18 ideas
22024 | Fichte's subjectivity struggles to then give any account of objectivity [Pinkard on Fichte] |
Full Idea: For Fichte 'subjectivity' came first, and he was then stuck with the (impossible) task of showing how 'objectivity' arose out of it. | |
From: comment on Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 06 | |
A reaction: The best available answer to this problem (for idealists) is, I think, Nietzsche's perspectives, in which multiple subjectivities are summed to produce a blurred picture which has a degree of consensus. Fichte later embraced other minds. |
22017 | Normativity needs the possibility of negation, in affirmation and denial [Fichte, by Pinkard] |
Full Idea: To adopt any kind of normative stance is to commit oneself necessarily to the possibility of negation. It involves doing something correctly or incorrectly, so there must exist the possibility of denying or affirming. | |
From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 05 | |
A reaction: This seems to be the key idea for understanding Hegel's logic. Personally I think animals have a non-verbal experience of negation - when a partner dies, for example. |
22018 | Necessary truths derive from basic assertion and negation [Fichte, by Pinkard] |
Full Idea: Fichte thought that everything that involves necessary truths - even mathematics and logic - should be shown to follow from the more basic principles involved in assertion and negation. | |
From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 05 | |
A reaction: An interesting proposal, though I am struggling to see how it works. Fichte sees assertion and negation as foundational (Idea 22017), but I take them to be responses to the real world. |
22064 | Fichte's logic is much too narrow, and doesn't deduce ethics, art, society or life [Schlegel,F on Fichte] |
Full Idea: Only Fichte's principles are deduced in his book, that is, the logical ones, and not even these completely. And what about the practical, the moral and ethical ones. Society, learning, wit, art, and so on are also entitled to be deduced here. | |
From: comment on Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Friedrich Schlegel - works Vol 18 p.34 | |
A reaction: This is the beginnings of the romantic rebellion against a rather narrowly rationalist approach to philosophy. Schlegel also objects to the fact that Fichte only had one axiom (presumably the idea of the not-Self). |
22032 | Fichte's key claim was that the subjective-objective distinction must itself be subjective [Fichte, by Pinkard] |
Full Idea: Fichte's key claim was that the difference between the subjective and the objective points of view had to be itself a subjective distinction, something that the 'I' posits. | |
From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 09 | |
A reaction: This seems to lock us firmly into the idealist mental prison and throw away the key. |
22020 | We only see ourselves as self-conscious and rational in relation to other rationalities [Fichte] |
Full Idea: A rational creature cannot posit itself as such a creature with self-consciousness without positing itself as an individual, as one among many rational creatures. | |
From: Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794], p.8), quoted by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 05 n25 | |
A reaction: [1796 book about his Wissenschaftlehre] This is the transcendental (Kantian) approach to other minds. Wittgenstein's private language argument is similar. Hegel was impressed by this idea (I think). |
22060 | The Self is the spontaneity, self-relatedness and unity needed for knowledge [Fichte, by Siep] |
Full Idea: According to Fichte, spontaneity, self-relatedness, and unity are the basic traits of knowledge (which includes conscience). ...This principle of all knowledge is what he calls the 'I' or the Self. | |
From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Ludwig Siep - Fichte p.58 | |
A reaction: This is the idealist view. He gets 'spontaneity' from Kant, which is the mind's contribution to experience. Self-relatedness is the distinctive Fichte idea. Unity presumably means total coherence, which is typical of idealists. |
22066 | Novalis sought a much wider concept of the ego than Fichte's proposal [Novalis on Fichte] |
Full Idea: Novalis aimed to create a theory of the ego with a much wider scope than Fichte's doctrine of knowledge had been able to establish. ....Without philosophy, imperfect poet - without poetry, imperfect thinker. | |
From: comment on Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Novalis - Logological Fragments I vol.3 p.531 | |
A reaction: [in his 'Fichte Studies] Since this is at the heart of early romanticism, I take the concept to embrace nature, as well as creative imagination. There is a general rebellion against the narrowness of Fichte. |
22016 | The self is not a 'thing', but what emerges from an assertion of normativity [Fichte, by Pinkard] |
Full Idea: Fichte said the self is not a natural 'thing' but is itself a normative status, and 'it' can obtain this status, so it seems, only by an act of attributing it to itself. ...He continually identified the 'I' with 'reason' itself. | |
From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 05 | |
A reaction: Pinkard says Fichte gradually qualified this claim. Fichte struggled to state his view in a way that avoided obvious paradoxes. 'My mind produces decisions, so there must be someone in charge of them'? Is this transcendental? |
22019 | Consciousness of an object always entails awareness of the self [Fichte] |
Full Idea: I can be conscious of any object only on the condition that I am also conscious of myself, that is, of the conscious subject. This proposition is incontrovertible. | |
From: Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794], p.112), quoted by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 05 | |
A reaction: [from the 1797/8 version of Wissenschaftslehre] Russell might be cross to find that his idea on this was anticipated by Fichte. I still approve of the idea. |
22061 | Judgement is distinguishing concepts, and seeing their relations [Fichte, by Siep] |
Full Idea: For Fichte, to judge means to distinguish concepts from one another and to place them in relationship to one another. | |
From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Ludwig Siep - Fichte p.59 | |
A reaction: This idea of Fichte's seems to be the key one for Hegel, and hence (I presume) it is the lynchpin of German Idealism. It seems to describe mathematical knowledge quite well. I don't think it fits judging whether there is a snake in the grass. |
6000 | The goal is rationality in the selection of things according to nature [Diogenes of Babylon, by Blank] |
Full Idea: Diogenes of Babylon defined the goal to be rationality in the selection and rejection of the things according to nature. | |
From: report of Diogenes (Bab) (fragments/reports [c.180 BCE]) by D.L. Blank - Diogenes of Babylon | |
A reaction: This captures the central Stoic idea quite nicely. 'Live according to nature', but this always meant 'live according to reason', because that is (as Aristotle had taught) the essence of our nature. This only makes sense if reason and nature coincide. |
22023 | Fichte's idea of spontaneity implied that nothing counts unless we give it status [Fichte, by Pinkard] |
Full Idea: Fichte placed emphasis on human spontaneity, on nothing 'counting' for us unless we somehow bestowed some kind of status on it. | |
From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 06 | |
A reaction: This idea evidentally arises from Kant's account of thought. Pinkard says this idea inspired the early Romantics. I would have thought the drive to exist (Spinoza's conatus) would make things count whether we liked it or not. |
5999 | The good is what is perfect by nature [Diogenes of Babylon, by Blank] |
Full Idea: Diogenes of Babylon defined the good as what is perfect by nature. | |
From: report of Diogenes (Bab) (fragments/reports [c.180 BCE]) by D.L. Blank - Diogenes of Babylon | |
A reaction: This might come close to G.E. Moore's Ideal Utilitarianism, but its dependence on the rather uneasy of concept of 'perfection' makes it questionable. Personally I find it appealing. I wish we had Diogenes' explanation. |
6001 | Justice is a disposition to distribute according to desert [Diogenes of Babylon, by Blank] |
Full Idea: Diogenes of Babylon defined justice as the disposition which distributes to everyone what he deserves. | |
From: report of Diogenes (Bab) (fragments/reports [c.180 BCE]) by D.L. Blank - Diogenes of Babylon | |
A reaction: The questions that arise would be 'what does a new-born baby deserve?', and 'what do animals deserve?', and 'does the lowest and worst of criminals deserve anything at all?' |
22065 | Fichte reduces nature to a lifeless immobility [Schlegel,F on Fichte] |
Full Idea: Fichte reduces the non-Ego or nature to a state of constant calm, standstill, immobility, lack of all change, movement and life, that is death. | |
From: comment on Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Friedrich Schlegel - works vol 12 p.190 | |
A reaction: The point is that Fichte's nature is a merely logical or conceptual deduction from the spontaneous reason of the self, so it can't have the lively diversity we find in nature. |
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. |