Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'works (fragments)', 'Letters to Pierre Bayle' and 'The Beautiful in Music'

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8 ideas

2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 9. Limits of Reason

1813	All reasoning endlessly leads to further reasoning (Mode 12) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius]
	Full Idea: Twelfth mode: all reasoning leads on to further reasoning, and this process goes on forever.
	From: report of Agrippa (fragments/reports [c.60]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.10

1811	Proofs often presuppose the thing to be proved (Mode 15) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius]
	Full Idea: Fifteenth mode: proofs often presuppose the thing to be proved.
	From: report of Agrippa (fragments/reports [c.60]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.10

1815	Reasoning needs arbitrary faith in preliminary hypotheses (Mode 14) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius]
	Full Idea: Fourteenth mode: reasoning requires arbitrary faith in preliminary hypotheses.
	From: report of Agrippa (fragments/reports [c.60]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.10

1812	All discussion is full of uncertainty and contradiction (Mode 11) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius]
	Full Idea: Eleventh mode: all topics of discussion are full of uncertainty and contradiction.
	From: report of Agrippa (fragments/reports [c.60]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.10

13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 2. Justification Challenges / a. Agrippa's trilemma

8850	Agrippa's Trilemma: justification is infinite, or ends arbitrarily, or is circular [Agrippa, by Williams,M]
	Full Idea: Agrippa's Trilemma offers three possible outcomes for a regress of justification: the chain goes on for ever (infinite); or the chain stops at an unjustified proposition (arbitrary); or the chain eventually includes the original proposition (circular).
	From: report of Agrippa (fragments/reports [c.60], §2) by Michael Williams - Without Immediate Justification §2
	A reaction: This summarises Ideas 1911, 1913 and 1914. Agrippa's Trilemma is now a standard starting point for modern discussions of foundations. Personally I reject 2, and am torn between 1 (+ social consensus) and 3 (with a benign, coherent circle).

13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 1. Relativism

1814	Everything is perceived in relation to another thing (Mode 13) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius]
	Full Idea: Thirteenth mode: everything is always perceived in relation to something else.
	From: report of Agrippa (fragments/reports [c.60]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.10

16. Persons / F. Free Will / 5. Against Free Will

19413	If we know what is good or rational, our knowledge is extended, and our free will restricted [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: The more perfect one is, the more one is determined to the good, and so is more free at the same time. ...Our power and knowledge are more extended, and our will much the more limited within the bounds of perfect reason.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Pierre Bayle [1702], 1702)
	A reaction: I like this idea, which seems to me to derive from Aquinas. When I choose to eat and drink each day, or agree that 7+5 is 12, I don't complain about my lack of freedom in the choices. Goodness and reason are constraints I welcome.

21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 4. Emotion in Art

20344	Music is not an expressive art, because it expresses no familiar emotions [Hanslick, by Wollheim]
	Full Idea: Hanslick concluded from the fact that music doesn't express definite feelings like piety, love, joy, or sadness, that it isn't an art of expression.
	From: report of Eduard Hanslick (The Beautiful in Music [1854]) by Richard Wollheim - Art and Its Objects 48
	A reaction: Whether music is 'expressive' (which it may not be) should not be confused with whether it is emotional, which it clearly is, even in its coolest examples. Hanslick viewed music as a code, not a language.