Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'On Providence' and 'Commentary on Sentences'

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6 ideas

8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 8. Properties as Modes
Accidents always remain suited to a subject [Bonaventura]
     Full Idea: An accident's aptitudinal relationship to a subject is essential, and this is never taken away from accidents….for it is true to say that they are suited to a subject.
     From: Bonaventura (Commentary on Sentences [1252], IV.12.1.1.1c)
     A reaction: This is the compromise view that allows accidents to be separated, for Transubstantiation, while acknowledging that we identify them with their subjects.
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 6. Successive Things
Successive things reduce to permanent things [Bonaventura]
     Full Idea: Everything successive reduces to something permanent.
     From: Bonaventura (Commentary on Sentences [1252], II.2.1.1.3 ad 5), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 18.2
     A reaction: Avicenna first took successive entities seriously, but Bonaventure and Aquinas seem to have rejected them, or given reductive accounts of them. It resembles modern actualists versus modal realists.
21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 7. Art and Morality
Musical performance can reveal a range of virtues [Damon of Ath.]
     Full Idea: In singing and playing the lyre, a boy will be likely to reveal not only courage and moderation, but also justice.
     From: Damon (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B4), quoted by (who?) - where?
22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 2. Happiness / a. Nature of happiness
To be always happy is to lack knowledge of one half of nature [Seneca]
     Full Idea: To be always happy and to pass through life without any mental distress is to lack knowledge of one half of nature.
     From: Seneca the Younger (On Providence [c.60], §4)
     A reaction: These kind of paradoxes plague virtue theory, and any theory which aims at an ideal. Heaven, for example, seems to have no problems to solve, which spells boredom. The fascination of corrupt people is their superior knowledge of the world.
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 4. External Goods / a. External goods
Nothing bad can happen to a good man [Seneca]
     Full Idea: Nothing bad can happen to a good man.
     From: Seneca the Younger (On Providence [c.60], §2)
     A reaction: This is a pithy summary of a well know ancient attitude - one that is rejected by Aristotle, but defended by Socrates. It depends what you mean by 'bad' - but that is a rather modern response.
27. Natural Reality / A. Classical Physics / 1. Mechanics / c. Forces
The ocean changes in volume in proportion to the attraction of the moon [Seneca]
     Full Idea: The waves increase by degrees, approaching to the hour and day proportionately larger or smaller in volume as they are attracted by the star we call the moon, whose power controls the ocean's surge.
     From: Seneca the Younger (On Providence [c.60], §1)
     A reaction: ....just in case anyone thought that Isaac Newton had invented gravity.