22 ideas
| 5988 | Anaximander produced the first philosophy book (and maybe the first book) [Anaximander, by Bodnár] |
| Full Idea: Anaximander was the first to produce a philosophical book (later conventionally titled 'On Nature'), if not the first to produce a book at all. | |
| From: report of Anaximander (fragments/reports [c.570 BCE]) by István Bodnár - Anaximander | |
| A reaction: Wow! Presumably there were Egyptian 'books', but this still sounds like a stupendous claim to fame. |
| 1496 | The earth is stationary, because it is in the centre, and has no more reason to move one way than another [Anaximander, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Something which is established in the centre and has equality in relation to the extremes has no more reason to move up than it has down or to the sides (so the earth is stationary) | |
| From: report of Anaximander (fragments/reports [c.570 BCE], A26) by Aristotle - On the Heavens 295b11 |
| 14874 | Anaximander saw the contradiction in the world - that its own qualities destroy it [Anaximander, by Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Anaximander discovers the contradictory character of our world: it perishes from its own qualities. | |
| From: report of Anaximander (fragments/reports [c.570 BCE]) by Friedrich Nietzsche - Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 19 [239] | |
| A reaction: A lovely gloss on Anaximander, though I am not sure that I understand what Nietzsche means. |
| 19419 | Not all of perception is accompanied by consciousness [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: I do not think that the Cartesians have ever proved or can prove that every perception is accompanied by consciousness. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Principle of Life and Plastic Natures [1705], p.195) | |
| A reaction: This idea is very important in Leibniz, because non-conscious or barely conscious thoughts and perceptions explain a huge amount about behaviour, reality and morality. |
| 19421 | Souls act as if there were no bodies, and bodies act as if there were no souls [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Everything takes place in souls as if there were no body, and everything takes place in bodies as if there were no souls. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Principle of Life and Plastic Natures [1705], p.198) | |
| A reaction: I don't think I have ever encountered a modern thinker who accepts this view. Leibniz rejected Occasionalism, but his account depends entirely on the role of God, to set up the pre-established harmony. Why would God do that? |
| 8122 | True works of art transmit completely new feelings [Tolstoy] |
| Full Idea: Only that is a true work of art which transmits fresh feelings not previously experienced by man. | |
| From: Leo Tolstoy (What is Art? [1898], Ch.9) | |
| A reaction: I think a great composer will probably not have any new feelings at all, but will discover new expressions which contain feelings by which even they are surprised (e.g. the Tristan chord). |
| 8121 | Art is when one man uses external signs to hand on his feelings to another man [Tolstoy] |
| Full Idea: Art is a human activity in which one man consciously by means of external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and other are infected by those feelings, and also experience them. | |
| From: Leo Tolstoy (What is Art? [1898], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Such definitions always work better for some art forms than for others. This may fit 'Anna Karenin' quite well, but probably not Bach's 'Art of Fugue'. Writing obscenities on someone's front door would fit this definition. |
| 8124 | The highest feelings of mankind can only be transmitted by art [Tolstoy] |
| Full Idea: The highest feelings to which mankind has attained can only be transmitted from man to man by art. | |
| From: Leo Tolstoy (What is Art? [1898], Ch.17) | |
| A reaction: We are much more nervous these days of talking about 'highest' feelings. Tolstoy obviously considers religion to be an ingredient of the highest feelings, but that prevents us from judging them purely as feelings. Music is the place to rank feelings. |
| 8123 | The purpose of art is to help mankind to evolve better, more socially beneficial feelings [Tolstoy] |
| Full Idea: The evolution of feeling proceeds by means of art - feelings less kind and less necessary for the well-being of mankind being replaced by others kinder and more needful for that end. That is the purpose of art. | |
| From: Leo Tolstoy (What is Art? [1898], Ch.16) | |
| A reaction: Underneath his superficially expressivist view of art, Tolstoy is really an old-fashioned moralist about it, like Dr Johnson. This is the moralism of the great age of the nineteenth century novel (which was, er, the greatest age of the novel!). |
| 22710 | People estimate art according to their moral values [Tolstoy] |
| Full Idea: The estimation of the value of art …depends on men's perception of the meaning of life; depends on what they hold to be the good and evil of life. | |
| From: Leo Tolstoy (What is Art? [1898]), quoted by Iris Murdoch - The Sublime and the Good p.206 | |
| A reaction: [No ref given] This is put to the test by the insightful depiction of wickedness. We condemn the wickedness and admire the insight. Every reading of a novel is a moral journey, though I'm not sure how the true psychopath reads a novel. |
| 8125 | The upper classes put beauty first, and thus freed themselves from morality [Tolstoy] |
| Full Idea: The people of the upper class, more and more frequently encountering the contradictions between beauty and goodness, put the ideal of beauty first, thus freeing themselves from the demands of morality. | |
| From: Leo Tolstoy (What is Art? [1898], Ch.17) | |
| A reaction: The rich are a great deal freer to pursue the demands of beauty than are the poor. They also have a tradition of 'immorality' (such as duels and adultery) which was in place long before they discovered art. |
| 8064 | We separate the concept of beauty from goodness, unlike the ancients [Tolstoy] |
| Full Idea: The ancients had not that conception of beauty separated from goodness which forms the basis and aim of aesthetics in our time. | |
| From: Leo Tolstoy (What is Art? [1898], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: This is written at around the time of the Aesthetic Movement, but Tolstoy's own novels are intensely moral. This separation makes abstract painting possible. |
| 19420 | Death and generation are just transformations of an animal, augmented or diminished [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Death, like generation, is only the transformation of the same animal, which is sometimes augmented and sometimes diminished. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Principle of Life and Plastic Natures [1705], p.195) | |
| A reaction: Leibniz has a very unusual view of death, since neither minds nor their bodies can ever be wholly destroyed. Death is a kind of shrinking. I suspect that he was wrong about that. |
| 405 | The essential nature, whatever it is, of the non-limited is everlasting and ageless [Anaximander] |
| Full Idea: The essential nature, whatever it is, of the non-limited is everlasting and ageless. | |
| From: Anaximander (fragments/reports [c.570 BCE], B2), quoted by (who?) - where? |
| 13222 | The Boundless cannot exist on its own, and must have something contrary to it [Aristotle on Anaximander] |
| Full Idea: Those thinkers are in error who postulate ...a single matter, for this cannot exist without some 'perceptible contrariety': this Boundless, which they identify with the 'original real', must be either light or heavy, either hot or cold. | |
| From: comment on Anaximander (fragments/reports [c.570 BCE]) by Aristotle - Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) 329a10 | |
| A reaction: A dubious objection, I would say. If there has to be a contrasting cold thing to any hot thing, what happens when the cold thing is removed? |
| 404 | Things begin and end in the Unlimited, and are balanced over time according to justice [Anaximander] |
| Full Idea: The non-limited is the original material of existing things; their source is also that to which they return after destruction, according to necessity; they give justice and make reparation to each other for injustice, according to the arrangement of Time. | |
| From: Anaximander (fragments/reports [c.570 BCE], B1), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 24.13- | |
| A reaction: Simplicius is quoting Theophrastus |
| 1495 | Anaximander introduced the idea that the first principle and element of things was the Boundless [Anaximander, by Simplicius] |
| Full Idea: Anaximander said that the first principle and element of existing things was the boundless; it was he who originally introduced this name for the first principle. | |
| From: report of Anaximander (fragments/reports [c.570 BCE], A09) by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.24.14- | |
| A reaction: Simplicius is quoting Theophrastus |
| 19416 | Not all of matter is animated, any more than a pond full of living fish is animated [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: It must not be said that each portion of matter is animated, just as we do not say that a pond full of fishes is an animated body, although a fish is. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Principle of Life and Plastic Natures [1705], p.190) | |
| A reaction: This is a particularly clear picture of the role of monads in matter. Monads are attached to bodies, which are entirely inanimate, but monads suffuse matter and give it its properties, like particularly bubbly champagne. Cf Idea 19422. |
| 19422 | Every particle of matter contains organic bodies [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: There is no particle of matter which does not contain organic bodies. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Principle of Life and Plastic Natures [1705], p.198) | |
| A reaction: Cf Idea 19416. There seems to be an interaction problem here (solved, presumably, by pre-established harmony). The organic bodies are there to explain the active behaviour of matter, but the related matter seems intrinsically inert. |
| 1746 | The parts of all things are susceptible to change, but the whole is unchangeable [Anaximander, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: The parts of all things are susceptible to change, but the whole is unchangeable. | |
| From: report of Anaximander (fragments/reports [c.570 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.An.2 |
| 19418 | Mechanics shows that all motion originates in other motion, so there is a Prime Mover [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The maxim that there is no motion which has not its origin in another motion, according to the laws of mechanics, leads us again to the Prime Mover. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Principle of Life and Plastic Natures [1705], p.194) | |
| A reaction: This is Leibniz's endorsement (uncredited) to Aquinas's First Way. It is hard to see how the laws of mechanics could have anything to say about the origin of movement. And doesn't the law say that the motions of God need a mover? |
| 19417 | All substances are in harmony, even though separate, so they must have one divine cause [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: My system of Pre-established Harmony furnishes a new proof of God's existence, since it is manifest that the agreement of so many substances, of which the one has no influence upon the other, could only come from a general cause on which they all depend. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Principle of Life and Plastic Natures [1705], p.192) | |
| A reaction: Adjacent harmony seems self-explanatory, but remote harmony is interesting evidence for God. Hence modern quantum non-locality should make us all wonder whether there is a deeper explanation. |