10 ideas
| 21852 | Nomads are the basis of history, and yet almost unknowable [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: There is no history from the viewpoint of nomads, although everything passes through them, to the point that they are like the noumena or the unknowable of history. | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (Many Politics [1977], p.107) | |
| A reaction: Nomads have the same place in society that indeterminate 'stuff' has in an object-orientated metaphysics. Deleuze seems to be romanticising nomads the way the late Victorians romanticised gypsies. |
| 22098 | Socrates neglects the gap between knowing what is good and doing good [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle] |
| Full Idea: There is a fundamental weakness in Socrates, that he does not take into account the gap between knowing what is good and actually putting this into action. | |
| From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (The Concept of Dread (/Anxiety) [1844]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 5 | |
| A reaction: This rejects Socrates's intellectualism about weakness of will. It is perhaps a better criticism that Aristotle's view that desires sometimes overcome the will. It is also the problem of motivation in Kantian deontology. Or utilitarianism. |
| 22096 | Anxiety is not a passing mood, but a response to human freedom [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle] |
| Full Idea: For Kierkegaard anxiety is not simply a mood or an emotion that certain people experience at certain times, but a basic response to freedom that is part of the human condition. | |
| From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (The Concept of Dread (/Anxiety) [1844]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 5 | |
| A reaction: Outside of Christianity, this may be Kierkegaard's most influential idea - since existential individualism is floating around in the romantic movement. But the Byronic hero experiences a sort of anxiety. If you can't face anxiety, become a monk or nun. |
| 22097 | The ultimate in life is learning to be anxious in the right way [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Every human being must learn to be anxious in order that he might not perish either by never having been in anxiety or by succumbing in anxiety. Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learnt the ultimate. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (The Concept of Dread (/Anxiety) [1844], p.154), quoted by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 5 | |
| A reaction: I think this is the most existentialist quotation I have found in Kierkegaard. It sounds circular. You must be in anxiety because otherwise you won't be able to cope with anxiety? I suppose anxiety is facing up to his concept of truth. |
| 21909 | Ultimate knowledge is being anxious in the right way [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Whoever learns to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (The Concept of Dread (/Anxiety) [1844], p.187), quoted by Alastair Hannay - Kierkegaard 06 | |
| A reaction: This shows us that Kierkegaard had a rather bizarre mental life which the rest of us have little chance of penetrating. I'll have a go at cataloguing my types of anxiety, but I'm not hopeful. |
| 20758 | Anxiety is staring into the yawning abyss of freedom [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: One may liken anxiety to dizziness. He whose eyes chance to look down into a yawning abyss becomes dizzy. Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom which is when freedom gazes down into its own possibility, grasping at finiteness to sustain itself. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (The Concept of Dread (/Anxiety) [1844], p.55), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 6 'Moods' | |
| A reaction: Most of us rapidly retreat from the thought of the infinity of things we might choose. Choosing bizarrely merely to assert one's freedom is simple stupidity. |
| 21853 | We are currently extending capitalism to the whole of society [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: What characterises our situation is ….the extension of capitalism to the whole social body. | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (Many Politics [1977], p.110) | |
| A reaction: This is driven by the naïve people who think all problems can be solved by market forces, and that to everything that goes bankrupt we should just say 'good riddance'. |
| 21851 | The State requires self-preservation, but the war-machine desires destruction [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: There will always be a tension between the State apparatus with its requirement for self-preservation, and the war-machine in its undertaking to destroy the State, to destroy the subjects of the State, and even to destroy itself. | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (Many Politics [1977], p.106) | |
| A reaction: This seems to fit WWI quite well, but the desire of the war-machine to destroy the State which pays for it sounds unlikely. Nevertheless war is appalling for the state, but it is the whole point of the war-machine, which gets restless. |
| 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. |