22 ideas
8093 | Seek wisdom rather than truth; it is easier [Joubert] |
Full Idea: To seek wisdom rather than truth. It is more within our grasp. | |
From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1797) | |
A reaction: A nice challenge to the traditional goal of philosophy. The idea that we should 'seek truth' only seems to have emerged during the Reformation. The Greeks may well never have dreamed of such a thing. |
8095 | We must think with our entire body and soul [Joubert] |
Full Idea: Everything we think must be thought with our entire being, body and soul. | |
From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1798) | |
A reaction: Not just that thinking must be a whole-hearted activity, but that the very contents of our thinking will be better if it arises out of being a physical creature, and not just a disembodied reasoner. Maybe the bowels are not needed to analyse set theory. |
8107 | The love of certainty holds us back in metaphysics [Joubert] |
Full Idea: What stops or holds us back in metaphysics is a love of certainty. | |
From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1814) | |
A reaction: This is a prominent truth from the age of Descartes, but may have diminished in the twenty-first century. The very best metaphysicians (e.g. Aristotle and Lewis) always end in a trail of dots when things become unsure. |
8099 | The truths of reason instruct, but they do not illuminate [Joubert] |
Full Idea: There are truths that instruct, perhaps, but they do not illuminate. In this class are all the truths of reasoning. | |
From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1800) | |
A reaction: A rather romantic view, which strikes me as false. An inspiring truth can suddenly collapse when you see why it must be false. Equally a line of reasoning can lead to a truth which need becomes an illumination. |
8098 | Truth consists of having the same idea about something that God has [Joubert] |
Full Idea: Truth consists of having the same idea about something that God has. | |
From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1800) | |
A reaction: Presumably sceptics about the existence of objective truth must also be sceptical about the possibility of such a God. I think Joubert is close to the nature of truth here. It is a remote and barely imaginable ideal. |
8101 | To know is to see inside oneself [Joubert] |
Full Idea: To know: it is to see inside oneself. | |
From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1800) | |
A reaction: Extreme internalism about justification! Personally I am becoming convinced that 'know' (unlike 'believe' and 'true') is an entirely social concept. Fools spend a lot of time instrospecting; wise people ask around, and check in books. |
8094 | The imagination has made more discoveries than the eye [Joubert] |
Full Idea: The imagination has made more discoveries than the eye. | |
From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1797) | |
A reaction: As a fan of the imagination, I love this one. I suspect that imagination, which was marginalised by Descartes, is actually the single most important aspect of thought (in slugs as well as humans). Abstraction requires imagination. |
8103 | A thought is as real as a cannon ball [Joubert] |
Full Idea: A thought is a thing as real as a cannon ball. | |
From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1801) | |
A reaction: Nice. The realisation of a thought can strike someone as if they have been assaulted, and hearing some remarks can be as bad as being stabbed. That is quite apart from political consequences. Joubert is good on the physicality of thinking. |
8100 | Where does the bird's idea of a nest come from? [Joubert] |
Full Idea: The idea of the nest in the bird's mind, where does it come from? | |
From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1800) | |
A reaction: I think this is a very striking example in support of innate ideas. Most animal behaviour can be explained as responses to stimuli, but the bird seems to hold a model in its mind while it collects its materials. |
8096 | He gives his body up to pleasure, but not his soul [Joubert] |
Full Idea: He gives his body up to pleasure, but not his soul. | |
From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1799) | |
A reaction: A rather crucial distinction in the world of hedonism. There seems something sincere about someone who pursues pleasure body and soul, and something fractured about the pursuit of pleasure without real commitment. The split seems possible. |
8104 | What will you think of pleasures when you no longer enjoy them? [Joubert] |
Full Idea: What will you think of pleasures when you no longer enjoy them? | |
From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1802) | |
A reaction: A lovely test question for aspiring young hedonists! It doesn't follow at all that we will despise past pleasures. The judgement may be utilitarian - that we regret the pleasures that harmed others, but love the harmless ones. Shame is social. |
8097 | Virtue is hard if we are scorned; we need support [Joubert] |
Full Idea: It would be difficult to be scorned and to live virtuously. We have need of support. | |
From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1800) | |
A reaction: He seems to have hit on what I take to be one of the keys to Aristotle: that virtue is a social matter, requiring both upbringing and a healthy culture. But we can help to create that culture, as well as benefiting from it. |
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 |
24073 | Capitalists use their exceptional power to impose their own rules, and make the state their ally [Davies,W] |
Full Idea: Capitalists exploit their unrivalled control over time and space in order to impose their rules on everyone else. …It triumphed late, only becoming dominant in the 19th century, when it had conscripted the state as its ally. | |
From: William Davies (Review of 'The Price is Wrong' by B.Christophers [2024], 24-04-04) | |
A reaction: This so very much makes sense of the modern world. Nowadays capitalists are so wealthy that the state has largely become their pawn, rather than their ally. Populist leaders are their puppets (and are well rewarded). |
24070 | Economies have material, economic and capitalist layers [Davies,W] |
Full Idea: Braudel's economic history has three layers. At the bottom is material life of consumption, production, reproduction. Next is economic life of markets, of equals in exchange and competition. Top is capitalism, of opacity, monopoly, power, high profits. | |
From: William Davies (Review of 'The Price is Wrong' by B.Christophers [2024], 24-04-04) | |
A reaction: The point Davies emphasises here is the sharp distinction between the market economy and capitalism. |
24074 | Capitalism must mainly rely either on the labour market, or on the financial markets [Davies,W] |
Full Idea: According to Marxists, the one market capitalism cannot do without is the labour market, which creates saleable things. Others, influenced by Keynes, emphasise financial markets, where pieces of paper change hands on expectation of their value. | |
From: William Davies (Review of 'The Price is Wrong' by B.Christophers [2024], 24-04-04) | |
A reaction: Modern Britain fits the Keynesian account much better, given its low production, and very active (until recently) London financial market. |
24072 | Capitalism is the anti-market, with opacity, monopolies, powers, exceptional profits and wealth [Davies,W] |
Full Idea: Braudel sees capitalism as the 'anti-market': a world of opacity, monopoly, concentration of power and wealth, and the exceptional profits that can be achieved only by escaping the norms of 'economic life'. | |
From: William Davies (Review of 'The Price is Wrong' by B.Christophers [2024], 24-04-04) | |
A reaction: Given all the talk about the wonders of the 'free market' from right-wingers, this passage came as a revelation to me. Capitalists all dream of a monopoly, which is precisely the destruction of a market. |
24071 | Markets are transparent, with known prices and activity, and minimal profits [Davies,W] |
Full Idea: Markets are characterised by transparency. Prices are public, and all relevant activity is visible to everyone. And because of competition, profits are minimal, little more than a 'wage' for the seller. | |
From: William Davies (Review of 'The Price is Wrong' by B.Christophers [2024], 24-04-04) | |
A reaction: This account, from Braudel, is to distinguish markets from capitalism. |
8106 | In raising a child we must think of his old age [Joubert] |
Full Idea: In raising a child we must think of his old age. | |
From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1809) | |
A reaction: Very nice, and Aristotle would approve. If educators think much about the future, it rarely extends before the child's first job. We should be preparing good grand-parents, as well as parents and employees. Educate for retirement! |
8105 | We can't exactly conceive virtue without the idea of God [Joubert] |
Full Idea: If we exclude the idea of God, it is impossible to have an exact idea of virtue. | |
From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1808) | |
A reaction: I suspect that an 'exact' idea is impossible even with an idea of God. This is an interesting defence of the importance of God in moral thinking, but it only requires the concept of a supreme being, and not belief. |
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 |
8102 | We cannot speak against Christianity without anger, or speak for it without love [Joubert] |
Full Idea: We cannot speak against Christianity without anger, or speak for it without love. | |
From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1801) | |
A reaction: This seems to be rather true at the present time, when a wave of anti-religious books is sweeping through our culture. Presumably this remark used to be true of ancient paganism, but it died away. Christianity, though, is very personal. |