8 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. |
| 21753 | If we look at the world rationally, the world assumes a rational aspect [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Whoever looks at the world rationally will find that it in turn assumes a rational aspect; the two exist in a reciprocal relationship. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on the Philosophy of (World) History [1837], p.29), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 01 | |
| A reaction: What happens when I look at irrationality rationally? |
| 21974 | The world seems rational to those who look at it rationally [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: To him who looks at the world rationally, the world looks rationally back; the two exist in reciprocal relationship. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on the Philosophy of (World) History [1837], Intro p.29), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.4 | |
| A reaction: This is a nice variation on the stoic idea that nature is essentially rational. If we are capable of rationality, then nature has made us that way. Romantics seem to prefer looking at nature less rationally, so what do they see in nature? |
| 8526 | We might treat both tropes and substances as fundamental, so we can't presume it is just tropes [Daly] |
| Full Idea: Since C.B. Martin accepts both tropes and substances as fundamental, the claim that tropes are the only fundamental constituents is a further, independent claim. | |
| From: Chris Daly (Tropes [1995], §4) | |
| A reaction: A dubious mode of argument. Martin may only make the claim because he is ignorant, of facts or of language. Why are some tropes perfectly similar? Is it the result of something more fundamental? |
| 8527 | More than one trope (even identical ones!) can occupy the same location [Daly] |
| Full Idea: More than one trope can occupy the same spatio-temporal location, and it even seems possible for a pair of exactly resembling tropes to occupy the same spatio-temporal location. | |
| From: Chris Daly (Tropes [1995], §6) | |
| A reaction: This may be the strongest objection to tropes. Being disc-shaped and red would occupy the same location. Aristotle's example of mixing white with white (Idea 557) would be the second case. Individuation of these 'particulars' is the problem. |
| 8528 | If tropes are linked by the existence of concurrence, a special relation is needed to link them all [Daly] |
| Full Idea: To explain how tropes form bundles, concurrence relations are invoked. But tropes F and G and a concurrence relation C don't ensure that F stands in C to G. So trope theory needs 'instantiation' relations (special relational tropes) after all. | |
| From: Chris Daly (Tropes [1995], §7) | |
| A reaction: Campbell presents relations as 'second-order' items dependent on tropes (Idea 8525), but that seems unclear. Daly's argument resembles Russell's (which he likes), that some sort of universal is inescapable. It also resembles Bradley's regress (7966). |
| 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. |