5 ideas
21336 | Crates lived in poverty, and treated his whole life as a joke [Crates of Thebes, by Plutarch] |
Full Idea: Crates, with his bag and threadbare cloak, spent his whole life laughing and joking as though he were on holiday. | |
From: report of Crates (Theb) (fragments/reports [c.325 BCE]) by Plutarch - 30: Quiet of Mind 266e | |
A reaction: Crates sounds a little less alarming than Diogenes, while living a similar life. Was Crates the first ancestor of post-modernism? |
1767 | Everyone should study philosophy until they see all people in the same light [Crates of Thebes, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: A man should study philosophy up to the point of looking on generals and donkey-drivers in the same light. | |
From: report of Crates (Theb) (fragments/reports [c.325 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 06.Cr.9 | |
A reaction: This seems to reject Aristote's idea that some people are clearly superior to others. |
15456 | Extrinsic properties, unlike intrinsics, imply the existence of a separate object [Kim, by Lewis] |
Full Idea: Kim suggest that 'extrinsic' properties are those that imply 'accompaniment' (coexisting with some wholly distinct contingent object), whereas 'intrinsic' properties are compatible with 'loneliness' (being un-accompanied). | |
From: report of Jaegwon Kim (Psychophysical supervenience [1982], 9th pg) by David Lewis - Extrinsic Properties II | |
A reaction: The aim of Kim and Lewis is to get the ontological commitment down to a minimum - in this case just to objects (and mysterious 'implications'!). I like nominalism, but you can't just deny properties. 'Loneliness' is extrinsic! |
541 | Virtue comes more from habit than character [Critias] |
Full Idea: More men are good through habit than through character. | |
From: Critias (fragments/reports [c.440 BCE], B09), quoted by John Stobaeus - Anthology 3.29.41 |
542 | Fear of the gods was invented to discourage secret sin [Critias] |
Full Idea: When the laws forbade men to commit open crimes of violence, and they began to do them in secret, a wise and clever man invented fear of the gods for mortals, to frighten the wicked, even if they sin in secret. | |
From: Critias (fragments/reports [c.440 BCE], B25), quoted by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Professors (six books) 9.54 |