77 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. |
| 20262 | Don't use wisdom in order to become clever! [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One ought not to use one's wisdom to become clever! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 308) | |
| A reaction: And I would add 'don't think that being clever makes you wise'. Nietzsche, as always, is subtler than me (which is why I read him a lot). Presumably wisdom is broad, and cleverness is focused. Will becoming clever spoil someone's wisdom? |
| 20255 | Early 19th century German philosophers enjoyed concepts, rather than scientific explanations [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Early 19th century German philosophers retreated to the first and oldest level of speculation, for, like the thinkers of dreamy ages, they found satisfaction in concepts rather than in explanations - they resuscitated a prescientific type of philosophy. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 197) | |
| A reaction: I have a suspicion that this may still apply to 'continental philosophy'. Personally I love explanations, which lead to understanding. But not all explanations are scientific. |
| 20260 | Carlyle spent his life vainly trying to make reason appear romantic [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Thomas Carlyle spent a long life trying to make reason romantic to his fellow Englishmen: to no avail! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 298) | |
| A reaction: An interesting gloss on the shift from the Enlightenment to the Romantic era. Presumably the idea of the 'genius' and the 'hero' are the means whereby Carlyle hoped to achive this. |
| 20256 | What we think is totally dictated by the language available to express it [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We have at every moment only that very thought for which we have ready to hand the words that are roughly capable of expressing it. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 257) | |
| A reaction: This is a highly influential idea, even if this expression of it is little known. Everyone who places language at the centre of philosophy believes something like this. It is a very striking thought, and must certainly contain considerable truth. |
| 20265 | The desire for a complete system requires making the weak parts look equal to the rest [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There is playacting going on among systematisers: inasmuch as they want to make the system whole and round off the horizon around it, they must attempt to have their weaker qualities appear in the same style as their strong ones. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 318) | |
| A reaction: Filed under 'rationalism', because they are the notorious system builders, but the same tendency and problem can be seen to some extent among empiricsts who seek completeness. David Lewis, perhaps. |
| 21962 | Metaphysics is the roots of the tree of science [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: The whole of philosophy is like a tree. The roots are metaphysics, the trunk is physics, and the branches emerging from the trunk are all the other sciences. | |
| From: René Descartes (Preface to 'Principles of Philosophy' [1647]), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 01.2 | |
| A reaction: If Descartes had not believed this he would not have bothered with metaphysics, and philosophy might have been dead by 1650. |
| 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 |
| 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? |
| 3659 | I know the truth that God exists and is the author of truth [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: I have very clearly deduced the following truths, that there is a God who is the author of all that is in the world, and who is the source of all truth. | |
| From: René Descartes (Preface to 'Principles of Philosophy' [1647], p.180) |
| 20380 | Why should truth be omnipotent? It is enough that it is very powerful [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I have no idea why the dictatorship and omnipotence of truth would be desirable; it's sufficient for me that it has great power. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], §507) | |
| A reaction: I once heard a philosopher (at Essex University) assert that truth is the only value, which was interesting. Nietzsche actually wants to endorse the value of lies and deceptions, like the 'noble lie' in Plato's Republic. |
| 20235 | Like animals, we seek truth because we want safety [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Even that nose for truth, which is, at bottom, the nose for safety, human beings have in common with animals. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 026) | |
| A reaction: After Darwin, Nietzsche immediately saw that we need an account of humanity which is continuous with animals. The first step to physical security is ascertaining the physical facts. This idea rings true. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 20258 | Most people treat knowledge as a private possession [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Most people take a thing they know under their protection, as if knowing it turned it into their possession. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 285) | |
| A reaction: A typically wicked and subtle remark. This presumably makes knowledge part of the will to power, with which Francis Bacon would presumably agree. |
| 3657 | Understanding, not the senses, gives certainty [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Certainty is not in the sense but in the understanding alone, when it has evident perceptions. | |
| From: René Descartes (Preface to 'Principles of Philosophy' [1647], p.177) |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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). |
| 20250 | We may be unable to remember, but we may never actually forget [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It has yet to be proven that there is such a thing as forgetting; all we know is that the act of remembering is not within our power. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 126) | |
| A reaction: There is some evidence for this. We forget innumerable people, but then find that we recognise them if we meet them many years later. Anecdotes report very ancient memories suddenly surfacing. |
| 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 |
| 20270 | There is no one scientific method; we must try many approaches, and many emotions [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There is no one and only scientific method that leads to knowledge. We must proceed experimentally with things, be sometimes angry, sometimes affectionate towards them, and allow justice, passion, and coldness to follow one upon another. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 432) | |
| A reaction: Alexander Bird says the same thing in our time. I agree, but I think there is a core of controlled conditions and peer review. |
| 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. |
| 20131 | We can cultivate our drives, of anger, pity, curiosity, vanity, like a gardener, with good or bad taste [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One can dispose of one's drives like a gardener and, though few know it, cultivate the shoots of anger, pity, curiosity, vanity as productively and profitably as a beautiful fruit tree on a trellis; one can do it with the good or bad taste of a gardener. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 560) | |
| A reaction: This sort of existentialism I find very appealing. You take what you are given, the cards you are dealt, and try to make something nice out of it. This is quite different from the crazy freedom of later existentialists. |
| 20242 | Things are the boundaries of humanity, so all things must be known, for self-knowledge [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Only when the human being has finally attained knowledge of all things will he have known himself. For things are merely the boundaries of the human being. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 048) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a rather externalist view of the mind. If philosophy aims to disentangle mind from world then good knowledge of the world seems to be required. |
| 20249 | Our knowledge of the many drives that constitute us is hopelessly incomplete [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: No matter how hard a person struggles for self-knowledge, nothing can be more incomplete than the image of all the drives taken together than constitute his being. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 119) | |
| A reaction: This gives the concept of personal identity that arises from the (later) doctrine of the 'will to power'. It is a bundle view of the self, but a bundle of drives rather than of percepts and mental events. His view is close to Hume's. |
| 20231 | People used to think that outcomes were from God, rather than consequences of acts [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: People used to believe that the outcome of an action was not a consequence, but an independent, supplemental ingredient, namely God's. Is a greater confusion conceivable? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 012) | |
| A reaction: Not sure how well documented or accurate this is, but Nietzsche was a great scholar, and it would explain the fatalism that runs through many older forms of society. |
| 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. |
| 20266 | It is essential that wise people learn to express their wisdom, possibly even as foolishness [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It is not yet enough to prove a thing, one must seduce people to accept it or raise them up to it. That is why a knowledgeable person ought to learn to speak his wisdom: and often in such a way that it sounds like foolishness. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 330) | |
| A reaction: Kant comes to mind. He has needed endless exegesis by people who write better than him. Have there been even greater philosophers who couldn't express their wisdom at all? Cratylus, perhaps! |
| 20251 | Actions done for a purpose are least understood, because we complacently think it's obvious [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Of all actions, the ones least understood are those undertaken for a purpose, no doubt because they have always passed for the most intelligible and are to our way of thinking the most commonplace. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 127) | |
| A reaction: You feel that Nietzsche is right about our stupendous lack of of self-knowledge, but then a bit of a panic ensues, because it is not clear what you are supposed to do about anything, particularly if we don't know why anyone else does anything. |
| 20271 | Beauty in art is the imitation of happiness [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: By beauty in art one always understands imitation of happiness. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 433) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure how one goes about imitating happiness. One can replicate things that make us happy, like a nice landscape. But some beauty in art is also novel, and produces a new sort of happiness. Kandinsky. |
| 20230 | The very idea of a critique of morality is regarded as immoral! [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Even to think of criticising morality, to consider morality as a problem, as problematic: what? was that not - is that not - immoral? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], Pref 3) | |
| A reaction: Offering critiques of the value of morality and of truth are perhaps Nietzsche's greatest achievements. |
| 20234 | Morality prevents us from developing better customs [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Morality acts to prevent the rise of new and better mores: it stupefies. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 019) | |
| A reaction: Note that he wants 'better' customs, and not just different ones. So the deep question concerns the criteria for why some customs are better. He seems to want us to fulfil our natures more completely. Arts, sciences, great deeds... |
| 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! |
| 20237 | Moral feelings are entirely different from the moral concepts used to judge actions [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The history of moral feeling is completely different from the history of moral concepts. The former are powerful before, the latter especially after an action in view of the compulsion to pronounce upon it. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 034) | |
| A reaction: I think he places the feelings in our animal origins, and the concepts in rather unnatural cultures. |
| 20238 | Treating morality as feelings is just obeying your ancestors [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: To trust your feelings - that means obeying your grandfather and your grandmother and their grandparents more than the gods in us: our reason and our experience. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 035) | |
| A reaction: He says prior to this that feelings are just an inheritance, not our true natures. Stoics said 'live according to nature', by which they meant 'live by reason', because that is our true nature. |
| 20243 | Human beings are not majestic, either through divine origins, or through grand aims [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Formerly one tried to get a feel for the majesty of human beings by pointing backward toward their divine descent: this has now become a forbidden path. ...So now the path humanity pursues is proof of its majesty. Alas, this too leads nowhere! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 049) | |
| A reaction: I love the breadth of Nietzsche's vision, both across history, and in the great scheme. He goes on to say that we are no more a 'higher order' than ants and earwigs. |
| 20268 | Most dying people have probably lost more important things than what they are about to lose [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The act of dying is not as significant as the universal awe of it would have us believe, and the dying person has probably lost more important things in life than he is now about to lose. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 349) | |
| A reaction: He says this is a thought about death which we tend to repress. It would depend on the life, I should think, but it is probably right in very many cases. |
| 20252 | Marriage is too serious to be permitted for people in love! [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Lovers' vows ought to be publicly declared invalid and marriage denied the pair: and indeed precisely because one ought to take marriage unspeakably more seriously! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 151) | |
| A reaction: Sounds like the traditional aristocratic attitude to marriage, so the idea suits Nietzsche. I think that nowadays it is much wiser to be base proposal of marriage on friendship than on love. You are choosing a life-long friend, not someone to adore. |
| 20236 | Marriage upholds the idea that love, though a passion, can endure [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The institution of marriage stubbornly upholds the belief that love, though a passion, is, as such, capable of duration. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 027) | |
| A reaction: No wonder Nietzsche never married. Women must have been terrified of him, when he came out with this sort of remark. I doubt whether many couples who are celebrating their golden wedding would agree with him. [1/5/2017] |
| 20263 | Fear reveals the natures of other people much more clearly than love does [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Fear has furthered the universal knowledge of humanity more than love, for fear wants to discern who the other person is, what he can do and what he wants. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 309) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche had it in for love at this stage in his career. This remark strikes me as brilliantly accurate. |
| 20233 | Punishment has distorted the pure innocence of the contingency of outcomes [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: With this infamous art of interpreting the concept of punishment, people have robbed of its innocence the whole, pure contingency of events. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 013) | |
| A reaction: What a wonderfully subtle observation about moral luck! That whole problem is driven by the issue of whether the agent should be punished. When a chain of errors leads to disaster, we may see many innocent people doing a collective evil. |
| 20248 | People do nothing for their real ego, but only for a phantom ego created by other people [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Whatever they say about their 'egotism', people nevertheless do nothing their whole life long for their ego, but instead for the phantom ego that has formed in the heads around them and been communicated to them. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 105) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche has a vision of true devotion to the ego as healthy, and so (I would say) does Aristotle, though the two might disagree about the details. I want to live among people who work on themselves, not those who always sacrifice themselves. |
| 20246 | If you feel to others as they feel to themselves, you must hate a self-hater [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Supposing we felt toward someone else as that person feels about himself, then we would have to hate him if he (like Pascal) found himself hateful. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 063) | |
| A reaction: And how does the Golden Rule work if the other people feel suicidal (as groups sometimes do)? |
| 20272 | Honesty is a new young virtue, and we can promote it, or not [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Among neither the Socratic nor the Christian virtues does honesty appear: it is one of the youngest virtues, still quite immature. ...We can advance it or retard it, as we see fit. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 456) | |
| A reaction: I associate the virtue of honesty with the cult of sincerity of feelings which arose in the romantic movement. |
| 20240 | The Jews treated great anger as holy, and were in awe of those who expressed it [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The Jews felt differently about wrath than we do and decreed it holy; in return, they, as a people, viewed the foreboding majesty of the individual with whom wrath showed itself connected, at a height at which a European is incapable of imagining. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 038) | |
| A reaction: If you thought wrath was really wonderful then presumably you would aspire to partake of it, but I see no signs of the Jews having been an especially wrathful people. It sounds like the tantrums of Tudor monarchs, which was their royal privilege. |
| 20244 | Christianity replaces rational philosophical virtues with great passions focused on God [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Christianity disallows all moral value to the virtue of philosophers - the triumph of reason over affects - and demands that affects reveal themselves in splendour, as love of God, fear before God, fanatical faith in God, and blindest hope in God. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 058) | |
| A reaction: Faith, hope and charity are the three great Christian virtues that were added to the four cardinal virtues of the Greeks. |
| 20274 | The cardinal virtues want us to be honest, brave, magnanimous and polite [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Honest towards ourselves and whatever else is our friend; courageous toward the enemy; magnanimous toward the defeated; polite - always. This is how the four cardinal virtues want us to be. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 556) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be Nietzsche genuinely asserting his four cardinal virtues, rather than being ironic. He certainly asserts politeness as the fourth virtue earlier in the book. Cf a different list in Idea 20382 |
| 20257 | Cool courage and feverish bravery have one name, but are two very different virtues [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Courage as cold bravery and imperturbability, and courage as feverish, half-blind bravura - one calls both of these things by the same name! How different are the cold virtues from the warm ones! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 277) | |
| A reaction: How few philosophers are capable of making a subtle but accurate observation like this! How many other virtues should be subdivided? |
| 20259 | Teach youth to respect people who differ with them, not people who agree with them [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The surest way to ruin a youth is by teaching him to respect those who think like him more highly than those who think differently. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 297) | |
| A reaction: On the whole I prefer to read the philosophers who seem to be on my side, because I am trying to strengthen my explanation of the world, and opponents aren't much help. I do read opponents, if they explicitly challenge what I defend. |
| 20267 | Seeing duty as a burden makes it a bit cruel, and it can thus never become a habit [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: To require that duty always be somewhat burdensome - as Kant does - amounts to acquiring that it never become habit and custom: in this requirement there linger a tiny remnant of ascetic cruelty. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 339) | |
| A reaction: Habit, of course, is the ideal of Aristotelian virtue. |
| 20275 | Most people think they are already complete, but we can cultivate ourselves [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We are free to handle and cultivate our drives like a gardener ...but how many people know we are free to do this? Don't most people believe in themselves as completed, full grown up facts? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 560) | |
| A reaction: I see Nietzsche as an existentialist philosopher. He is much more than that, but this quotation endorses what I take to be the central idea of existentialism. |
| 20229 | No authority ever willingly accepts criticism [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: As long as the world has existed, no authority has ever willingly permitted itself to become the object of critique. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], Pref 3) | |
| A reaction: A political remark, but it leads into speaking of conventional morality as just such an authority. Nowadays teachers have feedback forms, and leaders have to endure party conferences. But on the whole it remains true. |
| 20254 | People govern for the pleasure of it, or just to avoid being governed [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Some govern out of pleasure in governing, others in order not to be governed - to the latter, governing is merely the lesser of two evils. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 181) | |
| A reaction: Our current society is full of self-employed people whose major motivation is to avoid being employees. |
| 20273 | The French Revolution gave trusting Europe the false delusion of instant recovery [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The 'Great Revolution' [in France] was nothing more than a pathetic and bloody quackery, which understood how, through sudden crises, to supply a trusting Europe with the sudden hope of recovery. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 534) | |
| A reaction: Whenever a new leader comes into power there is the same honeymoon period, where dreams of salvation have a moment in the sun. |
| 20232 | Get rid of the idea of punishment! It is a noxious weed! [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: People of diligence and goodwill, lend a hand in the one work of eradicating from the face of the earth the concept of punishment, which has overrun the whole world! There is no more noxious weed! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 013) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche never tried his hand at school teaching or parenting or running a youth club. But I still love this idea. In really good families I suspect that punishment is almost unknown. |
| 20253 | Modern wars arise from the study of history [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The great wars of our day are the effects of the study of history. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 180) | |
| A reaction: The Prussians reacted to Napoleon. The Nazis reacted to Versailles. But now the study of history reveals to us dreadful wars based on simplistic accounts of history. Be wise about history, not ignorant of it. |
| 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 |
| 20261 | History does not concern what really happened, but supposed events, which have all the influence [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The writer of history deals not with what really happened but merely with supposed events, for only the latter have had an effect. ...All historians speak of things that have never existed except in imagination. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 307) | |
| A reaction: This seems blatantly true, and is most obvious in the case of forged documents which have been hugely influential. Erroneous conspiracy theories are another example. (Note: only scorn conspiracy theories if you think conspiracies never happen!). |
| 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 Michèle 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. |
| 20241 | Enquirers think finding our origin is salvation, but it turns out to be dull [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Investigators of knowledge ...have regularly presupposed that the salvation of humanity depended on insight into the origin of things. ...but with insight into origin comes the increasing insignificance of origin. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 044) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like the etymological fallacy, of thinking that the origin of a word gives you a true grasp of its meaning. |
| 3660 | Atheism arises from empiricism, because God is intangible [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: The existence of God has been doubted by some, because they attributed too much to the perceptions of the senses, and God can be neither seen nor touched. | |
| From: René Descartes (Preface to 'Principles of Philosophy' [1647], p.180) |
| 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). |
| 20245 | Christianity hoped for a short cut to perfection, that skipped the hard labour of morality [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: You can say what you like: Christianity wanted to liberate humanity from the burden of the demands of morality by pointing out a shorter way to perfection, or so it believed. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 059) | |
| A reaction: This conjures up Graham Greene's Catholic heroes, who wallow in sin, but hope for salvation at the last moment. |
| 20247 | Christianity was successful because of its heathen rituals [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Not what is Christian in it, rather the universal heathenism of its rituals is the reason for the propagation of this world religion. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 070) | |
| A reaction: I'm afraid I think this is right. I grew up bewildered by the lack of content in the rituals of church services. Even austere protestants manage to sing and recite. Maybe philosophies should do this - wanted: new Cartesian and Kantian rituals! |
| 20269 | 'I believe because it is absurd' - but how about 'I believe because I am absurd' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Many people have achieved the humility that says: 'I believe because it is absurd', and have sacrificed their reason for it. But no one, as far as I know, has achieved the humility, which is only one step further, of 'I believe because I am absurd'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 417) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche gives the Latin: 'credo quia absurdum est' (Tertullian), and 'credo quia absurdus sum'. It may look like an insulting remark from Nietzsche, but it is actually in tune with the spirit of the original. |
| 20264 | The easy and graceful aspects of a person are called 'soul', and inner awkwardness is called 'soulless' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The sum of inner movements that are easy for a person and that he consequently performs happily and with grace is called his 'soul'; - if inner movements obviously cause him difficulty and effort, he is considered soulless. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 311) | |
| A reaction: 'Soulless' is usually applied to people deficient in some sort of empathic feeling, or with an inability to recognise grandeur. It seems to imply that people who experience inner torture are soulless, but romantics see them as very soulful. |