54 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. |
| 24084 | Seeing with other eyes is more egoism, but exploring other perspectives leads to objectivity [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Wanting to know things as they are - that alone is the good inclination: not seeing ..with other eyes; that would be merely a change of place of egoistic seeing. …Practise at seeing with other eyes, and without human relationships, hence objectively! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[013]) | |
| A reaction: That Nietzsche thinks we should try to see things objectively will come as a bit of a shock to those who have him catalogued among the relativists. It's clear from other writings that he thinks (rightly) that perfect objectivity is unattainable. |
| 24092 | I tell the truth, even if it is repulsive [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: As a man I tell the truth, even the repulsive ones. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 12[86]) | |
| A reaction: I wonder if even Nietzsche had his limits. He is quite coy about sexual matters, for example, before Freud and various sexual revolutions. To ruthlessly tell difficult truths strikes me as a scientific approach to the world. |
| 24114 | The pain in truth is when it destroys a belief [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The truth hurts because it destroys a belief: not in itself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 9[48]) | |
| A reaction: There are hideous events, about which it can be dreadful to learn the truth, but the unpleasantness is in the fact, not in the truth of the fact. So, yes. |
| 24104 | We don't create logic, time and space! The mind obeys laws because they are true [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: That which is logical, time, space would have to be produced by us: nonsense! When the mind obeys its own laws, this because they are actually true, true in themselves! …An error with respect to these truths avenges itself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[023]) | |
| A reaction: So much for those who see Nietzsche as the embodiment of relativism. This is Nietzsche standing up to what I increasingly see as the pernicious influence of Kant. I agree with Nietzsche. Relations with the world keep our logic honest. |
| 24112 | To think about being we must have an opinion about what it is [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We are in the process of figuring out the being of things: consequently we must already have an opinion as to what being is. This can be an error! E.g., I. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 9[41]) | |
| A reaction: The point of 'I' is that we unquestioningly think the self is a given aspect of being, as in Descartes. |
| 24089 | Essences are fictions needed for beings who represent things [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The true essence of things is a fiction of representing being, without which being is unable to represent. 11[330] Thinking must assert substance and identity because a knowing of complete flux is impossible. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[329]) | |
| A reaction: I have defended (in my PhD) the thesis that the concept of essence is required for explanation. Do animals need the concept of essence in order to represent? I think people and animals ascribe essential natures to most things. |
| 20189 | Belief is a feeling, independent of the will, which arises from uncontrolled and unknown causes [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Belief consists merely in a certain feeling or sentiment; in something, that depends not on the will, but must arise from certain determinate causes and principles, of which we are not master. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, + Appendix [1740], Appen p.2) | |
| A reaction: This is the opposite of Descartes' 'doxastic voluntarism' (i.e. we choose what to believe). If you want to become a Christian, steep yourself in religious literature, and the company of religious people. It will probably work. |
| 21309 | A proposition cannot be intelligible or consistent, if the perceptions are not so [Hume] |
| Full Idea: No proposition can be intelligible or consistent with regard to objects, which is not so with regard to perceptions. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, + Appendix [1740], Appendix) | |
| A reaction: An interesting variant on expressions of the empiricist principle. Presumably one can say intelligible things about Escher drawings. |
| 24115 | There is no proof that we forget things - only that we can't recall [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: That forgetting exists has never yet been demonstrated, but only that many things do not occur to us when we want them to. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 12[1]123) | |
| A reaction: There is now quite a lot of evidence that there innumerable memories buried in that mind that we seem unable to directly recall. He is right that we can hardly demonstrate this negative fact. |
| 24090 | Our inclinations would not conflict if we were a unity; we imagine unity for our multiplicity [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: How is it that we satisfy our stronger inclinations at the expense of our weaker inclinations? - In itself, if we were a unity, this split could not exist. In fact we are a multiplicity that has imagined a unity for itself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 12[35]) | |
| A reaction: Plato had the same thought, but stopped at three parts, rather than a multiplicity. What Nietzsche fails to say, I think, is that this 'imagined' unity of the mind is not optional, and obviously has a real link to the one body and the one life. |
| 15755 | Hume needs a notion which includes degrees of resemblance [Shoemaker on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Hume needs a notion of resemblance where some things resemble a given thing more than other things do, and some may resemble exactly, and some hardly at all. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, + Appendix [1740]) by Sydney Shoemaker - Causality and Properties §02 | |
| A reaction: An astute and simple point. Once you admit degrees of resemblance, of course, then resemblance probably ceases to be a primitive concept in your system, and Hume would be well stuck. |
| 5323 | Experiences are logically separate, but factually linked by simultaneity or a feeling of continuousness [Ayer on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Our experiences are logically independent, but they may be factually connected. What unites them is that either they are experienced together, or (if at separate times) they are separated by a stream of experience which is felt to be continuous. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, + Appendix [1740], Bk 3 App.) by A.J. Ayer - The Central Questions of Philosophy §VI.A | |
| A reaction: A strict empiricist cannot deny that the feeling of continuity could be false, though that invites the Cartesian question of what exactly is experiencing the delusion. Hume denies that we experience any link between simultaneous experiences. |
| 21311 | Are self and substance the same? Then how can self remain if substance changes? [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Is the self the same with substance? If it be, how can that question have place concerning the subsistence of self, under a change of substance? If they be distinct, what is the difference between them? | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, + Appendix [1740], Appendix) | |
| A reaction: Locke seems to think there is a characterless substance which supports momories, and the latter constitute the self. So if my substance acquires Nestor's memories, I become Nestor. Hume, the stricter empiricist, cares nothing for characterless things. |
| 21312 | Perceptions are distinct, so no connection between them can ever be discovered [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If perceptions are distinct existences, they form a whole only by being connected together. But no connexions among distinct existences are ever discoverable. We only feel a connexion ...to pass from one object to another. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, + Appendix [1740], Appendix) | |
| A reaction: This first part of this is a problem for any 'bundle' theory of objects or self. This is why Hume abandons all hope for his theory of personal identity based on association. You infer the associations, but don't perceive them. |
| 21308 | We have no impression of the self, and we therefore have no idea of it [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Every idea is derived from preceding impressions; and we have no impression of self or substance, as something simple and individual. We have, therefore, no idea of them in that sense. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, + Appendix [1740], Appendix) | |
| A reaction: This spells out with beautiful simplicity how his empiricist assumptions lead him to this sceptical view. No logical positivist could reject this thought. Personally I favour empiricism with added inference to the best explanation. |
| 21310 | Does an oyster with one perception have a self? Would lots of perceptions change that? [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Suppose an oyster to have only one perception, as of thirst or hunger. Do you consider any thing but merely that perception? Have you any notion of self or substance? If not, the addition of other perceptions can never give you that notion. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, + Appendix [1740], Appendix) | |
| A reaction: A splendid addition to his earlier sceptical thinking. We could form a different conclusion. Suppose I do have a self. If my multitudinous perceptions were reduced to a single perception of agonising pain, would that remove the self? |
| 24099 | We contain many minds, which fight for the 'I' of the mind [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Many minds are housed within humans like creatures of the sea - they battle one another for the mind 'I'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 4[207]) | |
| A reaction: I am happy to use the word 'I' for the sense of central control of focus and choice, but there doesn's seem to be an actual organ of the Self, so it is a fiction, but one which reflects the general picture of what happens. I can pick a drive to foster. |
| 24102 | Thoughts are signs (just as words are) [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Thoughts are merely signs, as words are signs for thoughts. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 5[1]272) | |
| A reaction: The obvious question he invites is 'signs of what?'. His point must be that most thinking is both non-verbal and non-conscious, which he took to be true even of intellectual thought. I sympathise with his view. |
| 24120 | Great orators lead their arguments, rather than following them [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: For me there are no true orators and super-orators unless they can convince the arguments themselves to run after them. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 22[01]) | |
| A reaction: I translate this as great orators generating the mere appearance of good arguments. Both reason and feeling must be irrationally swept along. Nice. |
| 24097 | The pragmatics of language is more comprehensible than the meaning [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The most comprehensible part of language is not the word itself, but rather tone, force, modulation, tempo, with which a series of words is spoken. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 3[296]) | |
| A reaction: He exaggerates. If you watch someone talking vociferously in an unknown foreign language, the feeling of the exchange is obvious, but the content is quite unknown. I see his point that we underestimate body language etc. |
| 24108 | Actions are just a release of force. They seize on something, which becomes the purpose [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What is the source of actions? For what purpose? …People do not act for happiness, utility or pleasure. Rather, a certain amount of force is released. Seizes on something on which it can vent itself. 'Goal' and 'purpose' are the means for this process. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[077]) | |
| A reaction: Surprised at how little Nietzsche is discussed in modern theoretical accounts of action. I'm not sure what the evolutionary value might be of a blind force that produces action before its purpose has been decided. Not convinced. What triggers the force? |
| 24105 | Drives make us feel non-feelings; Will is the effect of those feelings [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: 'Drive' is only a translation from the language of nonfeeling into the language of feeling. 'Will' is what is communicated to our feelings as a result of that process - in other words an effect, and not the beginning and cause. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[025]) | |
| A reaction: This shows the link between his central idea of 'drives' in psychology, and the actions that result. Effectively this makes all our actions arise from the unconscious. Intention and choice are effectively epiphenomena. |
| 24117 | We need lower and higher drives, but they must be under firm control [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: All lower drives must be present and have fresh force if the highest ones want to exist and exist in abundance: but control of the whole must be in firm hands! otherwise the danger is too great. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 14[03]) | |
| A reaction: This is unusual, because he speaks of the Self as little more than the currently dominant drive, but here he postulates a controller of the drives, a ringmaster. A-krasia means lack of control. Nietzsche wants en-krateia. |
| 24113 | Our motives don't explain our actions [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Human actions can in no way be explained by reference to human motives. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 9[43]) | |
| A reaction: He takes motives to come after the event. His view seems to be that our actions are deeply inexplicable. But if we explain why we performed some action, are we all and always lying? We give reasons, even if we don't know the source of the reasons. |
| 24087 | People who miss beauty seek the sublime, where even the ugly shows its 'beauty' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Whoever does to achieve the beautiful seeks the wildly sublime, because there even the ugly can show its 'beauty'. Likewise we seek the wildly sublime morality. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[049]) | |
| A reaction: Is the 'we' here Nietzsche, or the herd? The former, I guess, since some the values he likes seem rather ugly to me. He is a fan of war, for example. I'm guessing that massive destruction is sublime but ugly. |
| 24091 | The sublimity of nature which dwarfs us was a human creation [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: This beauty and sublimity of nature, before which every human being seems small, was first imposed on nature by us. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 12[38]) | |
| A reaction: I was struck when I was 10 with how indifferent to a landscape I was, when my mother told me it was 'beautiful'. Five years later I saw it differently. I assume nature is not intrinsically sublime. Dwarfed by our own concept is a bit odd. |
| 24093 | We can aspire to greatness by creating new functions for ourselves [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: To see the new greatness not above oneself, not outside oneself, but to make a new function from it. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 13[19]) | |
| A reaction: Thus we might combine the Aristotelian and the existentialist views! Do we discover our function or invent it? Anyone who acquires an expertise is creating a new function for themselves, presumably with a high value. |
| 24121 | Greeks might see modern analysis of what is human as impious [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps a Greek would experience the way we have delved deeply in uncovering what is human to be an impiety against nature, a shameless act. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 34[01]) | |
| A reaction: Three instances come to mind: Vesalius, Kant and Darwin. That is, anatomical dissection, deep and critical introspection, and natural selection. Human dissection was certainly a Greek taboo. |
| 24107 | Once a drive controls the intellect, it rules, and sets the goals [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Once it has taken control of the intellect, every single human drive probably demands to be recognised as the ultimate lord and goal-setter of all human matters. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[057]) | |
| A reaction: This is the best line of attack against the view I like, that human values arise out of the central functions of human nature. It is roughly the existential objection. Is all intellect controlled by some drive, or can intellect seize control of a drive? |
| 24085 | For absolute morality a goal for mankind is needed [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I deny absolute morality because I do not know an absolute goal of mankind. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[037]) | |
| A reaction: Christianity dreams of union of souls with God (clustering around God like goldfish to food, according to Dante). That is an absolute goal, justifying an absolute morality. If Aristotelians could identify human nature, its flourishing might be absolute. |
| 24101 | We always assign values, but we may not value those values [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible to live without assigning value: but it is possible to live without assigning value to what you value. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 5[1]186) | |
| A reaction: True. In my terminology, we can't live without thinking some things are more important than others. But that is compatible with not assigning much importance to anything. |
| 23115 | We have no natural love of mankind, other than through various relationships [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It may be affirm'd, that there is no such passion in human minds, as the love of mankind, merely as such, independent of personal qualities, of services, or of relation to ourself. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, + Appendix [1740], p.481), quoted by John Kekes - Against Liberalism 9.4 | |
| A reaction: Hume says this is for the best. I can't imagine spontaneous love of human beings we have never met. It takes the teachings of some sort of doctrine - religious or political - to produce such an attitude. I see it as a distortion of love. A hijacking. |
| 24094 | Humans are vividly aware of short-term effects, and almost ignorant of the long-term ones [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: How weakly human beings feel responsible for their indirect and distant effects! And how cruelly and exaggeratedly the closest effect that we exert pounces on us - the effect we see, for which our myopic vision is still just sharp enough! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 15[11]) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as both accurate and important, because consequentialist ethics is largely committed to judging by a very distorted image of their own objective. |
| 24111 | Happiness is the active equilibrium of our drives [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Happiness would be the equilibrium of the triggering activities of all the drives. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[260]) | |
| A reaction: For Nietzsche, only the 'highest' sort of human being could achieve such happiness. I can certainly see that there is happiness when a person is fully focused on something that seems worth doing. |
| 24109 | Actual morality is more complicated and subtle than theory (which gets paralysed) [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Actual morality is infinitely more subtle, more complicated, more thoughtful than theoretical morality: the latter still stands awkward and embarrassed at the starting point. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[202]) | |
| A reaction: Glad to find an explicit endorsement of particularism in Nietzsche, since so much of his discussion points that way. |
| 24110 | Some things we would never do, even for the highest ideals [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There are actions that we will never allow ourselves to engage in, not even as a means to the noblest end e.g., betraying a friend. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[241]) | |
| A reaction: Jean Genet made a point of betraying his friends. I wonder why Nietzsche thinks we should not betray our friends? Being Nietzsche, he will certainly have asked the question. |
| 24103 | You should not want too many virtues; one is enough [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: You should not want to have too many virtues. One virtue is already a lot of virtue. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 5[18]) | |
| A reaction: A typically challenging thought from the great maverick of philosophy. Which virtue would you choose? Do some virtues entail further virtues? |
| 24106 | Talk of 'utility' presupposes that what is useful to people has been defined [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: All this chat about 'utility' already presupposes that what is useful to people has been defined: in other words, useful for what! i.e. the people's purposes are already taken for granted. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[030]) | |
| A reaction: When they stopped talking about utility they talked instead about 'benefit', but the same objection applies. This is the problem of paternalism in Utilitarianism, which leads to Preference Utilitarianism, which probably doesn't help. |
| 24086 | The goal is to settle human beings, like other animals, but humans are still changeable [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Obviously the goal is to make human beings as steady and firm as most animal species; they have adapted to the conditions of the earth etc. and do not change essentially. The human being is still changeable - is still becoming. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[044]) | |
| A reaction: I favour an Aristotelian view, based on the flourishing of human nature, but this thought obviously challenges such a view. Great changes to a culture can make some difference to the apparent nature of people. |
| 24123 | My eternal recurrence is opposed to feeling fragmented and imperfect [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I held up eternal recurrence against the numbing feeling of general disintegration and imperfection. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 24[28]) | |
| A reaction: I've heard people say that they think Nietzsche was a nihilist. This is nonsense. His whole career was an opposition to nihilism. His excitement over the idea of recurrence is that he sees a real answer to nihilism. You have to value a recurring life. |
| 24088 | See our present lives as eternal! Religions see it as fleeting, and aim at some different life [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Let us press the image of eternity on our life! This thought contains more than all religions that despise this life as fleeting and taught us to look toward an unspecified different life. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[159]) | |
| A reaction: This is the best statement of the idea of eternal recurrence I have so far found. His ideal is to design a life for ourselves which we would be happy to see endlessly repeated. A lot of thought would have to go into that! |
| 24119 | The eternal return of wastefulness is a terrible thought [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The most terrible thought of an eternal return of wastefulness. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 20[02]) | |
| A reaction: This illuminates quite well his notion of eternal recurrence. Not only what you would do in an eternally recurring life, but what you would avoid. |
| 24116 | Justice says people are not equal, and should become increasingly unequal [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: People are not equal: thus speaks justice. …Humans should keep becoming ever more unequal. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 12[43]) | |
| A reaction: Important to add a little dash of Nietzsche to the widespread modern mantras about equality. We must at least question the extent to which equality should be our aim. (Personally I am an egalitarian liberal). |
| 24098 | Reasons that justify punishment can also justify the crime [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The reasons used to justify the punishment for a crime can also be used to justify the crime. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 3[312]) | |
| A reaction: A splendid observation, even if it is not wholly true. The justification of capital punishment appeals in some way to the whole of society, but a murderer could hardly do that. |
| 24118 | Do away with punishment. Counter-retribution is as bad as the crime [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: My programme: do away with punishment: for us. Counter-retribution is nonsense. (If something is evil, then whoever performs the counter-retribution is certainly committing the same evil). | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 16[17]) | |
| A reaction: Note that he seems to have a perfectly orthodox concept of 'evil' here. I don't think he ever suggested a strategy to replace punishment. |
| 24100 | If you don't want war, remove your borders; but you set up borders because you want war [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: You are waging war? You fear your neighbour? So remove the border markers: then you will have no more neighbours. But you want war: and that's why you set up the border markers in the first place. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 5[1]145) | |
| A reaction: The only reason to demarcate some territory is to keep other people out of it, which is a first act of gentle hostility. The European Union is trying to gradually dismantle the borders. Nietzsche had a creepy liking for war. |
| 24095 | Our growth is too subtle to perceive, and long events are too slow for us to grasp [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The slowness of the events in the history of human beings is not suited to the human sense of time - and the subtlety and smallness of all growth defies human vision. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 15[41]) | |
| A reaction: The only way we can study history is by 'periods'. It is as if English history has its slate wiped clean in 1066, 1485, 1603 and 1689. All historians know that the reality of it all is totally beyond our grasp. |
| 16946 | Causation is just invariance, as long as it is described in general terms [Quine on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Hume explained cause as invariable succession, and this makes sense as long as the cause and effect are referred to by general terms. … This account leaves singular causal statements unexplained. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, + Appendix [1740]) by Willard Quine - Natural Kinds p.131 | |
| A reaction: A nice 20th century linguistic point made against a good 18th century theory. |
| 15250 | If impressions, memories and ideas only differ in vivacity, nothing says it is memory, or repetition [Whitehead on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Hume confuses 'repetition of impressions' with 'impression of repetitions of impressions'. ...In order of 'force and vivacity' we have: impressions, memories, ideas. This omits the vital fact that memory is memory; the notion of repetition is lost. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, + Appendix [1740]) by Alfred North Whitehead - Process and Reality V.II | |
| A reaction: [compressed; Harré and Madden spotted this idea] This seems to pinpoint rather nicely the hopeless thinness of Hume's account. He is so desperate to get it down to minimal empirical experience that his explanations are too thin. One big idea.... |
| 24096 | Unlike time, space is subjective. Empty space was assumed, but it doesn't exist [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Space, like matter, is a subjective form. Time is not. Space first emerged through the assumption of empty space. This doesn't exist. Force is everything. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 1[003]) | |
| A reaction: I would think modern physics endorses his opinion of space. The original atomists proposed a 'void', to prevent traffic jams of atoms. Now we see space as fields, so it is never empty. |
| 24122 | Life is forces conjoined by nutrition, to produce resistance, arrangement and value [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: A multiplicity of forces, conjoined through a common nutritive process, is what we call 'life'. All so-called feeling, representing, thinking is part of this nutritive process to enable resistance to other forces, and arrangement, and an evaluation. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 24[14]) | |
| A reaction: [compressed at the end] Since no one else seems able to define life, this is quite a good attempt. Life is certainly a sort of unification of active energies, which than share goals. |
| 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. |