128 ideas
| 19693 | There is practical wisdom (for action), and theoretical wisdom (for deep understanding) [Aristotle, by Whitcomb] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle takes wisdom to come in two forms, the practical and the theoretical, the former of which is good judgement about how to act, and the latter of which is deep knowledge or understanding. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Dennis Whitcomb - Wisdom Intro | |
| A reaction: The interesting question is then whether the two are connected. One might be thoroughly 'sensible' about action, without counting as 'wise', which seems to require a broader view of what is being done. Whitcomb endorses Aristotle on this idea. |
| 21584 | A sense of timelessness is essential to wisdom [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Both in thought and in feeling, to realize the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 6) | |
| A reaction: A very rationalist and un-Heraclitean view of wisdom. This picture may give wisdom a bad name, if wise people are (at a minimum) at least expected to give good advice about real life. |
| 20383 | The wisest man is full of contradictions, and attuned to other people, with occasional harmony [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The wisest man would be the one richest in contradictions, who has, as it were, antennae for all types of men - as well as his great moments of grand harmony - a rare accident even in us! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §259) | |
| A reaction: By 'us' does he mean himself? Whether the rest of us thought such a person to be wise would depend on whether we met them on a contradictory or a harmonious day. Permanent harmony should be viewed with suspicion. |
| 4520 | I don't want to persuade anyone to be a philosopher; they should be rare plants [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I do not wish to persuade anyone to philosophy: it is inevitable, it perhaps also desirable, that the philosopher should be a rare plant. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §420) | |
| A reaction: My immediate reaction is disagreement, but 'what if everybody' became a philosopher. The fear is that philosophy paralyses action, but it need not. Good philosophy is time-consuming. History would come to an end. The excitement of medieval history! |
| 21572 | Philosophical disputes are mostly hopeless, because philosophers don't understand each other [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Explicit controversy is almost always fruitless in philosophy, owing to the fact that no two philosophers ever understand one another. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 1) | |
| A reaction: Contemporaries don't even seem to read one another very much, especially these days, when there are thousands of professional philosophers. (If you are a professional, have you read all the works written by your colleagues and friends?) |
| 21571 | Philosophical systems are interesting, but we now need a more objective scientific philosophy [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The great systems of the past serve a very useful purpose, and are abundantly worthy of study. But something different is required if philosophy is to become a science, and to aim at results independent of the tastes of the philosophers who advocate them. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], Pref) | |
| A reaction: An interesting product of this move in philosophy is (about sixty years later) the work of David Lewis, who set out to be precise and scientific, and ended up creating a very personal system. Why not a collaborative system? |
| 21574 | Hegel's confusions over 'is' show how vast systems can be built on simple errors [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Hegel's confusion of the 'is' of predication with the 'is' of identity ...is an example of how, for want of care at the start, vast and imposing systems of philosophy are built upon stupid and trivial confusions. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 2 n1) | |
| A reaction: [He explains the confusion in more detail in the note] Russell cites an English translation, and I am wondering how this occurs in the German. Plato has been accused of similar elementary blunders about properties. Russell treats Berkeley similarly. |
| 21587 | Philosophers sometimes neglect truth and distort facts to attain a nice system [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The desire for unadulterated truth is often obscured, in professional philosophers, by love of system: the one little fact which will not come inside the philosophical edifice has to be pushed and tortured until it seems to consent. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 8) | |
| A reaction: Bit of hypocrisy here. Russell was continually trying to find a system, grounded in physics and logic. Presumably his shifting views are indications of integrity, because he changes the system rather than the facts. |
| 21582 | Physicists accept particles, points and instants, while pretending they don't do metaphysics [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Physicists, ignorant and contemptuous of philosophy, have been content to assume their particles, points and instants in practice, while contending, with ironical politeness, that their concepts laid no claim to metaphysical validity. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 4) | |
| A reaction: Presumably physicists are allowed to wave their hands and utter the word 'instrumentalism', and then get on with the job. They just have to ensure they never speculate about what is being measured. |
| 21573 | When problems are analysed properly, they are either logical, or not philosophical at all [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and purification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 2) | |
| A reaction: [All Lecture 2 discusses 'logical'] I think Bertie was getting carried away here. In his life's corpus he barely acknowledges the existence of ethics, or political philosophy, or aesthetics. He never even engages with 'objects' the way Aristotle does. |
| 1575 | For Aristotle logos is essentially the ability to talk rationally about questions of value [Roochnik on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle logos is the ability to speak rationally about, with the hope of attaining knowledge, questions of value. | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.26 |
| 1589 | Aristotle is the supreme optimist about the ability of logos to explain nature [Roochnik on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle is the great theoretician who articulates a vision of a world in which natural and stable structures can be rationally discovered. His is the most optimistic and richest view of the possibilities of logos | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.95 |
| 4545 | Could not the objective character of things be merely a difference of degree within the subjective? [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Could not the objective character of things be merely a difference of degree within the subjective? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §560) | |
| A reaction: A reasonable speculation. I begin to feel my opinions are objective if they are reinforced by the agreement of others. One can believe in the facts, but despair of objectivity. It is called 'scepticism'. Buf cf. T.Nagel. |
| 4530 | Reason is a mere idiosyncrasy of a certain species of animal [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Reason is a mere idiosyncrasy of a certain species of animal. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §515) | |
| A reaction: Call me narrow-minded, prejudiced and arrogant, but I just don't believe this. Rational minds meet across cultures, and good reasons can rise above culture. However, I may be wrong about this… |
| 4523 | What can be 'demonstrated' is of little worth [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What can be 'demonstrated' is of little worth. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §431) | |
| A reaction: He admits that some things can be demonstrated, and that they have some worth. But demonstration may be a matter of coherence, so that anything can be demonstrated, by assuming a range of ideas as being beyond demonstration. |
| 4531 | Our inability to both affirm and deny a single thing is merely an inability, not a 'necessity' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We are unable to affirm and to deny one and the same thing: this is a subjective empirical law, not the expression of any 'necessity', but only an inability. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §516) | |
| A reaction: A remarkable claim, made by someone utterly gripped by relativism. I don't believe it. Why can't we do it? We experience it as a truth, not as a prejudice or mental block. I say it reflects reality - there is only one set of facts. |
| 4541 | Everything simple is merely imaginary [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Everything simple is merely imaginary. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §536) | |
| A reaction: A wonderful aphorism. This is one's worst fear, which is why it is suggested that ontological O's R is bad, though epistemological O's R ('be cautious') is fine. I have to admit that I have no idea whether reality is simple. |
| 8200 | Aristotelian definitions aim to give the essential properties of the thing defined [Aristotle, by Quine] |
| Full Idea: A real definition, according to the Aristotelian tradition, gives the essence of the kind of thing defined. Man is defined as a rational animal, and thus rationality and animality are of the essence of each of us. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Willard Quine - Vagaries of Definition p.51 | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 4385. Personally I prefer the Aristotelian approach, but we may have to say 'We cannot identify the essence of x, and so x cannot be defined'. Compare 'his mood was hard to define' with 'his mood was hostile'. |
| 4385 | Aristotelian definition involves first stating the genus, then the differentia of the thing [Aristotle, by Urmson] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle, to give a definition one must first state the genus and then the differentia of the kind of thing to be defined. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by J.O. Urmson - Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean p.157 | |
| A reaction: Presumably a modern definition would just be a list of properties, but Aristotle seeks the substance. How does he define a genus? - by placing it in a further genus? |
| 20357 | Truth was given value by morality, but eventually turned against its own source [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Among the forces cultivated by morality was truthfulness: this eventually turned against morality, discovered its teleology, its partial perspective. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §015) | |
| A reaction: Just as 'duty' is said to have withered in modern times, because its religious underpinning has been lost, so this gives an account of the decline of the value of truth. It is still left to us to assert the value of truth, perhaps as the only value. |
| 4534 | 'Truth' is the will to be master over the multiplicity of sensations [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: 'Truth' is the will to be master over the multiplicity of sensations. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §517) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that this is a nice explanation of why we value truth, but says nothing at all about what truth actually is. I can't think of a better explanation of why we value truth. |
| 4548 | Only because there is thought is there untruth [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Only because there is thought is there untruth. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §574) | |
| A reaction: A nicely oblique place to start in one's study of truth. Untruth is a very human contribution to the world, making virtually no sense of animal thought. Meta-thought seems to be required. |
| 5652 | True beliefs are those which augment one's power [Nietzsche, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: For Nietzsche, the true belief is the one which augments one's power. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.13 | |
| A reaction: Sounds suspiciously like pragmatism. Sounds suspiciously unlike truth as we know it. So many philosophers seem to me to confuse the concept of the truth itself with the ability of humans grasp the truth, or be interested in it. Truth is not part of us. |
| 4508 | The truth is what gives us the minimum of spiritual effort, and avoids the exhaustion of lying [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What is true? Where an explanation is given which causes us the minimum of spiritual effort (moreover, lying is very exhausting). | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §279) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche is just being naughty here. Obviously lazy but intelligent people tell the truth, but to suggest that there is nothing more to truth means the collapse of language and thought. Which means no more reading Nietzsche… |
| 4538 | Judgements can't be true and known in isolation; the only surety is in connections and relations [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: An isolated judgement is never 'true', never knowledge; only in connection and relation of many judgements is there any surety. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §530) | |
| A reaction: It actually seems impossible to state an isolated judgement in language without having a mass of presuppositions and beliefs to support it. I don't think the full holistic thesis about language follows, however. |
| 13282 | Aristotle relativises the notion of wholeness to different measures [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle proposes to relativise unity and plurality, so that a single object can be both one (indivisible) and many (divisible) simultaneously, without contradiction, relative to different measures. Wholeness has degrees, with the strength of the unity. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 7.2.12 | |
| A reaction: [see Koslicki's account of Aristotle for details] As always, the Aristotelian approach looks by far the most promising. Simplistic mechanical accounts of how parts make wholes aren't going to work. We must include the conventional and conceptual bit. |
| 21588 | Logic gives the method of research in philosophy [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Logic gives the method of research in philosophy, just as mathematics gives the method in physics. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 8) | |
| A reaction: I'm struck by how rarely philosophers actually prove anything. Mostly they just use the language of logic as a tool for disambiguation. Only a tiny handful of philosophers can actually create sustained and novel proofs. |
| 4730 | For Aristotle, the subject-predicate structure of Greek reflected a substance-accident structure of reality [Aristotle, by O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle apparently believed that the subject-predicate structure of Greek reflected the substance-accident nature of reality. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: We need not assume that Aristotle is wrong. It is a chicken-and-egg. There is something obvious about subject-predicate language, if one assumes that unified objects are part of nature, and not just conventional. |
| 21586 | The logical connectives are not objects, but are formal, and need a context [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Such words as 'or' and 'not' are not names of definite objects, but are words that require a context in order to have a meaning. All of them are formal. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 7) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Wittgenstein's 1922 Tractatus in a footnote - presumably in a later edition than 1914] This is the most famous idea which Russell acquired from Wittgenstein. It was yet another step in his scaling down of ontology. |
| 21585 | The tortoise won't win, because infinite instants don't compose an infinitely long time [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The idea that an infinite number of instants make up an infinitely long time is not true, and therefore the conclusion that Achilles will never overtake the tortoise does not follow. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 6) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle spotted this, but didn't express it as clearly as Russell. |
| 20361 | We need 'unities' for reckoning, but that does not mean they exist [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We need 'unities' in order to be able to reckon: that does not mean we must suppose that such unities exist. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §635) | |
| A reaction: True. I takes this thought to be important in the Psychology of Metaphysics (an unfashionable branch). |
| 4533 | Logic and maths refer to fictitious entities which we have created [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Logic (like geometry and arithmetic) applies only to fictitious entities that we have created. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §516) | |
| A reaction: This finds Nietzsche on the relativist wing of logical empiricism. The thing is, fictitious entities can have a close relationship with truth, as in a great novel. I believe in necessary logical truth, but there are many ways of slicing it. |
| 20359 | The nature of being, of things, is much easier to understand than is becoming [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The doctrine of being, of things, of all sorts of fixed unities is a hundred times easier than the doctrine of becoming, of development. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §238) | |
| A reaction: I don't know if he intended it, but this is a fierce shaft hurled at Aristotle, who gives a wonderful essentialist account of the nature of things, but can offer nothing more on becoming than the doctrine of potentiality and actuality. |
| 21684 | Atomic facts may be inferrable from others, but never from non-atomic facts [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps one atomic fact may sometimes be capable of being inferred from another, though I do not believe this to be the case; but in any case it cannot be inferred from premises no one of which is an atomic fact. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], p.48) | |
| A reaction: I prefer Russell's caution to Wittgenstein's dogmatism. I presume utterly simple facts give you nothing to work with. Hegel thought that you could infer new concepts from given concepts. |
| 22316 | A positive and negative fact have the same constituents; their difference is primitive [Russell] |
| Full Idea: It must not be supposed that a negative fact contains a constituent corresponding to the word 'not'. It contains no more constituents than a positive fact of the correlative positive form. The differenece between the two forms is ultimate and irreducible. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], VIII.279), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 41 'Neg' | |
| A reaction: ['Harvard Lectures'] The audience disliked this. How does one fact exclude the other fact? Potter asks whether absence is a fact, and whether an absence can be a truthmaker. |
| 4525 | There are no facts in themselves, only interpretations [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Against positivism, which halts at phenomena, and says "there are only facts", I would say: No, facts is precisely what there is not, only interpretations. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §481) | |
| A reaction: A cornerstone of relativism is the denial of facts. A cornerstone of realism is the affirmation of facts. Personally, I affirm facts. |
| 4543 | There are no 'facts-in-themselves', since a sense must be projected into them to make them 'facts' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There are no 'facts-in-themselves', for a sense must always be projected into them before they can be 'facts'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §556) | |
| A reaction: The relativist (and anti-realist) view. Any attempt at taking this proposal seriously induces a hopeless vertigo, a well known consequence of reading Nietzsche. I don't believe this. It is not to my taste. |
| 4484 | Nihilism results from valuing the world by the 'categories of reason', because that is fiction [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The faith in the categories of reason is the cause of nihilism; we have measured the value of the world according to categories that refer to a purely fictitious world. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §12B) | |
| A reaction: Presumably this refers to Kant, whose dogmatic assertions about the structure of human reason are as open to objection as those of Freud. Nietzsche may have a very profound truth here. |
| 21576 | With asymmetrical relations (before/after) the reduction to properties is impossible [Russell] |
| Full Idea: When we come to asymmetrical relations, such as before and after, greater and less etc., the attempt to reduce them to properties becomes obviously impossible. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 2) | |
| A reaction: The traditional Aristotelian reduction to properties is attributed by Russell to logic based on subject-predicate. As an example he cites being greater than as depending on more than the mere magnitudes of the entities. Direction of the relation. |
| 21575 | When we attribute a common quality to a group, we can forget the quality and just talk of the group [Russell] |
| Full Idea: When a group of objects have the similarity we are inclined to attribute to possession of a common quality, the membership of the group will serve all the purposes of the supposed common quality ...which need not be assumed to exist. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 2) | |
| A reaction: This is the earliest account I have found of properties being treated as sets of objects. It more or less coincides with the invention of set theory. I am reminded of Idea 9208. What is the bazzing property? It's what those three things have in common. |
| 4546 | We realise that properties are sensations of the feeling subject, not part of the thing [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There comes a point where one realises that what one calls a property of a thing is a sensation of the feeling subject; at this point the property ceases to belong to the thing. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §562) | |
| A reaction: I don't believe this. Has Nietzsche no theory about WHY we have one sensation rather than another? I prefer to distinguish primary from secondary qualities. |
| 4544 | A thing has no properties if it has no effect on other 'things' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The properties of a thing are effects on other 'things'; if one removes other 'things', then a thing has no properties. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §557) | |
| A reaction: This is a causal theory of properties. A counterexample is a potential property, like a bomb which never explodes. |
| 20362 | We saw unity in things because our ego seemed unified (but now we doubt the ego!) [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We borrowed the concept of unity from our 'ego' concept - our oldest article of faith. If we did not hold ourselves to be unified, we would never have formed the concept 'thing'. Now, somewhat late, we are convinced that the ego does not guarantee unity. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §635) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche tells a similar story about the emergence and subsequent undermining of truth. I am becoming an enthusiast for Nietzsche's account of how our psychology has generated out metaphysics - which doesn't make the metaphysics false. |
| 13276 | The unmoved mover and the soul show Aristotelian form as the ultimate mereological atom [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's discussion of the unmoved mover and of the soul confirms the suspicion that form, when it is not thought of as the object represented in a definition, plays the role of the ultimate mereological atom within his system. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 6.6 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle is concerned with which things are 'divisible', and he cites these two examples as indivisible, but they may be too unusual to offer an actual theory of how Aristotle builds up wholes from atoms. He denies atoms in matter. |
| 13277 | The 'form' is the recipe for building wholes of a particular kind [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Thus in Aristotle we may think of an object's formal components as a sort of recipe for how to build wholes of that particular kind. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 7.2.5 | |
| A reaction: In the elusive business of pinning down what Aristotle means by the crucial idea of 'form', this analogy strikes me as being quite illuminating. It would fit DNA in living things, and the design of an artifact. |
| 4528 | For me, a priori 'truths' are just provisional assumptions [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The most strongly believed a priori 'truths' are for me provisional assumptions (e.g. the law of causality). | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §497) | |
| A reaction: The example of causality would fit in with Humean scepticism, but presumably Nietzsche would also apply it to maths and logic, since he is a thorough-going relativist. I cautiously disagree. |
| 5991 | For Aristotle, knowledge is of causes, and is theoretical, practical or productive [Aristotle, by Code] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle thinks that in general we have knowledge or understanding when we grasp causes, and he distinguishes three fundamental types of knowledge - theoretical, practical and productive. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Alan D. Code - Aristotle | |
| A reaction: Productive knowledge we tend to label as 'knowing how'. The centrality of causes for knowledge would get Aristotle nowadays labelled as a 'naturalist'. It is hard to disagree with his three types, though they may overlap. |
| 4537 | We can't know whether there is knowledge if we don't know what it is [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: If we do not know what knowledge is, we cannot possibly answer the question of whether there is knowledge. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §530) | |
| A reaction: Obviously Nietzsche is pessimistic about the prospects here, but this is a motto for the whole modern analysis of knowledge, and (besides) we have lots of things (like a concept of identity) which we can't define. |
| 4485 | Every belief is a considering-something-true [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Every belief is a considering-something-true. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §015) | |
| A reaction: This is correct, I think, but a little perplexing coming from Nietzsche, who seems to deny objective truth. Presumably we should follow instinct, rather than 'belief'. |
| 4487 | A note for asses: What convinces is not necessarily true - it is merely convincing [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What convinces is not necessarily true - it is merely convincing (a note for asses). | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §017) | |
| A reaction: I hope I am not such an ass that I need Nietzsche to explain this, as I have always thought it true. Many good modern epistemologists seem to me guilty of this error, though. Pragmatists, riff-raff like that… |
| 21580 | Science condemns sense-data and accepts matter, but a logical construction must link them [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Men of science condemn immediate data as 'merely subjective', while maintaining the truths of physics from those data. ...The only justification possible for this must be one which exhibits matter as a logical construction from sense-data. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 4) | |
| A reaction: Since we blatantly aren't doing logic when we stare out of the window, this aspires to finding something like the 'logical form' of perception. |
| 11239 | The notion of a priori truth is absent in Aristotle [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: The notion of a priori truth is conspicuously absent in Aristotle. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.5 | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 11240. |
| 4539 | The forms of 'knowledge' about logic which precede experience are actually regulations of belief [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The basic laws of logic (identity and contradiction) are said to be forms of pure knowledge because they precede experience. But these are not forms of knowledge at all! They are regulative articles of belief. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §530) | |
| A reaction: This is a standard objection to foundationalism - that the basic beliefs (of reason, or raw experience) are not actually knowledge. We can all speculate about their origin and basis. Personally I think 'truth' must be somewhere in the explanation. |
| 4529 | All sense perceptions are permeated with value judgements (useful or harmful) [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It cannot be doubted that all sense perceptions are permeated with value judgements (useful and harmful - consequently, pleasant and unpleasant). | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §505) | |
| A reaction: A thesis expanded by Charles Taylor ('Sources of the Self'). This is a very modern view, but also a very Greek view, which slices through the is/ought distinction. |
| 21583 | When sense-data change, there must be indistinguishable sense-data in the process [Russell] |
| Full Idea: In all cases of sense-data capable of gradual change, we may find one sense-datum indistinguishable from another, and that indistinguishable from a third, while yet the first and third are quite easily distinguishable. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 5) | |
| A reaction: This point is key to the sense-data theory, because it gives them independent existence, standing between reality and subjective experience. It is also the reason why they look increasingly implausible, if they may not be experienced. |
| 23312 | Aristotle is a rationalist, but reason is slowly acquired through perception and experience [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle is a rationalist …but reason for him is a disposition which we only acquire over time. Its acquisition is made possible primarily by perception and experience. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Aristotle's Rationalism p.173 | |
| A reaction: I would describe this process as the gradual acquisition of the skill of objectivity, which needs the right knowledge and concepts to evaluate new experiences. |
| 21577 | Empirical truths are particular, so general truths need an a priori input of generality [Russell] |
| Full Idea: All empirical evidence is of particular truths. Hence, if there is any knowledge of general truths at all, there must be some knowledge of general truths which is independent of empirical evidence. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 2) | |
| A reaction: Humean empiricists respond by being a sceptical of general truths. At this stage of his career Russell looks like a thoroughgoing rationalist, and he believes in the reality of universals, relations and propositions. He became more empirical later. |
| 4532 | We can have two opposite sensations, like hard and soft, at the same time [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There is a coarse sensualistic prejudice that sensations teach us truths about things - that I cannot say at the same time that a thing is hard and soft. To say that I cannot have two opposite sensations at the same time is quite coarse and false. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §516) | |
| A reaction: I am struggling to think of examples. I might experience something as cool, but judge it to be warm (because my hand is hot). I don't think I know what experience he is referring to. Interesting claim, though. |
| 16111 | Aristotle wants to fit common intuitions, and therefore uses language as a guide [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: Since Aristotle generally prefers a metaphysical theory that accords with common intuitions, he frequently relies on facts about language to guide his metaphysical claims. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: I approve of his procedure. I take intuition to be largely rational justifications too complex for us to enunciate fully, and language embodies folk intuitions in its concepts (especially if the concepts occur in many languages). |
| 21579 | Objects are treated as real when they connect with other experiences in a normal way [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Objects of sense are called 'real' when they have the kind of connection with other objects of sense which experience has led us to regard as normal; when they fail this, they are called 'illusions'. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 3) | |
| A reaction: This rests rather too much on the concept of 'normal', but offers an attractive coherence account of perception. Direct perceptions are often invoked by anti-coherentists, but I think coherence is just as much needed in that realm. |
| 21578 | Global scepticism is irrefutable, but can't replace our other beliefs, and just makes us hesitate [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Universal scepticism, though logically irrefutable, is practically barren; it can only, therefore, give a certain flavour of hesitancy to our beliefs, and cannot be used to substitute other beliefs for them. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 3) | |
| A reaction: Spot on. There is no positive evidence for scepticism, so must just register it as the faintest of possibilities, like the existence of secretive fairies. |
| 4486 | The extreme view is there are only perspectives, no true beliefs, because there is no true world [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The most extreme form of nihilism would be the view that every belief, every considering-something-true, is necessarily false because there is simply no true world. Thus: a perspectival appearance, whose origin lies in us. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §015) | |
| A reaction: The idea that 'there is no true world' is incomprehensible to me. But note that here Nietzsche labels this an 'extreme' view, which he may not be asserting. He likes to flirt with danger. |
| 16971 | Plato says sciences are unified around Forms; Aristotle says they're unified around substance [Aristotle, by Moravcsik] |
| Full Idea: Plato's unity of science principle states that all - legitimate - sciences are ultimately about the Forms. Aristotle's principle states that all sciences must be, ultimately, about substances, or aspects of substances. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE], 1) by Julius Moravcsik - Aristotle on Adequate Explanations 1 |
| 11243 | Aristotelian explanations are facts, while modern explanations depend on human conceptions [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle things which explain (the explanantia) are facts, which should not be associated with the modern view that says explanations are dependent on how we conceive and describe the world (where causes are independent of us). | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.1 | |
| A reaction: There must be some room in modern thought for the Aristotelian view, if some sort of robust scientific realism is being maintained against the highly linguistic view of philosophy found in the twentieth century. |
| 3320 | Aristotle's standard analysis of species and genus involves specifying things in terms of something more general [Aristotle, by Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: The standard Aristotelian doctrine of species and genus in the theory of anything whatever involves specifying what the thing is in terms of something more general. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.10 |
| 12000 | Aristotle regularly says that essential properties explain other significant properties [Aristotle, by Kung] |
| Full Idea: The view that essential properties are those in virtue of which other significant properties of the subjects under investigation can be explained is encountered repeatedly in Aristotle's work. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Joan Kung - Aristotle on Essence and Explanation IV | |
| A reaction: What does 'significant' mean here? I take it that the significant properties are the ones which explain the role, function and powers of the object. |
| 6416 | Other minds seem to exist, because their testimony supports realism about the world [Russell, by Grayling] |
| Full Idea: Russell gives an argument that other minds exist, because if one is entitled to believe this, then one can rely on the testimony of others, which, jointly with one's own experience, will give powerful support to the view that there a real spatial world. | |
| From: report of Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 3) by A.C. Grayling - Russell Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: I rather like this argument. It is quite close to Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument, which also seems to refute scepticism about other minds. I think Russell's line, using testimony, knowledge and realism, may be better than Wittgenstein's. |
| 4536 | It is a major blunder to think of consciousness as a unity, and hence as an entity, a thing [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There is a tremendous blunder in absurdly overestimating consciousness, the transformation of it into a unity, an entity - 'spirit', 'soul', something that feels, thinks, wills. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §529) | |
| A reaction: This is a wonderfully modern and scientific view. Even strong materialists still make claims about mental unity, behind which an extravagent and contradictory metaphysics can be hidden. Was Nietzsche, then, an 'eliminativist' about mind? |
| 4551 | Great self-examination is to become conscious of oneself not as an individual, but as mankind [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Tremendous self-examination: becoming conscious of oneself, not as an individual but as mankind. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §575) | |
| A reaction: A lovely thought, which illustrates the fact that it is hard to be introspective without bringing an agenda to the process. |
| 4527 | Perhaps we are not single subjects, but a multiplicity of 'cells', interacting to create thought [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The assumption of one single subject is perhaps unnecessary; perhaps we are a multiplicity of subjects, whose interaction and struggle is the basis of our thought and consciousness, an aristocracy of 'cells' in which dominion resides equally. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §490) | |
| A reaction: A nice combination of Humean scepticism, and an anticipation of the modularity of mind. Was Nietzsche thinking about evolution? It goes with his doubts about reason (if we are run by a committee). |
| 20374 | Consciousness is a terminal phenomenon, and causes nothing [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Everything of which we become conscious is a terminal phenomenon, an end - and causes nothing. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §478) | |
| A reaction: This appears to endorse epiphenomenalism - which I take to be an incoherent concept. How can becoming fully aware of something, rather than subliminally or subconsciously aware, make no difference at all? If it exists, it has causal powers. |
| 23938 | Passions are ranked, as if they are non-rational and animal pleasure seeking [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The whole conception of an order of rank among the passions: as if it were the right and normal thing to be guided by reason - with the passions as abnormal, dangerous, semi-animal …and nothing other than desires for pleasure. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §387) | |
| A reaction: This thought of Nietzsche's seems to be very important, because the Enlightenment relegation of passions was inherited from Christianity, and dominated European culture (and Buddhism too, I think). |
| 23939 | We fail to see that reason is a network of passions, and every passion contains some reason [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The misunderstanding of passion and reason, as if the latter were an independent entity and not rather a system of relations between various passions and desires; and as if every passion did not possess its quantum of reason. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §387) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me a much more accurate account of the relation of reason and passion than almost anything in earlier philosophy (though Aristotle is quite good on it). I am retraining myself to see my mental life in this way. |
| 23300 | Aristotle and the Stoics denied rationality to animals, while Platonists affirmed it [Aristotle, by Sorabji] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle, and also the Stoics, denied rationality to animals. …The Platonists, the Pythagoreans, and some more independent Aristotelians, did grant reason and intellect to animals. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Richard Sorabji - Rationality 'Denial' | |
| A reaction: This is not the same as affirming or denying their consciousness. The debate depends on how rationality is conceived. |
| 11240 | The notion of analytic truth is absent in Aristotle [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: The notion of analytic truth is conspicuously absent in Aristotle. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.5 | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 11239. |
| 4554 | The concept of the 'will' is just a false simplification by our understanding [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There is no such thing as 'will'; it is only a simplifying conception of understanding, as is 'matter'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §671) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche shares this view with British philosophers such as Hobbes and Bernard Williams. So what is the ontological status of the 'will to power'? |
| 4552 | There is no such things a pure 'willing' on its own; the aim must always be part of it [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There is no such thing as 'willing', but only willing something: one must not remove the aim from the total condition - as epistemologists do. 'Willing' as they understand it is as little a reality as 'thinking': it is a pure fiction. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §668) | |
| A reaction: This is parallel to the common modern assertion that emotions also have intentional content, and cannot be understood as having a 'pure' identity. |
| 4521 | None of the ancients had the courage to deny morality by denying free will [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Not one of the ancient philosophers had the courage for a theory of the 'unfree will' (i.e. for a theory that denies morality). | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §428) | |
| A reaction: The ancients were struck by fate, and by the elusiveness of truth, and Heraclitus said that "character is fate". But Nietzsche seems basically correct. |
| 4496 | 'Conscience' is invented to value actions by intention and conformity to 'law', rather than consequences [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: "Conscience" was created as an inner voice which does not measure the value of every action with regard to its consequences, but with regard to its intention, and the degree to which this intention conforms with the "laws". | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §141) | |
| A reaction: The idea of conscience does seem to preserve moral authority in the absence of gods, but intentions need not only be judged by their obedience to laws. |
| 6559 | Aristotle never actually says that man is a rational animal [Aristotle, by Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: To the best of my knowledge (and somewhat to my surprise), Aristotle never actually says that man is a rational animal; however, he all but says it. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: When I read this I thought that this database would prove Fogelin wrong, but it actually supports him, as I can't find it in Aristotle either. Descartes refers to it in Med.Two. In Idea 5133 Aristotle does say that man is a 'social being'. But 22586! |
| 20136 | There is an extended logic to a great man's life, achieved by a sustained will [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There is a logic in all of a great man's activities, hard to survey because of its length .... he has the ability to extend his will across great stretches of his life. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §962 (1885)) | |
| A reaction: This looks very close to Nietzsche's moral ideal - that one creates a life in impeccable taste, like a great work of art, by deliberately training one's nature, like a gardener. He talks of it as having 'style' in character. |
| 20358 | The highest man can endure and control the greatest combination of powerful drives [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The highest man has the greatest multiplicity of drives, in the relatively greatest strength that can be endured. Indeed, when the plant 'man' shows himself strongest one finds instincts that conflict powerfully (e.g. in Shakespeare), but are controlled. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §966) | |
| A reaction: Are there some people, perhaps in mental hospitals, who cannot endure or control such things? Do these people have some drives which the rest of us never experience? Do good people only have good drives? |
| 20369 | The highest man directs the values of the highest natures over millenia [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: He who determines values and directs the will of millenia by giving direction to the highest natures is the highest man. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §999) | |
| A reaction: The second half is the interesting bit. If Ghengis Khan inspires hordes to commit massacres, he certainly creates values, but he hasn't inspired highest natures. So who inspires highest natures? Who are the role models of role models? |
| 4506 | There is a conspiracy (a will to power) to make morality dominate other values, like knowledge and art [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Whose will to power is morality? - Since Socrates there has been a sustained attempt to make moral values dominate over other values, so that they guide living, but also knowledge, the arts, and political and social endeavour. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §274) | |
| A reaction: Is the 'will to power' really an explanation? If all human activity is the will to power, then you have to explain the difference between activities. Genocide and altruism are strikingly different manifestations of the will to power. |
| 4514 | The basic tendency of the weak has always been to pull down the strong, using morality [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The basic tendency of the weak and mediocre of all ages is to weaken and pull down the stronger: chief means, the moral judgement. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §345) | |
| A reaction: Obviously this contains some truth. Morality is a vast trade union movement by means of which the weak seek power and security. And good luck to them, I say. Why is mass power any worse than aristocratic or oligarchic power? |
| 20370 | All evaluation is from some perspective, and aims at survival [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: All evaluation is made from a definite perspective: that of the preservation of the individual, a community, a race, a state, a church, a faith, a culture. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §259) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be a tension over the source of values in Nietzsche. Are they the individualistic visions of an übermensch, or do they arise from the collective pressures of one of these social groups? I suspec that his answer tries to combine them. |
| 20354 | The ruling drives of our culture all want to be the highest court of our values [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What is common to all [the artistic, scientific, religious and moral views]: the ruling drives want to be viewed also as the highest courts of value in general, indeed as creative and ruling powers. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §677) | |
| A reaction: An interesting question is whether those four socially dominant forces could reach a consensus on a core of values. And also which value held by one of the groups is viewed as crazy by the other three. |
| 4505 | How can it be that I should prefer my neighbour to myself, but he should prefer me to himself? [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What does it mean that the welfare of my neighbour ought to possess for me a higher value than my own? But that my neighbour ought to subordinate his welfare to my welfare? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §269) | |
| A reaction: Interestingly, this is Nietzsche using a Kantian tool to criticise Christian morality. He is pointing out a logical inconsistency. It seems to me an excellent question, though Christians could say it is benignly circular. The most benign circle possible. |
| 4509 | Utilitarians prefer consequences because intentions are unknowable - but so are consequences! [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Utilitarians say actions must be judged by consequences, because it is impossible to know the origins. But one only knows the consequences about five steps ahead, and who knows what an action can stimulate, excite, provoke? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §291) | |
| A reaction: The utilitarian slogan seems to be 'do your best', but that could apply equally to intentions and consequences. Nietzsche seems to offer nothing to compensate us for our massive ignorance. Nihilism. |
| 4500 | It is a sign of degeneration when eudaimonistic values begin to prevail [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It is a sign of degeneration when eudaemonistic valuations begin to prevail (physiological fatigue, feebleness of the will). | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §222) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle's analysis of eudaimonia says that it is only achievable through action, and he considers consequences to be an essential part of an action. Surely hedonism is more degenerate than aiming at all-round success in life? |
| 4558 | We have no more right to 'happiness' than worms [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One has no right to 'happiness': the individual human being is in precisely the same case as the lowest worm. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §759) | |
| A reaction: This seems an obvious truth, but nicely made clear. It is, I suppose, aimed at Christians and socialists. |
| 4550 | Pleasure and pain are mere epiphenomena, and achievement requires that one desire both [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Brave and creative men never consider pleasure and pain as ultimate values - they are epiphenomena: one must desire both if one is to achieve anything. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §579) | |
| A reaction: I am struggling with the notion that I must desire pain if I am ambitious, but to label these feeling 'epiphenomena' is challenging and plausible. I certainly deny that they have intrinsic value, which is a matter of judgement, not feeling. |
| 4518 | The question about egoism is: what kind of ego? since not all egos are equal [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Egoism! But no one has yet asked: what kind of ego? On the contrary, everyone unconsciously thinks every ego equal to every other ego. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §364) | |
| A reaction: The implication, I presume, is that you should be egoistic if you have a really excellent ego, but very altruistic if you are a loser. Or a slave. Or a monk. |
| 4519 | The ego is only a fiction, and doesn't exist at all [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The 'subject' is only a fiction: the ego of which one speaks when one censures egoism does not exist at all. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §370) | |
| A reaction: This is the true Nietzsche, the nihilistic relativist. On optimistic days he thought some people had quivering dynamic egoes, to which they apparently owe duties, as one might to a great talent with which one was born. |
| 4517 | Egoism is inescapable, and when it grows weak, the power of love also grows weak [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There cannot be anything other than egoism; in men whose ego is weak and thin the power of great love also grows weak. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §362) | |
| A reaction: We have captured this now in the popular psychological notion of 'low self-esteem', which blights a persons behaviour. It runs counter to the Christian ideal of self-effacing altruism. |
| 4560 | The Golden Rule prohibits harmful actions, with the premise that actions will be requited [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The rule 'do nothing that ought not to be done to you' prohibits actions on account of their harmful consequences: the concealed premise is that an action will always be requited. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §925) | |
| A reaction: Indeed it seems to be a slogan for contractarians, though I don't see why you shouldn't be influenced by the thought that there might be reciprocation, even if you don't expect it. |
| 4555 | The great error is to think that happiness derives from virtue, which in turn derives from free will [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The tremendous rat's tail of errors that has hitherto counted as the highest inspiration of humanity: 'All happiness is a consequence of virtue, all virtue is a consequence of free will!' | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §705) | |
| A reaction: A nice suggestion about the hidden agenda of Greek and Christian philosophy. If one began to doubt free will, where would that leave Socrates and Aristotle? |
| 4494 | Not "return to nature", for there has never yet been a natural humanity [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Not "return to nature", for there has never yet been a natural humanity. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §120) | |
| A reaction: I like that. The notion of dividing humanity into natural and unnatural makes me uneasy (and certainly isn't PC), and yet us all having to be 'natural' seems a conservative straight-jacket. |
| 4498 | 'Love your enemy' is unnatural, for the natural law says 'love your neighbour and hate your enemy' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One drives nature out of morality when one say "love your enemies": for then the natural "Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thy enemy" in the law (in instinct) has become meaningless. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §204) | |
| A reaction: When the stoics said 'live according to nature' they meant according to reason, which presumably compromises with enemies. Profoundly Christian acts may be unnatural, but they are very moving. |
| 4493 | Be natural! But how, if one happens to be "unnatural"? [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Be natural! But how, if one happens to be "unnatural"? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §066) | |
| A reaction: Quite so, though Nietzsche isn't the person to offer a solution. Choose the route of Aristotle ('normal' human function), or Kant (escape from nature into reason). |
| 4511 | We would avoid a person who always needed reasons for remaining decent [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It would arouse doubts in us concerning a man if we heard he needed reasons for remaining decent: certainly, we would avoid him. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §313) | |
| A reaction: This is a perfect slogan for virtue theory, and so rather surprising coming from Nietzsche. And 'decent' isn't a great Nietzsche value (though he WAS a very decent man). |
| 4512 | Virtue is pursued from self-interest and prudence, and reduces people to non-entities [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Above all, gentlemen of virtue, you are not our superiors: it is a miserable self-interest and prudence that suggests virtue to you. If you had more strength and courage you would not reduce yourselves to virtuous nonentities in this way. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §318) | |
| A reaction: It is certainly true that virtue is about self-interest, and also that it tends to be rather conservative. But we recognise the virtues of adventure and risk. |
| 20372 | The instinct of the herd, the majority, aims for the mean, in the middle [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The instinct of the herd considers the middle and the mean as the highest and most valuable: the place where the majority finds itself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §280) | |
| A reaction: The reason, I think, for Nietzsche's hostility to Aristotle. But the doctrine of the mean doesn't just seek the middle. It seeks what is appropriate. The mean for bravery and cowardice is not somewhat timid bravery; it is alarmingly brave, but sensible. |
| 4510 | A path to power: to introduce a new virtue under the name of an old one [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: A path to power: to introduce a new virtue under the name of an old one. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §310) | |
| A reaction: A nicely wicked Nietzschean suggestion. One doesn't replace altruism, one 'reinterprets' it. Or democracy. Or 'true' courage. |
| 4515 | Modesty, industriousness, benevolence and temperance are the virtues of a good slave [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Modest, industrious, benevolent, temperate: is that how you would have men? good men? But to me that seems only the ideal slave, the slave of the future. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §356) | |
| A reaction: An extremely good critical observation on virtue theory. Start from scratch, and list the virtues you would want in a good slave. |
| 4516 | Many virtues are merely restraints on the most creative qualities of a human being [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Industry, modesty, benevolence, temperance are just so many hindrances to a sovereign disposition, great inventiveness, heroic purposiveness, noble being-for-oneself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §358) | |
| A reaction: The traditional virtues here are reasonably precise and clear, but Nietzsche's preferred virtues are vague, and open to bizarre interpretations. One foresees a bunch of obsessive arrogant fools trying to live up to Nietzsche's ideal. |
| 4559 | When powerless one desires freedom; if power is too weak, one desires equal power ('justice') [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One desires freedom as long as one does not possess power. Once one does possess it, one desires to overpower; if one cannot do that (if one is too weak), one desires 'justice', i.e. equal power. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §784) | |
| A reaction: Personally I hope the Martians have freedom and justice, but that is presumably just a sublimation. People have given up power for freedom and justice. |
| 4557 | The supposed great lovers of honour (Alexander etc) were actually great despisers of honour [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The type of the ambitious man who thirsts after honour is supposed to be Napoleon, or Caesar, or Alexander! As if these were not precisely the great despisers of honour! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §751) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure how Nietzsche knows this, but it sounds right. Great success comes from total focus on the end, not on incidental rewards. |
| 4507 | The categorical imperative needs either God behind it, or a metaphysic of the unity of reason [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One needed God as an unconditional sanction, as a 'categorical imperative'; or, if one believed in the authority of reason, one needed a metaphysic of unity, by virtue of which this was logical. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §275) | |
| A reaction: I am not sure what a 'metaphysic of unity' is, but this still captures the problem with Kant. The categorical imperative is purely formal, and will justify consistent principles of pain and destruction, without some value to get it off the ground. |
| 4501 | Utilitarianism criticises the origins of morality, but still believes in it as much as Christians [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Utilitarianism (socialism, democracy) criticises the origins of moral evaluations, but it believes them just as much as the Christian does. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §253) | |
| A reaction: It is a critique of both utilitarianism and Kantian deontology that they seem to rest on unquestioned assumptions about what has value (pleasure, happiness, reason). I think Aristotle offers a better answer to this problem than 'divine' authority. |
| 4489 | If faith is lost, people seek other authorities, in order to avoid the risk of willing personal goals [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Having unlearned faith, one still seeks another authority (in conscience, or reason, or social instinct, or history); one wants to get around the will, the willing of a goal, the risk of positing a goal for oneself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §020) | |
| A reaction: But what goal should you risk willing, and why? And what limits my goals? What is the hallmark of a healthy goal, or good taste in goals, or whatever it is Nietzsche aspires to? |
| 4513 | Virtuous people are inferior because they are not 'persons', but conform to a fixed pattern [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: A virtuous man is a lower species because he is not a "person" but acquires his value by conforming to a pattern of man that is fixed once and for all. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §319) | |
| A reaction: A penetrating critque of virtue theory. If, even now, we are trying to conform to Aristotle's model, that is VERY conservative. The obliteration of individual identity is also a charge against Kant and Bentham. Virtues are more flexible than rules. |
| 4504 | Morality used to be for preservation, but now we can only experiment, giving ourselves moral goals [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Formerly one employed morality for preservation: but nobody wants to preserve any longer, there is nothing to preserve. Therefore an experimental morality: to give oneself a goal. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §260) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as the essence of Nietzsche, and the relativist position. Exciting and dangerous. Let's kill someone (Gide). Take drugs (Manson). Betray friends (Genet). Be altruistic…? |
| 4495 | The high points of culture and civilization do not coincide [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The high points of culture and civilization do not coincide. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §121) | |
| A reaction: Intriguing. What can Nietzsche have meant by 'civilization'? Certainly not the English utilitarian ideal. He probably means aristocrats running slaves… |
| 4491 | In modern society virtue is 'equal rights', but only because everyone is zero, so it is a sum of zeroes [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Our entire sociology simply does not know any other instinct than that of the herd, i.e. that of the sum of zeroes - where every zero has "equal rights", where it is virtuous to be zero. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §053) | |
| A reaction: I see his point, but all social arrangements are a trade-off. It would be quite exciting if warlike aristocrats dragged us into massive conquest, but nuclear weapons seem to have ruined that game. |
| 11150 | It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it. | |
| From: Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) | |
| A reaction: The epigraph on a David Chalmers website. A wonderful remark, and it should be on the wall of every beginners' philosophy class. However, while it is in the spirit of Aristotle, it appears to be a misattribution with no ancient provenance. |
| 3037 | Aristotle said the educated were superior to the uneducated as the living are to the dead [Aristotle, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle was asked how much educated men were superior to those uneducated; "As much," he said, "as the living are to the dead." | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 05.1.11 |
| 8660 | There are potential infinities (never running out), but actual infinity is incoherent [Aristotle, by Friend] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle developed his own distinction between potential infinity (never running out) and actual infinity (there being a collection of an actual infinite number of things, such as places, times, objects). He decided that actual infinity was incoherent. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Michčle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics 1.3 | |
| A reaction: Friend argues, plausibly, that this won't do, since potential infinity doesn't make much sense if there is not an actual infinity of things to supply the demand. It seems to just illustrate how boggling and uncongenial infinity was to Aristotle. |
| 12058 | Aristotle's matter can become any other kind of matter [Aristotle, by Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's conception of matter permits any kind of matter to become any other kind of matter. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Wiggins - Substance 4.11.2 | |
| A reaction: This is obviously crucial background information when we read Aristotle on matter. Our 92+ elements, and fixed fundamental particles, gives a quite different picture. Aristotle would discuss form and matter quite differently now. |
| 4542 | Science has taken the meaning out of causation; cause and effect are two equal sides of an equation [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Science has emptied the concept of causality of its content and retained it as a formula of an equation, in which it has become at bottom a matter of indifference on which side cause is placed and on which side effect. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §551) | |
| A reaction: What a perceptive remark in the nineteenth century. Science is notoriously uninterested in the direction of time, and such a symmetry seems to make the concept of causation redundant. |
| 4553 | We derive the popular belief in cause and effect from our belief that our free will causes things [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The popular belief in cause and effect is founded on the presupposition that free will is the cause of every effect: it is only from this that we derive the feeling of causality. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §667) | |
| A reaction: It may be that our first experiences of causation involve the wil, though I don't see why babies shouldn't also observe. Nietzsche is muddling the epistemology with the ontology. |
| 21581 | We never experience times, but only succession of events [Russell] |
| Full Idea: There is no reason in experience to suppose that there are times as opposed to events: the events, ordered by the relations of simultaneity and succession, are all that experience provides. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 4) | |
| A reaction: We experience events, but also have quite an accurate sense of how much time has passed during the occurrence of events. If asked how much time has lapsed, why don't we say '32 events'? How do we distinguish long events from short ones? |
| 4535 | A 'species' is a stable phase of evolution, implying the false notion that evolution has a goal [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: When a 'species' appears, it is a phase in which evolution is not visible, so an equilibrium seems to have been attained, making possible the false notion that a goal has been attained, and that evolution has a goal. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §521) | |
| A reaction: A penetrating explanation of a crucial that won't go away, and that still grips people's minds. Even if we all want a particular goal, evolution will ignore our dreams and go another way. |
| 4497 | The concept of 'God' represents a turning away from life, and a critique of life [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The concept 'God' represents a turning away from life, a critique of life, even a contempt for it. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §141) | |
| A reaction: Clearly Nietzsche has the same view of Platonism, and any view which aspires to 'higher' things, and views humans as being potentially divine (even Aristotle's dream of pure 'contemplation'). |
| 4488 | Those who have abandoned God cling that much more firmly to the faith in morality [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Those who have abandoned God cling that much more firmly to the faith in morality. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §018) | |
| A reaction: A nice remark. The interesting implication is that theists do NOT cling so strongly to morality (perhaps because they hope for mercy, or ultimate justice). |
| 4502 | Morality cannot survive when the God who sanctions it is missing [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Morality cannot survive when the God who sanctions it is missing! The "beyond" is absolutely necessary if faith in morality is to be maintained. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §253) | |
| A reaction: It strikes me that Nietzsche is self-evidently wrong. We must ask why people hang on to moral absolutes after they lose religious faith. Nietzsche seems to think it is a comfort blanket. But he admits the contractarian origins of morality. |
| 22729 | The concepts of gods arose from observing the soul, and the cosmos [Aristotle, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle said that the conception of gods arose among mankind from two originating causes, namely from events which concern the soul and from celestial phenomena. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE], Frag 10) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Physicists (two books) I.20 | |
| A reaction: The cosmos suggests order, and possible creation. What do events of the soul suggest? It doesn't seem to be its non-physical nature, because Aristotle is more of a functionalist. Puzzling. (It says later that gods are like the soul). |
| 4499 | Primitive Christianity is abolition of the state; it is opposed to defence, justice, patriotism and class [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Primitive Christianity is abolition of the state: it forbids oaths, war service, courts of justice, defence of self or community, the distinction between citizens and foreigners, and differences of class. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §207) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. This tension is still in Christianity, and permeates international socialism movements. But then Diogenes the Cynic said he was a citizen of the world. |