9 ideas
| 19441 | All philosophies presuppose their historical moment, and arise from it [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Every philosophy originates as a manifestation of its time; its origin presupposes its historical time. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy [1839], p.59) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be widespread agreement among continental philosophers about this idea, whereas analytic philosophers largely ignore, and treat Plato as if he were a current professor in Chicago. |
| 19442 | I don't study Plato for his own sake; the primary aim is always understanding [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Plato in writing is only a means for me; that which is primary and a priori, that which is the ground to which all is ultimately referred, is understanding. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy [1839], p.63) | |
| A reaction: It always seems to that the main aim of philosophy is understanding - which is why its central activity is explanation. |
| 19444 | Each proposition has an antithesis, and truth exists as its refutation [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Every intellectual determination has its antithesis, its contradiction. Truth exists not in unity with, but in refutation of its opposite. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy [1839], p.72) | |
| A reaction: This appears to be a rejection of the 'synthesis' in Hegel, in favour of what strikes me as a rather more sensible interpretation of the modern dialectic. Being exists in contrast to nothingness, and truth exists in contrast to its negation? |
| 19445 | A dialectician has to be his own opponent [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: A thinker is a dialectician only insofar as he is his own opponent. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy [1839], p.72) | |
| A reaction: Quite an inspirational slogan for beginners in philosophy. How many non-philosophers are willing to be their own opponent. In law courts and the House of Commons we assign the roles to separate persons. Hence rhetoric replaces reason? |
| 19443 | Truth forges an impersonal unity between people [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: The urge to communicate is a fundamental urge - the urge for truth. ...That which is true belongs neither to me nor exclusively to you, but is common to all. The thought in which 'I' and 'You' are united is a true thought. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy [1839], p.65) | |
| A reaction: Sceptics may doubt that there are such truths, but this is certainly how we experience agreement - that there is some truth shared between us which is no longer the possession of either of us. Nice idea. |
| 19446 | To our consciousness it is language which looks unreal [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: To sensuous consciousness it is precisely language that is unreal, nothing. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy [1839], p.77) | |
| A reaction: Offered as a corrective to the view that our ontological commitments entirely concern what we are willing to say. |
| 19440 | How do you know you have conceived a thing deeply enough to assess its possibility? [Vaidya] |
| Full Idea: The main issue with learning possibility from conceivability concerns how we can be confident that we have conceived things to the relevant level of depth required for the scenario to actually be a presentation or manifestation of a genuine possibility. | |
| From: Anand Vaidya (The Epistemology of Modality [2015], 1.2.2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Van Inwagen 1998 for this idea] The point is that ignorant imagination can conceive of all sorts of absurd things which are seen to be impossible when enough information is available. We can hardly demand a criterion for this. |
| 19447 | The Absolute is the 'and' which unites 'spirit and nature' [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: The Absolute is spirit and nature. ...But what then is the Absolute? Nothing other than this 'and', that is, the unity of spirit and nature. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy [1839], p.82) | |
| A reaction: This is Feuerbach's spin on Hegel. He has been outlining idealist philosophy and the philosophy of nature in Schelling. Is this Spinoza's one substance? |
| 22100 | Experienced time means no two mental moments are ever alike [Bergson] |
| Full Idea: If duration [experienced time] is what we say, deep-seated psychic states are radically heterogeneous to each other, and it is impossible that any two of them should be quite alike, since they are two different moments in a life-story. | |
| From: Henri Bergson (Time and Free Will [1889], p.220), quoted by Pete A.Y. Gunter - Bergson p.174 | |
| A reaction: This implies that we are intrinsically unpredictable, and there certainly can't be a regularity account of mental causation. The sense of time is said to make the self radically different from the rest of reality. Bergson later rejected dualism. |