47 ideas
| 14888 | Wisdom prevents us from being ruled by the moment [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The most important thing about wisdom is that it prevents human beings from being ruled by the moment. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 30 [25]) |
| 14863 | Unlike science, true wisdom involves good taste [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Inherent in wisdom [sophia] is discrimination, the possession of good taste: whereas science, lacking such a refined sense of taste, gobbles up anything that is worth knowing. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [086]) | |
| A reaction: This is blatantly unfair to science, which may lack 'taste', but at least prefers deep theories with wide-ranging explanatory power to narrow local theories. Maybe the line across the philosophical community is the one picking out those with taste? |
| 14890 | Suffering is the meaning of existence [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Suffering is the meaning of existence. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 32 [67]) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't mean that he is advocating suffering. The context of his remark is that the pursuit of truth involves suffering. |
| 14861 | Philosophy ennobles the world, by producing an artistic conception of our knowledge [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is indispensable for education because it draws knowledge into an artistic conception of the world, and thereby ennobles it. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [052]) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be an unusual way of saying that philosophy aims at the unification of knowledge, which is roughly my own view. It has hard for us to keep believing that life could be 'ennobled'. |
| 14885 | The first aim of a philosopher is a life, not some works [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The philosopher's product is his life (first, before his works). It is his work of art. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 29 [205]) |
| 14887 | You should only develop a philosophy if you are willing to live by it [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One should have a philosophy only to the extent that one is capable of living according to this philosophy: so that everything does not become mere words. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 30 [17]) |
| 14889 | Philosophy is pointless if it does not advocate, and live, a new way of life [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: As long as philosophers do not muster the courage to advocate a lifestyle structured in an entirely different way and demonstrate it by their own example, they will come to nothing. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 31 [10]) | |
| A reaction: This is a pretty tough requirement for the leading logicians and metaphysicians of our day, but they must face their marginality. The public will only be interested in philosophers who advocate new ways of living. |
| 14862 | Philosophy is more valuable than much of science, because of its beauty [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The reason why unprovable philosophizing still has some value - more value, in fact, than many a scientific proposition - lies in the aesthetic value of such philosophizing, that is, in its beauty and sublimity. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [076]) | |
| A reaction: I am increasingly inclined to agree. I love wide-ranging and ambitious works of metaphysics, each of which is a unique creation of the human intellect (and with which no other individual will ever entirely agree). A great short paper is also beautiful. |
| 14876 | Philosophy is always secondary, because it cannot support a popular culture [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It is not possible to base a popular culture on philosophy. Thus, with regard to culture, philosophy never can have primary, but always only secondary, significance. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 23 [14]) | |
| A reaction: It is the brilliance of Christianity as a set of ideas that it is simple enough to found a popular culture. A complex theology would make that impossible. Luther brought it back to its roots, when the priesthood lost touch with the people. |
| 14878 | It would better if there was no thought [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It would be better if thought did not exist at all. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 29 [004]) |
| 14881 | Why do people want philosophers? [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Why do human beings even want philosophers? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 29 [019]) | |
| A reaction: It is not clear, of course, that they do want philosophers. The standard attitude to them seems to be a mixture of contempt and fear. |
| 6947 | Metaphysics does not rest on facts, but on what we are inclined to believe [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysical systems have not usually rested upon any observed facts, or not in any great degree. They are chiefly adopted because their fundamental propositions seem 'agreeable to reason', which means that which we find ourselves inclined to believe. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.15) | |
| A reaction: This leads to Peirce's key claim - that we should allow our beliefs to be formed by something outside of ourselves. I don't share Peirce's contempt for metaphysics, which I take to be about the most abstract presuppositions of our ordinary beliefs. |
| 14860 | Kant has undermined our belief in metaphysics [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: In a certain sense, Kant's influence was detrimental; for the belief in metaphysics has been lost. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [028]) | |
| A reaction: As I understand it, there are two interpretations of Kant, one of which is fairly thoroughly anti-metaphysical, and another which is less so. Also one path leads to idealism and the other doesn't, but I need to research that. |
| 14859 | If philosophy controls science, then it has to determine its scope, and its value [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The philosophy that is in control of science must also consider the extent to which science should be allowed to develop; it must determine its value! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [024]) |
| 6937 | Reason aims to discover the unknown by thinking about the known [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The object of reasoning is to find out, from the consideration of what we already know, something else which we do not know. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p. 7) | |
| A reaction: I defy anyone to come up with a better definition of reasoning than that. The emphasis is on knowledge rather than truth, which you would expect from a pragmatist. …Actually the definition doesn't cover conditional reasoning terribly well. |
| 14880 | Logic is just slavery to language [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Logic is merely slavery in the fetters of language. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 29 [008]) | |
| A reaction: I don't think I agree with this, but I still like it. |
| 14869 | If some sort of experience is at the root of matter, then human knowledge is close to its essence [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: If pleasure, displeasure, sensation, memory, reflex movements are all part of the essence of matter, then human knowledge penetrates far more deeply into the essence of things. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [161]) | |
| A reaction: I don't think Nietzsche is thinking of monads at this point, but his idea certainly applies to them. Leibniz rested his whole theory on the close analogy between how minds work and how matter must also work. |
| 21492 | Realism is basic to the scientific method [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The fundamental hypothesis of the method of science is this: There are real things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinion of them. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877]), quoted by Albert Atkin - Peirce 3 'method' | |
| A reaction: He admits later that this is only a commitment and not a fact. It seems to me that when you combine this idea with the huge success of science, the denial of realism is crazy. Philosophy has a lot to answer for. |
| 6949 | If someone doubted reality, they would not actually feel dissatisfaction [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Nobody can really doubt that there are Reals, for, if he did, doubt would not be a source of dissatisfaction. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.19) | |
| A reaction: This rests on Peirce's view that all that really matters is a sense of genuine dissatisfaction, rather than a theoretical idea. So even at the end of Meditation One, Descartes isn't actually worried about whether his furniture exists. |
| 13160 | To exist and be understood, a multitude must first be reduced to a unity [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: A plurality of things can neither be understood nor can exist unless one first understands the thing that is one, that to which the multitude necessarily reduces. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Notes on Comments by Fardella [1690], Prop 3) | |
| A reaction: Notice that it is our need to understand which imposes the unity on the multitude. It is not just some random fiction, or a meaningless mechanical act of thought. |
| 13161 | Substances are everywhere in matter, like points in a line [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: There are substances everywhere in matter, just as points are everywhere in a line. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Notes on Comments by Fardella [1690], Clarif) | |
| A reaction: Since Leibniz is unlikely to believe in the reality of the points, we must wonder whether he was really committed to this infinity of substances. The more traditional notion of substance is always called 'substantial form' by Leibniz. |
| 14875 | Belief matters more than knowledge, and only begins when knowledge ceases [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The human being starts to believe when he ceases to know. …Knowledge is not as important for the welfare of human beings as is belief. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 21 [13]) | |
| A reaction: The first idea is now associated with Williamson (and Hossack). The second is something like the pragmatic view of belief espoused by Ramsey. |
| 6940 | The feeling of belief shows a habit which will determine our actions [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The feeling of believing is a more or less sure indication of there being established in our nature some habit which will determine our actions. Doubt never has such an effect. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.10) | |
| A reaction: It is one thing to assert this fairly accurate observation, and another to assert that this is the essence or definition of a belief. Perhaps it is the purpose of belief, without being the phenomenological essence of it. We act in states of uncertainty. |
| 6943 | A mere question does not stimulate a struggle for belief; there must be a real doubt [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The mere putting of a proposition into the interrogative form does not stimulate the mind to any struggle after belief; there must be a real and living doubt. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.11) | |
| A reaction: This the attractive aspect of Peirce's pragmatism, that he is always focusing on real life rather than abstract theory or pure logic. |
| 6941 | We are entirely satisfied with a firm belief, even if it is false [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: As soon as a firm belief is reached we are entirely satisfied, whether the belief be true or false. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.10) | |
| A reaction: This does not deny that the truth or falsehood of a belief is independent of whether we are satisfied with it. It is making a fair point, though, about why we believe things, and it can't be because of truth, because we don't know how to ensure that. |
| 6942 | We want true beliefs, but obviously we think our beliefs are true [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: We seek for a belief that we shall think to be true; but we think each one of our beliefs to be true, and, indeed, it is mere tautology to say so. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.11) | |
| A reaction: If, as I do, you like to define belief as 'commitment to truth', Peirce makes a rather startling observation. You are rendered unable to ask whether your beliefs are true, because you have defined them as true. Nice point… |
| 14866 | It always remains possible that the world just is the way it appears [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Against Kant we can still object, even if we accept all his propositions, that it is still possible that the world is as it appears to us. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [125]) | |
| A reaction: This little thought at least seems to be enough to block the slide from phenomenalism into total idealism. The idea that direct realism can never be ruled out, even if it is false, is very striking. |
| 6598 | We need our beliefs to be determined by some external inhuman permanency [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: It is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs be determined by nothing human, but by some external permanency - by something upon which our thinking has no effect. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877]), quoted by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: This very sensible and interesting remark hovers somewhere between empiricism and pragmatism. Fogelin very persuasively builds his account of knowledge on it. The key point is that we hardly ever choose what to believe. See Idea 2454. |
| 6944 | Demonstration does not rest on first principles of reason or sensation, but on freedom from actual doubt [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: It is a common idea that demonstration must rest on indubitable propositions, either first principles of a general nature, or first sensations; but actual demonstration is completely satisfactory if it starts from propositions free from all actual doubt. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.11) | |
| A reaction: Another nice example of Peirce focusing on the practical business of thinking, rather than abstract theory. I agree with this approach, that explanation and proof do not aim at perfection and indubitability, but at what satisfies a critical mind. |
| 6948 | Doubts should be satisfied by some external permanency upon which thinking has no effect [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: To satisfy our doubts it is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs may be determined by nothing human, but by some external permanency - by something upon which our thinking has no effect. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.18) | |
| A reaction: This may be the single most important idea in pragmatism and in the philosophy of science. See Fodor on experiments (Idea 2455). Put the question to nature. The essential aim is to be passive in our beliefs - just let reality form them. |
| 14872 | Our knowledge is illogical, because it rests on false identities between things [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Every piece of knowledge that is beneficial to us involves an identification of nonidentical things, of things that are similar, which means that it is essentially illogical. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [236]) | |
| A reaction: I take the thought to be that no two tigers are alike, but we call them all 'tigers' and merge them into a type, and then all our knowledge is based on this distortion. A wonderful idea. I love particulars You should love particulars. |
| 14879 | The most extreme scepticism is when you even give up logic [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Even skepticism contains a belief: the belief in logic. The most extreme position is hence the abandoning of logic. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 29 [008]) | |
| A reaction: Some might say that flirting with non-classical logic (as in Graham Priest) is precisely travelling down this road. You could also be sceptical about meaning in language, so you couldn't articulate your abandonment of logic. |
| 6945 | Once doubt ceases, there is no point in continuing to argue [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Some people seem to love to argue a point after all the world is fully convinced of it. But no further advance can be made. When doubt ceases, mental action on the subject comes to an end; and, if it did go on, it would be without purpose. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.11) | |
| A reaction: This is the way Peirce's pragmatism, which deals with how real thinking actually works (rather than abstract logic), deals with scepticism. However, there is a borderline where almost everyone is satisfied, but the very wise person remains sceptical. |
| 14873 | If we find a hypothesis that explains many things, we conclude that it explains everything [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The feeling of certainty is the most difficult to develop. Initially one seeks explanation: if a hypothesis explains many things, we draw the conclusion that it explains everything. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [238]) | |
| A reaction: As so often, a wonderful warning from Nietzsche to other philosophers. They love to latch onto a Big Idea, and offer it as the answer to everything (especially, dare I say it, continental philosophers). |
| 14868 | Our primary faculty is perception of structure, as when looking in a mirror [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The primary faculty seems to me to be the perception of structure, that is, based upon the mirror. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [153]) | |
| A reaction: The point about the mirror makes this such an intriguingly original idea. Personally I like very much the idea that structure is our prime perception. See Sider 2011 on structure. |
| 14870 | We experience causation between willing and acting, and thereby explain conjunctions of changes [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The only form of causality of which we are aware is that between willing and acting - we transfer this to all things, and thereby explain the relationship between two changes that always occur together. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [209]) | |
| A reaction: This is a rather Humean view, of projecting our experience onto the world, but it may be that we really are experiencing real causation, just as it occurs between insentiate things. |
| 14867 | It is just madness to think that the mind is supernatural (or even divine!) [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: To view 'spirit', the product of the brain, as supernatural. Even to deify it. What madness! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [127]) | |
| A reaction: When I started philolosophy I was obliged to take mind-body dualism very seriously, but I have finally managed to drag myself to the shores of this lake of madness, where Nietzsche awaited with a helping hand. |
| 14884 | The shortest path to happiness is forgetfulness, the path of animals (but of little value) [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: If happiness were the goal, then animals would be the highest creatures. Their cynicism is grounded in forgetfulness: that is the shortest path to happiness, even if it is a happiness with little value. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 29 [143]) | |
| A reaction: I would be reluctant to describe an apparently contented cow as 'happy'. Is a comatose person happy? Maybe happiness is fulfilling one's nature, like a monkey swinging through trees? |
| 14886 | Education is contrary to human nature [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Education runs contrary to the nature of a human being. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 30 [06]) | |
| A reaction: Tell me about it! |
| 14883 | We should evaluate the past morally [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: For the past I desire above all a moral evaluation. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 29 [096]) | |
| A reaction: There is a bit of a contradiction with Idea 14819, of only a few years later. He was always interested in a historical approach to morality, but I'm not sure if his ethics gives a decent basis for moral assessments of remote historical eras. |
| 14882 | Protest against vivisection - living things should not become objects of scientific investigation [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Protest against vivisection of living things, that is, those things that are not yet dead should be allowed to live and not immediately be treated as an object for scientific investigation. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 29 [027]) | |
| A reaction: Wow. How many other people had come up with this idea in 1873? |
| 6939 | What is true of one piece of copper is true of another (unlike brass) [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The guiding principle is that what is true of one piece of copper is true of another; such a guiding principle with regard to copper would be much safer than with regard to many other substances - brass, for example. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p. 8) | |
| A reaction: Peirce is so beautifully simple and sensible. This gives the essential notion of a natural kind, and is a key notion in our whole understanding of physical reality. |
| 14865 | We do not know the nature of one single causality [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We do not know the nature of one single causality. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [121]) |
| 14871 | Laws of nature are merely complex networks of relations [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: All laws of nature are only relations between x, y and z. We define laws of nature as relations to an x, y, and z, each of which in turn, is known to us only in relation to other x's, y's and z's. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [235]) | |
| A reaction: This could be interpreted in Armstrong's terms, as only identifying the x's, y's and z's by their universals, and then seeing laws as how those universal relate. I suspect, though, that Nietzsche has a Humean regularity pattern in mind. |
| 6938 | Natural selection might well fill an animal's mind with pleasing thoughts rather than true ones [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: It is probably of more advantage to an animal to have his mind filled with pleasing and encouraging visions, independently of their truth; and thus, upon unpractical subjects, natural selection might occasion a fallacious tendency of thought. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p. 8) | |
| A reaction: Note that this is a pragmatist saying that a set of beliefs might work fine but be untrue. So Peirce does not have the highly relativistic notion of truth of some later pragmatists. Good for him. Note the early date to be thinking about Darwin. |
| 6946 | If death is annihilation, belief in heaven is a cheap pleasure with no disappointment [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: If death is annihilation, then the man who believes that he will certainly go straight to heaven when he dies, provided he have fulfilled certain simple observances in this life, has a cheap pleasure which will not be followed by the least disappointment. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.12) | |
| A reaction: This is a nicely wicked summary of one side of Pascal's options. All the problems of the argument are built into Peirce's word "cheap". Peirce goes on to talk about ostriches burying their heads. |
| 14864 | The Greeks lack a normative theology: each person has their own poetic view of things [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The Greeks lack a normative theology: everyone has the right to deal with it in a poetic manner and he can believe whatever he wants. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [110]) | |
| A reaction: There is quite a lot of record of harshness towards atheists, and the trial of Socrates seems to have been partly over theology. However, no proper theological texts have come down, or records of the teachings of the priests. |