67 ideas
| 8927 | Philosophy moves essentially in the element of universality [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy moves essentially in the element of universality. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 01) | |
| A reaction: I would take this to be uncontroversially correct. An interesting test case is applied ethics, which seems embedded in current cultural practices. I would always take it to be searching for what is universal in each situation. |
| 21776 | Philosophy aims to reveal the necessity and rationality of the categories of nature and spirit [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| Full Idea: For Hegel, philosophy's principal task is to disclose the enduring necessity and rationality of the categories and forms of nature and spirit that it examines. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 4 'Phenomenology' | |
| A reaction: The idea that a miserable little evolved and transient mammal on a tiny planet has direct insight into the necessities and categories of nature and spirit looks a shade optimistic to me. You have to admire the ambition, though. |
| 7950 | Philosophy tries to explain how the actual is possible, given that it seems impossible [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Philosophical problems are problems about how what is actual is possible, given that what is actual appears, because of some faulty argument, to be impossible. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: [She is discussing universals when she makes this comment] A very appealing remark, given that most people come into philosophy because of a mixture of wonder and puzzlement. It is a rather Wittgensteinian view, though, that we must cure our own ills. |
| 7923 | 'Did it for the sake of x' doesn't involve a sake, so how can ontological commitments be inferred? [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: In 'She did it for the sake of her country' no one thinks that the expression 'the sake' refers to an individual thing, a sake. But given that, how can we work out what the ontological commitments of a theory actually are? | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: For these sorts of reasons it rapidly became obvious that ordinary language analysis wasn't going to reveal much, but it is also a problem for a project like Quine's, which infers an ontology from the terms of a scientific theory. |
| 8935 | Without philosophy, science is barren and futile [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Let other sciences try to argue as much as they like without philosophy - without it they can have in them neither life, Spirit, nor truth. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 67) | |
| A reaction: To be pinned up in every physics laboratory in the world. On the whole I agree with this. My slogan is 'science is the servant of philosophy'. An unphilosophical scientist is just a technologist, an artisan. |
| 22082 | Truth does not appear by asserting reasons and then counter-reasons [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: It is not difficult to see that the way of asserting a proposition, adducing reasons for it, and in the same way refuting its opposite by reasons, is not the form in which truth can appear. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], p.28), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - Hegel p.100 | |
| A reaction: This is a pretty good description of the way Plato and Aristotle do philosophy, so this idea, which must be a founding idea for the 'continental school', is extremely radical. Personally I identify rationality with believing things for good reasons. |
| 22035 | The structure of reason is a social and historical achievement [Hegel, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: The lesson of Hegel's Phenomenology was that the structure of reason was social, and was therefore a historical achievement. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 10 | |
| A reaction: This must be one of the most influential ideas to have filtered into the modern world. It is a predecessor of Marxist sociology. The idea that stands against it is Frege's platonist view of logic, making it necessary, despite being historical. |
| 8932 | Truth does not come from giving reasons for and against propositions [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The way of asserting a proposition, adducing reasons for it, and in the same way refuting its opposite by reasons, is not the form in which truth can appear. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 48) | |
| A reaction: I can't see Plato or Aristotle agreeing with this. It is obviously the prelude to Hegel's dialectical account of reasoning. However, if we don't believe things because we have good reason to, I'm not sure where we shoud start. |
| 7933 | Don't assume that a thing has all the properties of its parts [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The fallacy of composition makes the erroneous assumption that every property of the things that constitute a thing is a property of the thing as well. But every large object is constituted by small parts, and every red object by colourless parts. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: There are nice questions here like 'If you add lots of smallness together, why don't you get extreme smallness?' Colours always make bad examples in such cases (see Idea 5456). Distinctions are needed here (e.g. Idea 7007). |
| 7077 | The true is the whole [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The true is the whole. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 20) | |
| A reaction: This is the full idealist coherence view of truth, that one only approaches the Truth (capital T) as one builds up a more and more coherent picture. It makes truth unattainable, and that strikes me as a bit silly. |
| 7944 | Reduce by bridge laws (plus property identities?), by elimination, or by reducing talk [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: There are four kinds of reduction: the identifying of entities of two theories by means of bridge or correlation laws; the elimination of entities in favour of the other theory; reducing by bridge laws and property identities; and merely reducing talk. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3 n5) | |
| A reaction: [She gives references] The idea of 'bridge laws' I regard with caution. If bridge laws are ceteris paribus, they are not much help, and if they are strict, or necessary, then there must be an underlying reason for that, which is probably elimination. |
| 7938 | Relational properties are clearly not essential to substances [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: In statements attributing relational properties ('Felix is my favourite cat'), it seems clear that the property truly attributed to the substance is not essential to it. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: A fairly obvious point, but an important one when mapping out (cautiously) what we actually mean by 'property'. However, maybe the relational property is essential: the ceiling is ('is' of predication!) above the room. |
| 7967 | Being taller is an external relation, but properties and substances have internal relations [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The relation of being taller than is an external relation, since it relates two independent material substances, but the relation of instantiation or exemplification is internal, in that it relates a substance with a property. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: An interesting revival of internal relations. To be plausible it would need clear notions of 'property' and 'substance'. We are getting a long way from physics, and I sense Ockham stropping his Razor. How do you individuate a 'relation'? |
| 7965 | Does the knowledge of each property require an infinity of accompanying knowledge? [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: An object's being two inches long seems to guarantee an infinite number of other properties, such as being less than three inches long. If we must understand the second property to understand the first, then there seems to be a vicious infinite regress. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: She dismisses this by saying that we don't need to know an infinity of numbers in order to count. I would say that we just need to distinguish between intrinsic and relational properties. You needn't know all a thing's relations to know the thing. |
| 7934 | Tropes are abstract (two can occupy the same place), but not universals (they have locations) [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Tropes are abstract entities, at least in the sense that more than one can be in the same place at the same time (e.g. redness and roundness). But they are not universals, because they have unique and particular locations. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: I'm uneasy about the reification involved in this kind of talk. Does a coin possess a thing called 'roundness', which then has to be individuated, identified and located? I am drawn to the two extreme views, and suspicious of compromise. |
| 7958 | Properties are sets of exactly resembling property-particulars [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Trope Nominalism says properties are classes or sets of exactly similar or resembling tropes, where tropes are what we might called 'property-tokens' or 'particularized properties'. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: We still seem to have the problem of 'resembling' here, and we certainly have the perennial problem of why any given particular should be placed in any particular set. See Idea 7959. |
| 7972 | Tropes are abstract particulars, not concrete particulars, so the theory is not nominalist [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Trope 'Nominalism' is not a version of nominalism, because tropes are abstract particulars, rather than concrete particulars. Of course, a trope account of the relations between particulars and their properties has ramifications for concrete particulars. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6 n16) | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 7971. At this point the boundary between nominalist and realist theories seems to blur. Possibly that is bad news for tropes. Not many dilemmas can be solved by simply blurring the boundary. |
| 7959 | How do a group of resembling tropes all resemble one another in the same way? [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The problem is how a group of resembling tropes can be of the same type, that is, that they can resemble one another in the same way. This problem is not settled simply by positing tropes. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be a fundamental fact that there is no resemblance unless the respect of resemblance is specified. Two identical objects could still said to be different because of their locations. Is resemblance natural or conventional? Consider atoms. |
| 7960 | Trope Nominalism is the only nominalism to introduce new entities, inviting Ockham's Razor [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Of all the nominalist solutions, Trope Nominalism is the only one that tries to solve the problem at issue by introducing entities; all the others try to get by with concrete particulars and sets of them. This might invite Ockham's Razor. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: We could reply that tropes are necessities. The issue seems to be a key one, which is whether our fundamental onotology should include properties (in some form or other). I am inclined to exclude them (Ideas 3322, 3906, 4029). |
| 7951 | Numerical sameness is explained by theories of identity, but what explains qualitative identity? [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: We can distinguish between numerical identity and qualitative identity. Numerical sameness is explained by a theory of identity, but what explains qualitative sameness? | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: The distinction is between type and token identity. Tokens are particulars, and types are sets, so her question comes down to the one of what entitles something to be a member of a set? Nothing, if sets are totally conventional, but they aren't. |
| 7964 | How can universals connect instances, if they are nothing like them? [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The 'one over many' problem is to explain how universals can unify their instances if they are wholly other than them. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: If universals are self-predicating (beauty is beautiful) then they have a massive amount in common, despite one being general. You then have the regress problem of explaining the beauty of the beautiful. Baffling regress, or baffling participation. |
| 7971 | Real Nominalism is only committed to concrete particulars, word-tokens, and (possibly) sets [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: All real forms of Nominalism should hold that the only objects relevant to the explanation of generality are concrete particulars, words (i.e. word-tokens, not word-types), and perhaps sets. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6 n16) | |
| A reaction: The addition of sets seems controversial (see Idea 7970). The context is her rejection of the use of tropes in nominalist theories. I would doubt whether a theory still counted as nominalist if it admitted sets (e.g. Quine). |
| 7955 | Resemblance Nominalism cannot explain either new resemblances, or absence of resemblances [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Resemblance Nominalism cannot explain the fact that we know when and in what way new objects resemble old ones, and that we know when and in what ways new objects do not resemble old ones. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: It is not clear what sort of theory would be needed to 'explain' such a thing. Unless there is an explanation of resemblance waiting in the wings (beyond asserting that resemblance is a universal), then this is not a strong objection. |
| 7961 | A 'thing' cannot be in two places at once, and two things cannot be in the same place at once [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The so-called 'laws of thinghood' govern particulars, saying that one thing cannot be wholly present at different places at the same time, and two things cannot occupy the same place at the same time. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: Is this an empirical observation, or a tautology? Or might it even be a priori synthetic? What happens when two water drops or clouds merge? Or an amoeba fissions? In what sense is an image in two places at once? Se also Idea 2351. |
| 7926 | We 'individuate' kinds of object, and 'identify' particular specimens [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: We can usefully refer to 'individuation conditions', to distinguish objects of that kind from objects not of that kind, and to 'identity conditions', to distinguish objects within that kind from one another. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: So we individuate types or sets, and identify tokens or particulars. Sounds good. Should be in every philosopher's toolkit, and on every introductory philosophy course. |
| 7936 | Unlike bundles of properties, substances have an intrinsic unity [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Substances have a kind of unity that mere collocations of properties do not have, namely an instrinsic unity. So substances cannot be collocations - bundles - of properties. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: A team is a unity. Compare a similar thought, Idea 1395, about personal identity. How can something which is a pure unity have more than one property? What distinguishes substances? Why can't a substance have a certain property? |
| 7930 | The bundle theory of substance implies the identity of indiscernibles [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The bundle theory of substance requires unconditional commitment to the truth of the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles: that things that are alike with respect to all of their properties are identical. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Since the identity of indiscernibles is very dubious (see Ideas 1365, 4476, 5746, 7928), this is bad news for the bundle theory. I suspect that all of these problems arise because no one seems to have a clear concept of a property. |
| 7932 | A phenomenalist cannot distinguish substance from attribute, so must accept the bundle view [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Commitment to the view that only what can be an object of possible sensory experience can exist eliminates the possibility of distinguishing between substance and attribute, leaving only one alternative, namely the bundle view. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Phenomenalism strikes me as a paradigm case of confusing ontology with epistemology. Presumably physicists (even empiricist ones) are committed to the 'interior' of quarks and electrons, but no one expects to experience them. |
| 7937 | When we ascribe a property to a substance, the bundle theory will make that a tautology [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The bundle theory makes all true statements ascribing properties to substances uninformative, by making them logical truths. The property of being a feline animal is literally a constituent of a cat. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: The solution would seem to a distinction between accidental and essential properties. Compare 'that plane is red' with 'that plane has wings'. 'Of course it does - it's a plane'. We might still survive without a plane-substance. |
| 7939 | Substances persist through change, but the bundle theory says they can't [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Substances are capable of persisting through change, where this involves change in properties; but the bundle theory has the consequence that substances cannot survive change. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Her example is an apple remaining an apple when it turns brown. It doesn't look, though, as if there is a precise moment when the apple-substance ceases. The end of an apple seems to be more a matter of a loss of crucial properties. |
| 7940 | A substance might be a sequence of bundles, rather than a single bundle [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Maybe a substance is not itself a bundle of properties, but a sum or sequence of bundles of properties, a bundle of bundles of properties (which 'perdures' rather than 'endures'). | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: There remains the problem of deciding when the bundle has drifted too far away from the original to perdure correctly. A caterpillar can turn into a butterfly (which is pretty bizarre!), but not into a cathedral. Why? She says this idea denies change. |
| 7948 | A statue and its matter have different persistence conditions, so they are not identical [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Because a statue and the lump of matter that constitute it have different persistence conditions, they are not identical. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: Maybe being a statue is a relational property? All the relational properties of a thing will have different persistence conditions. Suppose I see a face in a bowl of sugar, and you don't? |
| 7929 | A substance is either a bundle of properties, or a bare substratum, or an essence [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The three main theories of substance are the bundle theory (Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, Ayer), the bare substratum theory (Locke and Bergmann), and the essentialist theory. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Macdonald defends the essentialist theory. The essentialist view immediately appeals to me. Properties must be OF something, and the something must have the power to produce properties. So there. |
| 7941 | Each substance contains a non-property, which is its substratum or bare particular [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: A rival to the bundle theory says that, for each substance, there is a constituent of it that is not a property but is both essential and unique to it, this constituent being referred to as a 'bare particular' or 'substratum'. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't sound promising. It is unclear what existence devoid of all properties could be like. How could it 'have' its properties if it was devoid of features (it seems to need property-hooks)? It is an ontological black hole. How do you prove it? |
| 7942 | The substratum theory explains the unity of substances, and their survival through change [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: If there is a substratum or bare particular within a substance, this gives an explanation of the unity of substances, and it is something which can survive intact when a substance changes. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: [v. compressed wording] Many problems here. The one that strikes me is that when things change they sometimes lose their unity and identity, and that seems to be decided entirely from observation of properties, not from assessing the substratum. |
| 7943 | A substratum has the quality of being bare, and they are useless because indiscernible [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: There seems to be no way of identifying a substratum as the bearer of qualities without qualifiying it as bare (having the property of being bare?), ..and they cannot be used to individuate things, because they are necessarily indiscernible. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: The defence would probably be a priori, claiming an axiomatic necessity for substrata in our thinking about the world, along with a denial that bareness is a property (any more than not being a contemporary of Napoleon is a property). |
| 11976 | Aristotelian essentialism says essences are not relative to specification [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: So-called 'Aristotelian essentialism' is the doctrine of essences not relative to specifications. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], III) | |
| A reaction: In other words, they are so-called 'real essences', understood as de re. Quine says essences are all de dicto, and relative to some specification. I vote for Aristotle. |
| 7927 | At different times Leibniz articulated three different versions of his so-called Law [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: There are three distinct versions of Leibniz's Law, all traced to remarks made by Leibniz: the Identity of Indiscernibles (same properties, same thing), the Indiscernibility of Identicals (same thing, same properties), and the Substitution Principle. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: The best view seems to be to treat the second one as Leibniz's Law (and uncontroversially true), and the first one as being an interesting but dubious claim. |
| 7928 | The Identity of Indiscernibles is false, because it is not necessarily true [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: One common argument to the conclusion that the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles is false is that it is not necessarily true. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.2 n32) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a good argument. If you test the Principle with an example ('this butler is the murderer') then total identity does not seem to necessitate identity, though it strongly implies it (the butler may have a twin etc). |
| 11978 | Causal necessities hold in all worlds compatible with the laws of nature [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Just as a sentence is necessary if it holds in all worlds, so it is causally necessary if it holds in all worlds compatible with the laws of nature. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], V) | |
| A reaction: I don't believe in the so-called 'laws of nature', so I'm not buying that. Is there no distinction in Lewis's view between those sentences which must hold, and those which happen to hold universally? |
| 11979 | It doesn't take the whole of a possible Humphrey to win the election [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Even if Humphrey is a modal continuant, it doesn't take the whole of him to do such things as winning. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], Post B) | |
| A reaction: This responds to Kripke's famous example, that people only care about what happens to themselves, and not to some 'counterpart' of themselves. |
| 16994 | Counterpart theory is bizarre, as no one cares what happens to a mere counterpart [Kripke on Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Probably Humphrey could not care less whether someone else, no matter how much resembling him, would have been victorious in another possible world. Thus Lewis's view seems even more bizarre that the usual transworld identification it replaces. | |
| From: comment on David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968]) by Saul A. Kripke - Naming and Necessity notes and addenda note 13 | |
| A reaction: I begin to see this as a devastating reply to a theory I previously found quite congenial. |
| 11974 | Counterparts are not the original thing, but resemble it more than other things do [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Your counterparts resemble you closely in content and context in important respects. They resemble you more closely than do the other things in their worlds. But they are not really you. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], I) | |
| A reaction: It is a dilemma. If my counterpart were exactly me, I couldn't contemplate possibly losing a leg, or my sanity. But if my counterpart isn't exactly me, then I don't have much interest in its fate. Only essences can save us here. Cf. me tomorrow. |
| 11975 | If the closest resembler to you is in fact quite unlike you, then you have no counterpart [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: If whatever thing in world w6 it is that resembles you more closely than anything else in w6 is nevertheless quite unlike you; nothing in w6 resembles you at all closely. If so, you have no counterpart in w6. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], I) | |
| A reaction: This is the nub, because the whole theory rests on deciding whether two things resemble sufficiently 'closely'. But then we need a criterion of closeness, so we must start talking about which properties matter. Essences loom. |
| 11977 | Essential attributes are those shared with all the counterparts [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: An essential attribute of something is an attribute it shares with all its counterparts. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], III) | |
| A reaction: I don't like this. It ties essence entirely to identity, but I think essence precedes identity. Essence is a nexus of causal and explanatory powers which bestows an identity on each thing. But essence might be unstable, and identity with it. |
| 15611 | I develop philosophical science from the simplest appearance of immediate consciousness [Hegel, by Hegel] |
| Full Idea: In my 'Phenomenology of Spirit' the procedure adopted was to begin from the first and simplest appearance of the spirit, from immediate consciousness, and to develop the dialectic right up to the standpoint of philosophical science. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Georg W.F.Hegel - Logic (Encyclopedia I) §25 Rem | |
| A reaction: I take metaphysics to be either Parmenidean (starting from Being) or Cartesian (starting from mind), and this (surprisingly, given his lengthy talk of Being) shows Hegel to be a quintessentially Cartesian philosopher. Aristotle is the great Parmenidean. |
| 8928 | The Absolute is not supposed to be comprehended, but felt and intuited [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The Absolute is not supposed to be comprehended, it is to be felt and intuited. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 06) | |
| A reaction: Hegel was a rather romantic philosopher. Where does the 'supposed' come from? If the Absolute is only felt and intuited, can the resulting apprehensions be reported to others? Is this, in fact, mysticism? |
| 8929 | In the Absolute everything is the same [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: In the Absolute everything is the same. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 16) | |
| A reaction: This is indistinguishable from the great spherical reality of Parmenides. It is not unreasonable to enquire about the epistemology of this claim. Is Hegel a seer, or can we all intuit this insight into reality? |
| 21774 | Genuine idealism is seeing the ideal structure of the world [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| Full Idea: Genuine (as opposed to subjective) idealism, for Hegel, is the point of view that knows the world to have a rational, and therefore 'ideal', structure. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 04 'The Unhappy' | |
| A reaction: Compare Leibniz, whose monad theory is said to be a sort of idealism, because it places ideas at the heart of reality. Is Plato also this sort of 'genuine' idealism? Do we need different terms for 'genuine' and 'subjective' idealism? And 'transcendental'? |
| 8934 | Being is Thought [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Being is Thought. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 54) | |
| A reaction: You won't find a more succinct slogan for idealism than that. Speaking as what Tim Williamson (referring to himself) calls a 'rottweiler realist', I can't quite get the hang of Hegel's claim. What does he think thought is, if it isn't about the world? |
| 21773 | Experience is immediacy, unity, forces, self-awareness, reason, culture, absolute being [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| Full Idea: Experience moves from 1) immediacy, to 2) united objects with properties, 3) its forces and laws, 4) self-consciousness in the process, 5) seeing a rational realm, 6) seeing a cultural realm, 7) seeing the absolute being of consciousness. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 03 'From certainty' | |
| A reaction: [My summary of Houlgate's summary of the key sequence of ideas in The Phenomenology of Spirit]. I stare at it with bewilderment, but cannot decide whether or not Hegel is pursuing a worthwhile project. [also Houlgate p.77 and 102] |
| 22033 | Hegel tried to avoid Kant's dualism of neutral intuitions and imposed concepts [Hegel, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Hegel tried to avoid the untenable Kantian dualism between concepts and intuitions, and the Kantian mechanism of the 'imposition' of concepts on sensibility entailed by that dualism (with intuition having neutral content). | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 09 | |
| A reaction: [Pinker is describing the opening of Phenomenology] In modern discussions this concerns the idea of The Given, which is wholly uninterpreted raw experience. Sellars and MacDowell. Kant seems to split an agent into two (Master/Slave). |
| 21771 | Consciousness derives its criterion of knowledge from direct knowledge of its own being [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: In what consciousness affirms from within itself as being-in-itself or the True we have the standard which consciousness itself sets up by which to measure what it knows. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], p.053), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 03 'The Method' | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a very close relation of Descartes' 'clear and distinct conceptions'. This certainly places Hegel in the Rationalist camp. |
| 20741 | Consciousness is shaped dialectically, by opposing forces and concepts [Hegel, by Aho] |
| Full Idea: In 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' Hegel offers a panoptic account of Western consciousness as a dialectical process shaped by opposing principles - such as subject/object, freedom/determinism, temporal/eternal, and particular/universal. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 2 'Subjective' | |
| A reaction: A helpful pointer, for us poor analytic philosophers, who stare in bewilderment at Hegel's stuff, despite its apparent importance. At moment it is the politics that strikes me as most interesting in Hegel. This is cultured consciousness, pre-Marx. |
| 21770 | Consciousness is both of objects, and of itself [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Consciousness is, on the one hand, consciousness of the object, and on the other, consciousness of itself. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], p.052), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 03 'The Method' | |
| A reaction: Hume challenges whether there is any knowledge of consciousness purely in itself. Schopenhauer flatly disagreed (Idea 4166) - but then he would, wouldn't he? |
| 5647 | Hegel claims knowledge of self presupposes desire, and hence objects [Hegel, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Hegel seems to argue that the immediate knowledge of self (the Cartesian premise) presupposes the activity that constitutes the self, and this presupposes desire, and hence the knowledge of objects. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.12 | |
| A reaction: This hardly amounts to an argument, but I find it quite sympathetic as a claim. It fits comfortably with modern externalist accounts of thought. While solipsism seems a logical possibility, it hardly amounts to a coherent account of mental life. |
| 7947 | In continuity, what matters is not just the beginning and end states, but the process itself [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: What matters to continuity is not just the beginning and end states of the process by which a thing persists, perhaps through change, but the process itself. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as being a really important insight. Compare Idea 4931. If this is the key to understanding mind and personal identity, it means that the concept of a 'process' must be a central issue in ontology. How do you individuate a process? |
| 5648 | For Hegel knowledge of self presupposes objects, and also a public and moral social world [Hegel, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Hegel tries to show that knowledge of self as subject presupposes not just knowledge of objects, but knowledge of a public social world, in which there is moral order and civic trust. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.12 | |
| A reaction: This is not far off Wittgenstein's private language argument. It is also Popper's 'World Three', of society and language. Human reality is incomprehensible without some recognition of the culture in which we immerse, like fish in water. |
| 8930 | The in-itself must become for-itself, which requires self-consciousness [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The in-itself has to express itself outwardly and become for itself, and this means simply that it has to posit self-consciousness as one with itself. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 26) | |
| A reaction: This famous distinction seems to be at the core of idealism, but also to be the germ of existentialism (prior to Kierkegaard), which builds on this view of what it means to exist as an individual. Self-consciousness in nature is inevitable? |
| 8936 | Human nature only really exists in an achieved community of minds [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Human nature only really exists in an achieved community of minds. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 69) | |
| A reaction: A lovely slogan, that makes Hegel the father of the communitarian movement. The politics of Hegel can, of course, be sinister, so one must proceed with care, and study history to see where it can all go wrong. |
| 22034 | Modern life needs individuality, but must recognise that human agency is social [Hegel, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Hegel argued that the modern world necessarily had to make space for individuals and their inviolable conscience, while not becoming so individualistic that it failed to acknowledge the deep sociality of human agency. ...Subjectivity became a right. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 09 | |
| A reaction: [at the end of the chapter on the history of Geist in the Phenomenology] Conservatives, revolutionaries and communitarians all claim Hegel as their own. The sociality is a matter of mutual law-giving, as in the Master/Slave. |
| 21987 | History is the progress of the consciousness of freedom [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The History of the World is none other than than the progress of the consciousness of freedom. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]), quoted by Peter Singer - Marx 2 | |
| A reaction: [no ref given] Presumably there is an evolutionary view implicit in this. Presumably also later generations are hereby superior to previous generations. Since no one still has this view of history, does that invalidate Hegel? |
| 8931 | The movement of pure essences constitutes the nature of scientific method [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The movement of pure essences constitutes the nature of scientific method in general. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 34) | |
| A reaction: This would appear to be precisely the idea of scientific essentialism - if he is saying that science seeks to understand the movement (or power) of essences as they occur in nature. |
| 8933 | Science confronts the inner necessities of objects [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Scientific cognition demands surrender to the life of the object, or, what amounts to the same thing, confronting and expressing its inner necessity. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 53) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as being a much better account of what science tries to do than all the modern talk about laws and theories. |
| 21775 | The God of revealed religion can only be understood through pure speculative knowledge [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: God is attainable in pure speculative knowledge alone and is only in that knowledge, and is only that knowledge itself, for He is Spirit; and this speculative knowledge is the knowledge of revealed religion. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], p.461), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 04 'Absolute' | |
| A reaction: If you were hoping to find out why Hegel believed in God, I fear this is the best evidence available. He is evidently opposed to natural theology. Hegel's language makes it very hard to grasp how we sees the nature of God. |
| 6917 | God is the essence of thought, abstracted from the thinker [Hegel, by Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: In Hegel the essence of God is actually nothing other than the essence of thought, or thought abstracted from the ego, that is, from the one who thinks. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Ludwig Feuerbach - Principles of Philosophy of the Future §23 | |
| A reaction: Presumably Descartes' Cogito is the origin for this train of thought. This is Feuerbach's reading of Hegel, but the former was keen on the idea of God as idealised humanity. |
| 6915 | Hegel made the last attempt to restore Christianity, which philosophy had destroyed [Hegel, by Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: The Hegelian philosophy is the last magnificent attempt to restore Christianity, which was lost and wrecked, through philosophy, and to restore Christianity (as usual in the modern era) by identifying it with the negation of Christianity. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Ludwig Feuerbach - Principles of Philosophy of the Future §21 | |
| A reaction: What is meant by the 'negation' of Christianity needs some untangling, but I suspect that a lot of 'continental' philosophy 1750-1950 is to do with Christianity, unlike British empiricism, which is intrinsically atheistic. |