158 ideas
| 21979 | Wisdom emerges at the end of a process [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The Owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], Pref p.13), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.4 | |
| A reaction: Hegel explains that this means that wisdom is the product of historical maturity, as the ideal emerges, and illuminates what is real. I think. |
| 2937 | What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 7) | |
| A reaction: This is either a boring truism, or points towards some sort of verificationism (where we can speak meaninglessly). Compare Ideas 7973 and 6870. |
| 22766 | Philosophy is exploration of the rational [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is exploration of the rational. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], Pref) | |
| A reaction: The only problem is that Hegel (like the Stoics) thought that nature is rational all the way down, so philosophy becomes the study of everything. |
| 6870 | I say (contrary to Wittgenstein) that philosophy expresses what we thought we must be silent about [Ansell Pearson on Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: I recognise the incredible force of Wittgenstein's closing statement in the 'Tractatus', but I hold the opposite view: philosophy exists to give expression to that which we think we can only remain silent about. | |
| From: comment on Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 7) by Keith Ansell Pearson - Interview with Baggini and Stangroom p.267 | |
| A reaction: A wonderful remark, with which I totally agree. Compare Idea 1596. I think it is just a fact that philosophers are able to articulate a huge number of ideas which other intelligent people find very interesting but on which they are unable to speak. |
| 2944 | If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.5) | |
| A reaction: Just the sort of unsubstantiated metaphysical claim that philosophers are always making. |
| 9810 | The 'Tractatus' is a masterpiece of anti-philosophy [Badiou on Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The 'Tractatus' is without doubt one of the masterpieces of anti-philosophy. | |
| From: comment on Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Alain Badiou - Mathematics and Philosophy: grand and little p.16 | |
| A reaction: French philosophers do love making wicked remarks like that. It seems that analysis is anti-philosophy, or 'little' philosophy in Badiou's parlance. |
| 23459 | This work solves all the main problems, but that has little value [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: I believe myself to have found, on all essential points, the final solution of the problems. ….and this work shows how little is achieved when these problems are solved. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], Pref) | |
| A reaction: This is LW's deep pessimism about the value of philosophy, right from the start. You can only idolise LW if you agree with him on this. |
| 23512 | Once you understand my book you will see that it is nonsensical [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Anyone who understands me eventually recognises my propositions as nonsensical, when he has used them - as steps - to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.54) | |
| A reaction: A much discussed passage. It can't possibly say that his book is pointless, because you can't attain this recognition without climbing his ladder. He speaks like an eastern guru. Perhaps Hume should have ended 'so commit my book to the flames'? |
| 2938 | The limits of my language means the limits of my world [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The limits of my language means the limits of my world. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.6) | |
| A reaction: This is dangerous rubbish. For a start, if you accept (as you should) the existence of propositions, our heads are full of unarticulated ones. And truth emerges by degrees from what cannot be articulated. |
| 6429 | All complex statements can be resolved into constituents and descriptions [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Every statement about complexes can be resolved into a statement about their constituents and into the propositions that describe the complexes completely. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.0201) | |
| A reaction: Russell says this embodies Wittgenstein's belief in analysis. Obviously Wittgenstein is making this claim 'in principle', as life is very short, and people are rather dim. I don't know how to begin evaluating such a claim. |
| 23492 | Our language is an aspect of biology, and so its inner logic is opaque [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Everyday language is a part of the human organism and is no less complicated than it. It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.002) | |
| A reaction: It is normally assumed that ordinary language philosophy was derived from the later Wittgenstein, but this para in the Tractatus seems to contain the germ of the idea. He is pessimistic about finding logical forms. |
| 23510 | Most philosophical questions arise from failing to understand the logic of language [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.003) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure what the scope of 'logic' is here. I suppose it means everything about language which is expounded in the Tractatus. I assume this includes Plato and Aristotle? I don't think I agree. It's about concepts, not about logic. |
| 23499 | This book says we should either say it clearly, or shut up [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The whole sense of the book might be summed up in the following words: what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], Pref) | |
| A reaction: This also provides the last sentence of his book. I think this is an axiom of modern analytic philosophy. The dream is to clarify everything, and belief that this is possible puts logic centre-stage, as the most precise language available. |
| 23508 | Science is all the true propositions [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The totality of true propositions is the whole of natural science (or the whole corpus of the natural sciences). | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.11) | |
| A reaction: So if it is true, it is science. What about truths about science? What about true speculations beyond science? What about bad science? What about trivial everyday truths? This is said to be a rare precursor of logical positivism in Tractatus. |
| 22768 | Subjective and objective are not firmly opposed, but merge into one another [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: It is usually believed that the subjective and objective are firmly opposed to one another. But this is not the case; they in fact pass over into one another. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 026 add) | |
| A reaction: I take this to mean that they are on a spectrum, rather than being binary opposites. This seems reasonable to me, since I take there to be degrees of objectivity. |
| 2939 | If a sign is useless it is meaningless; that is the point of Ockham's maxim [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: If a sign is useless it is meaningless. That is the point of Occam's maxim. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 3.328) |
| 10910 | The best account of truth-making is isomorphism [Wittgenstein, by Mulligan/Simons/Smith] |
| Full Idea: The most sophisticated account of truth-making to have appeared to date is the 'isomorphism' theory of the Tractatus. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Mulligan/Simons/Smith - Truth-makers §5 | |
| A reaction: Wittgenstein's theory is clearly closely related to Russell's 'congruence' theory of correspondence of around 1912. |
| 23462 | He says the world is the facts because it is the facts which fix all the truths [Wittgenstein, by Morris,M] |
| Full Idea: Wittgenstein is thinking of the world as what makes truths true. …To get all the truths fixed we need more than the things: we need, as it were, the way things are - that is to say, the facts. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 1.12) by Michael Morris - Guidebook to Wittgenstein's Tractatus 1 | |
| A reaction: Morris says this is 'sometimes suggested'. It strikes me as plausible, and makes LW a key source for the modern truthmaker idea. Perhaps in David Lewis's version of it. The facts include the relations and processes of the things. |
| 18349 | All truths have truth-makers, but only atomic truths correspond to them [Wittgenstein, by Rami] |
| Full Idea: In 1922 Wittgenstein said that every truth has a truth-maker, but only atomic truths correspond to their truth-makers. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Adolph Rami - Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making note 04 | |
| A reaction: Presumably this is what logical atomism is meant to be (cf Russell). The atomic sentences plug into the world, and the rest are constructions from them, making the latter more remote from the truth-makers. |
| 10967 | Wittgenstein's picture theory is the best version of the correspondence theory of truth [Read on Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Wittgenstein's picture theory is without doubt the best thought-out and developed of all the versions of the correspondence theory of truth. | |
| From: comment on Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Stephen Read - Thinking About Logic Ch.1 |
| 7087 | Language is [propositions-elementary propositions-names]; reality is [facts-states of affairs-objects] [Wittgenstein, by Grayling] |
| Full Idea: Language consists in propositions, which are made of 'elementary' propositions, which are based ultimately on names. This matches the world of facts, compounded out of 'states of affairs', which are compounded of objects. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by A.C. Grayling - Wittgenstein Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This is Grayling's summary of the basic idea of the 'Tractatus'. The whole thing seems to be an elaborate version of Russell's 'congruence' account of the correspondence theory of truth. Later Wittgenstein is loss of faith in this theory. |
| 4702 | The account of truth in the 'Tractatus' seems a perfect example of the correspondence theory [Wittgenstein, by O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: Wittgenstein's account in the 'Tractatus' is often taken as a paradigm instance of a sophisticated correspondence theory of truth. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This might explain why I am so much more drawn to the 'Tractatus' than to the later relativistic anti-philosophical mind-eliminitavist, meaning-eliminativist Wittgenstein. |
| 7056 | Pictures reach out to or feel reality, touching at the edges, correlating in its parts [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: A picture attaches to reality by reaching out to it; it is laid against reality like a measure; only the end-points actually touch the object; the pictorial relationship consists of correlations of picture's elements with things, the picture's feelers. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.1511-5) | |
| A reaction: (somewhat compressed). This is Wittgenstein's so-called 'picture theory' of meaning (replaced later by 'meaning is use'). It is perhaps better seen as an account of the correspondence theory of truth. Compare Russell's 'congruence' view (Idea 5427). |
| 23483 | Proposition elements correlate with objects, but the whole picture does not correspond to a fact [Wittgenstein, by Morris,M] |
| Full Idea: Correlation need only be between elements of the picture and things in reality; it is not also required that there be a correspondence between the picture as a whole and a fact in reality - so things can be depicted falsely. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.15121) by Michael Morris - Guidebook to Wittgenstein's Tractatus 3C | |
| A reaction: To turn his picture theory into a correspondence theory of truth would need a further step, of saying the proposition is true when the two structures coincide. I don't think LW says that. |
| 23502 | Logic fills the world, to its limits [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Logic pervades the world: the limits of the world are also its limits. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.61) | |
| A reaction: This is a gospel belief for hardcore analytic philosophy. Hence Williamson writes a book on modal logic as metaphysics. |
| 23504 | Logic concerns everything that is subject to law; the rest is accident [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The exploration of logic means the exploration of everything that is subject to law. And outside logic everything is accidental. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: Why should laws be logical? Legislatures can pass whimsical laws. Does he mean that the laws of nature are logically necessary? He can't just mean logical laws. |
| 6428 | Wittgenstein is right that logic is just tautologies [Wittgenstein, by Russell] |
| Full Idea: I think Wittgenstein is right when he says (in the 'Tractatus') that logic consists wholly of tautologies. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Bertrand Russell - My Philosophical Development Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: Despite Russell's support, I find this hard to accept. While a 'pure' or 'Platonist' logic may be hard to demonstrate or believe, I have a strong gut feeling that logic is more of a natural phenomenon than a human convention. |
| 11062 | Logic is a priori because it is impossible to think illogically [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: What makes logic a priori is the impossibility of illogical thought. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.4731) | |
| A reaction: That places the a priori aspect of it in us (in the epistemology), rather than in the necessity of the logic (the ontology), which is as Kripke says it should be. |
| 18277 | If q implies p, that is justified by q and p, not by some 'laws' of inference [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: If p follows from q, I can make an inference from q to p, deduce p from q. The nature of the inference can be gathered only from the two propositions. They are the only possible justification of the inference. 'Laws of Inference' would be superfluous. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.132) | |
| A reaction: That seems to imply that each inference is judged on its particulars. But logic aims to be general. There seem to be 'laws' at a more complex level in the logic. |
| 18162 | The propositions of logic are analytic tautologies [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The propositions of logic are tautologies. Therefore the propositions of logic say nothing. (They are the analytic propositions). | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.1) |
| 7537 | Wittgenstein convinced Russell that logic is tautologies, not Platonic forms [Wittgenstein, by Monk] |
| Full Idea: Russell took a Platonist view of logic, but reading the 'Tractatus' convinced him that logic was purely linguistic, so-called 'logical truths' being nothing more than tautologies. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Ray Monk - Bertrand Russell: Spirit of Solitude Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: If p-and-q and p-or-q are both tautologies, how do you explain the difference between them? The first is an indicative proposition about the actual world, but the second is modal. They are asserting very different things. |
| 23496 | Two colours in the same place is ruled out by the logical structure of colour [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The simultaneous presence of two colours in the same place in the visual field is impossible, in fact logically impossible, since it is ruled out by the logical structure of colour. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.3751) | |
| A reaction: This sounds the wrong way around. We derive our concept of the logic of colour from experiencing the total incompatibility of two colours in the same location. What if each of our eyes saw a different colour? |
| 18154 | The sign of identity is not allowed in 'Tractatus' [Wittgenstein, by Bostock] |
| Full Idea: The 'Tractatus' does not allow the introduction of a sign for identity. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by David Bostock - Philosophy of Mathematics 9.B.4 |
| 13429 | The identity sign is not essential in logical notation, if every sign has a different meaning [Wittgenstein, by Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: Wittgenstein discovered that the sign of identity is not a necessary constituent of logical notation, but can be replaced by the convention that different signs must have different meanings. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Frank P. Ramsey - The Foundations of Mathematics p.139 | |
| A reaction: [Ramsey cites p.139 - need to track down the modern reference] Hence in modern logic it is usually necessary to say that we are using 'classical logic with identity', since the use of identity is very convenient, and reasonably harmless (I think). |
| 18268 | Apparent logical form may not be real logical form [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The apparent logical form of the proposition need not be its real logical form. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.0031), quoted by J. Alberto Coffa - The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap 6 'The incom' | |
| A reaction: This is one of the key doctrines of modern analytic philosophy. |
| 10905 | My fundamental idea is that the 'logical constants' do not represent [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: My fundamental idea is that the 'logical constants' do not represent; that the logic of facts does not allow of representation. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.0312) | |
| A reaction: This seems to a firm rebuttal of any sort of platonism about logic, and implies a purely formal account. |
| 23493 | 'Not' isn't an object, because not-not-p would then differ from p [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: If there were an object called 'not', it would follow that 'not-not-p' would say something different from what 'p' said, just because the one proposition would then be about 'not', and the other would not. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.44) | |
| A reaction: That is, the first proposition would be about not-p, and the second would be about p. Assuming we can say what such things are 'about'. A rather good argument that the connectives are not entities. P and double-negated P should be indistinguishable. |
| 7784 | 'Object' is a pseudo-concept, properly indicated in logic by the variable x [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The variable name ‘x’ is the proper sign of the pseudo-concept object. Wherever the word ‘object’ (‘thing’, ‘entity’, etc.) is rightly used, it is expressed in logical symbolism by the variable name. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.1272) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the germ of Quine's famous dictum (Idea 1610). I am not persuaded that because logic must handle an object as a variable, that it follows that we are dealing with a pseudo-concept. Let logic limp behind life. |
| 23506 | Names are primitive, and cannot be analysed [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: A name cannot be dissected any further by means of a definition: it is a primitive sign. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 3.26) | |
| A reaction: All logicians and analytic philosophers seem to agree on this. He means terms which pick out specific objects. |
| 7089 | A name is primitive, and its meaning is the object [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: A name means an object; an object is its meaning. ...A name cannot be dissected further by means of a definition: it is a primitive sign. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 3.203/3.26) | |
| A reaction: This is the optimistic view of names, that they are the point at which language plugs into the world (Russell preferred demonstratives for that job). Kripke's baptismal view of names has the same aspiration. |
| 9467 | Wittgenstein tried unsuccessfully to reduce quantifiers to conjunctions and disjunctions [Wittgenstein, by Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: Wittgenstein reduces the universal quantifier to conjunctions of singular predications, and the existential quantifier to disjunctions of singular predications. ..This is nowadays understood as a failed effort. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Dale Jacquette - Intro to III: Quantifiers p.143 | |
| A reaction: The problem this meets has something to do with infinite objects. In a domain of three objects it looks like a perfectly plausible strategy. 'All' is all three, and 'Some' is at least one of the three. |
| 15089 | Logical proof just explicates complicated tautologies [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Proof in logic is merely a mechanical expedient to facilitate recognition of tautologies in complicated cases. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.1262) |
| 13830 | Logical truths are just 'by-products' of the introduction rules for logical constants [Wittgenstein, by Hacking] |
| Full Idea: Wittgenstein's by-product theory is that the meanings of the logical constants are conveyed by their introduction rules, and these rules have as a by-product the class of logical truths. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Ian Hacking - What is Logic? §03 | |
| A reaction: I find this approach highly plausible. All the truths about chess openings are just a by-product of the original rules. |
| 19292 | Logic doesn't split into primitive and derived propositions; they all have the same status [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: All the propositions of logic are of equal status: it is not the case that some of them are essentially primitive propositions and others essentially derived propositions. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.127) | |
| A reaction: So axioms are conventional. This specifically contradicts the claims of Frege and the earlier Russell. Their view is that logic has an explanatory essence, found in some core axioms or rules or concepts. I agree with them. |
| 18160 | The concept of number is just what all numbers have in common [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The concept of number is simply what is common to all numbers, the general form of number. The concept of number is the variable number. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.022) |
| 18153 | A number is a repeated operation [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: A number is the index of an operation. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.021) | |
| A reaction: Roughly, this means that a number indicates how many times some basic operation has been performed. Bostock 2009:286 expounds the idea. |
| 18161 | The theory of classes is superfluous in mathematics [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The theory of classes is completely superfluous in mathematics. This is connected with the fact that the generality required in mathematics is not accidental generality. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.031) | |
| A reaction: This fits Russell's no-class theory, which rests everything instead on propositional functions. |
| 6849 | Wittgenstein hated logicism, and described it as a cancerous growth [Wittgenstein, by Monk] |
| Full Idea: Wittgenstein didn't just have an arguments against logicism; he hated logicism, and described is as a cancerous growth. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Ray Monk - Interview with Baggini and Stangroom p.12 | |
| A reaction: This appears to have been part of an inexplicable personal antipathy towards Russell. Wittgenstein appears to have developed a dislike of all reductionist ideas in philosophy. |
| 23509 | The logic of the world is shown by tautologies in logic, and by equations in mathematics [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The logic of the world, which is shown in tautologies by the propositions of logic, is shown in equations by mathematics. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.22) | |
| A reaction: White observes that this is Wittgenstein distinguishing logic from mathematics, and thus distancing himself from logicism. But see T 6.2. |
| 13133 | The world is facts, not things. Facts determine the world, and the world divides into facts [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The world is the totality of facts, not of things. The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts. The totality of facts determines what is the case, and what is not the case. ..The world divides into facts. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 1 - 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This is said to be a radical new ontology, because the facts are held to be prior to the things and their properties, which are presumably abstractions from the primitive facts. The modern heir of this is Armstrong's 'states of affairs'. |
| 22772 | Personality overcomes subjective limitations and posits Dasein as its own [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Personality is that which overcomes the limitation of being merely subjective and gives itself reality - or, what amounts to the same thing, to posit that existence [Dasein] as its own. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 039) | |
| A reaction: This looks like the source for Heidegger's distinctive concept of Dasein. The emphasis in Hegel is on creating it out of subjectivity by an act of choice. For Heidegger Dasein seems to be a primitive concept. |
| 7090 | The 'Tractatus' is an extreme example of 'Logical Atomism' [Wittgenstein, by Grayling] |
| Full Idea: The 'Tractatus' is an uncompromising, indeed an extreme, example of 'Logical Atomism' | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by A.C. Grayling - Wittgenstein Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: Russell talked about his 'logical atomism' after 1918, but this reminds us that Wittgenstein was fulfilling a task set for him by Russell. Wittgenstein's atoms are names-plus-objects, Russell's are demonstratives-plus-sensedata. |
| 23464 | In atomic facts the objects hang together like chain links [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: In an atomic fact [Sachverhalt] the objects hang one in another, like the links of a chain | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.03), quoted by Homer - The Iliad | |
| A reaction: So the world consists of facts, but the facts are composed of objects. The point seems to be that the truths of language refer to the facts, rather than to the objects. Objects 'don't hang' together in the fact of a chance encounter. |
| 23471 | The structure of an atomic fact is how its objects combine; this possibility is its form [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The way in which objects hang together in the atomic fact is the structure of the atomic fact. …The form is the possibility of the structure. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.032-3) | |
| A reaction: I very much like the way LW adds a modal dimension to his ontology. Why doesn't he talk of 'relations', rather than 'hanging together'? |
| 21682 | If a proposition is elementary, no other elementary proposition contradicts it [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: It is a sign of a proposition's being elementary that there can be no elementary proposition contradicting it. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.211) | |
| A reaction: It is a hallmark of atomic atoms that they have no relations with other atoms, but are wholly independent. This obviously invites the question of how they are united. Are logical connectives intrinsically relational logical atoms? |
| 22319 | Analysis must end in elementary propositions, which are combinations of names [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: It is obvious that in the analysis of propositions we must come to elementary propositions, which consist of names in immediate combination. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.221), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 50 'Indep' | |
| A reaction: Not clear about 'combinations of names'. Does that include predicates? How do you combine two names? |
| 21683 | Nothing can be inferred from an elementary proposition [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: From an elementary proposition no other can be inferred. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.134) | |
| A reaction: Russell was not so sure. This is the sort of remark that elicits from me the question that extravagent metaphysics also provokes - 'how on earth does he know what he claims to be true?'. |
| 23473 | Do his existent facts constitute the world, or determine the world? [Morris,M on Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Wittgenstein's writing here is loose, and he seems to be conflating two claims: 1) The totality of existent facts is the world (everything that is the case), and 2) The totality of existent facts determines everything that is the case (the world). | |
| From: comment on Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.04) by Michael Morris - Guidebook to Wittgenstein's Tractatus 1E | |
| A reaction: [Also 2.06 and 2.063] Morris says he must actually mean the second version. |
| 22311 | The world is determined by the facts, and there are no further facts [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The world is determined by the facts, and by these being all the facts. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 1.11), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 47 'Mole' | |
| A reaction: He is denying negative facts (also written to Russell in 1919). Best approached through truthmakers, I suspect. There is no truthmaker for the supposed factual claim 'there are birds on Mars' - so it is a fact that there are no birds on Mars. |
| 22313 | The existence of atomic facts is a positive fact, their non-existence a negative fact [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The existence of atomic facts we also call a positive fact, their non-existence a negative fact. b...The existence and non-existence of atomic facts is the reality. ...[2.063] the total reality is the world. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.06), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 47 'Mole' | |
| A reaction: Potter observes that he denies negative facts in a1919 letter to Russell, and at 1.11, but then affirms them at 2.06. |
| 22314 | On white paper a black spot is a positive fact and a white spot a negative fact [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: On white paper, the fact that a point is black corresponds to a positive fact; to the fact that a point is white (not black), a negative fact. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.063), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 08 'Judg' | |
| A reaction: Elsewhere Wittgenstein is ambiguous as to whether he believes in negative facts [qv]. |
| 7969 | The order of numbers is an internal relation, not an external one [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The order of the number-series is not governed by an external relation but by an internal relation. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.1252) | |
| A reaction: He seems to mean something like a tautology (see Idea 7968). It is, I take it, part of the concept of any given integer that it has a place in the series. But do the concepts arise self-evidently, or from nature? |
| 7968 | A relation is internal if it is unthinkable that its object should not possess it [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: A relation is internal if it is unthinkable that its object should not possess it. (This shade of blue and that one stand, eo ipso, in the internal relation of lighter to darker. It is unthinkable that these two objects should not stand in this relation). | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.123) | |
| A reaction: An epistemological definition. If only one shade of blue existed, would it still have this internal relation? Are things therefore full of potential internal relations with non-existent things? |
| 23466 | Objects are the substance of the world [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Objects make up the substance of the world. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.021) | |
| A reaction: He doesn't say here that the objects are physical, and may be including Frege's abstract objects. His concept of substance seems more like Spinoza than Aristotle. |
| 23467 | Objects are simple [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Objects are simple | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.02) | |
| A reaction: Presumably all his objects are 'simples', and what we think of as normal objects are counted by LW as 'facts'. |
| 23468 | Apart from the facts, there is only substance [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Substance is what remains independently of what is the case. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.024) | |
| A reaction: He sees what is the case as comprised of objects, so substance is even more basic. It seems close to Spinoza's single-substance view. |
| 22321 | To know an object we must know the form and content of its internal properties [Wittgenstein, by Potter] |
| Full Idea: Wittgenstein explicitly said that to know an object I must know all its internal properties. ...Internal properties have form and content; form is 'possibility of occurrence in atomic facts' (2.0141), content is its being that specific object (2.0233). | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.01231) by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 52 'Simp' | |
| A reaction: [check original quote] This seems to be an essentialist view of (formal) objects. See Potter 347-9 for discussion. The 'external properties' of an object are the atomic facts in which it occurs. |
| 6056 | Identity is not a relation between objects [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: It is self-evident that identity is not a relation between objects. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.5301) | |
| A reaction: Part of Wittgenstein's claim that identity statements are 'pseudo-propositions'. See, in reply, the ideas of McGinn on identity. This was part of the drive that led to the extremes of logical positivism, killing metaphysics for two generations. |
| 22322 | You can't define identity by same predicates, because two objects with same predicates is assertable [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Russell's definition of identity [x is y if any predicate of x is a predicate of y] won't do, because then one cannot say that two objects have all their properties in common | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.5302), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 53 'Ident' | |
| A reaction: [The Russell is in Principia] Good. Even if Leibniz is right that no two obejcts have identical properties, it is at least meaningful to consider the possibility. Russell makes it an impossibility, rather than a contingent fact. |
| 6057 | Two things can't be identical, and self-identity is an empty concept [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Roughly speaking, to say of two things that they are identical is nonsense, and to say of one thing that it is identical with itself is to say nothing at all. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.5303) | |
| A reaction: Wittgenstein's attack on identity. It is best (following McGinn) to only speak of resemblance between two things (possibly to a very high degree, as in two electrons). Self-identity just is identity; you can drop the word 'identity', but not the concept. |
| 9442 | The only necessity is logical necessity [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The only necessity that exists is logical necessity. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.37) | |
| A reaction: For Wittgenstein that will mean conventional necessity. He is taking a standard Humean view of these things. |
| 23495 | The tautologies of logic show the logic of language and the world [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The fact that the propositions of logic are tautologies shows the formal - logical - properties of language and the world. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.12) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me an extraordinarily hubristic remark (philosophically speaking), especially coming from a work which famously throws away its own ladder. He is very much pursuing Kant's project. |
| 23487 | What is thinkable is possible [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: What is thinkable is possible too. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 3.02) | |
| A reaction: [Plucked from a context!] The modern tide has turned against this idea. The more clearly you understand the facts, the more restricted the possibilities become. If you think the impossible is possible, it is because you are bad at thinking. |
| 23470 | Each thing is in a space of possible facts [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Each thing is, as it were, in a space of possible states of affairs. This space I can imagine as empty, but not of the thing without the space. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.013) | |
| A reaction: A clear echo of Kant on natural space. LW calls it 'logical space' (1.13). I take this to be exactly the concept of the space of possibilities which contains the modern notion of possible worlds. |
| 23507 | Unlike the modern view of a set of worlds, Wittgenstein thinks of a structured manifold of them [Wittgenstein, by White,RM] |
| Full Idea: In 'Tractatus' Wittgenstein is not just thinking of a set of possible worlds (in the modern account), but of a structured manifold within which each 'possible world' is located. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Roger M. White - Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus' 3 'Positions' | |
| A reaction: So the modern view has the neutrality of a merely formal system, but LW is thinking of them as the modal structure of reality. |
| 23469 | An imagined world must have something in common with the real world [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: It is obvious that an imagined world, however different it may be from the real one, must have something - a form - in common with it. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.022) | |
| A reaction: It is clear that Wittgenstein had a concept of possible worlds close to the modern view. |
| 11027 | To know an object you must know all its possible occurrences [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: If I know an object I also know all its possible occurrences in states of affairs. (Every one of those possibilities must be part of the nature of the object.) A new possibility cannot be discovered later. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.0123) | |
| A reaction: The requirement that you know them 'all' seems absurd, especially if we need science to discover them. I take this idea to be extremely important, and essentially Aristotelian (connecting with the notion of 'potentiality'). We need to know the powers. |
| 23465 | The 'form' of an object is its possible roles in facts [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The possibility of its occurrence in atomic facts is the form of the object. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.0141) | |
| A reaction: Morris says this picks up the idea from Kant. We might now label the 'form' as the 'modal profile' of the object (a phrase I like). The modern issues over transworld identity seem to be a development of this thought. |
| 12869 | Two objects may only differ in being different [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: If two objects have the same logical form, the only distinction between them, apart from their external properties, is that they are different. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.0233) | |
| A reaction: This isn't a commitment to haecceities, but it seems to be flirting with the idea. See Simons 1987:241. Kit Fine picks up the idea that objects, as well as sentences, might have 'logical form'. How can being 'different' be primitive? Spatial location? |
| 23503 | Strict solipsism is pure realism, with the self as a mere point in surrounding reality [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Solipsism, when its implications are followed out strictly, coincides with pure realism. The self of solipsism shrinks to a point without extension, and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.64) | |
| A reaction: Despite this, Michael Morris is more inclined to see him as an idealist. It is not clear whether the present account of solipsism is idealist or realist. Berkeley seemed to think his idealism was true realism. Can reality be co-ordinated with a point? |
| 16907 | If the truth doesn't follow from self-evidence, then self-evidence cannot justify a truth [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: If the truth of a proposition does not follow from the fact that it is self-evident to us, then its self-evidence in no way justifies our belief in its truth. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.1363), quoted by Robin Jeshion - Frege's Notion of Self-Evidence 4 | |
| A reaction: Frege seems to have taken self-evidence as intrinsic justification, but Wittgenstein seems to demand a supporting inference. But what is it all based on? Stipulative definitions? |
| 23479 | The Tractatus aims to reveal the necessities, without appealing to synthetic a priori truths [Wittgenstein, by Morris,M] |
| Full Idea: We can see the 'Tractatus' as an attempt to make sense of what is necessarily true of the world - in general, and not just in the mathematical case - without appealing to synthetic a priori truths. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Michael Morris - Guidebook to Wittgenstein's Tractatus 2H | |
| A reaction: Morris sees the Tractatus as firmly in the Kantian tradition, and exploring Kant's main project in the first Critique. |
| 23501 | There is no a priori order of things [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Whatever we can describe at all could be other than it is. There is no a priori order of things. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.634) | |
| A reaction: This is his rejection of Kant's dream, of inferring truths about the world by self-examination. However, compare Idea 23495. He clings to the faith that logic reveals 'something' about reality. |
| 7088 | Logic and maths can't say anything about the world, since, as tautologies, they are consistent with all realities [Wittgenstein, by Grayling] |
| Full Idea: Neither logical nor mathematical propositions say anything about the world, because in virtue of their always being true they are consistent with any way the world could happen to be. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by A.C. Grayling - Wittgenstein Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This became the standard view for twentieth century empiricists, and appeared to rule out a priori synthetic knowledge forever. Kripke's proposal that there are a posteriori necessities, however, changes the picture. |
| 16909 | Logic is a priori because we cannot think illogically [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: That logic is a priori consists in the fact that we cannot think illogically. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.4731), quoted by Robin Jeshion - Frege's Notion of Self-Evidence 4 | |
| A reaction: A rather startling claim. Presumably we have to say that when we draw a stupid inference, then we weren't really 'thinking'? |
| 23485 | No pictures are true a priori [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: There are no pictures that are true a priori. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.225) | |
| A reaction: This is part of the growing modern doubts about the scope or possibility of a priori knowledge. A 'picture' here is the mental model which is the meaning of a proposition. |
| 6591 | Doubts can't exist if they are inexpressible or unanswerable [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Doubt can exist only where a question exists, a question only where an answer can exist, and an answer only where something can be said. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.51) | |
| A reaction: I don't agree with any of that. It is typical of the phase when philosophers were mesmerised by language. Cats look puzzled sometimes. A glimmering of doubt may be pre-linguistic, inexpressible and unanswerable, but still feels like a doubt. |
| 22780 | It is a rejection of intellectual dignity to say that we cannot know the truth [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The assertion that human beings cannot know the truth, but have to do only with appearances …deprives the spirit of intellectual dignity. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 132) | |
| A reaction: It is a relief to find Hegel making this assertion. His later followers seem to have slid into an extreme cultural relativism. I'm not sure that 'intellectual dignity' is a very secure foundation for his claim. |
| 17665 | The 'Tractatus' is instrumentalist about laws of nature [Wittgenstein, by Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Wittgenstein is an instrumentalist about laws of nature in 'Tractatus'. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by David M. Armstrong - What is a Law of Nature? 01.3 | |
| A reaction: [I record this, but don't know the reference] |
| 2941 | Induction accepts the simplest law that fits our experiences [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The procedure of induction consists in accepting as true the simplest law that can be reconciled with our experiences. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.363) |
| 17673 | The modern worldview is based on the illusion that laws explain nature [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.371) | |
| A reaction: Love it! Not only does it say that lawlike explanation is wrong, but it registers that this is a profound feature of the modern view of the world, and not just a slightly misguided philosophical theory. |
| 7658 | Obviously there can't be a functional anaylsis of qualia if they are defined by intrinsic properties [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: If you define qualia as intrinsic properties of experiences considered in isolation from all their causes and effects, logically independent of all dispositional properties, then they are logically guaranteed to elude all broad functional analysis. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Sweet Dreams [2005], Ch.8) | |
| A reaction: This is a good point - it seems daft to reify qualia and imagine them dangling in mid-air with all their vibrant qualities - but that is a long way from saying there is nothing more to qualia than functional roles. Functions must be exlained too. |
| 22770 | A person is a being which is aware of its own self-directed and free subjectivity [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: A person is a subject which is aware of its subjectivity, for as a person, I am completely for myself: the person is the individuality of freedom in pure being-for-itself. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 035 add) | |
| A reaction: Sartre's being 'pour-soi'. Presumably the freedom is for action as well as thought. He ignores Spinoza's claim that such freedom is just an illusion. |
| 2940 | The subject stands outside our understanding of the world [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The subject does not belong to the world; rather, it is a limit of the world. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.632) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. We must not confuse epistemology with ontology, but the perceived world exists between two limits - the farthest reaches of my perceptions, and the farthest reaches of myself. I wish I could clearly disentangle the nearer border. Dasein? |
| 22788 | A human only become a somebody as a member of a social estate [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: When we say that a human being must be somebody, we mean that he must belong to a particular estate. …A human being with no estate is merely a private person and does not possess universality. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 207 add) | |
| A reaction: The first rebellion in Europe against the rising individual liberalism which started with Descartes and was clarified in Kant. Hegel's idea is hugely influential, especially through Marx. I don't believe being a person is a wholly social matter. |
| 22792 | Individuals attain their right by discovering their self-consciousness in institutions [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Individuals attain their essential right by discovering their essential self-consciousness in social institutions, as that universal aspect of their particular interests which has being in itself. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 264) | |
| A reaction: This is the source of the influential idea made famous by Marx. Hegel seems to have a rather rigid and deterministic view of society, which fixes self-consciousness. The modern view is that self-consciousness is endlessly malleable, by society. |
| 23498 | The modern idea of the subjective soul is composite, and impossible [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Therre is no such thing as the soul - the subject, etc. - as it is conceived in the superficial psychology of the present day. Indeed a composite soul would no longer be a soul. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.5421) | |
| A reaction: This seems to endorse Descartes' claim about the essential unity of the mind. I think Hume is in the background of LW's thought. Presumably the psychologist offered a 'composite' view. Prior discussion of belief leads into this remark. |
| 7655 | The work done by the 'homunculus in the theatre' must be spread amongst non-conscious agencies [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: All the work done by the imagined homunculus in the Cartesian Theater must be distributed among various lesser agencies in the brain, none of which is conscious. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Sweet Dreams [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Dennett's account crucially depends on consciousness being much more fragmentary than most philosophers claim it to be. It is actually full of joints, which can come apart. He may be right. |
| 21780 | A free will primarily wills its own freedoom [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| Full Idea: For Hegel, the content or 'object' which any free will wills simply by virtue of being free is nothing other than its own freedom. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 027) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 8 'The Limits' | |
| A reaction: Personally I take the concept of a wholly 'free' will to be vacuous, but this is a very interesting idea. I would delete 'by virtue of being free', and say that what we mean by free will is the will's desperation to be as free as possible. Love it. |
| 7657 | Intelligent agents are composed of nested homunculi, of decreasing intelligence, ending in machines [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: As long as your homunculi are more stupid and ignorant than the intelligent agent they compose, the nesting of homunculi within homunculi can be finite, bottoming out, eventually, with agents so unimpressive they can be replaced by machines. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Sweet Dreams [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: [Dennett first proposed this in 'Brainstorms' 1978]. This view was developed well by Lycan. I rate it as one of the most illuminating ideas in the modern philosophy of mind. All complex systems (like aeroplanes) have this structure. |
| 7656 | I don't deny consciousness; it just isn't what people think it is [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: I don't maintain, of course, that human consciousness does not exist; I maintain that it is not what people often think it is. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Sweet Dreams [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: I consider Dennett to be as near as you can get to an eliminativist, but he is not stupid. As far as I can see, the modern philosopher's bogey-man, the true total eliminativist, simply doesn't exist. Eliminativists usually deny propositional attitudes. |
| 23475 | The form of a proposition must show why nonsense is unjudgeable [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The correct explanation of the form of the proposition 'A judges p' must show that it is impossible to judge a nonsense. (Russell's theory does not satisfy this condition). | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.5422) | |
| A reaction: In Notebooks p.96 LW gives the example 'this table penholders the book'. I take it Russell wanted judgement to impose unified meaning on sentences, but LW shows that assembling meaning must precede judgement. LW is right. |
| 7654 | What matters about neuro-science is the discovery of the functional role of the chemistry [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: Neuro-science matters because - and only because - we have discovered that the many different neuromodulators and other chemical messengers that diffuse throughout the brain have functional roles that make important differences. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Sweet Dreams [2005], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: I agree with Dennett that this is the true ground for pessimism about spectacular breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, rather than abstract concerns about irreducible features of the mind like 'qualia' and 'rationality'. |
| 7084 | What can be said is what can be thought, so language shows the limits of thought [Wittgenstein, by Grayling] |
| Full Idea: In Wittgenstein's view, what can be said is the same as what can be thought; so that once one has grasped the nature of language, one has shown the limit beyond which language and thought become nonsense. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by A.C. Grayling - Wittgenstein Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: I just don't believe that what is thinkable is limited to what is expressible. A lot of philosophy is the struggle to find expression for thoughts which are just beyond the edge of current language. See Idea 6870. |
| 23482 | The 'form' of the picture is its possible combinations [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The form of depiction is the possibility that the things are combined with one another as are the elements of the picture. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.151) | |
| A reaction: This is why 'model' (or even 'simulation'?) is a better term than 'picture' for his proposal. Pictures are fixed, but models can be adjusted. |
| 8172 | To understand a proposition means to know what is the case if it is true [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: To understand a proposition means to know what is the case if it is true. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.024) | |
| A reaction: This established the Frege truth-conditions theory of meaning, which was expanded by Davidson, and then possible worlds semantics. You can't assess truth without knowing meaning. Dummett says the two go together. |
| 7086 | Good philosophy asserts science, and demonstrates the meaninglessness of metaphysics [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The correct method in philosophy would be to say nothing except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science, and whenever someone wanted to say something metaphysical, to show that he had failed to give a meaning to signs in his propositions. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.53) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the germ of logical positivism, picked up by the Vienna Circle, and passed on the Ayer and co. How, though, do you 'show' that a sign is meaningless? Very abstract ideas are too far away from experience to be analysed that way. |
| 23511 | Propositions use old expressions for a new sense [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: A proposition must use old expressions to communicate a new sense. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.03) | |
| A reaction: A nicely expressed affirmation of the principle of compositionality. It entails that the propositions can be either true or false, according to LW. |
| 23488 | Propositions are understood via their constituents [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: A proposition is understood by anyone who understands its constituents. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.024) | |
| A reaction: The 'constituents' had better include the grammatical relationships. Otherwise it's 'rearrange these words to make a well known saying'. That said, this strikes me as an important truth about language. We assemble sentence meanings. |
| 23486 | Pictures are possible situations in logical space [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: A picture represents a possible situation in logical space. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.202) | |
| A reaction: This seems pretty close to the idea that propositions are sets of possible worlds (though that seems to add unnecessary extra baggage). If they just picture situations, why does he mention logical space? Within the limits of possible picturing? |
| 23497 | Solipsism is correct, but can only be shown, not said, by the limits of my personal language [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: What the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest. The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which I alone understand) mean the limits of my world. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.62) | |
| A reaction: I take it that LW later showed that the remark in brackets is absurd, using his Private Language argument. Commentators seem unclear about how seriously to take this claim. |
| 23489 | We translate by means of proposition constituents, not by whole propositions [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: When translating one language into another, we do not proceed by translating each proposition of the one into a proposition of the other, but merely by translating the constituents of propositions. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.025) | |
| A reaction: This seems opposed to Quine's later holistic view of translating whole languages. Is he objecting to Frege's context principle? |
| 22769 | The concept of the will is the free will which wills its freedom [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The abstract concept of the Idea of the will is in general the free will which wills the free will. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 027) | |
| A reaction: Since Hegel thinks we only have free will because we will to have it, it makes sense that that will precedes the free will. But I don't understand how the will which wills that freedom is itself free. No doubt Hegelians understand this. |
| 21787 | Evil enters a good will when we believe we are doing right, but allow no criticism of our choice [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| Full Idea: The evil Hegel finds at the heart of the good will is not simply the criminal violation of rights, but the evil which lies in believing oneself to be doing what is truly good, while allowing no one but oneself to determine what the good actually is. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 08 'The Problem' | |
| A reaction: That is not intellectualism, but the implication that intellectualism is a potential source of evil. The interesting thought is that Hegel is contributing a social dimension to the weakness of will problem. |
| 2943 | Ethics cannot be put into words [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Ethics cannot be put into words. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.421) | |
| A reaction: Nonsense. There is lots of good writing about ethics. This is evasive mysticism. |
| 21786 | Conscience is the right of the self to know what is right and obligatory, and thus make them true [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Conscience is the expression of the absolute title of subjective self-consciousness to know in itself and from within itself what is right and obligatory, to recognise only what it knows as good, and that what is thus known is right and obligatory. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 137), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 08 'The Problem' | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is the sort of rabbit-out-of-the-hat move that Hegel loves, and I find implausible. Mill made the key point about conscience. |
| 2942 | The sense of the world must lie outside the world [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The sense of the world must lie outside the world. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.41) | |
| A reaction: Since I don't believe that anything 'lies outside the world' I can't make sense of this. He implies that the Self lies outside of the world (to the point of solipsism), so I suppose that's it. |
| 22784 | Love is ethical life in its natural form [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Love is a feeling, that is, ethical life in its natural form. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 158 add) | |
| A reaction: For Hegel the less natural forms are more abstract - such as the categorical imperative. Does this imply that intellectual beings should extend the feeling of love into more abstract forms, such as virtues or principles or ideals? |
| 8029 | You can't have a morality which is supplied by the individual, but is also genuinely universal [Hegel, by MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Hegel attacks doctrines which are attempts by the individual to supply his own morality, and at one and the same time, to claim for it a genuine universality. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.15 | |
| A reaction: Hegel clearly has Kant in mind. It is a penetrating criticism. Of course, there is no reason why a universal mathematical proof shouldn't be 'provided' by the individual. The Kantian seeks agreement. See Contractualism. |
| 22771 | Be a person, and respect other persons [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The commandment of right is: be a person, and respect other persons | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 036) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be presented as a categorical imperative. He implies that you can choose whether to be a person, which seems wrong. I love making 'respect other persons' the supreme command - but I prefer 'respect everything'. |
| 22051 | The categorical imperative lacks roots in a historical culture [Hegel, by Bowie] |
| Full Idea: Hegel criticised the categorical imperative for lacking any roots in the moral habits and practices which develop in actual historical communities. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821]) by Andrew Bowie - German Philosophy: a very short introduction 1 | |
| A reaction: This is the gist of Alasdair MacIntyre's defence of virtue theory, against rational Enlightenment ethics. Charles Taylor made the link to Hegel. |
| 22781 | The categorical imperative is fine if you already have a set of moral principles [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The proposition 'Consider whether your maxim can be asserted as a universal principle' would be all very well if we already had determinate principles concerning how to act. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 135 add) | |
| A reaction: Excellent! I have always taken this to be the overwhelming problem with Kant's theory. Kant's examples always presume a set of unquestioned conventional values. Kant offers a framework for moral thought, but values are what matter. |
| 22779 | The good is realised freedom [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The good is realised freedom, the absolute and ultimate end of the world. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 129) | |
| A reaction: This remark could have been made by Sartre. On its own I find it baffling, and can make no sense of an account of ethics that gives no guidance on behaviour at all, other than that freedom should be asserted. |
| 22787 | The family is the first basis of the state, but estates are a necessary second [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: While the family is the primary basis of the state, the estates are second. The latter are of special importance, because private persons, despite their selfishness, must have recourse to others. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 201 add) | |
| A reaction: He mentions agriculture as an estate. The implication is that interactions between families requires state institutions, but in simpler societies families can obviously interact and help one another directly. He wants the state to be indispensable. |
| 22790 | We cannot assert rights which are unnatural [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: No one can assert a right against nature. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 244 add) | |
| A reaction: Although the existence of natural rights is dubious (or nonsense, for Bentham), this is a vague but sensible constraint on what can plausibly be asserted as a right. The rights we create in society must respond to natural needs. |
| 22767 | I aim to portray the state as a rational entity [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: This treatise is an attempt to comprehend and portray the state as an inherently rational entity. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], Pref) | |
| A reaction: Right now I see very little sign of that being the case. States contain many institutions which are fairly rational, because they focus efficiently on a clear object, but a state can only be rational if there is a wide consensus on its objective. |
| 22789 | Society draws people, and requires their work, making them wholly dependent on it [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Civil society is the immense power which draws people to itself and requires them to work for it, to owe everything to it, and to do everything by its means. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 238 add) | |
| A reaction: This is the disturbing side of Hegel's quite attractive communitarian thinking. His general picture is of the state prescribing what is required of its citizens, with little scope for citizens to prescribe what they need from the state. See Popper. |
| 22791 | The state is the march of God in the world [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The state consists of the march of God in the world, and its basis is the power of reason actualising itself as will. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 258) | |
| A reaction: The most notorious sentence in the whole book. See Wiki article on it. The hair-raising aspect of it is that God won't tell us where the state is going, so those in charge will decide that for us. God gives their preferences maximum authority. |
| 22778 | Individuals can't leave the state, because they are natural citizens, and humans require a state [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The arbitrary will of individuals cannot break away from the state, because the individual is already by nature a citizen of it. It is the rational destiny of humans to live within a state, and if there is no state reason requires it to be established. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 075 add) | |
| A reaction: The Aristotelian view, in opposition to the social contract idea that individuals must choose to have a state. I agree with Hegel, but find his authoritarian tone disturbing. What else will I be told is my 'rational destiny'? We want liberal communiity. |
| 22794 | A fully developed state is conscious and knows what it wills [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: An essential part of the fully developed state is consciousness or thought; the state accordingly knows what it wills and knows this an a object of thought. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 270 add) | |
| A reaction: The silliest idea by a famous philosopher anywhere in this database. I bet the criterion for being fully developed is being conscious, and the criterion for being conscious is being fully developed, whatever that means. General will run riot. |
| 22799 | The people do not have the ability to know the general will [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: To know what one wills, and even more to know what reason wills, is the fruit of profound cognition and insight, and this the very thing which 'the people' lack. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 301) | |
| A reaction: This is obviously directed at Rousseau, and seems to be specifically anti-democratic. Hegel sees the general will as a mystical fact, only knowable to some elite intellectual priesthood. |
| 22801 | The great man of the ages is the one who reveals and accomplishes the will of his time [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: He who expresses the will of his age, tells it what its will is, and accomplishes this will, is the great man of the age. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 318 add) | |
| A reaction: The great man of Hegel's age had obviously been Napoleon, who may have accomplished the will of part of the French people, but went massively against the will of the rest of Europe. For Hegel this seems to be the reality of the General Will. |
| 22796 | A constitution embodies a nation's rights and condition [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The constitution of a nation must embody the nation's feeling for its rights and present condition. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 274 add) | |
| A reaction: Most constitutions also specify the institutions needed to maintain its principles and values. If it specifies its 'present' condition, that is a licence to change it from time to time. Hegel endorses such flexibility. |
| 22777 | Individuals must dedicate themselves to the ethical whole, and give their lives when asked [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The individual person is a subordinate entity who must dedicate himself to the ethical whole. Consequently, if the state demands his life, the individual must surrender it. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 070 add) | |
| A reaction: The obvious problem is a war which is perceived to be unjust. Vietnam draft dodgers. We should always consider the common good, but 'dedicate himself to the ethical whole'? It depends whether the ethical whole is dedicated to us. |
| 21791 | Social groups must focus on the state, which must in turn respect their inclusion and their will [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The interests of family and civil society must concentrate themselves on the state, although the universal end cannot be advanced without the personal knowledge and will of its particular members, whose own rights must be maintained. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 260), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 08 'Freedom' | |
| A reaction: Hegel's emphasis on the state has sometimes allowed him to be presented as a proto-fascist, so the second half of this is important - especially the remark about citizens having 'knowledge' of what is going on. Is citizen commitment conditional on this? |
| 22795 | People can achieve respect for their state by insight into its essence [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The best way for humans to achieve respect for the state as that whole of which they are branches is through philosophical insight into its essence. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 270 add) | |
| A reaction: Although Hegel on the state can be quite alarming, I rather approve of this Aristotelian thought. States do not, of course, have ready made essences awaiting the insights of philosophers, but discussion can converge on a concept of what the state is. |
| 21988 | In the 1840s Hegel seemed to defend society being right as it is, as a manifestation of Mind [Hegel, by Singer] |
| Full Idea: In the 1840s the orthodox interpretation of Hegel was that since human society is the manifestation of Mind [Geist] in the world, everything is right and rational as it is. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821]) by Peter Singer - Marx 2 | |
| A reaction: This orthodoxy provoked the rebellion of Marx and the Young Hegelians. Modern Communitarians like Hegel, but that view seems to hover between right-wing authoritarianism and left-wing egalitarianism. |
| 22800 | Majority rule means obligations can be imposed on me [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Majority decisions are at variance with the principle that I should be personally present in anything which imposes an obligation on me. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 309 add) | |
| A reaction: The big democratic problem of my time is sharp binary decisions made by a democracy, such as UK leaving the EU, or Scotland leaving the UK. A very large minority in such cases has their will entirely thwarted, whichever way it goes. |
| 21792 | The state should reflect all interests, and not just popular will, or a popular party [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| Full Idea: The best guarantee of freedom is for the state to be organised in such a way that the legislature reflects all the substantial interests within civil society, and not just the 'will of the majority', or the parties which happen to find popular support. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 311) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 08 'Freedom' | |
| A reaction: In our first-past-the-post system innumerable interests fail to be represented, and parliament is crushed by dull plodders with ossified views who smugly hang on to safe seats. IMHO. |
| 22797 | In modern states an individual's actions should be their choice [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: It is inherent in the principle of the modern state that all of an individual's actions should be mediated by his will. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 299 add) | |
| A reaction: This is the liberal side of Hegel's thinking. It is a corrective to his reverential attitude to the state. He criticise Plato for assigning citizens their jobs. |
| 21790 | Moral individuals become ethical when they see the social aspect of a matter [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| Full Idea: The moral individual becomes an ethical individual when he recognises that his own voice need not always utter the last word on a given matter, but should be understood as participating in ongoing social and political practices. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 08 'Freedom' | |
| A reaction: This is a key idea in Hegel, and is seen (by Charles Taylor etc) as the foundations of modern communitarianism. |
| 8030 | For Hegel, the moral life can only be led within a certain type of community [Hegel, by MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Hegel's final standpoint is that the moral life can only be led within a certain type of community. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.15 | |
| A reaction: This (together with Aristotle) is the basis of modern communitarianism. There is the problem of saintly people who kept their integrity through the Nazi period. I agree with the proposal, in a loose sort of way. |
| 22785 | Even educated women are unsuited to science, philosophy, art and government [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Women may well be educated, but they are not made for the higher sciences, for philosophy and certain artistic productions which require a universal element. …When women are in charge of government the state is in danger. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 166 add) | |
| A reaction: This makes unpleasant reading. Women have recently played a leading role in creating the Covid vaccines which may well have saved millions of lives. There were plenty of good women novelists around in Hegel's time. |
| 21789 | Slaves have no duties because they have no rights [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Slaves have no duties because they have no rights. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 261), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 08 'Freedom' | |
| A reaction: Does this correlation go all the way up society? Do I only have duties insofar as I have correlative rights? Monarchs seem to have maximum duties and maximum rights. Democratic leaders seem thereby to get a raw deal. |
| 22776 | Slaves are partly responsible for their own condition [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: If someone is a slave, his own will is responsible. The wrong of slavery is not only the fault of those who enslave people, but of the slaves themselves. …[66 add: The slave has an absolute right to free himself] | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 057 add) | |
| A reaction: He accepts that enslaving people is wrong. Are the slaves at fault for losing their struggle? Would Hegel approve of someone giving modern weapons to the slaves? |
| 21778 | True liberal freedom is to pursue something, while being free to cease the pursuit [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| Full Idea: The third moment of liberal freedom for Hegel is the unity of the first two - the freedom to engage in some specific pursuit, but in so doing to preserve the sense that one is not irrevocably committed to that pursuit. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 005) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 08 'The Limits' | |
| A reaction: Not too surprising, but Hegel is interesting for thinking that we shouldn't just rabbit on about having 'freedom', but should investigate more closely what this is exactly supposed to mean. |
| 21779 | People assume they are free, but the options available are not under their control [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The ordinary man believes himself to be free ...to act as he wants, but this arbitrariness entails that he is not free, because what it is that he wills is not intrinsic to self-determining activity, ...and depends on a given content and material. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 015), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 08 'The Limits' | |
| A reaction: [a bit compressed] I take this to be an extraordinarily influential idea (especially for Marx). Hitherto philosophers just wanted some vague metaphysical 'free will', making moral responsibility and pure reason possible. But who controls the options? |
| 22085 | Freedom requires us to submit to a family, or a corporation, or a state [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| Full Idea: Hegel thinks that political and social freedom involves letting one's actions be guided by those institutional structures (such as the family, corporations and the state) which secure rights, welfare, and mutual respect. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821]) by Stephen Houlgate - Hegel 102 | |
| A reaction: Since there are some hideous families, corporations and states, we will need more than that. He may have a point, though, that the rights we desire can only exist in healthy examples of such institutions. Popper loved institutions. |
| 22798 | Money is the best way to achieve just equality [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The justice of equality can be achieved most effectively by money. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 299) | |
| A reaction: There are also important equalities such as access to education and to superior jobs. Money is more tangible, but you can fob poor people off with quite small sums of money. |
| 22783 | Rights imply duties, and duties imply rights [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: A human being has rights in so far as he has duties, and duties in so far as he has rights. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 155) | |
| A reaction: I would express this as 'why we should we be loyal to the state if the state is not loyal to us'. The state must not only provide us with nominal rights, but must also enforce them. Without that the citizens are alienated, and the sense of duty fades. |
| 21782 | Man has an absolute right to appropriate things [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: A person has as his substantive end the right of putting his will into any and every thing and thereby making it his ...This is the absolute right of appropriation which man has over all things. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 044), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 08 'Rights' | |
| A reaction: Houlgate shows this is not a defence of theft. Hegel thinks the right to property stems from our freedom, not from our natural needs. Did Hegel know Locke? It is not obvious that if I pocket a stone I thereby 'own' it. Do birds own their nests? |
| 22773 | Because only human beings can own property, everything else can become our property [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: All things can become the property of human beings, because the human being is free will, and exists in and for himself, whereas that which confronts him does not have this quality. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 044 add) | |
| A reaction: Note that the human 'is' free will, rather than 'has' free will. He explicitly includes animals. From a modern ecological view this is a sinister idea. The default position is that if you own something you can do whatever you like with it. |
| 22774 | A community does not have the property-owning rights that a person has [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Many states have rightly dissolved the monasteries, because a community does not ultimately have the same right to property as a person does. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 046) | |
| A reaction: Trinity College, Cambridge, owns vast amounts of land. A lot of property seems to be owned by legal trusts. Hegel sees the basis of property ownership in a person's will. He allows some exceptions. |
| 22775 | The owner of a thing is obviously the first person to freely take possession of it [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: That a thing belongs to a person who happens to be the first to take possession of it is immediately self-evident. …This is not because he is the first, but because he is a free will. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 050) | |
| A reaction: At this time they were very conscious of the native Americans. They seem to have lost their lands because they had no institution of private property, and had not asserted their ownership. I suspect Hegel of endorsing this. |
| 22802 | Wars add strength to a nation, and cure internal dissension [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Not only do peoples emerge from wars with added strength, but nations troubled by civil dissension gain internal peace as a result of wars with their external enemies. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 324 add) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that Hegel quite likes wars because they accelerate the development of history. I don't think he would have written nonsense like this after WW1 and WW2. Leaders facing internal dissent like small external wars. |
| 22786 | Children need discipline, to break their self-will and eradicate sensuousness [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: One of the chief moments in a child's upbringing is discipline, the purpose of which is to break the child's self-will in order to eradicate the merely sensuous and natural. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 174 add) | |
| A reaction: A standard view for his time, no doubt. No sensible parent doubts that children need to be civilised, and taught to recognise the needs of others. I hope the general aspiration in our society to 'break' a child's self-will has now faded away. |
| 22782 | To have pagan beliefs and be a pagan are quite different [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: To believe in pagan religion and to be a pagan are two different things. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 147) | |
| A reaction: A nice general truth about all religions, and one not often understood by atheists. |
| 22793 | Some religions lead to harsh servitude and the debasement of human beings [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: It should not be a forgotten that can take on a from which leads to the harshest servitude within the fetters of superstition, and to the debasement of human beings to a level below that of animals. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 270) | |
| A reaction: Hegel was a Christian, though a very unorthodox one. He cities ancient Egypt and India as examples. If you want to assess a religion, see how it behaves when it has political power. |