190 ideas
| 9199 | Wisdom for one instant is as good as wisdom for eternity [Chrysippus] |
| Full Idea: If a person has wisdom for one instant, he is no less happy than he who possesses it for eternity. | |
| From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Pierre Hadot - Philosophy as a way of life 8 | |
| A reaction: [Hadot quotes Plutarch 'On Common Conceptions' 8,1062a] This makes it sound awfully like some sort of Buddhist 'enlightenment', which strikes like lightning. He does wisdom recognise itself - by a warm glow, or by the cautious thought that got you there? |
| 20262 | Don't use wisdom in order to become clever! [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One ought not to use one's wisdom to become clever! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 308) | |
| A reaction: And I would add 'don't think that being clever makes you wise'. Nietzsche, as always, is subtler than me (which is why I read him a lot). Presumably wisdom is broad, and cleverness is focused. Will becoming clever spoil someone's wisdom? |
| 20383 | The wisest man is full of contradictions, and attuned to other people, with occasional harmony [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The wisest man would be the one richest in contradictions, who has, as it were, antennae for all types of men - as well as his great moments of grand harmony - a rare accident even in us! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §259) | |
| A reaction: By 'us' does he mean himself? Whether the rest of us thought such a person to be wise would depend on whether we met them on a contradictory or a harmonious day. Permanent harmony should be viewed with suspicion. |
| 20853 | Wise men should try to participate in politics, since they are a good influence [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: The wise man will participate in politics unless something prevents him, for he will restrain vice and promote virtue. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.121 | |
| A reaction: [from lost On Ways of Life Bk 1] We have made modern politics so hostile for its participants, thanks to cruel media pressure, that the best people now run a mile from it. Disastrous. |
| 20255 | Early 19th century German philosophers enjoyed concepts, rather than scientific explanations [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Early 19th century German philosophers retreated to the first and oldest level of speculation, for, like the thinkers of dreamy ages, they found satisfaction in concepts rather than in explanations - they resuscitated a prescientific type of philosophy. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 197) | |
| A reaction: I have a suspicion that this may still apply to 'continental philosophy'. Personally I love explanations, which lead to understanding. But not all explanations are scientific. |
| 20260 | Carlyle spent his life vainly trying to make reason appear romantic [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Thomas Carlyle spent a long life trying to make reason romantic to his fellow Englishmen: to no avail! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 298) | |
| A reaction: An interesting gloss on the shift from the Enlightenment to the Romantic era. Presumably the idea of the 'genius' and the 'hero' are the means whereby Carlyle hoped to achive this. |
| 4520 | I don't want to persuade anyone to be a philosopher; they should be rare plants [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I do not wish to persuade anyone to philosophy: it is inevitable, it perhaps also desirable, that the philosopher should be a rare plant. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §420) | |
| A reaction: My immediate reaction is disagreement, but 'what if everybody' became a philosopher. The fear is that philosophy paralyses action, but it need not. Good philosophy is time-consuming. History would come to an end. The excitement of medieval history! |
| 20772 | Three branches of philosophy: first logic, second ethics, third physics (which ends with theology) [Chrysippus] |
| Full Idea: There are three kinds of philosophical theorems, logical, ethical, and physical; of these the logic should be placed first, ethics second, and physics third (and theology is the final topic in physics). | |
| From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1035a | |
| A reaction: [in his lost 'On Lives' Bk 4] 'Theology is the final topic in physics'! That should create a stir in theology departments. Is this an order of study, or of importance? You come to theology right at the end of your studies. |
| 20256 | What we think is totally dictated by the language available to express it [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We have at every moment only that very thought for which we have ready to hand the words that are roughly capable of expressing it. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 257) | |
| A reaction: This is a highly influential idea, even if this expression of it is little known. Everyone who places language at the centre of philosophy believes something like this. It is a very striking thought, and must certainly contain considerable truth. |
| 20265 | The desire for a complete system requires making the weak parts look equal to the rest [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There is playacting going on among systematisers: inasmuch as they want to make the system whole and round off the horizon around it, they must attempt to have their weaker qualities appear in the same style as their strong ones. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 318) | |
| A reaction: Filed under 'rationalism', because they are the notorious system builders, but the same tendency and problem can be seen to some extent among empiricsts who seek completeness. David Lewis, perhaps. |
| 4545 | Could not the objective character of things be merely a difference of degree within the subjective? [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Could not the objective character of things be merely a difference of degree within the subjective? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §560) | |
| A reaction: A reasonable speculation. I begin to feel my opinions are objective if they are reinforced by the agreement of others. One can believe in the facts, but despair of objectivity. It is called 'scepticism'. Buf cf. T.Nagel. |
| 4530 | Reason is a mere idiosyncrasy of a certain species of animal [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Reason is a mere idiosyncrasy of a certain species of animal. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §515) | |
| A reaction: Call me narrow-minded, prejudiced and arrogant, but I just don't believe this. Rational minds meet across cultures, and good reasons can rise above culture. However, I may be wrong about this… |
| 4523 | What can be 'demonstrated' is of little worth [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What can be 'demonstrated' is of little worth. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §431) | |
| A reaction: He admits that some things can be demonstrated, and that they have some worth. But demonstration may be a matter of coherence, so that anything can be demonstrated, by assuming a range of ideas as being beyond demonstration. |
| 5969 | Chrysippus said the uncaused is non-existent [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Chrysippus said that the uncaused is altogether non-existent. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1045c | |
| A reaction: The difficulty is to see what empirical basis there can be for such a claim, or what argument of any kind other than an intuition. Induction is the obvious answer, but Hume teaches us scepticism about any claim that 'there can be no exceptions'. |
| 4531 | Our inability to both affirm and deny a single thing is merely an inability, not a 'necessity' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We are unable to affirm and to deny one and the same thing: this is a subjective empirical law, not the expression of any 'necessity', but only an inability. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §516) | |
| A reaction: A remarkable claim, made by someone utterly gripped by relativism. I don't believe it. Why can't we do it? We experience it as a truth, not as a prejudice or mental block. I say it reflects reality - there is only one set of facts. |
| 4541 | Everything simple is merely imaginary [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Everything simple is merely imaginary. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §536) | |
| A reaction: A wonderful aphorism. This is one's worst fear, which is why it is suggested that ontological O's R is bad, though epistemological O's R ('be cautious') is fine. I have to admit that I have no idea whether reality is simple. |
| 20380 | Why should truth be omnipotent? It is enough that it is very powerful [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I have no idea why the dictatorship and omnipotence of truth would be desirable; it's sufficient for me that it has great power. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], §507) | |
| A reaction: I once heard a philosopher (at Essex University) assert that truth is the only value, which was interesting. Nietzsche actually wants to endorse the value of lies and deceptions, like the 'noble lie' in Plato's Republic. |
| 20357 | Truth was given value by morality, but eventually turned against its own source [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Among the forces cultivated by morality was truthfulness: this eventually turned against morality, discovered its teleology, its partial perspective. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §015) | |
| A reaction: Just as 'duty' is said to have withered in modern times, because its religious underpinning has been lost, so this gives an account of the decline of the value of truth. It is still left to us to assert the value of truth, perhaps as the only value. |
| 4534 | 'Truth' is the will to be master over the multiplicity of sensations [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: 'Truth' is the will to be master over the multiplicity of sensations. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §517) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that this is a nice explanation of why we value truth, but says nothing at all about what truth actually is. I can't think of a better explanation of why we value truth. |
| 20235 | Like animals, we seek truth because we want safety [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Even that nose for truth, which is, at bottom, the nose for safety, human beings have in common with animals. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 026) | |
| A reaction: After Darwin, Nietzsche immediately saw that we need an account of humanity which is continuous with animals. The first step to physical security is ascertaining the physical facts. This idea rings true. |
| 4548 | Only because there is thought is there untruth [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Only because there is thought is there untruth. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §574) | |
| A reaction: A nicely oblique place to start in one's study of truth. Untruth is a very human contribution to the world, making virtually no sense of animal thought. Meta-thought seems to be required. |
| 5652 | True beliefs are those which augment one's power [Nietzsche, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: For Nietzsche, the true belief is the one which augments one's power. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.13 | |
| A reaction: Sounds suspiciously like pragmatism. Sounds suspiciously unlike truth as we know it. So many philosophers seem to me to confuse the concept of the truth itself with the ability of humans grasp the truth, or be interested in it. Truth is not part of us. |
| 4508 | The truth is what gives us the minimum of spiritual effort, and avoids the exhaustion of lying [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What is true? Where an explanation is given which causes us the minimum of spiritual effort (moreover, lying is very exhausting). | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §279) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche is just being naughty here. Obviously lazy but intelligent people tell the truth, but to suggest that there is nothing more to truth means the collapse of language and thought. Which means no more reading Nietzsche… |
| 21388 | The causes of future true events must exist now, so they will happen because of destiny [Chrysippus, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: True future events cannot be such as do not possess causes on account of which they will happen; therefore that which is true must possess causes: and so, when the [true future events] happen they will have happened as a result of destiny. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On Fate ('De fato') 9.23-8 | |
| A reaction: [exact ref unclear] Presumably the current causes are the truthmakers for the future events, and so the past is the truthmaker of the future, if you are a determinist. |
| 20780 | Graspable presentations are criteria of facts, and are molded according to their objects [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Of presentations, some are graspable, some non-graspable. The graspable presentation, which they say is the criterion of facts [pragmata], is that which comes from an existing object and is stamped and molded in accordance wth the existing object itself. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.46 | |
| A reaction: [in lost Physics Bk 2] The big modern anguish over truth-as-correspondence is how you are supposed to verify the 'accordance'. This idea seems to blur the ideas of truth and justification (the 'criterion'), and you can't have both as accordance. |
| 20793 | How could you ever know that the presentation is similar to the object? [Sext.Empiricus on Chrysippus] |
| Full Idea: One cannot say that the soul grasps the externally existing objects by means of the states of the senses on the basis of the similarity of these states to the externally existing objects. For on what basis will it know the similarity? | |
| From: comment on Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Outlines of Pyrrhonism 2.74 | |
| A reaction: This exactly the main modern reason for rejecting the correspondence theory of truth. You are welcome to affirm a robust view of truth, but supporting it by claiming a correspondence or resemblance is dubious. |
| 4538 | Judgements can't be true and known in isolation; the only surety is in connections and relations [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: An isolated judgement is never 'true', never knowledge; only in connection and relation of many judgements is there any surety. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §530) | |
| A reaction: It actually seems impossible to state an isolated judgement in language without having a mass of presuppositions and beliefs to support it. I don't think the full holistic thesis about language follows, however. |
| 8077 | Stoic propositional logic is like chemistry - how atoms make molecules, not the innards of atoms [Chrysippus, by Devlin] |
| Full Idea: In Stoic logic propositions are treated the way atoms are treated in present-day chemistry, where the focus is on the way atoms fit together to form molecules, rather than on the internal structure of the atoms. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Keith Devlin - Goodbye Descartes Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: A nice analogy to explain the nature of Propositional Logic, which was invented by the Stoics (N.B. after Aristotle had invented predicate logic). |
| 20791 | Chrysippus has five obvious 'indemonstrables' of reasoning [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Chrysippus has five indemonstrables that do not need demonstration:1) If 1st the 2nd, but 1st, so 2nd; 2) If 1st the 2nd, but not 2nd, so not 1st; 3) Not 1st and 2nd, the 1st, so not 2nd; 4) 1st or 2nd, the 1st, so not 2nd; 5) 1st or 2nd, not 2nd, so 1st. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.80-81 | |
| A reaction: [from his lost text 'Dialectics'; squashed to fit into one quote] 1) is Modus Ponens, 2) is Modus Tollens. 4) and 5) are Disjunctive Syllogisms. 3) seems a bit complex to be an indemonstrable. |
| 8078 | Modus ponens is one of five inference rules identified by the Stoics [Chrysippus, by Devlin] |
| Full Idea: Modus ponens is just one of the five different inference rules identified by the Stoics. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Keith Devlin - Goodbye Descartes Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: Modus ponens strikes me as being more like a definition of implication than a 'rule'. Implication is what gets you from one truth to another. All the implications of a truth must also be true. |
| 6023 | Every proposition is either true or false [Chrysippus, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: We hold fast to the position, defended by Chrysippus, that every proposition is either true or false. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On Fate ('De fato') 38 | |
| A reaction: I am intrigued to know exactly how you defend this claim. It may depend what you mean by a proposition. A badly expressed proposition may have indeterminate truth, quite apart from the vague, the undecidable etc. |
| 20361 | We need 'unities' for reckoning, but that does not mean they exist [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We need 'unities' in order to be able to reckon: that does not mean we must suppose that such unities exist. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §635) | |
| A reaction: True. I takes this thought to be important in the Psychology of Metaphysics (an unfashionable branch). |
| 4533 | Logic and maths refer to fictitious entities which we have created [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Logic (like geometry and arithmetic) applies only to fictitious entities that we have created. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §516) | |
| A reaction: This finds Nietzsche on the relativist wing of logical empiricism. The thing is, fictitious entities can have a close relationship with truth, as in a great novel. I believe in necessary logical truth, but there are many ways of slicing it. |
| 20359 | The nature of being, of things, is much easier to understand than is becoming [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The doctrine of being, of things, of all sorts of fixed unities is a hundred times easier than the doctrine of becoming, of development. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §238) | |
| A reaction: I don't know if he intended it, but this is a fierce shaft hurled at Aristotle, who gives a wonderful essentialist account of the nature of things, but can offer nothing more on becoming than the doctrine of potentiality and actuality. |
| 5992 | Chrysippus says action is the criterion for existence, which must be physical [Chrysippus, by Tieleman] |
| Full Idea: Chrysippus regarded power to act and be acted upon as the criterion for existence or being - a test satisfied by bodies alone. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Teun L. Tieleman - Chrysippus | |
| A reaction: This defines existence in terms of causation. Is he ruling out a priori a particle (say) which exists, but never interacts with anything? If so, he is inclining towards anti-realism. |
| 21673 | There are simple and complex facts; the latter depend on further facts [Chrysippus, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Chrysippus says there are two classes of facts, simple and complex. An instance of a simple fact is 'Socrates will die at a given date', ...but 'Milo will wrestle at Olympia' is a complex statement, because there can be no wrestling without an opponent. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On Fate ('De fato') 13.30 | |
| A reaction: We might say that there are atomic and complex facts, but our atomic facts tend to be much simpler, usually just saying some object has some property. |
| 4525 | There are no facts in themselves, only interpretations [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Against positivism, which halts at phenomena, and says "there are only facts", I would say: No, facts is precisely what there is not, only interpretations. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §481) | |
| A reaction: A cornerstone of relativism is the denial of facts. A cornerstone of realism is the affirmation of facts. Personally, I affirm facts. |
| 4543 | There are no 'facts-in-themselves', since a sense must be projected into them to make them 'facts' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There are no 'facts-in-themselves', for a sense must always be projected into them before they can be 'facts'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §556) | |
| A reaction: The relativist (and anti-realist) view. Any attempt at taking this proposal seriously induces a hopeless vertigo, a well known consequence of reading Nietzsche. I don't believe this. It is not to my taste. |
| 16652 | Stoics categories are Substrate, Quality, Disposition, and Relation [Chrysippus, by Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics proposed a rather modest categorisation of Substrate, Quality, Disposition, and Relation. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 12.1 |
| 4484 | Nihilism results from valuing the world by the 'categories of reason', because that is fiction [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The faith in the categories of reason is the cause of nihilism; we have measured the value of the world according to categories that refer to a purely fictitious world. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §12B) | |
| A reaction: Presumably this refers to Kant, whose dogmatic assertions about the structure of human reason are as open to objection as those of Freud. Nietzsche may have a very profound truth here. |
| 4546 | We realise that properties are sensations of the feeling subject, not part of the thing [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There comes a point where one realises that what one calls a property of a thing is a sensation of the feeling subject; at this point the property ceases to belong to the thing. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §562) | |
| A reaction: I don't believe this. Has Nietzsche no theory about WHY we have one sensation rather than another? I prefer to distinguish primary from secondary qualities. |
| 4544 | A thing has no properties if it has no effect on other 'things' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The properties of a thing are effects on other 'things'; if one removes other 'things', then a thing has no properties. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §557) | |
| A reaction: This is a causal theory of properties. A counterexample is a potential property, like a bomb which never explodes. |
| 20362 | We saw unity in things because our ego seemed unified (but now we doubt the ego!) [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We borrowed the concept of unity from our 'ego' concept - our oldest article of faith. If we did not hold ourselves to be unified, we would never have formed the concept 'thing'. Now, somewhat late, we are convinced that the ego does not guarantee unity. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §635) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche tells a similar story about the emergence and subsequent undermining of truth. I am becoming an enthusiast for Nietzsche's account of how our psychology has generated out metaphysics - which doesn't make the metaphysics false. |
| 16058 | Dion and Theon coexist, but Theon lacks a foot. If Dion loses a foot, he ousts Theon? [Chrysippus, by Philo of Alexandria] |
| Full Idea: If two individuals occupied one substance …let one individual (Dion) be thought of as whole-limbed, the other (Theon) as minus one foot. Then let one of Dion's feet be amputated. Theon is the stronger candidate to have perished. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Philo (Alex) - On the Eternity of the World 48 | |
| A reaction: [SVF 2.397 - from Chrysippus's lost 'On the Growing Argument'] This is the original of Tibbles the Cat. Dion must persist to change, and then ousts Theon (it seems). Philo protests at Theon ceasing to exist when nothing has happened to him. |
| 16059 | Change of matter doesn't destroy identity - in Dion and Theon change is a condition of identity [Chrysippus, by Long/Sedley] |
| Full Idea: The Growing Argument said any change of matter is a change of identity. Chrysippus presents it with a case (Dion and Theon) where material diminution is the necessary condition of enduring identity, since the diminished footless Dion survives. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by AA Long / DN Sedley - Hellenic Philosophers commentary 28:175 | |
| A reaction: [The example, in Idea 16058, is the original of Tibbles the Cat] This is a lovely bold idea which I haven't met in the modern discussions - that identity actually requires change. The concept of identity is meaningless without change? |
| 4528 | For me, a priori 'truths' are just provisional assumptions [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The most strongly believed a priori 'truths' are for me provisional assumptions (e.g. the law of causality). | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §497) | |
| A reaction: The example of causality would fit in with Humean scepticism, but presumably Nietzsche would also apply it to maths and logic, since he is a thorough-going relativist. I cautiously disagree. |
| 4537 | We can't know whether there is knowledge if we don't know what it is [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: If we do not know what knowledge is, we cannot possibly answer the question of whether there is knowledge. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §530) | |
| A reaction: Obviously Nietzsche is pessimistic about the prospects here, but this is a motto for the whole modern analysis of knowledge, and (besides) we have lots of things (like a concept of identity) which we can't define. |
| 20258 | Most people treat knowledge as a private possession [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Most people take a thing they know under their protection, as if knowing it turned it into their possession. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 285) | |
| A reaction: A typically wicked and subtle remark. This presumably makes knowledge part of the will to power, with which Francis Bacon would presumably agree. |
| 4485 | Every belief is a considering-something-true [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Every belief is a considering-something-true. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §015) | |
| A reaction: This is correct, I think, but a little perplexing coming from Nietzsche, who seems to deny objective truth. Presumably we should follow instinct, rather than 'belief'. |
| 4487 | A note for asses: What convinces is not necessarily true - it is merely convincing [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What convinces is not necessarily true - it is merely convincing (a note for asses). | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §017) | |
| A reaction: I hope I am not such an ass that I need Nietzsche to explain this, as I have always thought it true. Many good modern epistemologists seem to me guilty of this error, though. Pragmatists, riff-raff like that… |
| 4539 | The forms of 'knowledge' about logic which precede experience are actually regulations of belief [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The basic laws of logic (identity and contradiction) are said to be forms of pure knowledge because they precede experience. But these are not forms of knowledge at all! They are regulative articles of belief. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §530) | |
| A reaction: This is a standard objection to foundationalism - that the basic beliefs (of reason, or raw experience) are not actually knowledge. We can all speculate about their origin and basis. Personally I think 'truth' must be somewhere in the explanation. |
| 4529 | All sense perceptions are permeated with value judgements (useful or harmful) [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It cannot be doubted that all sense perceptions are permeated with value judgements (useful and harmful - consequently, pleasant and unpleasant). | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §505) | |
| A reaction: A thesis expanded by Charles Taylor ('Sources of the Self'). This is a very modern view, but also a very Greek view, which slices through the is/ought distinction. |
| 4532 | We can have two opposite sensations, like hard and soft, at the same time [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There is a coarse sensualistic prejudice that sensations teach us truths about things - that I cannot say at the same time that a thing is hard and soft. To say that I cannot have two opposite sensations at the same time is quite coarse and false. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §516) | |
| A reaction: I am struggling to think of examples. I might experience something as cool, but judge it to be warm (because my hand is hot). I don't think I know what experience he is referring to. Interesting claim, though. |
| 20250 | We may be unable to remember, but we may never actually forget [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It has yet to be proven that there is such a thing as forgetting; all we know is that the act of remembering is not within our power. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 126) | |
| A reaction: There is some evidence for this. We forget innumerable people, but then find that we recognise them if we meet them many years later. Anecdotes report very ancient memories suddenly surfacing. |
| 4486 | The extreme view is there are only perspectives, no true beliefs, because there is no true world [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The most extreme form of nihilism would be the view that every belief, every considering-something-true, is necessarily false because there is simply no true world. Thus: a perspectival appearance, whose origin lies in us. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §015) | |
| A reaction: The idea that 'there is no true world' is incomprehensible to me. But note that here Nietzsche labels this an 'extreme' view, which he may not be asserting. He likes to flirt with danger. |
| 20270 | There is no one scientific method; we must try many approaches, and many emotions [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There is no one and only scientific method that leads to knowledge. We must proceed experimentally with things, be sometimes angry, sometimes affectionate towards them, and allow justice, passion, and coldness to follow one upon another. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 432) | |
| A reaction: Alexander Bird says the same thing in our time. I agree, but I think there is a core of controlled conditions and peer review. |
| 4536 | It is a major blunder to think of consciousness as a unity, and hence as an entity, a thing [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There is a tremendous blunder in absurdly overestimating consciousness, the transformation of it into a unity, an entity - 'spirit', 'soul', something that feels, thinks, wills. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §529) | |
| A reaction: This is a wonderfully modern and scientific view. Even strong materialists still make claims about mental unity, behind which an extravagent and contradictory metaphysics can be hidden. Was Nietzsche, then, an 'eliminativist' about mind? |
| 1875 | Dogs show reason in decisions made by elimination [Chrysippus, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: A dog makes use of the fifth complex indemonstrable syllogism when, arriving at a spot where three ways meet, after smelling at two roads by which the quarry did not pass, he rushes off at once by the third without pausing to smell. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Outlines of Pyrrhonism I.69 | |
| A reaction: As we might say: either A or B or C; not A; not B; therefore C. I wouldn't want to trust this observation without a lot of analysis of slow-motion photography of dogs as crossroads. Even so, it is a nice challenge to Descartes' view of animals. |
| 20131 | We can cultivate our drives, of anger, pity, curiosity, vanity, like a gardener, with good or bad taste [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One can dispose of one's drives like a gardener and, though few know it, cultivate the shoots of anger, pity, curiosity, vanity as productively and profitably as a beautiful fruit tree on a trellis; one can do it with the good or bad taste of a gardener. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 560) | |
| A reaction: This sort of existentialism I find very appealing. You take what you are given, the cards you are dealt, and try to make something nice out of it. This is quite different from the crazy freedom of later existentialists. |
| 20242 | Things are the boundaries of humanity, so all things must be known, for self-knowledge [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Only when the human being has finally attained knowledge of all things will he have known himself. For things are merely the boundaries of the human being. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 048) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a rather externalist view of the mind. If philosophy aims to disentangle mind from world then good knowledge of the world seems to be required. |
| 20249 | Our knowledge of the many drives that constitute us is hopelessly incomplete [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: No matter how hard a person struggles for self-knowledge, nothing can be more incomplete than the image of all the drives taken together than constitute his being. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 119) | |
| A reaction: This gives the concept of personal identity that arises from the (later) doctrine of the 'will to power'. It is a bundle view of the self, but a bundle of drives rather than of percepts and mental events. His view is close to Hume's. |
| 4551 | Great self-examination is to become conscious of oneself not as an individual, but as mankind [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Tremendous self-examination: becoming conscious of oneself, not as an individual but as mankind. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §575) | |
| A reaction: A lovely thought, which illustrates the fact that it is hard to be introspective without bringing an agenda to the process. |
| 4527 | Perhaps we are not single subjects, but a multiplicity of 'cells', interacting to create thought [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The assumption of one single subject is perhaps unnecessary; perhaps we are a multiplicity of subjects, whose interaction and struggle is the basis of our thought and consciousness, an aristocracy of 'cells' in which dominion resides equally. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §490) | |
| A reaction: A nice combination of Humean scepticism, and an anticipation of the modularity of mind. Was Nietzsche thinking about evolution? It goes with his doubts about reason (if we are run by a committee). |
| 20834 | Chrysippus allows evil to say it is fated, or even that it is rational and natural [Plutarch on Chrysippus] |
| Full Idea: Chrysippus gives vice blatant freedom to say not only that it is necessary and according to fate, but even that it occurs according to god's reason and the best nature. | |
| From: comment on Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1050c | |
| A reaction: This is Plutarch's criticism of stoic determinism or fatalism. Zeno replied that the punishment for vice may also be fated. It seems that Chysippus did believe that punishments were too harsh, given that vices are fated [p.109]. |
| 20833 | A swerve in the atoms would be unnatural, like scales settling differently for no reason [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Chrysippus argues against the 'swerve' of the Epicureans, on the grounds that they are doing violence to nature by positing something which is uncaused, and cites dice or scales, which can't settle differently without some cause or difference. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1045c | |
| A reaction: That is, the principle of sufficient reason (or of everything having a cause) is derived from observation, not a priori understanding. Pace Leibniz. As in modern discussion, free will or the swerve only occur in our minds, and not elsewhere. |
| 20835 | Chrysippus is wrong to believe in non-occurring future possibilities if he is a fatalist [Plutarch on Chrysippus] |
| Full Idea: Chrysippus's accounts of possibility and fate are in conflict. If he is right that 'everything that permits of occurring even if it is not going to occur is possible', then many things are possible which are not according to fate. | |
| From: comment on Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1055e | |
| A reaction: A palpable hit, I think. Plutarch refers to Chrysippus's rejection of Diodorus Cronus's Master Argument. Fatalism seems to entail that the only future possibilities are the ones that actually occur. |
| 20231 | People used to think that outcomes were from God, rather than consequences of acts [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: People used to believe that the outcome of an action was not a consequence, but an independent, supplemental ingredient, namely God's. Is a greater confusion conceivable? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 012) | |
| A reaction: Not sure how well documented or accurate this is, but Nietzsche was a great scholar, and it would explain the fatalism that runs through many older forms of society. |
| 20808 | Everything is fated, either by continuous causes or by a supreme rational principle [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Chrysippus says (in his 'On Fate') that everything happens by fate. Fate is a continuous string of causes of things which exist or a rational principle according to which the cosmos is managed. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.148 |
| 20837 | Fate is an eternal and fixed chain of causal events [Chrysippus] |
| Full Idea: Fate is a sempiternal and unchangeable series and chain of things, rolling and unravelling itself through eternal sequences of cause and effect, of which it is composed and compounded. | |
| From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Aulus Gellius - Noctes Atticae 7.2.01 | |
| A reaction: It seems that Chrysippus (called by Aulus Gellius 'the chief Stoic philosopher') had a rather grandly rhetorical prose style. |
| 20836 | The Lazy Argument responds to fate with 'why bother?', but the bothering is also fated [Chrysippus, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Chrysippus responded to the Lazy Argument (that the outcome of an illness is fated, so there is no point in calling the doctor) by saying 'calling the doctor is fated just as much as recovering', which he calls 'co-fated'. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On Fate ('De fato') 28-30 | |
| A reaction: From a pragmatic point of view, this idea also nullifies fatalism, since you can plausibly fight against your fate to your last breath. No evidence could ever be offered in support of fatalism, not even the most unlikely events. |
| 21679 | When we say events are fated by antecedent causes, do we mean principal or auxiliary causes? [Chrysippus] |
| Full Idea: Some causes are perfect and principal, others auxiliary and proximate. Hence when we say that everything takes place by fate owing to antecedent causes, what we wish to be understood is not perfect and principal causes but auxiliary and proximate causes. | |
| From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by M. Tullius Cicero - On Fate ('De fato') 18.41 | |
| A reaction: This move is described by Cicero as enabling Chrysippus to 'escape necessity and to retain fate'. |
| 5971 | Destiny is only a predisposing cause, not a sufficient cause [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Chrysippus considered destiny to be not a cause sufficient of itself but only a predisposing cause. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE], fr 997) by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1056b | |
| A reaction: This appears to be a rejection of determinism, and is the equivalent of Epicurus' introduction of the 'swerve' in atoms. They had suddenly become bothered about the free will problem in about 305 BCE. There must be other non-destiny causes? |
| 20374 | Consciousness is a terminal phenomenon, and causes nothing [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Everything of which we become conscious is a terminal phenomenon, an end - and causes nothing. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §478) | |
| A reaction: This appears to endorse epiphenomenalism - which I take to be an incoherent concept. How can becoming fully aware of something, rather than subliminally or subconsciously aware, make no difference at all? If it exists, it has causal powers. |
| 23938 | Passions are ranked, as if they are non-rational and animal pleasure seeking [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The whole conception of an order of rank among the passions: as if it were the right and normal thing to be guided by reason - with the passions as abnormal, dangerous, semi-animal …and nothing other than desires for pleasure. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §387) | |
| A reaction: This thought of Nietzsche's seems to be very important, because the Enlightenment relegation of passions was inherited from Christianity, and dominated European culture (and Buddhism too, I think). |
| 23939 | We fail to see that reason is a network of passions, and every passion contains some reason [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The misunderstanding of passion and reason, as if the latter were an independent entity and not rather a system of relations between various passions and desires; and as if every passion did not possess its quantum of reason. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §387) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me a much more accurate account of the relation of reason and passion than almost anything in earlier philosophy (though Aristotle is quite good on it). I am retraining myself to see my mental life in this way. |
| 20787 | A proposition is what can be asserted or denied on its own [Chrysippus] |
| Full Idea: A proposition is what can be asserted or denied on its own, for example, 'It is day' or 'Dion is walking'. | |
| From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.65 | |
| A reaction: Note the phrase 'on its own'. If you say 'it is day and Dion is walking', that can't be denied on its own, because first the two halves must each be evaluated, so presumably that doesn't count as a stoic proposition. |
| 20266 | It is essential that wise people learn to express their wisdom, possibly even as foolishness [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It is not yet enough to prove a thing, one must seduce people to accept it or raise them up to it. That is why a knowledgeable person ought to learn to speak his wisdom: and often in such a way that it sounds like foolishness. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 330) | |
| A reaction: Kant comes to mind. He has needed endless exegesis by people who write better than him. Have there been even greater philosophers who couldn't express their wisdom at all? Cratylus, perhaps! |
| 4554 | The concept of the 'will' is just a false simplification by our understanding [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There is no such thing as 'will'; it is only a simplifying conception of understanding, as is 'matter'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §671) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche shares this view with British philosophers such as Hobbes and Bernard Williams. So what is the ontological status of the 'will to power'? |
| 4552 | There is no such things a pure 'willing' on its own; the aim must always be part of it [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There is no such thing as 'willing', but only willing something: one must not remove the aim from the total condition - as epistemologists do. 'Willing' as they understand it is as little a reality as 'thinking': it is a pure fiction. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §668) | |
| A reaction: This is parallel to the common modern assertion that emotions also have intentional content, and cannot be understood as having a 'pure' identity. |
| 20850 | Passions are judgements; greed thinks money is honorable, and likewise drinking and lust [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Chrysippus says (in his On Passions) that the passions are judgements; for greed is a supposition that money is honorable, and similarly for drunkennes and wantonness and others. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.111 | |
| A reaction: This is an endorsement of Socrates's intellectualist reading of weakness of will, as against Aristotle's assigning it to overpowering passions. |
| 20251 | Actions done for a purpose are least understood, because we complacently think it's obvious [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Of all actions, the ones least understood are those undertaken for a purpose, no doubt because they have always passed for the most intelligible and are to our way of thinking the most commonplace. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 127) | |
| A reaction: You feel that Nietzsche is right about our stupendous lack of of self-knowledge, but then a bit of a panic ensues, because it is not clear what you are supposed to do about anything, particularly if we don't know why anyone else does anything. |
| 20869 | The highest degree of morality performs all that is appropriate, omitting nothing [Chrysippus] |
| Full Idea: He who makes moral progress to the highest degree performs all the appropriate actions in all circumstances, and omits none. | |
| From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Sophocles - Sophocles' Electra 4.39.22 | |
| A reaction: Hence concerns about omission as well as commission in the practice of ethics can be seen in the light of character and virtue. The world is fully of nice people who act well, but don't do so well on omissions. Car drivers, for example. |
| 20271 | Beauty in art is the imitation of happiness [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: By beauty in art one always understands imitation of happiness. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 433) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure how one goes about imitating happiness. One can replicate things that make us happy, like a nice landscape. But some beauty in art is also novel, and produces a new sort of happiness. Kandinsky. |
| 3044 | Stoics say that beauty and goodness are equivalent and linked [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say the beautiful is the only good. Good is an equivalent term to the beautiful; since a thing is good, it is beautiful; and it is beautiful, therefore it is good. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.1.59 |
| 20230 | The very idea of a critique of morality is regarded as immoral! [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Even to think of criticising morality, to consider morality as a problem, as problematic: what? was that not - is that not - immoral? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], Pref 3) | |
| A reaction: Offering critiques of the value of morality and of truth are perhaps Nietzsche's greatest achievements. |
| 4521 | None of the ancients had the courage to deny morality by denying free will [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Not one of the ancient philosophers had the courage for a theory of the 'unfree will' (i.e. for a theory that denies morality). | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §428) | |
| A reaction: The ancients were struck by fate, and by the elusiveness of truth, and Heraclitus said that "character is fate". But Nietzsche seems basically correct. |
| 20838 | Fate initiates general causes, but individual wills and characters dictate what we do [Chrysippus] |
| Full Idea: The order and reason of fate set in motion the general types and starting points of the causes, but each person's own will [or decisions] and the character of his mind govern the impulses of our thoughts and minds and our very actions. | |
| From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Aulus Gellius - Noctes Atticae 7.2.11 | |
| A reaction: So if you try and fail it was fate, but if you try and succeed it was you? |
| 20234 | Morality prevents us from developing better customs [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Morality acts to prevent the rise of new and better mores: it stupefies. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 019) | |
| A reaction: Note that he wants 'better' customs, and not just different ones. So the deep question concerns the criteria for why some customs are better. He seems to want us to fulfil our natures more completely. Arts, sciences, great deeds... |
| 4496 | 'Conscience' is invented to value actions by intention and conformity to 'law', rather than consequences [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: "Conscience" was created as an inner voice which does not measure the value of every action with regard to its consequences, but with regard to its intention, and the degree to which this intention conforms with the "laws". | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §141) | |
| A reaction: The idea of conscience does seem to preserve moral authority in the absence of gods, but intentions need not only be judged by their obedience to laws. |
| 20813 | Human purpose is to contemplate and imitate the cosmos [Chrysippus] |
| Full Idea: The human being was born for the sake of contemplating and imitating the cosmos. | |
| From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by M. Tullius Cicero - On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') 2.37 | |
| A reaction: [This seems to be an idea of Chrysippus] Remind me how to imitate the cosmos. Presumably this is living according to nature, but that becomes more obscure when express like this. |
| 20136 | There is an extended logic to a great man's life, achieved by a sustained will [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There is a logic in all of a great man's activities, hard to survey because of its length .... he has the ability to extend his will across great stretches of his life. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §962 (1885)) | |
| A reaction: This looks very close to Nietzsche's moral ideal - that one creates a life in impeccable taste, like a great work of art, by deliberately training one's nature, like a gardener. He talks of it as having 'style' in character. |
| 20358 | The highest man can endure and control the greatest combination of powerful drives [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The highest man has the greatest multiplicity of drives, in the relatively greatest strength that can be endured. Indeed, when the plant 'man' shows himself strongest one finds instincts that conflict powerfully (e.g. in Shakespeare), but are controlled. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §966) | |
| A reaction: Are there some people, perhaps in mental hospitals, who cannot endure or control such things? Do these people have some drives which the rest of us never experience? Do good people only have good drives? |
| 20369 | The highest man directs the values of the highest natures over millenia [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: He who determines values and directs the will of millenia by giving direction to the highest natures is the highest man. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §999) | |
| A reaction: The second half is the interesting bit. If Ghengis Khan inspires hordes to commit massacres, he certainly creates values, but he hasn't inspired highest natures. So who inspires highest natures? Who are the role models of role models? |
| 4506 | There is a conspiracy (a will to power) to make morality dominate other values, like knowledge and art [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Whose will to power is morality? - Since Socrates there has been a sustained attempt to make moral values dominate over other values, so that they guide living, but also knowledge, the arts, and political and social endeavour. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §274) | |
| A reaction: Is the 'will to power' really an explanation? If all human activity is the will to power, then you have to explain the difference between activities. Genocide and altruism are strikingly different manifestations of the will to power. |
| 4514 | The basic tendency of the weak has always been to pull down the strong, using morality [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The basic tendency of the weak and mediocre of all ages is to weaken and pull down the stronger: chief means, the moral judgement. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §345) | |
| A reaction: Obviously this contains some truth. Morality is a vast trade union movement by means of which the weak seek power and security. And good luck to them, I say. Why is mass power any worse than aristocratic or oligarchic power? |
| 20237 | Moral feelings are entirely different from the moral concepts used to judge actions [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The history of moral feeling is completely different from the history of moral concepts. The former are powerful before, the latter especially after an action in view of the compulsion to pronounce upon it. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 034) | |
| A reaction: I think he places the feelings in our animal origins, and the concepts in rather unnatural cultures. |
| 20238 | Treating morality as feelings is just obeying your ancestors [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: To trust your feelings - that means obeying your grandfather and your grandmother and their grandparents more than the gods in us: our reason and our experience. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 035) | |
| A reaction: He says prior to this that feelings are just an inheritance, not our true natures. Stoics said 'live according to nature', by which they meant 'live by reason', because that is our true nature. |
| 3045 | Stoics say justice is a part of nature, not just an invented principle [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say that justice exists by nature, and not because of any definition or principle. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.1.66 | |
| A reaction: cf Idea 3024. Stoics thought that nature is intrinsically rational, and therein lies its justice. 'King Lear' enacts this drama about whether nature is just. |
| 20774 | Only nature is available to guide action and virtue [Chrysippus] |
| Full Idea: What am I to take as the principle of appropriate action and raw material for virtue if I give up nature and what is according to nature? | |
| From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Plutarch - On Common Conceptions 1069e | |
| A reaction: 'Nature' is awfully vague as a guideline, even when we are told nature is rational. I can only make sense of it as 'human nature', which is more Aristotelian than stoic. 'Go with the flow' and 'lay the cards you are dealt' might capture it. |
| 20370 | All evaluation is from some perspective, and aims at survival [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: All evaluation is made from a definite perspective: that of the preservation of the individual, a community, a race, a state, a church, a faith, a culture. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §259) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be a tension over the source of values in Nietzsche. Are they the individualistic visions of an übermensch, or do they arise from the collective pressures of one of these social groups? I suspec that his answer tries to combine them. |
| 20354 | The ruling drives of our culture all want to be the highest court of our values [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What is common to all [the artistic, scientific, religious and moral views]: the ruling drives want to be viewed also as the highest courts of value in general, indeed as creative and ruling powers. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §677) | |
| A reaction: An interesting question is whether those four socially dominant forces could reach a consensus on a core of values. And also which value held by one of the groups is viewed as crazy by the other three. |
| 20864 | Live in agreement, according to experience of natural events [Chrysippus] |
| Full Idea: The goal of life is to live in agreement, which is according to experience of the things which happen by nature. | |
| From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by John Stobaeus - Anthology 2.06a | |
| A reaction: Cleanthes added 'with nature' to Zeno's slogan, and Chyrisppus added this variation. At least it gives you some idea of what the consistent rational principle should be. You still have to assess which aspects of nature should influence us. |
| 20243 | Human beings are not majestic, either through divine origins, or through grand aims [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Formerly one tried to get a feel for the majesty of human beings by pointing backward toward their divine descent: this has now become a forbidden path. ...So now the path humanity pursues is proof of its majesty. Alas, this too leads nowhere! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 049) | |
| A reaction: I love the breadth of Nietzsche's vision, both across history, and in the great scheme. He goes on to say that we are no more a 'higher order' than ants and earwigs. |
| 20268 | Most dying people have probably lost more important things than what they are about to lose [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The act of dying is not as significant as the universal awe of it would have us believe, and the dying person has probably lost more important things in life than he is now about to lose. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 349) | |
| A reaction: He says this is a thought about death which we tend to repress. It would depend on the life, I should think, but it is probably right in very many cases. |
| 4505 | How can it be that I should prefer my neighbour to myself, but he should prefer me to himself? [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What does it mean that the welfare of my neighbour ought to possess for me a higher value than my own? But that my neighbour ought to subordinate his welfare to my welfare? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §269) | |
| A reaction: Interestingly, this is Nietzsche using a Kantian tool to criticise Christian morality. He is pointing out a logical inconsistency. It seems to me an excellent question, though Christians could say it is benignly circular. The most benign circle possible. |
| 20252 | Marriage is too serious to be permitted for people in love! [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Lovers' vows ought to be publicly declared invalid and marriage denied the pair: and indeed precisely because one ought to take marriage unspeakably more seriously! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 151) | |
| A reaction: Sounds like the traditional aristocratic attitude to marriage, so the idea suits Nietzsche. I think that nowadays it is much wiser to be base proposal of marriage on friendship than on love. You are choosing a life-long friend, not someone to adore. |
| 20236 | Marriage upholds the idea that love, though a passion, can endure [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The institution of marriage stubbornly upholds the belief that love, though a passion, is, as such, capable of duration. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 027) | |
| A reaction: No wonder Nietzsche never married. Women must have been terrified of him, when he came out with this sort of remark. I doubt whether many couples who are celebrating their golden wedding would agree with him. [1/5/2017] |
| 20263 | Fear reveals the natures of other people much more clearly than love does [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Fear has furthered the universal knowledge of humanity more than love, for fear wants to discern who the other person is, what he can do and what he wants. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 309) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche had it in for love at this stage in his career. This remark strikes me as brilliantly accurate. |
| 5972 | Living happily is nothing but living virtuously [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: According to Chrysippus, living happily consists solely in living virtuously. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE], fr139) by Plutarch - 72: Against Stoics on common Conceptions 1060d | |
| A reaction: This, along with 'live according to nature', is the essential doctrine of stoicism. This is 'eudaimonia', not the modern idea of feeling nice. Is it possible to admire another person for anything other than virtue? (Yes! Looks, brains, strength, wealth). |
| 1777 | Pleasure is not the good, because there are disgraceful pleasures [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Pleasure is not the good, because there are disgraceful pleasures, and nothing disgraceful is good. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.Ze.60 | |
| A reaction: I certainly approve of the idea that not all pleasure is intrinsically good. Indeed, I think good has probably got nothing to do with pleasure. 'Disgraceful' is hardly objective though. |
| 5973 | Justice can be preserved if pleasure is a good, but not if it is the goal [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Chrysippus thinks that, while justice could not be preserved if one should set up pleasure as the goal, it could be if one should take pleasure to be not a goal but simply a good. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE], fr 23) by Plutarch - 72: Against Stoics on common Conceptions 1070d | |
| A reaction: This is an interesting and original contribution to the ancient debate about pleasure. It shows Aristotle's moderate criticism of pleasure (e.g. Idea 84), but attempts to pinpoint where the danger is. Aristotle says it thwarts achievement of the mean. |
| 4509 | Utilitarians prefer consequences because intentions are unknowable - but so are consequences! [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Utilitarians say actions must be judged by consequences, because it is impossible to know the origins. But one only knows the consequences about five steps ahead, and who knows what an action can stimulate, excite, provoke? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §291) | |
| A reaction: The utilitarian slogan seems to be 'do your best', but that could apply equally to intentions and consequences. Nietzsche seems to offer nothing to compensate us for our massive ignorance. Nihilism. |
| 20233 | Punishment has distorted the pure innocence of the contingency of outcomes [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: With this infamous art of interpreting the concept of punishment, people have robbed of its innocence the whole, pure contingency of events. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 013) | |
| A reaction: What a wonderfully subtle observation about moral luck! That whole problem is driven by the issue of whether the agent should be punished. When a chain of errors leads to disaster, we may see many innocent people doing a collective evil. |
| 4500 | It is a sign of degeneration when eudaimonistic values begin to prevail [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It is a sign of degeneration when eudaemonistic valuations begin to prevail (physiological fatigue, feebleness of the will). | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §222) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle's analysis of eudaimonia says that it is only achievable through action, and he considers consequences to be an essential part of an action. Surely hedonism is more degenerate than aiming at all-round success in life? |
| 4558 | We have no more right to 'happiness' than worms [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One has no right to 'happiness': the individual human being is in precisely the same case as the lowest worm. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §759) | |
| A reaction: This seems an obvious truth, but nicely made clear. It is, I suppose, aimed at Christians and socialists. |
| 4550 | Pleasure and pain are mere epiphenomena, and achievement requires that one desire both [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Brave and creative men never consider pleasure and pain as ultimate values - they are epiphenomena: one must desire both if one is to achieve anything. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §579) | |
| A reaction: I am struggling with the notion that I must desire pain if I am ambitious, but to label these feeling 'epiphenomena' is challenging and plausible. I certainly deny that they have intrinsic value, which is a matter of judgement, not feeling. |
| 20845 | There are shameful pleasures, and nothing shameful is good, so pleasure is not a good [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Chrysippus (in his On Pleasure) denies even of pleasure that it is a good; for there are also shameful pleasures, and nothing shameful is good. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.103 | |
| A reaction: Socrates seems to have started this line of the thought, to argue that pleasure is not The Good. Stoics are more puritanical. Nothing counts as good if it is capable of being bad. Thus good pleasures are not good, which sounds odd. |
| 20248 | People do nothing for their real ego, but only for a phantom ego created by other people [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Whatever they say about their 'egotism', people nevertheless do nothing their whole life long for their ego, but instead for the phantom ego that has formed in the heads around them and been communicated to them. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 105) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche has a vision of true devotion to the ego as healthy, and so (I would say) does Aristotle, though the two might disagree about the details. I want to live among people who work on themselves, not those who always sacrifice themselves. |
| 4518 | The question about egoism is: what kind of ego? since not all egos are equal [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Egoism! But no one has yet asked: what kind of ego? On the contrary, everyone unconsciously thinks every ego equal to every other ego. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §364) | |
| A reaction: The implication, I presume, is that you should be egoistic if you have a really excellent ego, but very altruistic if you are a loser. Or a slave. Or a monk. |
| 4519 | The ego is only a fiction, and doesn't exist at all [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The 'subject' is only a fiction: the ego of which one speaks when one censures egoism does not exist at all. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §370) | |
| A reaction: This is the true Nietzsche, the nihilistic relativist. On optimistic days he thought some people had quivering dynamic egoes, to which they apparently owe duties, as one might to a great talent with which one was born. |
| 4517 | Egoism is inescapable, and when it grows weak, the power of love also grows weak [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There cannot be anything other than egoism; in men whose ego is weak and thin the power of great love also grows weak. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §362) | |
| A reaction: We have captured this now in the popular psychological notion of 'low self-esteem', which blights a persons behaviour. It runs counter to the Christian ideal of self-effacing altruism. |
| 5967 | People need nothing except corn and water [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Chrysippus praises ad nauseam the lines "For what need mortals save two things alone,/ Demeter's grain and draughts of water clear". | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1043e | |
| A reaction: "Oh, reason not the need!" says King Lear. The remark shows the close affinity of stoicism and cynicism, as the famous story of Diogenes is that he threw away his drinking cup when he realised you could drink with your hands. |
| 4560 | The Golden Rule prohibits harmful actions, with the premise that actions will be requited [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The rule 'do nothing that ought not to be done to you' prohibits actions on account of their harmful consequences: the concealed premise is that an action will always be requited. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §925) | |
| A reaction: Indeed it seems to be a slogan for contractarians, though I don't see why you shouldn't be influenced by the thought that there might be reciprocation, even if you don't expect it. |
| 20246 | If you feel to others as they feel to themselves, you must hate a self-hater [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Supposing we felt toward someone else as that person feels about himself, then we would have to hate him if he (like Pascal) found himself hateful. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 063) | |
| A reaction: And how does the Golden Rule work if the other people feel suicidal (as groups sometimes do)? |
| 5966 | All virtue is good, but not always praised (as in not lusting after someone ugly) [Chrysippus] |
| Full Idea: Although deeds done in accordance with virtue are congenial, not all are cited as examples, such as courageously extending one's finger, or continently abstaining from a half-dead old woman, or not immediately agreeing that three is four. | |
| From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE], fr 211), quoted by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1038f | |
| A reaction: Presumably the point (so elegantly expressed - what a shame we have lost most of Chrysippus) is that virtue comes in degrees, even though its value is an absolute. The same has been said (by Russell and Bonjour) about self-evidence. |
| 4555 | The great error is to think that happiness derives from virtue, which in turn derives from free will [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The tremendous rat's tail of errors that has hitherto counted as the highest inspiration of humanity: 'All happiness is a consequence of virtue, all virtue is a consequence of free will!' | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §705) | |
| A reaction: A nice suggestion about the hidden agenda of Greek and Christian philosophy. If one began to doubt free will, where would that leave Socrates and Aristotle? |
| 20855 | Chrysippus says virtue can be lost (though Cleanthes says it is too secure for that) [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Chrysippus says that virtue can be lost, owing to drunkenness and excess of black bile, whereas Cleanthes says it cannot, because it consists in secure intellectual grasps, and it is worth choosing for its own sake. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.127 | |
| A reaction: Succumbing to drunkenness looks like evidence that you were not truly virtuous. Mental illness is something else. On the whole I agree the Cleanthes. |
| 5970 | Chrysippus says nothing is blameworthy, as everything conforms with the best nature [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Chrysippus has often written on the theme that there is nothing reprehensible or blameworthy in the universe since all things are accomplished in conformity with the best nature. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1051b | |
| A reaction: This is Leibniz's "best of all possible worlds", but deriving the idea from the rightness of nature rather than the perfection of God. Chrysippus has a more plausible ground than Leibniz, as for him nasty things follow from conscious choice. |
| 4494 | Not "return to nature", for there has never yet been a natural humanity [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Not "return to nature", for there has never yet been a natural humanity. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §120) | |
| A reaction: I like that. The notion of dividing humanity into natural and unnatural makes me uneasy (and certainly isn't PC), and yet us all having to be 'natural' seems a conservative straight-jacket. |
| 4498 | 'Love your enemy' is unnatural, for the natural law says 'love your neighbour and hate your enemy' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One drives nature out of morality when one say "love your enemies": for then the natural "Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thy enemy" in the law (in instinct) has become meaningless. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §204) | |
| A reaction: When the stoics said 'live according to nature' they meant according to reason, which presumably compromises with enemies. Profoundly Christian acts may be unnatural, but they are very moving. |
| 4493 | Be natural! But how, if one happens to be "unnatural"? [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Be natural! But how, if one happens to be "unnatural"? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §066) | |
| A reaction: Quite so, though Nietzsche isn't the person to offer a solution. Choose the route of Aristotle ('normal' human function), or Kant (escape from nature into reason). |
| 4511 | We would avoid a person who always needed reasons for remaining decent [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It would arouse doubts in us concerning a man if we heard he needed reasons for remaining decent: certainly, we would avoid him. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §313) | |
| A reaction: This is a perfect slogan for virtue theory, and so rather surprising coming from Nietzsche. And 'decent' isn't a great Nietzsche value (though he WAS a very decent man). |
| 4512 | Virtue is pursued from self-interest and prudence, and reduces people to non-entities [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Above all, gentlemen of virtue, you are not our superiors: it is a miserable self-interest and prudence that suggests virtue to you. If you had more strength and courage you would not reduce yourselves to virtuous nonentities in this way. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §318) | |
| A reaction: It is certainly true that virtue is about self-interest, and also that it tends to be rather conservative. But we recognise the virtues of adventure and risk. |
| 20372 | The instinct of the herd, the majority, aims for the mean, in the middle [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The instinct of the herd considers the middle and the mean as the highest and most valuable: the place where the majority finds itself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §280) | |
| A reaction: The reason, I think, for Nietzsche's hostility to Aristotle. But the doctrine of the mean doesn't just seek the middle. It seeks what is appropriate. The mean for bravery and cowardice is not somewhat timid bravery; it is alarmingly brave, but sensible. |
| 20272 | Honesty is a new young virtue, and we can promote it, or not [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Among neither the Socratic nor the Christian virtues does honesty appear: it is one of the youngest virtues, still quite immature. ...We can advance it or retard it, as we see fit. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 456) | |
| A reaction: I associate the virtue of honesty with the cult of sincerity of feelings which arose in the romantic movement. |
| 20240 | The Jews treated great anger as holy, and were in awe of those who expressed it [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The Jews felt differently about wrath than we do and decreed it holy; in return, they, as a people, viewed the foreboding majesty of the individual with whom wrath showed itself connected, at a height at which a European is incapable of imagining. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 038) | |
| A reaction: If you thought wrath was really wonderful then presumably you would aspire to partake of it, but I see no signs of the Jews having been an especially wrathful people. It sounds like the tantrums of Tudor monarchs, which was their royal privilege. |
| 20244 | Christianity replaces rational philosophical virtues with great passions focused on God [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Christianity disallows all moral value to the virtue of philosophers - the triumph of reason over affects - and demands that affects reveal themselves in splendour, as love of God, fear before God, fanatical faith in God, and blindest hope in God. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 058) | |
| A reaction: Faith, hope and charity are the three great Christian virtues that were added to the four cardinal virtues of the Greeks. |
| 20274 | The cardinal virtues want us to be honest, brave, magnanimous and polite [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Honest towards ourselves and whatever else is our friend; courageous toward the enemy; magnanimous toward the defeated; polite - always. This is how the four cardinal virtues want us to be. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 556) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be Nietzsche genuinely asserting his four cardinal virtues, rather than being ironic. He certainly asserts politeness as the fourth virtue earlier in the book. Cf a different list in Idea 20382 |
| 4510 | A path to power: to introduce a new virtue under the name of an old one [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: A path to power: to introduce a new virtue under the name of an old one. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §310) | |
| A reaction: A nicely wicked Nietzschean suggestion. One doesn't replace altruism, one 'reinterprets' it. Or democracy. Or 'true' courage. |
| 4515 | Modesty, industriousness, benevolence and temperance are the virtues of a good slave [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Modest, industrious, benevolent, temperate: is that how you would have men? good men? But to me that seems only the ideal slave, the slave of the future. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §356) | |
| A reaction: An extremely good critical observation on virtue theory. Start from scratch, and list the virtues you would want in a good slave. |
| 4516 | Many virtues are merely restraints on the most creative qualities of a human being [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Industry, modesty, benevolence, temperance are just so many hindrances to a sovereign disposition, great inventiveness, heroic purposiveness, noble being-for-oneself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §358) | |
| A reaction: The traditional virtues here are reasonably precise and clear, but Nietzsche's preferred virtues are vague, and open to bizarre interpretations. One foresees a bunch of obsessive arrogant fools trying to live up to Nietzsche's ideal. |
| 4559 | When powerless one desires freedom; if power is too weak, one desires equal power ('justice') [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One desires freedom as long as one does not possess power. Once one does possess it, one desires to overpower; if one cannot do that (if one is too weak), one desires 'justice', i.e. equal power. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §784) | |
| A reaction: Personally I hope the Martians have freedom and justice, but that is presumably just a sublimation. People have given up power for freedom and justice. |
| 20257 | Cool courage and feverish bravery have one name, but are two very different virtues [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Courage as cold bravery and imperturbability, and courage as feverish, half-blind bravura - one calls both of these things by the same name! How different are the cold virtues from the warm ones! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 277) | |
| A reaction: How few philosophers are capable of making a subtle but accurate observation like this! How many other virtues should be subdivided? |
| 4557 | The supposed great lovers of honour (Alexander etc) were actually great despisers of honour [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The type of the ambitious man who thirsts after honour is supposed to be Napoleon, or Caesar, or Alexander! As if these were not precisely the great despisers of honour! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §751) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure how Nietzsche knows this, but it sounds right. Great success comes from total focus on the end, not on incidental rewards. |
| 20259 | Teach youth to respect people who differ with them, not people who agree with them [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The surest way to ruin a youth is by teaching him to respect those who think like him more highly than those who think differently. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 297) | |
| A reaction: On the whole I prefer to read the philosophers who seem to be on my side, because I am trying to strengthen my explanation of the world, and opponents aren't much help. I do read opponents, if they explicitly challenge what I defend. |
| 20267 | Seeing duty as a burden makes it a bit cruel, and it can thus never become a habit [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: To require that duty always be somewhat burdensome - as Kant does - amounts to acquiring that it never become habit and custom: in this requirement there linger a tiny remnant of ascetic cruelty. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 339) | |
| A reaction: Habit, of course, is the ideal of Aristotelian virtue. |
| 4507 | The categorical imperative needs either God behind it, or a metaphysic of the unity of reason [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One needed God as an unconditional sanction, as a 'categorical imperative'; or, if one believed in the authority of reason, one needed a metaphysic of unity, by virtue of which this was logical. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §275) | |
| A reaction: I am not sure what a 'metaphysic of unity' is, but this still captures the problem with Kant. The categorical imperative is purely formal, and will justify consistent principles of pain and destruction, without some value to get it off the ground. |
| 4501 | Utilitarianism criticises the origins of morality, but still believes in it as much as Christians [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Utilitarianism (socialism, democracy) criticises the origins of moral evaluations, but it believes them just as much as the Christian does. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §253) | |
| A reaction: It is a critique of both utilitarianism and Kantian deontology that they seem to rest on unquestioned assumptions about what has value (pleasure, happiness, reason). I think Aristotle offers a better answer to this problem than 'divine' authority. |
| 4489 | If faith is lost, people seek other authorities, in order to avoid the risk of willing personal goals [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Having unlearned faith, one still seeks another authority (in conscience, or reason, or social instinct, or history); one wants to get around the will, the willing of a goal, the risk of positing a goal for oneself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §020) | |
| A reaction: But what goal should you risk willing, and why? And what limits my goals? What is the hallmark of a healthy goal, or good taste in goals, or whatever it is Nietzsche aspires to? |
| 20275 | Most people think they are already complete, but we can cultivate ourselves [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We are free to handle and cultivate our drives like a gardener ...but how many people know we are free to do this? Don't most people believe in themselves as completed, full grown up facts? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 560) | |
| A reaction: I see Nietzsche as an existentialist philosopher. He is much more than that, but this quotation endorses what I take to be the central idea of existentialism. |
| 4513 | Virtuous people are inferior because they are not 'persons', but conform to a fixed pattern [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: A virtuous man is a lower species because he is not a "person" but acquires his value by conforming to a pattern of man that is fixed once and for all. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §319) | |
| A reaction: A penetrating critque of virtue theory. If, even now, we are trying to conform to Aristotle's model, that is VERY conservative. The obliteration of individual identity is also a charge against Kant and Bentham. Virtues are more flexible than rules. |
| 4504 | Morality used to be for preservation, but now we can only experiment, giving ourselves moral goals [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Formerly one employed morality for preservation: but nobody wants to preserve any longer, there is nothing to preserve. Therefore an experimental morality: to give oneself a goal. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §260) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as the essence of Nietzsche, and the relativist position. Exciting and dangerous. Let's kill someone (Gide). Take drugs (Manson). Betray friends (Genet). Be altruistic…? |
| 20842 | Rational animals begin uncorrupted, but externals and companions are bad influences [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: The rational animal is corrupted, sometimes because of the persuasiveness of external activities and sometimes because of the influence of companions. For the starting points provided by nature are uncorrupted. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.89 | |
| A reaction: If companions corrupt us, what corrupted the companions? Aren't we all in this together? And where do the 'external activities' originate? |
| 4495 | The high points of culture and civilization do not coincide [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The high points of culture and civilization do not coincide. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §121) | |
| A reaction: Intriguing. What can Nietzsche have meant by 'civilization'? Certainly not the English utilitarian ideal. He probably means aristocrats running slaves… |
| 20229 | No authority ever willingly accepts criticism [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: As long as the world has existed, no authority has ever willingly permitted itself to become the object of critique. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], Pref 3) | |
| A reaction: A political remark, but it leads into speaking of conventional morality as just such an authority. Nowadays teachers have feedback forms, and leaders have to endure party conferences. But on the whole it remains true. |
| 20254 | People govern for the pleasure of it, or just to avoid being governed [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Some govern out of pleasure in governing, others in order not to be governed - to the latter, governing is merely the lesser of two evils. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 181) | |
| A reaction: Our current society is full of self-employed people whose major motivation is to avoid being employees. |
| 20273 | The French Revolution gave trusting Europe the false delusion of instant recovery [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The 'Great Revolution' [in France] was nothing more than a pathetic and bloody quackery, which understood how, through sudden crises, to supply a trusting Europe with the sudden hope of recovery. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 534) | |
| A reaction: Whenever a new leader comes into power there is the same honeymoon period, where dreams of salvation have a moment in the sun. |
| 4491 | In modern society virtue is 'equal rights', but only because everyone is zero, so it is a sum of zeroes [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Our entire sociology simply does not know any other instinct than that of the herd, i.e. that of the sum of zeroes - where every zero has "equal rights", where it is virtuous to be zero. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §053) | |
| A reaction: I see his point, but all social arrangements are a trade-off. It would be quite exciting if warlike aristocrats dragged us into massive conquest, but nuclear weapons seem to have ruined that game. |
| 20856 | Justice, the law, and right reason are natural and not conventional [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Chrysippus says (in On the Honourable) that justice is natural and not conventional, as are the law and right reason. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.128 | |
| A reaction: How does he explain variations in the law between different states? Presumably some of them have got it wrong. What is the criterion for deciding which laws are natural? |
| 20232 | Get rid of the idea of punishment! It is a noxious weed! [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: People of diligence and goodwill, lend a hand in the one work of eradicating from the face of the earth the concept of punishment, which has overrun the whole world! There is no more noxious weed! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 013) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche never tried his hand at school teaching or parenting or running a youth club. But I still love this idea. In really good families I suspect that punishment is almost unknown. |
| 20253 | Modern wars arise from the study of history [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The great wars of our day are the effects of the study of history. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 180) | |
| A reaction: The Prussians reacted to Napoleon. The Nazis reacted to Versailles. But now the study of history reveals to us dreadful wars based on simplistic accounts of history. Be wise about history, not ignorant of it. |
| 20261 | History does not concern what really happened, but supposed events, which have all the influence [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The writer of history deals not with what really happened but merely with supposed events, for only the latter have had an effect. ...All historians speak of things that have never existed except in imagination. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 307) | |
| A reaction: This seems blatantly true, and is most obvious in the case of forged documents which have been hugely influential. Erroneous conspiracy theories are another example. (Note: only scorn conspiracy theories if you think conspiracies never happen!). |
| 1779 | We don't have obligations to animals as they aren't like us [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: We have no obligations of justice to other animals, because they are dissimilar to us. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.Ze.66 | |
| A reaction: "Dissimilar" begs questions. Some human beings don't seem much like me. How are we going to treat visiting aliens? |
| 20857 | Justice is irrelevant to animals, because they are too unlike us [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: There is no justice between us and other animals because of the dissimilarity between us and them. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.129 | |
| A reaction: [from lost On Justice Bk 1] What would he make of modern revelations about bonobos and chimpanzees? If there is great dissimilarity between some peoples, does that invalidate justice between them? He also said animals exist for our use. |
| 20812 | Covers are for shields, and sheaths for swords; likewise, all in the cosmos is for some other thing [Chrysippus] |
| Full Idea: Just as the cover was made for the sake of the shield, and the sheath for the sword, in the same way everything else except the cosmos was made for the sake of other things. | |
| From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by M. Tullius Cicero - On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') 2.37 | |
| A reaction: Chrysippus was wise to stop at the cosmos. Similarly, religious teleology had better not ask about the purpose of God. What does he think pebbles are for? Nature is the source of stoic value, so it needs to be purposeful. |
| 21403 | The later Stoics identified the logos with an air-fire compound, called 'pneuma' [Chrysippus, by Long] |
| Full Idea: From Chrysippus onwards, the Stoics identified the logos throughout each world-cycle not with pure fire, but with a compound of fire and air, 'pneuma'. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by A.A. Long - Hellenistic Philosophy 4.4.2 | |
| A reaction: I suspect this was because breath is so vital to the human body. |
| 20828 | Fire is a separate element, not formed with others (as was previously believed) [Chrysippus, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: In his theory fire is said independently to be an element, since it is not formed together with another one, whereas according to the earlier theory fire is formed with other elements. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.10.16c | |
| A reaction: The point is that fire precedes the other elements, and is superior to them. |
| 5975 | Stoics say earth, air, fire and water are the primary elements [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics call the four bodies - earth and water and air and fire - primary elements. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE], fr 444) by Plutarch - 72: Against Stoics on common Conceptions 1085c | |
| A reaction: Elsewhere (fr 413) Chrysippus denies that they are all 'primary'. Essentially, though, he seems to be adopting the doctrine of Empedocles and Aristotle, in specific opposition to Epicurus' atomism. |
| 4542 | Science has taken the meaning out of causation; cause and effect are two equal sides of an equation [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Science has emptied the concept of causality of its content and retained it as a formula of an equation, in which it has become at bottom a matter of indifference on which side cause is placed and on which side effect. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §551) | |
| A reaction: What a perceptive remark in the nineteenth century. Science is notoriously uninterested in the direction of time, and such a symmetry seems to make the concept of causation redundant. |
| 4553 | We derive the popular belief in cause and effect from our belief that our free will causes things [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The popular belief in cause and effect is founded on the presupposition that free will is the cause of every effect: it is only from this that we derive the feeling of causality. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §667) | |
| A reaction: It may be that our first experiences of causation involve the wil, though I don't see why babies shouldn't also observe. Nietzsche is muddling the epistemology with the ontology. |
| 20819 | The past and the future subsist, but only the present exists [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: When he wished to be subtle, Chrysippus wrote that the past part of time and the future part do not exist but subsist, and only the present exists. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - On Common Conceptions 1081f | |
| A reaction: [from lost On Void] I think I prefer the ontology of Idea 20818. Idea 20819 does not offer an epistemology. Is the present substantial enough to be known? The word 'subsist' is an ontological evasion (even though Russell briefly relied on it). |
| 20818 | The present does not exist, so our immediate experience is actually part past and part future [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Stoics do not allow a minimal time to exist, and do not want to have a partless 'now'; so what one thinks one has grasped as present is in part future and in part past. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - On Common Conceptions 1081c | |
| A reaction: [from lost On Parts Bk3-5] I agree with the ontology here, but I take our grasp of the present to be very short-term memory of the past. I ignore special relativity. Chrysippus expressed two views about this; in the other one he was a Presentist. |
| 20821 | Time is continous and infinitely divisible, so there cannot be a wholly present time [Chrysippus, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: Chrysippus says most clearly that no time is wholly present; for since the divisibility of continuous things is infinite, time as a whole is also subject to infinite divisibility by this method of division. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42 | |
| A reaction: But what is his reason for thinking that time is a continuous thing? There is a minimum time in quantum mechanics (the Planck Time), but do these quantum intervals overlap? Compare Idea 20819. |
| 20241 | Enquirers think finding our origin is salvation, but it turns out to be dull [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Investigators of knowledge ...have regularly presupposed that the salvation of humanity depended on insight into the origin of things. ...but with insight into origin comes the increasing insignificance of origin. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 044) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like the etymological fallacy, of thinking that the origin of a word gives you a true grasp of its meaning. |
| 4535 | A 'species' is a stable phase of evolution, implying the false notion that evolution has a goal [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: When a 'species' appears, it is a phase in which evolution is not visible, so an equilibrium seems to have been attained, making possible the false notion that a goal has been attained, and that evolution has a goal. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §521) | |
| A reaction: A penetrating explanation of a crucial that won't go away, and that still grips people's minds. Even if we all want a particular goal, evolution will ignore our dreams and go another way. |
| 4497 | The concept of 'God' represents a turning away from life, and a critique of life [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The concept 'God' represents a turning away from life, a critique of life, even a contempt for it. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §141) | |
| A reaction: Clearly Nietzsche has the same view of Platonism, and any view which aspires to 'higher' things, and views humans as being potentially divine (even Aristotle's dream of pure 'contemplation'). |
| 3048 | Stoics say that God the creator is the perfection of all animals [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say that God is an animal immortal, rational, perfect, and intellectual in his happiness, unsusceptible of any kind of evil, having a foreknowledge of the world; however, he is not the figure of a man, and is the creator of the universe. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.1.72 |
| 4488 | Those who have abandoned God cling that much more firmly to the faith in morality [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Those who have abandoned God cling that much more firmly to the faith in morality. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §018) | |
| A reaction: A nice remark. The interesting implication is that theists do NOT cling so strongly to morality (perhaps because they hope for mercy, or ultimate justice). |
| 20773 | The origin of justice can only be in Zeus, and in nature [Chrysippus] |
| Full Idea: One can find no other starting point or origin for justice except the one derived from Zeus and that derived from the common nature; for everything like this must have that starting point, if we are going to say anything at all about good and bad things. | |
| From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1035c | |
| A reaction: [in lost 'On Gods' bk 3] This appears to offer two starting points, in the mind of Zeus, and in nature, though since nature is presumed to be rational the two may run together. Is Zeus the embodiment, or the unconscious source, or the maker of decrees? |
| 5965 | The source of all justice is Zeus and the universal nature [Chrysippus] |
| Full Idea: It is not possible to discover any other beginning of justice or any source for it other than that from Zeus and from the universal nature. | |
| From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE], fr 326), quoted by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1035c | |
| A reaction: If the source is 'universal nature', that could agree with Plato, but if the source is Zeus, then stoicism is a religion rather than a philosophy. |
| 4502 | Morality cannot survive when the God who sanctions it is missing [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Morality cannot survive when the God who sanctions it is missing! The "beyond" is absolutely necessary if faith in morality is to be maintained. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §253) | |
| A reaction: It strikes me that Nietzsche is self-evidently wrong. We must ask why people hang on to moral absolutes after they lose religious faith. Nietzsche seems to think it is a comfort blanket. But he admits the contractarian origins of morality. |
| 3042 | Stoics teach that law is identical with right reason, which is the will of Zeus [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics teach that common law is identical with that right reason which pervades everything, being the same with Zeus, who is the regulator and chief manager of all existing things. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.1.53 |
| 1782 | Stoics teach that God is a unity, variously known as Mind, or Fate, or Jupiter [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics teach that God is unity, and that he is called Mind, and Fate, and Jupiter, and by many names besides. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.Ze.68 |
| 20245 | Christianity hoped for a short cut to perfection, that skipped the hard labour of morality [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: You can say what you like: Christianity wanted to liberate humanity from the burden of the demands of morality by pointing out a shorter way to perfection, or so it believed. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 059) | |
| A reaction: This conjures up Graham Greene's Catholic heroes, who wallow in sin, but hope for salvation at the last moment. |
| 20247 | Christianity was successful because of its heathen rituals [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Not what is Christian in it, rather the universal heathenism of its rituals is the reason for the propagation of this world religion. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 070) | |
| A reaction: I'm afraid I think this is right. I grew up bewildered by the lack of content in the rituals of church services. Even austere protestants manage to sing and recite. Maybe philosophies should do this - wanted: new Cartesian and Kantian rituals! |
| 4499 | Primitive Christianity is abolition of the state; it is opposed to defence, justice, patriotism and class [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Primitive Christianity is abolition of the state: it forbids oaths, war service, courts of justice, defence of self or community, the distinction between citizens and foreigners, and differences of class. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §207) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. This tension is still in Christianity, and permeates international socialism movements. But then Diogenes the Cynic said he was a citizen of the world. |
| 20269 | 'I believe because it is absurd' - but how about 'I believe because I am absurd' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Many people have achieved the humility that says: 'I believe because it is absurd', and have sacrificed their reason for it. But no one, as far as I know, has achieved the humility, which is only one step further, of 'I believe because I am absurd'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 417) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche gives the Latin: 'credo quia absurdum est' (Tertullian), and 'credo quia absurdus sum'. It may look like an insulting remark from Nietzsche, but it is actually in tune with the spirit of the original. |
| 20830 | Death can't separate soul from body, because incorporeal soul can't unite with body [Chrysippus] |
| Full Idea: Death is a separation of soul from body. But nothing incorporeal can be separated from a body. For neither does anything incorporeal touch a body, and the soul touches and is separated from the body. Therefore the soul is not incorporeal. | |
| From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Tertullian - The Soul as an 'Astral Body' 5.3 | |
| A reaction: This is the classic interaction difficulty for substance dualist theories of mind. |
| 20264 | The easy and graceful aspects of a person are called 'soul', and inner awkwardness is called 'soulless' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The sum of inner movements that are easy for a person and that he consequently performs happily and with grace is called his 'soul'; - if inner movements obviously cause him difficulty and effort, he is considered soulless. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 311) | |
| A reaction: 'Soulless' is usually applied to people deficient in some sort of empathic feeling, or with an inability to recognise grandeur. It seems to imply that people who experience inner torture are soulless, but romantics see them as very soulful. |
| 21404 | There is a rationale in terrible disasters; they are useful to the whole, and make good possible [Chrysippus] |
| Full Idea: The evil which occurs in terrible disasters has a rationale [logos] peculiar to itself: for in a sense it occurs in accordance with universal reason, and is not without usefulness in relation to the whole. For without it there could be no good. | |
| From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by A.A. Long - Hellenistic Philosophy 4.4.5 | |
| A reaction: [a quotation from Chrysippus. Plutarch, Comm Not 1065b] A nice question about any terrible disaster is whether it is in some way 'useful', if we take a broader view of things. Almost everything has a good aspect, from that perspective. |