15 ideas
| 4424 | A warlike philosopher challenges problems to single combat [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: A warlike philosopher challenges problems to single combat. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Ecce Homo [1889], Wise §7) | |
| A reaction: And what do pacifist philosophers do? It is a moot point whether philosophy is even possible without a streak of aggression. Otherwise you circle the problem, but don't confront it. |
| 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. |
| 2886 | The distinction between egoistic and non-egoistic acts is absurd [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There are neither egoistic nor unegoistic actions: both concepts are psychologically nonsense. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Ecce Homo [1889], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: Not quite true, but I like this observation. The idea that you could divide everyone's actions into these two groups is certainly nonsense. But some people are more altruistic than others! |
| 4426 | A bad result distorts one's judgement about the virtue of what one has done [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I should prefer to exclude the bad result, the consequences, from the question of value as a matter of principle. Faced with a bad result, one loses all too easily the right perspective for what one has done. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Ecce Homo [1889], Clever §1) | |
| A reaction: If the perspective is easily lost, we should make more effort, not ignore consequences. The question is whether you could have foreseen or controlled the consequences. |
| 4425 | The overcoming of pity I count among the noble virtues [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The overcoming of pity I count among the noble virtues. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Ecce Homo [1889], Wise §4) | |
| A reaction: Hm. I can just about see that there might be more important things than compassion for suffering, but I can't see any human activity that makes it worthwhile to trample on pity. |
| 20132 | To become what you are you must have no self-awareness [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: To become what one is, one must not have the faintest notion of what one is. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Ecce Homo [1889], II.9), quoted by Brian Leiter - Nietzsche On Morality 3 'fatalism' | |
| A reaction: [Don't understand 'II.9'] Enigmatic but striking. As I understand it, Nietzsche thought that knowing what you are is virtually impossible, though he spent a lifetime studying himself. Would you recognise someone who had become what they are? |
| 20144 | Eternal recurrence is the highest attainable affirmation [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Eternal recurrence is the highest formula of affirmation that is at all attainable. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Ecce Homo [1889], Zar 1) | |
| A reaction: Did Nietzsche have in mind an even higher formulation that was unattainable? The aim of eternal recurrence is to offer the highest possible ideal that remains rooted in the nature of ordinary life. It is a cut-down version of the Form of the Good. |
| 20595 | You can't distribute goods from behind a veil, because their social meaning is unclear [Walzer, by Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: Walzer says behind the veil of ignorance there would be no way to know how a particular good should be distributed, because we would not know the social meaning of the good in question. | |
| From: report of Michael Walzer (Spheres of Justice [1983]) by Tuckness,A/Wolf,C - This is Political Philosophy 4 'Communitarian' | |
| A reaction: Is Rawls actually proposing to decide details of distribution from behind the veil? There is just the maximin principle. What that means in practice would surely come once the society was under way. |
| 20592 | Complex equality restricts equalities from spilling over, like money influencing politics and law [Walzer, by Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: Complex equality tries to keep advantages in one area (such as money) from translating into advantages in politics or before the law. | |
| From: report of Michael Walzer (Spheres of Justice [1983]) by Tuckness,A/Wolf,C - This is Political Philosophy 3 'Complex' | |
| A reaction: Put like that, Walzer's complex equality becomes very interesting, and pinpoints a major problem of our age, where discrepancies of wealth have become staggeringly large at the top end. |
| 20549 | Equality is complex, with different spheres of equality where different principles apply [Walzer, by Swift] |
| Full Idea: Michael Walzer argues for 'complex equality', saying different goods belong to different distributive 'spheres', each with its own distributive principles. | |
| From: report of Michael Walzer (Spheres of Justice [1983]) by Adam Swift - Political Philosophy (3rd ed) 3 'Egalitarian' | |
| A reaction: Sounds interesting. Equality seems to make different demands when it concerns basic food for survival, or fine wines. You can spend your money freely, but hording in a crisis is frowned on. |
| 2889 | One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Ecce Homo [1889], Fore) |
| 2887 | I am not an atheist because of reasoning or evidence, but because of instinct [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I have absolutely no knowledge of atheism as an outcome of reasoning, still less an event: with me it is obvious by instinct. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Ecce Homo [1889], 3.1) |