|
21844
|
The history of philosophy is an agent of power: how can you think if you haven't read the great names? [Deleuze]
|
|
Full Idea:
The history of philosophy has always been the agent of power in philosophy, and even in thought. It has played the oppressor's role: how can you think without having read Plato, Descartes, Kant and Heidegger.
|
|
From:
Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I)
|
|
A reaction:
I find it hard to relate to this French 1960s obsession with everybody being oppressed in every conceivable way, so that 'liberation' is the only value that matters. If you ask why liberty is needed, you seem to have missed the point.
|
|
21839
|
When I meet objections I just move on; they never contribute anything [Deleuze]
|
|
Full Idea:
Not reflection, and objections are even worse. Every time someone puts an objection to me, I want to say: 'OK, OK, let's get on to something else'. Objections have never contributed anything.
|
|
From:
Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I)
|
|
A reaction:
I know it is heresy in analytic philosophy, but I love this! In analytic seminars you can barely complete your first sentence before someone interrupts. It's like road range - the philosophical mind state is always poised to attack, attack.
|
|
21842
|
Don't assess ideas for truth or justice; look for another idea, and establish a relationship with it [Deleuze]
|
|
Full Idea:
You should not try to find whether an idea is just or correct. You should look for a completely different idea, elsewhere, in another area, so that something passes between the two which is neither in one nor the other.
|
|
From:
Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I)
|
|
A reaction:
Neither relativism nor dialectic. Sounds like just having fun with ideas, but a commentator tells me it is a strategy for liberating our thought, following an agenda created by Nietzsche.
|
|
21850
|
Dualisms can be undone from within, by tracing connections, and drawing them to a new path [Deleuze]
|
|
Full Idea:
It is always possible to undo dualisms from the inside, by tracing the line of flight which passes between the two terms or the two sets …and which draws both into a non-parallel evolution. At least this does not belong to the dialectic.
|
|
From:
Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], II)
|
|
A reaction:
Deleuze disliked Hegel's version of the dialectic. Not clear what he means here, but he is evidently groping for an alternative account of the reasoning process, which is interesting. Deleuze hates rigid dualisms.
|
|
21843
|
People consist of many undetermined lines, some rigid, some supple, some 'lines of flight' [Deleuze]
|
|
Full Idea:
Things, people, are made up of varied lines, and they do not necessarily know which line they are on or where they should make the line which they are tracing pass; there is a whole geography in people, with rigid lines, supple lines, lines of flight etc.
|
|
From:
Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I)
|
|
A reaction:
An example of Deleuze creating a novel concept, in order to generate a liberating way of seeing our lives. His big focus is on 'lines of flight' (which, I think, are less restrained by local culture than the others).
|
|
6248
|
Reason is too slow and doubtful to guide all actions, which need external and moral senses [Hutcheson]
|
|
Full Idea:
We boast of our mighty reason above other animals, but its processes are too slow, too full of doubt, to serve us in every exigency, either for our preservation, without external senses, or to influence our actions for good without the moral sense.
|
|
From:
Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], §VII.III)
|
|
A reaction:
This idea was taken up by Hume, and it must have influence Hume's general scepticism about the importance of reason. What this idea misses is the enormous influence of prior reasoning on our quick decisions.
|
|
6239
|
We dislike a traitor, even if they give us great benefit [Hutcheson]
|
|
Full Idea:
Let us consider if a traitor, who would sell his own country to us, may not often be as advantageous to us, as an hero who defends us: and yet we can love the treason, and hate the traitor.
|
|
From:
Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], §I.VI)
|
|
A reaction:
A nice example, which certainly refutes any claim that morality is entirely and directly self-interested. High-minded idealism, though, is not the only alternative explanation. We admire loyalty, but not loyalty to, say, Hitler.
|
|
6240
|
The moral sense is not an innate idea, but an ability to approve or disapprove in a disinterested way [Hutcheson]
|
|
Full Idea:
The moral sense is not an innate idea or knowledge, but a determination of our minds to receive the simple ideas of approbation or condemnation, from actions observed, antecedent to any opinions of advantage or loss to redound to ourselves.
|
|
From:
Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], §I.VIII)
|
|
A reaction:
This may claim a pure moral intuition, but it is also close to Kantian universalising of the rules for behaviour. It is also a variation on Descartes' 'natural light' of reason. Of course, if we say the ideas are 'received', where are they received from?
|
|
6242
|
We cannot choose our moral feelings, otherwise bribery could affect them [Hutcheson]
|
|
Full Idea:
Neither benevolence nor any other affection or desire can be directly raised by volition; if they could, then we could be bribed into any affection whatsoever toward any object.
|
|
From:
Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], §II.IV)
|
|
A reaction:
Of course, notoriously, the vast mass of people have often been bribed to love a politician, by low taxes, or bread and circuses. Still, you cannot choose to love or admire someone, you just do. Not much free will there.
|
|
6244
|
Human nature seems incapable of universal malice, except what results from self-love [Hutcheson]
|
|
Full Idea:
Human nature seems scarce capable of malicious disinterested hatred, or an ultimate desire of the misery of others, when we imagine them not pernicious to us, or opposite to our interests; ..that is only the effect of self-love, not disinterested malice.
|
|
From:
Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], §II.VII)
|
|
A reaction:
I suppose it is true that even the worst criminals brooding in prison don't wish the entire population of some foreign country to die in pain. Only a very freakish person would wish the human race were extinct. A very nice observation.
|
|
6243
|
As death approaches, why do we still care about family, friends or country? [Hutcheson]
|
|
Full Idea:
How comes it that we do not lose, at the approach of death, all concern for our families, friends, or country?
|
|
From:
Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], §II.V)
|
|
A reaction:
A nice question. No doubt some people do cease to care, but on the whole it raises the 'last round' problem in social contract theory, which is why fulfil your part of a bargain if it is too late to receive the repayment afterwards?
|
|
6241
|
Contempt of danger is just madness if it is not in some worthy cause [Hutcheson]
|
|
Full Idea:
Mere courage, or contempt of danger, if we conceive it to have no regard to the defence of the innocent, or repairing of wrongs or self-interest, would only entitle its possessor to bedlam.
|
|
From:
Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], §II.I)
|
|
A reaction:
If many criminals would love to rob a bank, but only a few have the nerve to attempt it, we can hardly deny that the latter exhibit a sort of courage. The Greeks say that good sense must be involved, but few of them were so moral about courage.
|
|
6245
|
That action is best, which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest number [Hutcheson]
|
|
Full Idea:
That action is best, which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest number; and that worst, which, in like manner, occasions misery.
|
|
From:
Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], §III.VIII)
|
|
A reaction:
The first use of a phrase taken up by Bentham. This is not just an anticipation of utilitarianism, it is utilitarianism, with all its commitment to consequentialism (but see Idea 6246), and to the maximising of happiness. It is a brilliant idea.
|
|
21848
|
Some lines (of flight) are becomings which escape the system [Deleuze]
|
|
Full Idea:
There are lines which do not amount to the path of a point, which break free from structure - lines of flight, becomings, without future or past, without memory, which resist the binary machine. …The rhizome is all this.
|
|
From:
Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], II)
|
|
A reaction:
The binary machine enforces simplistic either/or choices. I assume the 'lines' are to replace the Self, with something much more indeterminate, active and changing.
|
|
6251
|
The loss of perfect rights causes misery, but the loss of imperfect rights reduces social good [Hutcheson]
|
|
Full Idea:
Perfect rights are necessary to the public good, and it makes those miserable whose rights are thus violated; …imperfect rights tend to the improvement and increase of good in a society, but are not necessary to prevent universal misery.
|
|
From:
Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], §VII.VI)
|
|
A reaction:
This is a very utilitarian streak in Hutcheson, converting natural law into its tangible outcome in actual happiness or misery. The distinction here is interesting (taken up by Mill), but there is a very blurred borderline.
|
|
6249
|
If goodness is constituted by God's will, it is a tautology to say God's will is good [Hutcheson]
|
|
Full Idea:
To call the laws of the supreme Deity good or holy or just, if these be constituted by laws, or the will of a superior, must be an insignificant tautology, amounting to no more than 'God wills what he wills' or 'His will is conformable to his will'.
|
|
From:
Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], §VII.V)
|
|
A reaction:
This argues not only against God as the source of morality, but also against any rules, such as those of the Categorical Imperative. Why should I follow the Categorical Imperative? What has value must dictate the rules. Is obedience the highest value?
|