13 ideas
19574 | If man sacrifices truth he sacrifices himself, by acting against his own convictions [Novalis] |
Full Idea: Man has his being in truth - if he sacrifices truth he sacrifices himself. Whoever betrays truth betrays himself. It is not a question of lying - but of acting against one's conviction. | |
From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 038) | |
A reaction: Does he condone lying here, as long as you don't believe the lie? We would call it loss of integrity. |
19571 | Delusion and truth differ in their life functions [Novalis] |
Full Idea: The distinction between delusion and truth lies in the difference in their life functions. | |
From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 008) | |
A reaction: Pure pragmatism, it seems. We might expect doubts about objective truth from a leading light of the Romantic movement. |
16083 | Aristotelian matter seriously threatens the intrinsic unity and substantiality of its object [Gill,ML] |
Full Idea: On the interpretation of Aristotelian matter that I shall propose, matter seriously threatens the intrinsic unity, and hence the substantiality, of the object to which it contributes. | |
From: Mary Louise Gill (Aristotle on Substance [1989], Intro) | |
A reaction: Presumably the thought is that if an object is form+matter (hylomorphism), then forms are essentially unified, but matter is essentially unified and sloppy. |
19575 | Refinement of senses increasingly distinguishes individuals [Novalis] |
Full Idea: The more our senses are refined, the more capable they become of distinguishing between individuals. The highest sense would be the highest receptivity to particularity in human nature. | |
From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 072) | |
A reaction: I adore this idea!! It goes into the collection of support I am building for individual essences, against the absurd idea of kinds as essences (when they are actually categorisations). It also accompanies particularism in ethics. |
19572 | Experiences tests reason, and reason tests experience [Novalis] |
Full Idea: Experience is the test of the rational - and vice versa. | |
From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 010) | |
A reaction: A wonderful remark. Surely we can't ignore our need to test claims of pure logic by filling in the variables with concrete instances, to assess validity? And philosophy without examples is doomed to be abstract waffle. Coherence is the combined aim. |
19573 | The seat of the soul is where our inner and outer worlds interpenetrate [Novalis] |
Full Idea: The seat of the soul is the point where the inner and the outer worlds touch. Wherever they penetrate each other - it is there at every point of penetration. | |
From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 020) | |
A reaction: I surmise that Spinoza's dual-aspect monism is behind this interesting remark. See the related idea from Schopenhauer. |
19577 | Everything is a chaotic unity, then we abstract, then we reunify the world into a free alliance [Novalis] |
Full Idea: Before abstraction everything is one - but one as chaos is - after abstraction everything is again unified - but in a free alliance of independent, self-determined beings. A crowd has become a society - a chaos is transformed into a manifold world. | |
From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 094) | |
A reaction: Personally I take (unfashionably) psychological abstraction to one of the key foundations of human thought, so I love this idea, which gives a huge picture of how the abstracting mind relates to reality. |
19578 | Only self-illuminated perfect individuals are beautiful [Novalis] |
Full Idea: Everything beautiful is a self-illuminated, perfect individual. | |
From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 101) | |
A reaction: It is a commonplace to describe something beautiful as being 'perfect'. Unfinished masterpieces are interesting exceptions. Are only 'individuals' beautiful? Is unity a necessary condition of beauty? Bad art fails to be self-illuminated. |
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 |
17006 | Prime matter has no place in Aristotle's theories, and passages claiming it are misread [Gill,ML] |
Full Idea: I argue that prime matter has no place in Aristotle's elemental theory. ..References to prime matter are found in Aristotle's work because his theory was thought to need the doctrine. If I am right, these passages will all admit of another interpretation. | |
From: Mary Louise Gill (Aristotle on Substance [1989], App) | |
A reaction: If correct, this strikes me as important for the history of ideas, because scholastics got themselves in a right tangle over prime matter. See Pasnau on it. It pushed the 17th century into corpuscularianism. |
16093 | Prime matter is actually nothing and potentially everything (or potentially an element) [Gill,ML] |
Full Idea: Prime matter is supposed to be actually nothing and potentially everything or, at any rate, potentially the simplest bodies - earth, water, air and fire. | |
From: Mary Louise Gill (Aristotle on Substance [1989], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: The view that the four elements turn out to be prime matter is distinctive of Gill's approach. Prime matter sounds like quark soup in the early universe. |
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. |
19576 | Religion needs an intermediary, because none of us can connect directly to a godhead [Novalis] |
Full Idea: Nothing is more indispensable for true religious feeling than an intermediary - which connects us to the godhead. The human being is absolutely incapable of sustaining an immediate relation with this. | |
From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 073) | |
A reaction: I take this to be a defence of priests and organised religion, and an implied attack on protestants who give centrality to private prayer and conscience. |