9 ideas
| 5637 | Nowadays logic is seen as the science of extensions, not intensions [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Logicians have come increasingly to realise that logic is the science not of the intension, but of the extension of terms. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Short History of Modern Philosophy [1981], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be because the notion of a 'set' is basic, which is defined strictly in terms of its members. This move is probably because we can be clear about extensions, but not intensions. Tidiness is no substitute for complex truth. |
| 22049 | Transcendental idealism aims to explain objectivity through subjectivity [Bowie] |
| Full Idea: The aim of transcendental idealism is to give a basis for objectivity in terms of subjectivity. | |
| From: Andrew Bowie (German Philosophy: a very short introduction [2010], 1) | |
| A reaction: Hume used subjectivity to undermine the findings of objectivity. There was then no return to naive objectivity. Kant's aim then was to thwart global scepticism. Post-Kantians feared that he had failed. |
| 22055 | The Idealists saw the same unexplained spontaneity in Kant's judgements and choices [Bowie] |
| Full Idea: The Idealist saw in Kant that knowledge, which depends on the spontaneity of judgement, and self-determined spontaneous action, can be seen as sharing the same source, which is not accessible to scientific investigation. | |
| From: Andrew Bowie (German Philosophy: a very short introduction [2010]) | |
| A reaction: This is the 'spontaneity' of judgements and choices which was seen as the main idea in Kant. It inspired romantic individualism. The judgements are the rule-based application of concepts. |
| 22054 | German Idealism tried to stop oppositions of appearances/things and receptivity/spontaneity [Bowie] |
| Full Idea: A central aim of German Idealism is to overcome Kant's oppositions between appearances and thing in themselves, and between receptivity and spontaneity. | |
| From: Andrew Bowie (German Philosophy: a very short introduction [2010], 2) | |
| A reaction: I have the impression that there were two strategies: break down the opposition within the self (Fichte), or break down the opposition in the world (Spinozism). |
| 22056 | Crucial to Idealism is the idea of continuity between receptivity and spontaneous judgement [Bowie] |
| Full Idea: A crucial idea for German Idealism (from Hamann) is that apparently passive receptivity and active spontaneity are in fact different degrees of the same 'activity, and the gap between subject and world can be closed. | |
| From: Andrew Bowie (German Philosophy: a very short introduction [2010], 3) | |
| A reaction: The 'passive' bit seems to be Hume's 'impressions', which are Kant's 'intuitions', which need 'spontaneous' interpretation to become experiences. Critics of Kant said this implied a dualism. |
| 5636 | Cartesian 'ideas' confuse concepts and propositions [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Cartesian 'ideas' seem to be both concepts and propositions at once. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Short History of Modern Philosophy [1981], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the simple reason why modern philosophers don't like this seventeenth century notion. There is something slightly too tidy about the modern notion of propositions built out of concepts. Animals see propositions in a flash. |
| 5660 | Allegiance is prior to the recognition of individual rights [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Personally I regard allegiance, in the manner of Hegel, as prior to the recognition of individual rights. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Short History of Modern Philosophy [1981], Bibliog) | |
| A reaction: Scruton notoriously generates rather right-wing views from this basis, but it is also the basis of communitarianism, which can take a softer form. It seems to me self-evident that rights cannot be the prime concept in a society. What society? |
| 5653 | A right is a power which is enforced in the name of justice [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Rights are enforced in the name of justice, whereas power is enforced come what may. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Short History of Modern Philosophy [1981], Ch.14) | |
| A reaction: Presumably rights can be claimed as well as enforced, and the notion of a natural right is at least a discussable concept, as in the 'right' of self-defence. Scruton offers us a very right-wing definition of rights. |
| 4677 | If suicide is wrong because only God disposes of our lives, it must also be wrong to save lives [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Were the disposal of human life so much the peculiar province of the Almighty that it were an encroachment on His right, for men to dispose of their own lives; it would be equally criminal to act for the preservation of life as for its destruction. | |
| From: David Hume (On suicide [1775]), quoted by Jonathan Glover - Causing Death and Saving Lives §13 | |
| A reaction: A characteristically wicked and neat point. Maybe we can intervene in the environment (diverting a falling stone), but not directly in a life? Life is sacred, but stones are not? |