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7420
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When logos controls our desires, we have actually become the logos [Foucault]
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Full Idea:
Plutarch says if you have mastered principles then logos will silence your desires like a master silencing a dog - in which case the logos functions without intervention on your part - you have become the logos, or the logos has become you.
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From:
Michel Foucault (Ethics of the Concern for Self as Freedom [1984], p.286)
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A reaction:
If you believe that logos is pure reason, you might be quite happy with this, but if you thought it was a cultural construct, you might feel that you had been cunningly enslaved. If I ask 'what is 7+6?', logos interrupts me to give the answer.
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16648
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Accidents must have formal being, if they are principles of real action, and of mental action and thought [Duns Scotus]
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Full Idea:
Accidents are principles of acting and principles of cognizing substance, and are the per se objects of the senses. But it is ridiculous to say that something is a principle of acting (either real or intentional) and yet does not have any formal being.
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From:
John Duns Scotus (Ordinatio [1302], IV.12.1), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 10.5
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A reaction:
Pasnau cites this as the key scholastic argument for accidental properties having some independent and real existence (as required for Transubstantiation). Rival views say accidents are just 'modes' of a thing's existence. Aquinas compromised.
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15386
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If only the singular exists, science is impossible, as that relies on true generalities [Duns Scotus, by Panaccio]
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Full Idea:
Scotus argued that if everything is singular, with no objective common feature, science would be impossible, as it proceeds from general concepts. General is the opposite of singular, so it would be inadequate to understand a singular reality.
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From:
report of John Duns Scotus (Ordinatio [1302]) by Claude Panaccio - Medieval Problem of Universals 'John Duns'
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A reaction:
[compressed] It is a fact that if you generalise about 'tigers', you are glossing over the individuality of each singular tiger. That is OK for 'electron', if they really are identical, but our general predicates may be imposing identity on electrons.
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16632
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We distinguish one thing from another by contradiction, because this is, and that is not [Duns Scotus]
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Full Idea:
What is it [that establishes distinctness of things]? It is, to be sure, that which is universally the reason for distinguishing one thing from another: namely, a contradiction…..If this is, and that is not, then they are not the same entity in being.
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From:
John Duns Scotus (Ordinatio [1302], IV.11.3), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 08.2
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A reaction:
This is a remarkably intellectualist view of such things. John Wycliff, apparently, enquired about how animals were going to manage all this sort of thing. It should appeal to the modern logical approach to metaphysics.
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13094
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The haecceity is the featureless thing which gives ultimate individuality to a substance [Duns Scotus, by Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
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Full Idea:
For Scotus, the haecceity of an individual was a positive non-quidditative entity which, together with a common nature from which it was formally distinct, played the role of the ultimate differentia, thus individuating the substance.
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From:
report of John Duns Scotus (Ordinatio [1302]) by Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J - Substance and Individuation in Leibniz 6.1.3
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A reaction:
Most thinkers seem to agree (with me) that this is a non-starter, an implausible postulate designed to fill a gap in a metaphysic that hasn't been properly worked out. Leibniz is the hero who faces the problem and works around it.
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16770
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It is absurd that there is no difference between a genuinely unified thing, and a mere aggregate [Duns Scotus]
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Full Idea:
It seems absurd …that there should be no difference between a whole that is one thing per se, and a whole that is one thing by aggregation, like a cloud or a heap.
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From:
John Duns Scotus (Ordinatio [1302], III.2.2), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 25.5
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A reaction:
Leibniz invented monads because he was driven crazy by the quest for 'true unity' in things. Objective unity may be bogus, but I suspect that imposing plausible unity on things is the only way we can grasp the world.
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7425
|
The aim is not to eliminate power relations, but to reduce domination [Foucault]
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Full Idea:
The problem is not to dissolve power relations in a utopia of transparent communications, but to acquire the rules of law, the management techniques, the morality, the practice of the self, that allows games of power with minimum domination.
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From:
Michel Foucault (Ethics of the Concern for Self as Freedom [1984], p.298)
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A reaction:
If you are a democrat it is hard to disagree with this, though I am still unclear why being dominated should rank as a total disaster. A healthy personal relationship might involve domination. 'Management techniques' is interesting.
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7418
|
The idea of liberation suggests there is a human nature which has been repressed [Foucault]
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Full Idea:
I am somewhat suspicious of the notion of liberation, because one runs the risk of falling back on the idea that there is a human nature, that has been concealed or alienated by mechanisms of repression.
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From:
Michel Foucault (Ethics of the Concern for Self as Freedom [1984], p.282)
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A reaction:
Personally I think there is (to some extent) a human nature, and that it fails to flourish if it gets too much 'liberation. However, the world contains a lot more repression than liberation, so we should all be fans of liberty.
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