21 ideas
| 20455 | Philosophy really got started as the rival mode of discourse to tragedy [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: The pre-Socratics are interesting, but philosophy really begins in drama; it's a competitive discourse to tragedy. Which is why Plato's 'Republic' excludes the poets: they're the competition; gotta get rid of them. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Impossible Objects: interviews [2012], 6) | |
| A reaction: That's an interesting and novel perspective. So what was the 'discourse' of tragedy saying, and why did that provoke the new rival? Was it too fatalistic? |
| 20446 | Philosophy begins in disappointment, notably in religion and politics [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: I claim that philosophy begins in disappointment, and there are two forms of disappointment that interest me: religious and political disappointment | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Impossible Objects: interviews [2012], 2) | |
| A reaction: You are only disappointed by reality if you expected something better. To be disappointed by the failures of religion strikes me as rather old-fashioned, which Critchley sort of admits. Given the size and tumult of modern states, politics isn't promising. |
| 20449 | Science gives us an excessively theoretical view of life [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: One of the problems with the scientific worldview is that it leads human beings to have an overwhelmingly theoretical relationship to the world. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Impossible Objects: interviews [2012], 2) | |
| A reaction: Critchley is defending phenomenology, but this also supports its cousin, existentialism. I keep meeting bright elderly men who have immersed themselves in the study of science, and they seem very remote from the humanist culture I love. |
| 20448 | Phenomenology uncovers and redescribes the pre-theoretical layer of life [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: Phenomenology is a philosophical method that tries to uncover the pre-theoretical layer of human experience and redescribe it. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Impossible Objects: interviews [2012], 2) | |
| A reaction: I would be delighted if someone could tell me what this means in practice. I have the impression of lots of talk about phenomenology, but not much doing of it. Clearly I must enquire further. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 20454 | Wallace Stevens is the greatest philosophical poet of the twentieth century in English [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: Wallace Stevens is the greatest philosophical poet of the twentieth century in the English language - full stop - in my humble opinion. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Impossible Objects: interviews [2012], 6) | |
| A reaction: I include this because I tend to agree, and love Stevens. Hear recordings of him reading. I once mentioned Stevens in a conversation with Ted Hughes, and he just shrugged and said Stevens 'wasn't much of a poet'. Wrong. |
| 20456 | Interesting art is always organised around ethical demands [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: I don't think that art can be unethical. I think that interesting art is always ethical. It is organised around ethical demands. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Impossible Objects: interviews [2012], 8) | |
| A reaction: It is a struggle to make this fit instrumental music. Critchley likes punk rock, so he might not see the problem. How to compare Bachian, Mozart, Beethovenian and Debussyian ethics? Not impossible. |
| 20447 | The problems is not justifying ethics, but motivating it. Why should a self seek its good? [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: The issue is not so much justification as motivation, that in virtue of which the self can be motivated to act on some conception of the good. ...How does a self bind itself to whatever it determines as its good? | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Impossible Objects: interviews [2012], 2) | |
| A reaction: That is a bold and interesting idea about the starting point for ethics. It is always a problem for Aristotle, that he can offer no motivation for the quest for virtue. Contractarians start from existing motivations, but that isn't impressive. |
| 20452 | Anarchism used to be libertarian (especially for sexuality), but now concerns responsibility [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: Anarchism in the 1960s was libertarian and organised around issues of sexual liberation. That moment has passed. People are and should be organising around responsibility. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Impossible Objects: interviews [2012], 3) | |
| A reaction: So there are two types of anarchism, focused on freedom or on responsibility. An organisation like Greenpeace might represent the latter. |
| 20450 | The state, law, bureaucracy and capital are limitations on life, so I prefer federalist anarchism [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: I begin with the ontological premise that the state is a limitation on human existence. I am against the state, law, bureaucracy, and capital. I see anarchism as the only desirable way of organising, politically. ...Its political form is federalist. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Impossible Objects: interviews [2012], 3) | |
| A reaction: Hm. Some sympathy, but caution. All systems, even federalist anarchism, are limitations on our lives, so which limitations do we prefer? The law aspires to a calm egalitarian neutrality, which seems promising to me. |
| 20451 | Belief that humans are wicked leads to authoritarian politics [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: If you think human beings are wicked, you turn to an authoritarian conception of politics, the Hobbesian-Machiavellian-Straussian lie. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Impossible Objects: interviews [2012], 3) | |
| A reaction: Right-wingers also tend to believe in free will, so they can blame and punish. Good people are more inspired by a great leader than bad people are? (Later, Critchley says authoritarians usually believe in original sin). |
| 23601 | Leaders can only attack foreigners who have done wrong (as with their own subjects) [Vitoria] |
| Full Idea: A political leader cannot have greater authority over foreigners than over his own subjects; but he may not draw the sword against his own subjects unless they have done wrong; therefore he can only do so against foreigners in the same circumstances. | |
| From: Francis de Vitoria (On the Law of War [1525], p.303), quoted by Jeff McMahan - Killing in War 1.4 | |
| A reaction: The question would then be whether they have 'done some wrong' against this leader, or against some other people (such as their fellow citizens). That would be the 'intervention' justification. Are they engaged in the wrong, or responsible for it? |
| 23569 | The only just cause for a war is a wrong received [Vitoria] |
| Full Idea: There is a single and only just cause for commencing a war, namely, a wrong received. | |
| From: Francis de Vitoria (On the Law of War [1525], p.170), quoted by Michael Walzer - Just and Unjust Wars 04 | |
| A reaction: Walzer affirms this as one the principles of international law. In particular, mere differences of religion or politics cannot justify a war. The tricky bit is when the participants don't agree on the severity of the wrong. |
| 23566 | Princes should not justify a war to their subjects, and doing so would undermine the state [Vitoria] |
| Full Idea: A prince is not able and ought not always to render reasons for the war to its subjects, and if the subjects cannot serve in the war except they be satisfied of its justice, the state would fall into grave peril. | |
| From: Francis de Vitoria (On the Law of War [1525], p.176), quoted by Michael Walzer - Just and Unjust Wars 03 | |
| A reaction: This medieval view depends entirely on the absolute sovereignty of princes, and confidence that princes are wise and innately just. No student of history should believe such wicked nonsense. |
| 23576 | Sacking a city is lawful if it motivates the attacking troops [Vitoria] |
| Full Idea: It is not unlawful to put a city to sack, if it is necessary for the conduct of the war …as a spur to the courage of the troops. | |
| From: Francis de Vitoria (On the Law of War [1525], p.184), quoted by Michael Walzer - Just and Unjust Wars 08 | |
| A reaction: Hideous. Presumably this would include raping the women. Could you motivate a football team in a similar way? Or to get your children to pass exams? |