37 ideas
| 20455 | Philosophy really got started as the rival mode of discourse to tragedy [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: The pre-Socratics are interesting, but philosophy really begins in drama; it's a competitive discourse to tragedy. Which is why Plato's 'Republic' excludes the poets: they're the competition; gotta get rid of them. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Impossible Objects: interviews [2012], 6) | |
| A reaction: That's an interesting and novel perspective. So what was the 'discourse' of tragedy saying, and why did that provoke the new rival? Was it too fatalistic? |
| 20446 | Philosophy begins in disappointment, notably in religion and politics [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: I claim that philosophy begins in disappointment, and there are two forms of disappointment that interest me: religious and political disappointment | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Impossible Objects: interviews [2012], 2) | |
| A reaction: You are only disappointed by reality if you expected something better. To be disappointed by the failures of religion strikes me as rather old-fashioned, which Critchley sort of admits. Given the size and tumult of modern states, politics isn't promising. |
| 20449 | Science gives us an excessively theoretical view of life [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: One of the problems with the scientific worldview is that it leads human beings to have an overwhelmingly theoretical relationship to the world. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Impossible Objects: interviews [2012], 2) | |
| A reaction: Critchley is defending phenomenology, but this also supports its cousin, existentialism. I keep meeting bright elderly men who have immersed themselves in the study of science, and they seem very remote from the humanist culture I love. |
| 20448 | Phenomenology uncovers and redescribes the pre-theoretical layer of life [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: Phenomenology is a philosophical method that tries to uncover the pre-theoretical layer of human experience and redescribe it. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Impossible Objects: interviews [2012], 2) | |
| A reaction: I would be delighted if someone could tell me what this means in practice. I have the impression of lots of talk about phenomenology, but not much doing of it. Clearly I must enquire further. |
| 13076 | Scholastics treat relations as two separate predicates of the relata [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: The scholastics treated it as a step in the right explanatory direction to analyze a relational statement of the form 'aRb' into two subject-predicate statements, attributing different relational predicates to a and to b. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 2.2.1) | |
| A reaction: The only alternative seems to be Russell's view of relations as pure universals, having a life of their own, quite apart from their relata. Or you could take them as properties of space, time (and powers?), external to the relata? |
| 13102 | If you individuate things by their origin, you still have to individuate the origins themselves [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: If we go for the necessity-of-origins view, A and B are different if the origin of A is different from the origin of B. But one is left with the further question 'When is the origin of A distinct from the origin of B?' | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.1) | |
| A reaction: There may be an answer to this, in a regress of origins that support one another, but in the end the objection is obviously good. You can't begin to refer to an 'origin' if you can't identify anything in the first place. |
| 13103 | Numerical difference is a symmetrical notion, unlike proper individuation [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: Scholastics distinguished criteria of numerical difference from questions of individuation proper, since numerical difference is a symmetrical notion. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.1) | |
| A reaction: This apparently old-fashioned point appears to be conclusively correct. Modern thinkers, though, aren't comfortable with proper individuation, because they don't believe in concepts like 'essence' and 'substance' that are needed for the job. |
| 13104 | Haecceity as property, or as colourless thisness, or as singleton set [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: There is a contemporary property construal of haecceities, ...and a Scotistic construal as primitive, 'colourless' thisnesses which, unlike singleton-set haecceities, are aimed to do some explanatory work. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.4) | |
| A reaction: [He associates the contemporary account with David Kaplan] I suppose I would say that individuation is done by properties, but not by some single property, so I take it that I don't believe in haecceities at all. What individuates a haecceity? |
| 13100 | Maybe 'substance' is more of a mass-noun than a count-noun [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: We could think of 'substance' on the model of a mass noun, rather than a count noun. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.3) | |
| A reaction: They offer this to help Leibniz out of a mess, but I think he would be appalled. The proposal seems close to 'prime matter' in Aristotle, which never quite does the job required of it. The idea is nice, though, and should be taken seriously. |
| 13068 | We can ask for the nature of substance, about type of substance, and about individual substances [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: In the 'blueprint' approach to substance, we confront at least three questions: What is it for a thing to be an individual substance? What is it for a thing to be the kind of substance that it is? What is it to be that very individual substance? | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.1.1) | |
| A reaction: My working view is that the answer to the first question is that substance is essence, that the second question is overrated and parasitic on the third, and that the third is the key question, and also reduces to essence. |
| 13069 | The general assumption is that substances cannot possibly be non-substances [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: There is a widespread assumption, now and in the past, that substances are essentially substances: nothing is actually a substance but possibly a non-substance. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.1.2) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me that they clearly mean, in this context, that substances are 'necessarily' substances, not that they are 'essentially' substances. I would just say that substances are essences, and leave the necessity question open. |
| 13072 | Modern essences are sets of essential predicate-functions [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: The modern view of essence is that the essence of a particular thing is given by the set of predicate-functions essential to it, and the essence of any kind is given by the set of predicate-functions essential to every possible member of that kind. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.2.2) | |
| A reaction: Thus the modern view has elided the meanings of 'essential' and 'necessary' when talking of properties. They are said to be 'functions' from possible worlds to individuals. The old view (and mine) demands real essences, not necessary properties. |
| 17080 | Modern essentialists express essence as functions from worlds to extensions for predicates [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: The modern essentialist gives the same metaphysical treatment to every grammatical predicate - by associating a function from worlds to extensions for each. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: I take this to mean that essentialism is the view that if some predicate attaches to an object then that predicate is essential if there is an extension of that predicate in all possible worlds. In English, essential predicates are necessary predicates. |
| 13101 | Necessity-of-origin won't distinguish ex nihilo creations, or things sharing an origin [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: A necessity-of-origins approach cannot work to distinguish things that come into being genuinely ex nihilo, and cannot work to distinguish things sharing a single origin. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.1) | |
| A reaction: Since I am deeply suspicious of essentiality or necessity of origin (and they are not, I presume, the same thing) I like these two. Twins have always bothered me with the second case (where order of birth seems irrelevant). |
| 13081 | Even extreme modal realists might allow transworld identity for abstract objects [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: It might be suggested that even the extreme modal realist can countenance transworld identity for abstract objects. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 3.2.2 n46) | |
| A reaction: This may sound right for uncontroversial or well-defined abstracta such as numbers and circles, but even 'or' is ambiguous, and heaven knows what the transworld identity of 'democracy' is! |
| 13071 | We can go beyond mere causal explanations if we believe in an 'order of being' [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: The philosopher comfortable with an 'order of being' has richer resources to make sense of the 'in virtue of' relation than that provided only by causal relations between states of affairs, positing in addition other sorts of explanatory relationships. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.1.2) | |
| A reaction: This might best be characterised as 'ontological dependence', and could be seen as a non-causal but fundamental explanatory relationship, and not one that has to depend on a theistic world view. |
| 20454 | Wallace Stevens is the greatest philosophical poet of the twentieth century in English [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: Wallace Stevens is the greatest philosophical poet of the twentieth century in the English language - full stop - in my humble opinion. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Impossible Objects: interviews [2012], 6) | |
| A reaction: I include this because I tend to agree, and love Stevens. Hear recordings of him reading. I once mentioned Stevens in a conversation with Ted Hughes, and he just shrugged and said Stevens 'wasn't much of a poet'. Wrong. |
| 20456 | Interesting art is always organised around ethical demands [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: I don't think that art can be unethical. I think that interesting art is always ethical. It is organised around ethical demands. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Impossible Objects: interviews [2012], 8) | |
| A reaction: It is a struggle to make this fit instrumental music. Critchley likes punk rock, so he might not see the problem. How to compare Bachian, Mozart, Beethovenian and Debussyian ethics? Not impossible. |
| 20447 | The problems is not justifying ethics, but motivating it. Why should a self seek its good? [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: The issue is not so much justification as motivation, that in virtue of which the self can be motivated to act on some conception of the good. ...How does a self bind itself to whatever it determines as its good? | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Impossible Objects: interviews [2012], 2) | |
| A reaction: That is a bold and interesting idea about the starting point for ethics. It is always a problem for Aristotle, that he can offer no motivation for the quest for virtue. Contractarians start from existing motivations, but that isn't impressive. |
| 22673 | Wherever there is a small community, the association of the people is natural [Tocqueville] |
| Full Idea: The village or township is the only association which is so perfectly natural that, wherever a number of men are collected, it seems to constitute itself. | |
| From: Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America (abr Renshaw) [1840], 1.04) | |
| A reaction: Seems like a chicken and egg issue. I would have thought that association precedes the development of a village. |
| 22676 | The people are just individuals, and only present themselves as united to foreigners [Tocqueville] |
| Full Idea: The people in themselves are only individuals; and the special reason why they need to be united under one government is that they may appear to advantage before foreigners. | |
| From: Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America (abr Renshaw) [1840], 1.07) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be an observation on 1830s America, rather than a universal truth. It fits modern western societies rather well though. |
| 22679 | Vast empires are bad for well-being and freedom, though they may promote glory [Tocqueville] |
| Full Idea: Nothing is more opposed to the well-being and the freedom of men than vast empires. …But there is a love of glory in those who regard the applause of a great people as a worthy reward. | |
| From: Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America (abr Renshaw) [1840], 1.07) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the main the problem is the central dominance over distant colonies. There may also be some freedom in being distant from the centres, especially in 1830. The Wild West. |
| 22680 | People would be much happier and freer in small nations [Tocqueville] |
| Full Idea: If none but small nations existed, I do not doubt that mankind would be more happy and more free. | |
| From: Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America (abr Renshaw) [1840], 1.07) | |
| A reaction: In modern times many small states have appeared in Europe (in the Balkans and on the Baltic), and it looks to me a good thing. The prospect of Scottish independence may currently be looming, and De Tocqueville would approve. |
| 22675 | In American judges rule according to the Constitution, not the law [Tocqueville] |
| Full Idea: The Americans have acknowledged the right of judges to found their decisions on the Constitution, rather than on the laws. | |
| From: Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America (abr Renshaw) [1840], 1.05) | |
| A reaction: Obviously the Constitution is one short document, so the details must be enshrined in the laws (which presumably defer to the Constitution). |
| 22677 | A monarchical family is always deeply concerned with the interests of the state [Tocqueville] |
| Full Idea: The advantages of a monarchy are that the private interests of a family are connected with the interests of the state, …and at least there is always someone available to conduct the affairs of a monarchy. | |
| From: Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America (abr Renshaw) [1840], 1.07) | |
| A reaction: The second one is not much of a reason! The same defence can be given for the dominance of the Mafia. His defences are deliberately feeble, I suspect. England had plenty of monarchs who showed limited interest. |
| 22683 | Despots like to see their own regulations ignored, by themselves and their agents [Tocqueville] |
| Full Idea: In despotic states the sovereign is so much attached to his power that he dislikes the constraints even of his own regulations, and likes to see his agents acting irregularly. | |
| From: Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America (abr Renshaw) [1840], 1.11) | |
| A reaction: A nice observation. What would Machiavelli say? At least the citizens can see where the real power resides. |
| 22669 | Aristocracy is constituted by inherited landed property [Tocqueville] |
| Full Idea: Land is the basis of an aristocracy; …it is by landed property handed down from generation to generation that an aristocracy is constituted. | |
| From: Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America (abr Renshaw) [1840], 1.01) | |
| A reaction: Presumably there can be aristocrats by mere royal patronage, who have perhaps gambled away their land. They need protection by the other aristocrats. |
| 22674 | In Europe it is thought that local government is best handled centrally [Tocqueville] |
| Full Idea: The partisans of centralisation in Europe are wont to maintain that the government can administer the affairs of each locality better than the citizens can do it for themselves. | |
| From: Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America (abr Renshaw) [1840], 1.04) | |
| A reaction: In the modern UK we have lots of local government, which is thoroughly starved of funds by the central government. He is contrasting it with the strong local system in the U.S. |
| 20450 | The state, law, bureaucracy and capital are limitations on life, so I prefer federalist anarchism [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: I begin with the ontological premise that the state is a limitation on human existence. I am against the state, law, bureaucracy, and capital. I see anarchism as the only desirable way of organising, politically. ...Its political form is federalist. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Impossible Objects: interviews [2012], 3) | |
| A reaction: Hm. Some sympathy, but caution. All systems, even federalist anarchism, are limitations on our lives, so which limitations do we prefer? The law aspires to a calm egalitarian neutrality, which seems promising to me. |
| 20452 | Anarchism used to be libertarian (especially for sexuality), but now concerns responsibility [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: Anarchism in the 1960s was libertarian and organised around issues of sexual liberation. That moment has passed. People are and should be organising around responsibility. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Impossible Objects: interviews [2012], 3) | |
| A reaction: So there are two types of anarchism, focused on freedom or on responsibility. An organisation like Greenpeace might represent the latter. |
| 20451 | Belief that humans are wicked leads to authoritarian politics [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: If you think human beings are wicked, you turn to an authoritarian conception of politics, the Hobbesian-Machiavellian-Straussian lie. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Impossible Objects: interviews [2012], 3) | |
| A reaction: Right-wingers also tend to believe in free will, so they can blame and punish. Good people are more inspired by a great leader than bad people are? (Later, Critchley says authoritarians usually believe in original sin). |
| 22678 | An election, and its lead up time, are always a national crisis [Tocqueville] |
| Full Idea: The period which immediately precedes an election, and that during which the election is taking place, must always be considered as a national crisis. | |
| From: Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America (abr Renshaw) [1840], 1.07) | |
| A reaction: Rousseau said something similar. Election day in modern Britain is very peaceful and civilised, but it used to be chaotic. The weeks preceding it are invariably nasty. |
| 22682 | Universal suffrage is no guarantee of wise choices [Tocqueville] |
| Full Idea: Universal suffrage is by no means a guarantee of the wisdom of the popular choice. | |
| From: Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America (abr Renshaw) [1840], 1.11) | |
| A reaction: This was precisely Plato's fear about democracy. There seems no way at all of preventing the people from electing representatives on superficial grounds of personality. |
| 22670 | Slavery undermines the morals and energy of a society [Tocqueville] |
| Full Idea: Slavery dishonours labour; it introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. | |
| From: Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America (abr Renshaw) [1840], 1.01) | |
| A reaction: A pretty feeble reason (in the 1830s) for disliking slavery. He seems only concerned with the adverse effects on the slave-owning society, and shows no interest in the slaves themselves. |
| 22681 | The liberty of the press is more valuable for what it prevents than what it promotes [Tocqueville] |
| Full Idea: I approve of the liberty of the press from a consideration more of the evils it prevents than of the advantages it ensures. | |
| From: Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America (abr Renshaw) [1840], 1.10) | |
| A reaction: He accepts the freedom of the press as inevitable in a democracy, but he found U.S. newspapers to be nearly as bad then as they are now. |
| 22672 | It is admirable to elevate the humble to the level of the great, but the opposite is depraved [Tocqueville] |
| Full Idea: One manly and lawful passion for equality elevates the humble to the rank of the great. But there exists also a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level. | |
| From: Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America (abr Renshaw) [1840], 1.02) | |
| A reaction: There is a distinction in modern political rhetoric between 'levelling down' and 'levelling up'. Since levelling down is just destructive, and levelling up is unaffordable, it seems obvious that true equality needs to be a compromise. |
| 22671 | Equality can only be established by equal rights for all (or no rights for anyone) [Tocqueville] |
| Full Idea: I know of only two methods of establishing equality in the political world; rights must be given to every citizen, or none at all to anyone. | |
| From: Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America (abr Renshaw) [1840], 1.02) | |
| A reaction: We may have a vague concept of 'natural' rights, but primarily they are a tool of social engineering. You could grant equal rights on inheritance, for example, which turn out in practice to hugely favour the rich. |