8 ideas
16007 | I assume existence, rather than reasoning towards it [Kierkegaard] |
Full Idea: I always reason from existence, not towards existence. | |
From: Søren Kierkegaard (Philosophical Fragments [1844], p.40) | |
A reaction: Kierkegaard's important premise to help show that theistic proofs for God's existence don't actually prove existence, but develop the content of a conception. [SY] |
16013 | Nothing necessary can come into existence, since it already 'is' [Kierkegaard] |
Full Idea: Can the necessary come into existence? That is a change, and everything that comes into existence demonstrates that it is not necessary. The necessary already 'is'. | |
From: Søren Kierkegaard (Philosophical Fragments [1844], p.74) | |
A reaction: [SY] |
12732 | Some necessary truths are brute, and others derive from final causes [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: There is a difference between truths whose necessity is brute and geometric and those truths which have their source in fitness and final causes. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Remond de Montmort [1715], 1715.06.22/G III 645), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 6 | |
A reaction: The second one is a necessity deriving from God's wisdom. Strictly it could have been otherwise, unlike 'geometrical' necessity, which is utterly fixed. |
19438 | Our large perceptions and appetites are made up tiny unconscious fragments [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: Our great perceptions and our great appetites of which we are conscious, are composed of innumerable little perceptions and little inclinations of which we cannot be conscious. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Remond de Montmort [1715], 1715 §2) | |
A reaction: I think this is a wonderfully accurate report of how the mind is, in comparison with the much more simplistic views presented by most philosophers of that era. And so much understanding flows from Leibniz's account. |
19415 | Passions reside in confused perceptions [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: The passions of monads reside in their confused perceptions. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Remond de Montmort [1715], 1715) | |
A reaction: He thinks perceptions come in degrees of confusion, all the way up to God, who alone has fully clear perceptions. He blames in on these confused perceptions. |
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. |
19439 | God produces possibilities, and thus ideas [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: God is the source of possibilities and consequently of ideas. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Remond de Montmort [1715], 1715 §8) | |
A reaction: A wonderfully individual conception of the nature of God. He produces the possibilities from which creation is chosen, and ideas and concepts are of everything which is non-contradictory, and thus possible. It all makes lovely sense! |