6 ideas
| 10121 | Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor lack of contradiction a sign of truth [Pascal] |
| Full Idea: Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth. | |
| From: Blaise Pascal (works [1660]), quoted by A.George / D.J.Velleman - Philosophies of Mathematics Ch.6 | |
| A reaction: [Quoted in Auden and Kronenberger's Book of Aphorisms] Presumably we would now say that contradiction is a purely formal, syntactic notion, and not a semantic one. If you hit a contradiction, something has certainly gone wrong. |
| 13174 | A piece of flint contains something resembling perceptions and appetites [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: I don't say that bodies like flint, which are commonly called inanimate, have perceptions and appetition; rather they have something of that sort in them, like worms are in cheese. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Johann Bernoulli [1699], 1698.12.17) | |
| A reaction: Leibniz is caricatured as thinking that stones are full of little active minds, but he nearly always says that what he is proposing is 'like' or 'analogous to' that. His only real point is that nature is active, as seen in the appetites of animals. |
| 13175 | Entelechies are analogous to souls, as other minds are analogous to our own minds [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Just as we somehow conceive other souls and intelligences on analogy with our own souls, I wanted whatever other primitive entelechies there may be remote from our senses to be conceived on analogy with souls. They are not conceived perfectly. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Johann Bernoulli [1699], 1698.12.17) | |
| A reaction: This is the clearest evidence I can find that Leibniz does not think of monads as actually being souls. He is struggling to explain their active character. Garber thinks that Leibniz hasn't arrived at proper monads at this date. |
| 13172 | What we cannot imagine may still exist [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: It does not follow that what we can't imagine does not exist. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Johann Bernoulli [1699], 1698.11.18) | |
| A reaction: This just establishes the common sense end of the debate - that you cannot just use your imagination as the final authority on what exists, or what is possible. |
| 20956 | Ultimately, all being is willing. The nature of primal being is the same as the nature of willing [Schelling] |
| Full Idea: In the last and highest instance there is no other being but willing. Willing is primal being, and all the predicates of primal being only fit willing: groundlessness, eternity, being independent of time, self-affirmation. | |
| From: Friedrich Schelling (On the Essence of Human Freedom [1809], I.7.350), quoted by Andrew Bowie - Introduction to German Philosophy 5 'Reason' | |
| A reaction: Insofar as this says that 'primal being' must be active in character, I love this idea. Not the rest of the idea though! Bowie says this essay clearly influenced Schopenhauer. It looks as if Nietzsche must be read it too. |
| 13173 | Death is just the contraction of an animal [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Death is nothing but the contraction of an animal, just as generation is nothing but its unfolding. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Johann Bernoulli [1699], 1698.11.18) | |
| A reaction: This is possibly the most bizarre view that I have found in Leibniz. He seemed to thing that if you burnt an animal on a bonfire, some little atom of life would remain among the ashes. I can't see why he would believe such a thing. |