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20752
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For man, being is not what he is, but what he is going to be [Ortega y Gassett]
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Full Idea:
Being consists not in what it is already, but in what it is not yet, a being that consists in not-yet-being. Everything else in the world is what it is….Man is the entity that makes himself….He has to determine what he is going to be.
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From:
José Ortega y Gassett (Toward a Philosophy of History [1941], p.112,201-2), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 4 'Problem'
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A reaction:
[p.112 and 201-2] This seems to be Ortega y Gasset's spin on Heidegger's concept, by adding a temporal dimension to it.
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2171
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The 'will' doesn't exist; there is just conclusion, then action [Homer, by Williams,B]
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Full Idea:
Homer left out another mental action lying between coming to a conclusion and acting on it; and he did well, since there is no such action, and the idea is the invention of bad philosophy.
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From:
report of Homer (The Iliad [c.850 BCE]) by Bernard Williams - Shame and Necessity II - p.37
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A reaction:
This is a characteristically empiricist view, which is found in Hobbes. The 'will' seems to have a useful role in folk psychology. We can at least say that coming to a conclusion that I should act, and then actually acting, are not the same thing.
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20756
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Instead of having a nature, man only has a history [Ortega y Gassett]
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Full Idea:
Man lives in view of the past. Man, in a word, has no nature; what he has is history. Expressed differently: what nature is to things, history is to man.
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From:
José Ortega y Gassett (Toward a Philosophy of History [1941], p.217), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 5 'Situated'
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A reaction:
Makes explicit the existentialist denial of human nature. The foundation of ethics can only be total freedom, to choose both yourself and your actions. What is inescapable is the social and culture contexts. What is the role of the 'history'?
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21819
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Plato says the Good produces the Intellectual-Principle, which in turn produces the Soul [Homer, by Plotinus]
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Full Idea:
In Plato the order of generation is from the Good, the Intellectual-Principle; from the Intellectual-Principle, the Soul.
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From:
report of Homer (The Iliad [c.850 BCE], 509b) by Plotinus - The Enneads 5.1.08
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A reaction:
The doctrine of Plotinus merely echoes Plato, in that case, except that the One replaces the Form of the Good. Does this mean that what is first in Plotinus is less morally significant, and more concerned with reason and being?
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6616
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Least action is not a causal law, but a 'global law', describing a global essence [Ellis]
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Full Idea:
The principle of least action is not a causal law, but is what I call a 'global law', which describes the essence of the global kind, which every object in the universe necessarily instantiates.
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From:
Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005])
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A reaction:
As a fan of essentialism I find this persuasive. If I inherit part of my essence from being a mammal, I inherit other parts of my essence from being an object, and all objects would share that essence, so it would look like a 'law' for all objects.
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6615
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A species requires a genus, and its essence includes the essence of the genus [Ellis]
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Full Idea:
A specific universal can exist only if the generic universal of which it is a species exists, but generic universals don't depend on species; …the essence of any genus is included in its species, but not conversely.
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From:
Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 91)
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A reaction:
Thus the species 'electron' would be part of the genus 'lepton', or 'human' part of 'mammal'. The point of all this is to show how individual items connect up with the rest of the universe, giving rise to universal laws, such as Least Action.
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6614
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A hierarchy of natural kinds is elaborate ontology, but needed to explain natural laws [Ellis]
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Full Idea:
The hierarchy of natural kinds proposed by essentialism may be more elaborate than is strictly required for purposes of ontology, but it is necessary to explain the necessity of the laws of nature, and the universal applicability of global principles.
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From:
Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 91)
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A reaction:
I am all in favour of elaborating ontology in the name of best explanation. There seem, though, to be some remaining ontological questions at the point where the explanations of essentialism run out.
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6612
|
Without general principles, we couldn't predict the behaviour of dispositional properties [Ellis]
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Full Idea:
It is objected to dispositionalism that without the principle of least action, or some general principle of equal power, the specific dispositional properties of things could tell us very little about how these things would be disposed to behave.
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From:
Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 90)
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A reaction:
Ellis attempts to meet this criticism, by placing dispositional properties within a hierarchy of broader properties. There remains a nagging doubt about how essentialism can account for space, time, order, and the existence of essences.
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