9 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. |
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. |
15664 | Ideology is 'socially necessary illusion' or 'socially necessary false-consciousness' [Adorno, by Finlayson] |
Full Idea: Adorno defines ideology as 'socially necessary illusion' or 'socially necessary false-consciousness' (and the young Habermas accepted something like this definition). | |
From: report of Theodor W. Adorno (works [1955]) by James Gordon Finlayson - Habermas Ch.1:11 | |
A reaction: The marxism seems to reside in the view that such things are always 'false'. If they gradually became 'true', would they cease to be ideology? Is it impossible for widespread beliefs to be 'true'? |
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. |