13 ideas
7910 | Pursue truth with the urgency of someone whose clothes are on fire [Ashvaghosha] |
Full Idea: As though your turban or your clothes were on fire, so with a sense of urgency should you apply your intellect to the comprehension of the truths. | |
From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI) | |
A reaction: The best philosophers need no such urging. I retain a romantic view that we should be 'natural' in these things. See Plato's views in Idea 2153 and 1638. However, maybe I should be confronted with this quotation every morning when I awake. |
20771 | Six parts: dialectic, rhetoric, ethics, politics, physics, theology [Cleanthes, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Cleanthes says there are six parts: dialectic, rhetoric, ethics, politics, physics, and theology. | |
From: report of Cleanthes (fragments/reports [c.270 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.41 | |
A reaction: This was a minority view, as most stoics agreed with Zeno and Chrysippus that there are three main topics. Nowadays there is little discussion of the 'parts' of philosophy, but the recent revival of meta-philosophy should encourage it. |
1813 | All reasoning endlessly leads to further reasoning (Mode 12) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Twelfth mode: all reasoning leads on to further reasoning, and this process goes on forever. | |
From: report of Agrippa (fragments/reports [c.60]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.10 |
1811 | Proofs often presuppose the thing to be proved (Mode 15) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Fifteenth mode: proofs often presuppose the thing to be proved. | |
From: report of Agrippa (fragments/reports [c.60]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.10 |
1815 | Reasoning needs arbitrary faith in preliminary hypotheses (Mode 14) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Fourteenth mode: reasoning requires arbitrary faith in preliminary hypotheses. | |
From: report of Agrippa (fragments/reports [c.60]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.10 |
1812 | All discussion is full of uncertainty and contradiction (Mode 11) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Eleventh mode: all topics of discussion are full of uncertainty and contradiction. | |
From: report of Agrippa (fragments/reports [c.60]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.10 |
8850 | Agrippa's Trilemma: justification is infinite, or ends arbitrarily, or is circular [Agrippa, by Williams,M] |
Full Idea: Agrippa's Trilemma offers three possible outcomes for a regress of justification: the chain goes on for ever (infinite); or the chain stops at an unjustified proposition (arbitrary); or the chain eventually includes the original proposition (circular). | |
From: report of Agrippa (fragments/reports [c.60], §2) by Michael Williams - Without Immediate Justification §2 | |
A reaction: This summarises Ideas 1911, 1913 and 1914. Agrippa's Trilemma is now a standard starting point for modern discussions of foundations. Personally I reject 2, and am torn between 1 (+ social consensus) and 3 (with a benign, coherent circle). |
1814 | Everything is perceived in relation to another thing (Mode 13) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Thirteenth mode: everything is always perceived in relation to something else. | |
From: report of Agrippa (fragments/reports [c.60]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.10 |
6028 | Bodies interact with other bodies, and cuts cause pain, and shame causes blushing, so the soul is a body [Cleanthes, by Nemesius] |
Full Idea: Cleanthes says no incorporeal interacts with a body, but one body interacts with another body; the soul interacts with the body when it is sick and being cut, and the body feels shame and fear, and turns red or pale, so the soul is a body. | |
From: report of Cleanthes (fragments/reports [c.270 BCE]) by Nemesius - De Natura Hominis 78,7 | |
A reaction: This is precisely the interaction problem with dualism, or, as we might now say, the problem of mental causation. The standard Stoic view is that the soul is a sort of rarefied fire, which disperses at death. |
20831 | The soul suffers when the body hurts, creates redness from shame, and pallor from fear [Cleanthes] |
Full Idea: Nothing incorporeal shares an experience with a body …but the soul suffers with the body when it is ill and when it is cut, and the body suffers with the soul - when the soul is ashamed the body turns red, and pale when the soul is frightened. | |
From: Cleanthes (fragments/reports [c.270 BCE]), quoted by Nemesius - De Natura Hominis 2 | |
A reaction: Aha - my favourite example of the corporeal nature of the mind - blushing! It is the conscious content of the thought which brings blood to the cheeks. |
5993 | The ascending scale of living creatures requires a perfect being [Cleanthes, by Tieleman] |
Full Idea: Cleanthes tried to prove the existence of God, arguing that the ascending scale of living creatures requires there to be a perfect being. | |
From: report of Cleanthes (fragments/reports [c.270 BCE]) by Teun L. Tieleman - Cleanthes | |
A reaction: Not a very good argument. Even if you accept its basic claim, it is not clear what has to exist. A perfect tree? If the being transcends the physical (in order to achieve perfection), does it cease to be a 'being'? |
7909 | The Eightfold Path concerns morality, wisdom, and tranquillity [Ashvaghosha] |
Full Idea: The Eightfold Path has three steps concerning morality - right speech, right bodily action, and right livelihood; three of wisdom - right views, right intentions, and right effort; and two of tranquillity - right mindfulness and right concentration. | |
From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI) | |
A reaction: Most of this translates quite comfortably into the aspirations of western philosophy. For example, 'right effort' sounds like Kant's claim that only a good will is truly good (Idea 3710). The Buddhist division is interesting for action theory. |
7908 | At the end of a saint, he is not located in space, but just ceases to be disturbed [Ashvaghosha] |
Full Idea: When an accomplished saint comes to the end, he does not go anywhere down in the earth or up in the sky, nor into any of the directions of space, but because his defilements have become extinct he simply ceases to be disturbed. | |
From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI) | |
A reaction: To 'cease to be disturbed' is the most attractive account of heaven I have encountered. It all sounds a bit dull though. I wonder, as usual, how they know all this stuff. |