Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Saundaranandakavya', 'Later Letters to Dedekind' and 'works'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts

---

6 ideas

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 2. Invocation to Philosophy

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.

4. Formal Logic / F. Set Theory ST / 4. Axioms for Sets / a. Axioms for sets

17831	Cantor gives informal versions of ZF axioms as ways of getting from one set to another [Cantor, by Lake]
	Full Idea: Cantor gives informal versions of the axioms of ZF as ways of getting from one set to another.
	From: report of George Cantor (Later Letters to Dedekind [1899]) by John Lake - Approaches to Set Theory 1.6
	A reaction: Lake suggests that it should therefore be called CZF.

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 1. Nature of Ethics / a. Preconditions for ethics

20739	Levinas took 'first philosophy' to begin with seeing the vulnerable faces of others [Levinas, by Aho]
	Full Idea: Levinas forwarded a notion of 'ethics as first philosophy' that begins from the concete exposure and openness to 'the face' of the other, an experience of vulnerability and suffering that undercuts our ordinary egoistic and objectifying tendencies.
	From: report of Emmanuel Levinas (works [1956]) by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 1 'Existentialism'
	A reaction: Iris Murdoch speaks of seeing a falcon in flight as having a similar effect of diminishing the ego. If the main focus is on potential 'suffering' does this eventually cash out as utilitarianism? I bet not!

24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 9. Communism

20445	Levinas says Marxism is the replacement of individualist ethics, by solidarity and sociality [Levinas, by Critchley]
	Full Idea: For Levinas, Marxism is the absorption of the ethical in the socioeconomic, and so it is the disappearance of the face-to-face relation and the privileging of relations of solidarity and anonymous sociality, which he calls 'socialism'.
	From: report of Emmanuel Levinas (works [1956]) by Simon Critchley - Impossible Objects: interviews 1
	A reaction: Startling, if you are not used to this sort of thing. If you are in trouble, I should help you, not because you are you, or a human being, but because you are a member of my group? So what about the Good Samaritan? Or solidarity with humanity? Animals?

29. Religion / C. Spiritual Disciplines / 3. Buddhism

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.

29. Religion / D. Religious Issues / 2. Immortality / d. Heaven

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.