70 ideas
| 18330 | Judging by the positive forces, the Renaissance was the last great age [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Ages are to be assessed by their positive forces - and by this assessment the age of the Renaissance, so prodigal and so fateful, appears as the last great age. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.37) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that Nietzsche places art very high among the positive forces. Science and technology showed barely a glimmer during the Renaissance. Mathematics moved very little, Copernicus was ignored, and logic was static. |
| 2900 | I revere Heraclitus [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I set apart with high reverence the name of Heraclitus. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.2) |
| 2913 | Thucydides was the perfect anti-platonist sophist [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: My recreation, my preference, my cure from all Platonism has always been Thucydides. …Sophist culture, by which I mean realist culture, attains in him its perfect expression. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 9.2) |
| 2909 | Thinking has to be learned in the way dancing has to be learned [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Thinking has to be learned in the way dancing has to be learned. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 7.7) | |
| A reaction: Nice. At its deepest level thinking isn't a rational process? |
| 2892 | Wanting a system in philosophy is a lack of integrity [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to system is a lack of integrity. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], Maxim 26) |
| 2896 | I want to understand the Socratic idea that 'reason equals virtue equals happiness' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I seek to understand out of what idiosyncrasy that Socratic equation 'reason equals virtue equals happiness' derives. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 1.04) |
| 2897 | With dialectics the rabble gets on top [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: With dialectics the rabble gets on top. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 1.05) |
| 2898 | Anything which must first be proved is of little value [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What has first to have itself proved is of little value. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 1.05) |
| 10405 | In the iterative conception of sets, they form a natural hierarchy [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: In the iterative conception of sets, they form a natural hierarchy. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.1) |
| 10407 | Logical Form explains differing logical behaviour of similar sentences [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: 'Logical Form' is a technical notion motivated by the observation that sentences with a similar surface structure may exhibit quite different logical behaviour. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: [Swoyer goes on to give some nice examples] The tricky question is whether each sentence has ONE logical form. Pragmatics warns us of the dangers. One needs to check numerous inferences from a given sentences, not just one. |
| 18317 | The 'real being' of things is a nothingness constructed from contradictions in the actual world [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The characteristics which have been assigned to the 'real being' of things are the characteristics of non-being, of nothingness - the 'real world has been constructed out of the contradiction of the actual world. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.6) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a critique of Hegel, in particular. Could we describe the metaphysics of Nietzsche as 'constructivist'? I certainly think he is underrated as a metaphysician, because the ideas are so fragmentary. |
| 18315 | We get the concept of 'being' from the concept of the 'ego' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Being is everywhere thought in, foisted on, as cause; it is only from the conception 'ego' that there follows, derivatively, the concept 'being'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: 'Being' is such a remote abstraction that I doubt whether we can say anything at all meaningful about where it 'comes from'. |
| 10421 | Supervenience is nowadays seen as between properties, rather than linguistic [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: Supervenience is sometimes taken to be a relationship between two fragments of language, but it is increasingly taken to be a relationship between pairs of families of properties. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 7.17) | |
| A reaction: If supervenience is a feature of the world, rather than of our descriptions, then it cries out for explanation, just as any other regularities do. Personally I would have thought the best explanation of the supervenience of mind and body was obvious. |
| 18316 | The grounds for an assertion that the world is only apparent actually establish its reality [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The grounds upon which 'this' world has been designated as apparent establish rather its reality - another kind of reality is absolutely undemonstrable. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.6) |
| 10410 | Anti-realists can't explain different methods to measure distance [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: Anti-realists theories of measurement (like operationalism) cannot explain how we can use different methods to measure the same thing (e.g. lengths and distances in cosmology, geology, histology and atomic physics). | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: Swoyer says that the explanation is that measurement aims at objective properties, the same in each of these areas. Quite good. |
| 10399 | If a property such as self-identity can only be in one thing, it can't be a universal [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: Some properties may not be universals, if they can only be exemplified by one thing, such as 'being identical with Socrates'. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000]) | |
| A reaction: I think it is absurd to think that self-identity is an intrinsic 'property', possessed by everything. That a=a is a convenience for logicians, meaning nothing in the world. And it is relational. The sharing of properties is indeed what needs explanation. |
| 10416 | Can properties have parts? [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: Can properties have parts? | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: If powers are more fundamental than properties, with the latter often being complexes of the underlying powers, then yes they do. But powers don't. Presumably whatever is fundamental shouldn't have parts. Why? |
| 10417 | There are only first-order properties ('red'), and none of higher-order ('coloured') [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: 'Elementarism' is the view that there are first-order properties, but that there are no properties of any higher-order. There are first-order properties like various shades of red, but there is no higher-order property, like 'being a colour'. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 7.1) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Bergmann 1968] Interesting. Presumably the programme is naturalistic (and hence congenial to me), and generalisations about properties are conceptual, while the properties themselves are natural. |
| 10413 | The best-known candidate for an identity condition for properties is necessary coextensiveness [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: The best-known candidate for an identity condition for properties is necessary coextensiveness. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 6) | |
| A reaction: The necessity (in all possible worlds) covers renates and cordates. It is hard to see how one could assert the necessity without some deeper explanation. What makes us deny that actually coextensive renates and cordates have different properties? |
| 10402 | Various attempts are made to evade universals being wholly present in different places [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: The worry that a single thing could be wholly present in widely separated locations has led to trope theory, to the claim that properties are not located in their instances, or to the view that this treats universals as if they were individuals. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: I find it dispiriting to come to philosophy in the late twentieth century and have to inherit such a ridiculous view as that there are things that are 'wholly present' in many places. |
| 10400 | Conceptualism says words like 'honesty' refer to concepts, not to properties [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: Conceptualists urge that words like 'honesty', which might seem to refer to properties, really refer to concepts. A few contemporary philosophers have defended conceptualism, and recent empirical work bears on it, but the view is no longer common. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: ..and that's all Swoyer says about this very interesting view! He only cites Cocchiarella 1986 Ch.3. The view leaves a lot of work to be done in explaining how nature is, and how our concepts connect to it, and arise in response to it. |
| 10403 | If properties are abstract objects, then their being abstract exemplifies being abstract [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: If properties are abstract objects, then the property of being abstract should itself exemplify the property of being abstract. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: Swoyer links this observation with Plato's views on self-predication, and his Third Man Argument (which I bet originated with Aristotle in the Academy!). Do we have a regress of objects, as well as a regress of properties? |
| 18314 | In language we treat 'ego' as a substance, and it is thus that we create the concept 'thing' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It is the metaphysics of language (that is, of reason) ....which believes in the 'ego', in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and which projects its belief in the ego-substance on to all things - only thus does it create the concept 'thing'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.5) |
| 10406 | One might hope to reduce possible worlds to properties [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: One might hope to reduce possible worlds to properties. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Zalta 1983 4.2, and Forrest 1986] I think we are dealing with nothing more than imagined possibilities, which are inferred from our understanding of the underlying 'powers' of the actual world (expressed as 'properties'). |
| 18309 | The evidence of the senses is falsified by reason [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: 'Reason' is the cause of our falsification of the evidence of the senses. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: One for McDowell. |
| 10404 | Extreme empiricists can hardly explain anything [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: Extreme empiricists wind up unable to explain much of anything. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the major problem for empiricism, but I am not sure why inference to the best explanation should not be part of a sensible empirical approach. Thinking laws are just 'descriptions of regularities' illustrates the difficulty. |
| 18323 | Any explanation will be accepted as true if it gives pleasure and a feeling of power [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: To trace something unknown back to something known is alleviating, soothing, gratifying and gives moreover a feeling of power. ...First principle: any explanation is better than none. ...Proof by pleasure ('by potency') as criterion of truth. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: By 'proof by pleasure' he means that we find an explanation so satisfying that we cling to it. I assume it is a criterion of rationality (an epistemic virtue) to reject the principle 'any explanation is better than none'. Negative capability. |
| 18310 | The 'highest' concepts are the most general and empty concepts [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The 'highest concepts' ...are the most general, the emptiest concepts, the last fumes of evaporating reality. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: This could be seen as an attack on the aspirations of all of philosophy, which seeks general truths out of the chaos of experience. Should we shut up, then, and just be and do? |
| 3238 | 'Dead person' isn't a contradiction, so 'person' is somewhat vague [Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: If we say (in opposition to a physical view of identity) that when Jones dies 'Jones ceases to exist' but 'Jones' body does not cease to exist', this shouldn't be pressed too hard, because it would make 'dead person' a contradiction. | |
| From: Bernard Williams (Are Persons Bodies? [1970], p.74) | |
| A reaction: A good point, which nicely challenges the distinction between a 'human' and a 'person', but the problem case is much more the one where Jones gets advanced Alzheimer's, rather than dies. A dead body ceases as a mechanism, as well as as a personality. |
| 3239 | You can only really love a person as a token, not as a type [Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: If you love a person as a type instead of as a token (i.e. a "person", instead of a physical body) you might prefer a run-down copy of them to no person at all, but at this point our idea of loving a person begins to crack. | |
| From: Bernard Williams (Are Persons Bodies? [1970], p.81) | |
| A reaction: Very persuasive. If you love a person you can cope with them getting old. If you own an original watercolour, you can accept that it fades, but you would replace a reproduction of it if that faded. But what, then, is it that you love? |
| 20368 | There are no 'individual' persons; we are each the sum of humanity up to this moment [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The 'individual' ...is an error: he does not constitute a separate entity, an atom, a 'link in the chain', something merely inherited from the past - he constitutes the entire single line 'man' up to and including himself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.33) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure I understand this, but you can sort of imagine yourself as a culmination of something, rather than as an isolated entity. I'm not sure how that is supposed to affect my behaviour. |
| 2899 | The fanatical rationality of Greek philosophy shows that they were in a state of emergency [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The fanaticism with which the whole of Greek thought throws itself at rationality betrays itself as a state of emergency: one was in peril, one had only one choice: either to perish or- be absurdly rational. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 1.10) |
| 10408 | Intensions are functions which map possible worlds to sets of things denoted by an expression [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: Intensions are functions that assign a set to the expression at each possible world, ..so the semantic value of 'red' is the function that maps each possible world to the set of things in that world that are red. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: I am suddenly deeply alienated from this mathematical logicians' way of talking about what 'red' means! We need more psychology, not less. We call things red if we imagine them as looking red. Is imagination a taboo in analytical philosophy? |
| 10409 | Research suggests that concepts rely on typical examples [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: Recent empirical work on concepts says that many concepts have graded membership, and stress the importance of phenomena like typicality, prototypes, and exemplars. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Rorsch 1978 as the start of this] I say the mind is a database, exactly corresponding to tables, fields etc. Prototypes sound good as the way we identify a given category. Universals are the 'typical' examples labelling areas (e.g. goat). |
| 10401 | The F and G of logic cover a huge range of natural language combinations [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: All sorts of combinations of copulas ('is') with verbs, adverbs, adjectives, determiners, common nouns, noun phrases and prepositional phrases go over into the familiar Fs and Gs of standard logical notation. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice warning of how misleading logic can be when trying to understand how we think about reality. Montague semantics is an attempt to tackle the problem. Numbers as adjectives are a clear symptom of the difficulties. |
| 10420 | Maybe a proposition is just a property with all its places filled [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: Some say we can think of a proposition as a limiting case of a property, as when the two-place property '___ loves ___' can become the zero-placed property, or proposition 'that Sam loves Darla'. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 7.6) | |
| A reaction: If you had a prior commitment to the idea that reality largely consists of bundles of properties, I suppose you might find this tempting. |
| 18313 | The big error is to think the will is a faculty producing effects; in fact, it is just a word [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: At the beginning stands the great fateful error that the will is something which produces an effect - that will is a faculty.... Today we know it is merely a word. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: This is despite Nietzsche's insistence that 'will to power' is the central fact of active existence. The misreading of Nietzsche is to think that this refers to the conscious exercising of a mental faculty. |
| 20133 | The 'motive' is superficial, and may even hide the antecedents of a deed [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The so-called 'motive' is another error. Merely a surface phenomenon of consciousness - something alongside the deed which is more likely to cover up the antecedents of the deed than to represent them. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: [Leiter gives 'VI.3', but I can't find it] As far as you can get from intellectualism about action, and is more in accord with the picture found in modern neuro-science. No one knows why they are 'interested' in something, and that's the start of it. |
| 18326 | The beautiful never stands alone; it derives from man's pleasure in man [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Anyone who tried to divorce the beautiful from man's pleasure in man would at once feel the ground give way beneath him. The 'beautiful in itself' is not even a concept, merely a phrase. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.19) | |
| A reaction: I love the insult 'not even a concept'! It's like Pauli's 'not even wrong'! |
| 20101 | Without music life would be a mistake [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Without music life would be a mistake. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], Maxim 33) | |
| A reaction: Cf Schopenhauer in Idea 21469. If you, dear reader, don't love music, then I sincerely hope that there is something in your life which can match it. |
| 2902 | Healthy morality is dominated by an instinct for life [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: All naturalism in morality, that is all healthy morality, is dominated by an instinct for life. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: Sounds right. There is no reasoning against a moral nihilist, because they seem to have no instinct in favour of life. It is the given of morality. |
| 18311 | Philosophers hate values having an origin, and want values to be self-sufficient [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: For philosophers, the higher must not be allowed to grow out of the lower, must not be allowed to have grown at all ...Moral: everything of the first rank must be causa sui. Origin in something else counts as an objection, as casting a doubt on value. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: This is so deep and central that I wrote a paper on it, advocating that the theory of values should focus of value-makers. |
| 18324 | There are no moral facts, and moralists believe in realities which do not exist [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: An insight formulated by me: that there are no moral facts whatever. Moral judgement has this in common with religious judgement that it believes in realities which do not exist. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 6.1) | |
| A reaction: Not only a slogan for non-cognitivism, but also a clear statement of the error theory about morality, a century before John Mackie. |
| 2904 | The doctrine of free will has been invented essentially in order to blame and punish people [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The doctrine of will has been invented essentially for the purpose of punishment, that is of finding guilty. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 5.7) | |
| A reaction: Michael Frede says free will was invented to feel wholly in charge of our own actions. I doubt whether punishment was the first motive. The will just gives a simple explanation of actions. |
| 2894 | Value judgements about life can never be true [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Judgements, value judgements concerning life, for or against it, can in the last resort never be true. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 1.02) | |
| A reaction: I suppose this is in the same spirit as judging whether celery tastes nice. Are you for or against the Moon? |
| 18321 | To evaluate life one must know it, but also be situated outside of it [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One would have to be situated outside life ....[and yet know it thoroughly] ....to be permitted to touch on the problem of the value of life at all. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: Can practising artists question the value of their art? The whole point of objectivity is that we can mentally step 'outside' of something, without actually withdrawing from it. |
| 2895 | The value of life cannot be estimated [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The value of life cannot be estimated. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 1.02) | |
| A reaction: Military leaders apparently judge that the death of one of their own soldiers is worth between 12 and 20 enemy deaths (so history suggests). How about ransom money? |
| 18322 | When we establish values, that is life itself establishing them, through us [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: When we speak of values we do so under the inspiration and from the perspective of life: life itself evaluates through us when we establish values | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: I love Nietzsche's ideas about the source of values, and his remarks about the value of life. Other thinkers sound so simplistic in comparison. |
| 2893 | In every age the wisest people have judged life to be worthless [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: In every age the wisest have passed the identical judgement on life: it is worthless. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 1.01) | |
| A reaction: I guess he was having a bad day. Since the whole universe is clearly 'worthless', this judgement must in some sense be correct. But I love my books. |
| 18308 | A philosopher fails in wisdom if he thinks the value of life is a problem [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: For a philosopher to see a problem in the value of life thus even constitutes an objection to him, a question-mark as to his wisdom, a piece of unwisdom. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 1.02) | |
| A reaction: I take his point to be neither that life is unquestionably valuable nor that it is valueless, but that the very question is ridiculous. If we live, we value living. Sounds right. |
| 18319 | Love is the spiritualisation of sensuality [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The spiritualization of sensuality is called 'love': it is a great triumph over Christianity. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: I'm not quite clear what 'spiritualization' means, particularly when it comes from Nietzsche. |
| 2903 | A good human will be virtuous because they are happy [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: A well-constituted human being, a 'happy one', must perform certain actions and shrink from other actions. In a formula: his virtue is the consequence of his happiness. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 5.2) | |
| A reaction: A nice reversal of basic Aristotle, though Aristotle does say that the truly virtuous person is happy in their actions. Treat unhappy people with caution! |
| 2891 | Only the English actually strive after happiness [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Man does not strive after happiness; only the Englishman does that. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], Maxim 12) | |
| A reaction: The Danes keeping being voted the happiest nation, so presumably that results from some sort of effort on their part. The easiest is happiness is to achieve security, then do nothing. |
| 18327 | A wholly altruistic morality, with no egoism, is a thoroughly bad thing [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: An 'altruistic' morality, a morality under which egoism languishes - is under all circumstances a bad sign. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.35) |
| 15606 | Military idea: what does not kill me makes me stronger [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: From the military school of life. - What does not kill me makes me stronger. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], Maxim 08) | |
| A reaction: The published version! Perhaps the most famous remark in all of Nietzsche, and no one realises it is ironic! It is a sarcastic remark about the battering ram mentality of the Prussian militarist! He had served in the army. |
| 18328 | Invalids are parasites [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The invalid is a parasite on society. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.36) | |
| A reaction: I'll skip the rest, but you get the idea. The point (with which I sympathise) is that life is primarily about what healthy people do. Something has gone wrong if all we do is worry about the sick and the suffering. |
| 18331 | Democracy is organisational power in decline [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Democracy has always been the declining form of the power to organise. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.39) | |
| A reaction: Even when Nietzsche is wrong (and who knows, here?) he always challenges you to think! |
| 18332 | The creation of institutions needs a determination which is necessarily anti-liberal [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: For institutions to exist there must exist the kind of will, instinct, imperative which is anti-liberal to the point of malice: the will to tradition, to authority, to centuries-long responsibility, to solidarity between succeeding generations. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.39) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a lovely challenge to Popper, who seems to have been a liberal who pinned his faith on institutions. |
| 2911 | True justice is equality for equals and inequality for unequals [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: 'Equality for equals, inequality for unequals' - that would be the true voice of justice. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.48) |
| 18320 | To renounce war is to renounce the grand life [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One has renounced grand life when one renounces war. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche was a medical orderly in the 1870 Franco-Prussian war, so he had seen it at first hand. I think the machine gun and the heavy bomber would have changed his attitude to warfare. He sounds a bit silly now. Nostalgia for the Iliad. |
| 2908 | There is a need for educators who are themselves educated [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There is a need for educators who are themselves educated. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 7.5) |
| 18329 | Sometimes it is an error to have been born - but we can rectify it [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We have no power to prevent ourselves being born: but we can rectify this error - for sometimes it is an error. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.36) |
| 2905 | 'Purpose' is just a human fiction [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We invented the concept 'purpose': in reality purpose is lacking. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 5.8) |
| 10412 | If laws are mere regularities, they give no grounds for future prediction [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: If laws were mere regularities, then the fact that observed Fs have been Gs would give us no reason to conclude that those Fs we haven't encountered will also be Gs. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: I take this simple point to be very powerful. No amount of regularity gives grounds for asserting future patterns - one only has Humean habits. Causal mechanisms are what we are after. |
| 10411 | Two properties can have one power, and one property can have two powers [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: If properties are identical when they confer the same capacities on their instances, different properties seem able to bestow the same powers (e.g. force), and one property can bestow different powers (attraction or repulsion). | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: Interesting, but possibly a misunderstanding. Powers are basic, and properties are combinations of powers. A 'force' isn't a basic power, it is a consequence of various properties. Relational behaviours are also not basic powers, which are the source. |
| 18312 | The supreme general but empty concepts must be compatible, and hence we get 'God' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The supreme concepts of philosophers cannot be incommensurate with one another, be incompatible with one another... Thus they acquired their stupendous concept 'God'.... The last, thinnest, emptiest is placed as the first, as cause in itself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.4) |
| 2906 | By denying God we deny human accountability, and thus we redeem the world [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We deny God; in denying God we deny accountability; only by doing that do we redeem the world. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 5.8) |
| 2901 | How could the Church intelligently fight against passion if it preferred poorness of spirit to intelligence? [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The primitive church fought against the 'intelligent' in favour of the 'poor in spirit': how could one expect from it an intelligent war against passion? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 4.1) |
| 18325 | Christians believe that only God can know what is good for man [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Christianity presupposes that man does not know, cannot know what is good for him and what evil: he believes in God, who alone knows. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.05) |
| 18318 | People who disparage actual life avenge themselves by imagining a better one [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: If there is a strong instinct for slandering, disparaging and accusing life within us, then we revenge ourselves on life by means of the phantasmagoria of 'another', a 'better' life. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.6) |