generate an ensuing sequence of theorising. I doubt whether Vermeer had any 'meaning' in mind in his obsessive work. |
| 22042 | Natural beauty is unimportant, because it doesn't show human freedom [Hegel, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Hegel thinks that natural beauty is of no real significance since it cannot display our freedom to us; nature per se is meaningless. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 11 | |
| A reaction: Presumably freedom is in the creation, and so creativity is what matters in aesthetics. But what are the criteria of good creativity? |
| 20413 | For Hegel the importance of art concerns the culture, not the individual [Hegel, by Eldridge] |
| Full Idea: Hegel locates the significance of art in its role in cultural life in general, not in relation to the psychological needs of individuals. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826]) by Richard Eldridge - G.W.F. Hegel (aesthetics) 1 | |
| A reaction: I'm beginning to see that art is a wonderful focus and test case for political attitudes. Roughly, liberalism focuses on individual responses, but more societal views (from right and left) see it in terms of role in the community. Which are you? |
| 20394 | The purpose of art is to reveal to Spirit its own nature [Hegel, by Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: According to Hegel, the goal of art was to serve as a phase in a process by which Spirit would come to understand its own nature. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826]) by Stephen Davies - The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) 2.7 | |
| A reaction: I try very hard to understand ideas like this. Really really hard. However, since I see little sign of 'Spirit' really understanding its own nature, I'm guessing that the project is not going well. |
| 21794 | The main purpose of art is to express the unity of human life [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Art's primary function, for Hegel, is to give expression to the unity and wholeness of life - especially human life - that the contingencies of everyday existence frequently conceal. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826]), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 09 'Beauty' | |
| A reaction: I don't find the view that human life is 'unified' and 'whole' vary illuminating, and I have no objection to art which reflects the fragmentary and unstable aspects of life. I suspect Hegel would just prefer it if life were a unity. |
| 20415 | Art forms a bridge between the sensuous world and the world of pure thought [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Spirit generates out of itself works of fine art as the first reconciling middle term between pure thought and what is merely external, sensuous and transient - between finite natural reality and the infinite freedom of conceptual thinking. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826], p.8), quoted by Richard Eldridge - G.W.F. Hegel (aesthetics) | |
| A reaction: This apparently says that there is necessarily an intellectual and conceptual component in art. This means little to me. Does he include portraits? Dutch domestic scenes? Would photography qualify? |
| 20734 | Anxiety, nausea, guilt and absurdity shake us up, revealing our freedom and limits [Aho] |
| Full Idea: Some moods, such as 'anxiety' (Heidegger), 'nausea' (Sartre), 'guilt' (Kierkegaard), and 'absurdity' (Camus) are important because they have the capacity to shake us out of complacency and self-deception, disclosing our freedom and finitude. | |
| From: Kevin Aho (Existentialism: an introduction [2014], Pref 'What?) | |
| A reaction: [bit compressed] Problem: if I fail to feel such things, and deliberately induce them in myself, am I being inauthentic? Making a huge and unnatural effort to be an existentialist seems all wrong. And who wants the permanent grip of such feelings? |
| 20733 | Our 'existence' is how we create ourselves, unconstrained by any prior 'essence' [Aho] |
| Full Idea: 'Existence precedes essence' means there is no pre-given 'essence' that determines who and what we are. We are self-making beings. | |
| From: Kevin Aho (Existentialism: an introduction [2014], Pref 'What?) | |
| A reaction: This not a yes/no dilemma. Personally I believe (with Aristotle, and Steven Pinker) that there is a fairly comprehensive 'human nature' which we all share, and is the basis of ethics. On top of that, though, a fair bit of 'self-making' can go on. |
| 20753 | The self is constituted by its choices made within a social context [Aho] |
| Full Idea: The [existential] self is constituted by the continuous, open-ended process of choosing and pulling together the social interpretations that we care about and that are made available by the situation we grow into. | |
| From: Kevin Aho (Existentialism: an introduction [2014], 4 'Self') | |
| A reaction: These kind of explanations always seem wrong. That the self is influenced and moulded strongly by the choices it makes sounds right. But that the choices 'constitute' the chooser sounds like a bit of a muddle. |
| 20738 | Social contracts and markets have made society seem disconnected and artificial [Aho] |
| Full Idea: Modern society has come to be viewed as something artificial, an aggregate of disconnected individuals that is held together by instrumental social contracts and monetary exchanges. | |
| From: Kevin Aho (Existentialism: an introduction [2014], 1 'Emergence') | |
| A reaction: This is all long of you, Thomas Hobbes! Aho is explaining the rebellion of existentialists against this - though existentialism strikes me as another variant of liberal individualism. |
| 20737 | Protestantism brought the modern emphasis on inner states of the soul [Aho] |
| Full Idea: An important development in the formation of the modern worldview was the emergence of Protestantism, that reconfigured the self by privileging the inner states of the soul. Salvation concerns inner feelings, thoughts and desires, which can be genuine. | |
| From: Kevin Aho (Existentialism: an introduction [2014], 1 'Emergence') | |
| A reaction: [bit compressed] He is preparing the historical background for the existentialist concept of authenticity. We can link this Protestant idea with Descartes's Cogito, which grounds knowledge in the inner self. |
| 20766 | Four Noble Truths: life is suffering, caused by attachment, it is avoidable, there is a path [Aho] |
| Full Idea: The teachings of the Buddha are summarised in 'four noble truths': 1) life means suffering, 2) the origin of suffering is attachment, 3) the end of suffering is attainable, and 4) the path to the end of suffering. | |
| From: Kevin Aho (Existentialism: an introduction [2014], 9 'dukkha') | |
| A reaction: 1) and 2) summarise everything I dislike about most eastern philosophy. In the modern world life does not have to be suffering. To break off attachments in order to avoid suffering is a hideous injunction. |