12 ideas
24016 | Consciousness always transcends itself [Sartre] |
Full Idea: It is of the essence of consciousness to transcend itself | |
From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions [1939], §III) | |
A reaction: As usual, I am a bit baffled by these sorts of pronouncement. Sounds like an oxymoron to me. Maybe it is a development of Schopenhauer's thought. |
24013 | An emotion and its object form a unity, so emotion is a mode of apprehension [Sartre] |
Full Idea: Emotion returns to its object every moment, and feeds upon it. …The emotional subject and the object of the emotion are united in an indissoluble synthesis. Emotion is a specific manner of apprehending the world. …[39] It is a transformation of the world. | |
From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions [1939], §III) | |
A reaction: The last sentence is the essence (or existence?) of Sartre's core theory of the emotions. They are, it seems, a mode of perception, like a colour filter added to a camera. I don't think I agree. I see them as a response to perceptions, not part of them. |
24017 | Emotion is one of our modes of understanding our Being-in-the-World [Sartre] |
Full Idea: Emotion is not an accident, it is a mode of our conscious existence, one of the ways in which consciousness understands (in Heidegger's sense of verstehen) its Being-in-the-World. …It has a meaning. | |
From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions [1939], §III) | |
A reaction: Calling emotions a 'mode' suggests that this way of understanding is intermittent, which seems wrong. Even performing arithmetical calculations is coloured by emotions, so they go deeper than a 'mode'. |
24014 | Emotions are a sort of bodily incantation which brings a magic to the world [Sartre] |
Full Idea: Joy is the magical behaviour which tries, by incantation, to realise the possession of the desired object as an instantaneous totality. [47] Emotions are all reducible to the constitution of a magic world by using our bodies as instruments of incantation. | |
From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions [1939], §III) | |
A reaction: I can't pretend to understand this, but I am reminded of the fact that the so-called primary qualities of perception are innately boring, and it is only the secondary qualities (like colour and smell) which make the world interesting. |
24015 | Emotions makes us believe in and live in a new world [Sartre] |
Full Idea: Emotion is a phenomenon of belief. Consciousness does not limit itself to the projection of affective meanings upon the world around it; it lives the new world it has thereby constituted. | |
From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions [1939], §III) | |
A reaction: There seems to be an implied anti-realism in this, since the emotions prevent us from relating more objectively to the world. The 'magic' seems to be compulsory. |
3236 | Equality of opportunity without equality of respect would create a very inhuman society [Williams,B] |
Full Idea: A highly rational, efficient and unmitigated application of the idea of equality of opportunity, while abandoning the idea of equality of respect as vague and nostalgic, would lead to a quite inhuman society. | |
From: Bernard Williams (The Idea of Equality [1962], §3) |
20491 | States have a monopoly of legitimate violence [Sartre, by Wolff,J] |
Full Idea: Max Weber observed that states possess a monopoly of legitimate violence. | |
From: report of Jean-Paul Sartre (Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions [1939]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 2 'State' | |
A reaction: This sounds rather hair-raising, and often is, but it sounds quite good if we describe it as a denial of legitimate violence to individual citizens. Hobbes would like it, since individual violence breaches some sort of natural contract. Guns in USA. |
3233 | Equality implies that people are alike in potential as well as in needs [Williams,B] |
Full Idea: Supporters of equality have asserted that people are alike in certain things they could do or achieve, as well as in the things that they need and could suffer. | |
From: Bernard Williams (The Idea of Equality [1962], §2) |
3234 | Equality seems to require that each person be acknowledged as having a significant point of view [Williams,B] |
Full Idea: Equality seems to require that each person is owed an effort at identification; they should not be seen as a surface to which a label can be applied, but one should try to see the world (including the label) from their point of view. | |
From: Bernard Williams (The Idea of Equality [1962], §2) |
3235 | It is a mark of extreme exploitation that the sufferers do not realise their plight [Williams,B] |
Full Idea: It is a mark of extreme exploitation or degradation that those who suffer it do NOT see themselves differently from the way they are seen by the exploiters. | |
From: Bernard Williams (The Idea of Equality [1962], §2) |
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. |