11 ideas
| 7914 | To try to be wise all on one's own is folly [Rochefoucauld] |
| Full Idea: To try to be wise all on one's own is sheer folly. | |
| From: La Rochefoucauld (Maxims [1663], 231) | |
| A reaction: I agree strongly with this. There are counter-examples, of whom Spinoza may be the greatest, and Nietzsche thought that philosophy was essentially a solitary business, but most of us are not Spinoza or Nietzsche. |
| 3914 | Language arranges sensory experience to form a world-order [Whorf] |
| Full Idea: Language first of all is a classification and arrangement of the stream of sensory experience which results in a certain world-order. | |
| From: Benjamin Lee Whorf (Punctual and segmentive Hopi verbs [1936], p.55) | |
| A reaction: This is only true to a limited degree. See Davidson's 'On the very idea of a conceptual scheme'. All humans share a world-order, to some extent. |
| 7118 | La Rochefoucauld's idea of disguised self-love implies an unconscious mind [Rochefoucauld, by Sartre] |
| Full Idea: La Rochefoucauld is one of the first to have made use of the unconscious without naming it: for him, amour-propre conceals itself in the most diverse disguises. | |
| From: report of La Rochefoucauld (Maxims [1663]) by Jean-Paul Sartre - Transcendence of the Ego I (C) | |
| A reaction: It seems odd that no one before that ever thought that someone might have hidden motives of which even they themselves were unaware. How about Iago, or Macbeth, or Hamlet? It is a profound change in our view of human nature. |
| 7912 | Judging by effects, love looks more like hatred than friendship [Rochefoucauld] |
| Full Idea: If love be judged by its most visible effects it looks more like hatred than friendship. | |
| From: La Rochefoucauld (Maxims [1663], 072) | |
| A reaction: Presumably he is thinking of pursuit, possession and jealousy. The remark is plausible if you add the word 'sometimes' to it, but as a universal generalisation it is ridiculous, the product of a society where they competed to exceed in cynicism. |
| 7915 | Supreme cleverness is knowledge of the real value of things [Rochefoucauld] |
| Full Idea: Supreme cleverness is knowledge of the real value of things. | |
| From: La Rochefoucauld (Maxims [1663], 244) | |
| A reaction: Good. Right at the heart of wisdom is some kind of grasp of right values. It is so complex and subtle that it seems like pure intuition, but I am sure that reason is involved. 'Intelligent' people tend to be better at it. Some justifications can be given. |
| 7917 | Realising our future misery is a kind of happiness [Rochefoucauld] |
| Full Idea: To realise how much misery we have to face is in itself a kind of happiness. | |
| From: La Rochefoucauld (Maxims [1663], 570) | |
| A reaction: Probably true. Knowing that you have got hold of the truth is a sort of happiness in any area, no matter how grim the truth. However, a happy life could easily be poisoned by brooding on the future. Should the happily married brood on future solitude? |
| 7913 | Virtue doesn't go far without the support of vanity [Rochefoucauld] |
| Full Idea: Virtue would not go far without vanity to bear it company. | |
| From: La Rochefoucauld (Maxims [1663], 200) | |
| A reaction: Rochefoucauld's cynicism gets a bit tedious, but lovers of virtue must face up to this possibility when they consider what motivates them. At the heart of Aristotle there is a missing question, of what is so good about right-functioning and virtue. |
| 7916 | True friendship is even rarer than true love [Rochefoucauld] |
| Full Idea: Rare though true love may be, true friendship is rarer still. | |
| From: La Rochefoucauld (Maxims [1663], 473) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be true. Our culture doesn't encourage friendship as a high ideal. Are women better at friendship than men? Which culture, past or present, led to the greatest flourishing of friendship? Epicurus's Garden? |
| 9299 | We are bored by people to whom we ourselves are boring [Rochefoucauld] |
| Full Idea: Almost always we are bored by people to whom we ourselves are boring. | |
| From: La Rochefoucauld (Maxims [1663], 555) | |
| A reaction: An obvious exception would be a celebrity being bored with their fans. Their very excess of interest is precisely what is boring. If two people communicate well, it is unlikely that either of them will ever be bored. |
| 1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
| 5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |