41 ideas
| 7846 | Nietzsche thinks philosophy makes us more profound, but not better [Nietzsche, by Ansell Pearson] |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche does not think philosopher exists to make us better human beings - but it can make us more profound ones. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Keith Ansell Pearson - How to Read Nietzsche Intro | |
| A reaction: What is the point of being more 'profound' if that isn't 'better'? Are we sure that Kant is more 'profound' than a Yanomamo Indian? Personally I think philosophy tends to produce moral improvement, but I have seen a few striking counterexamples. |
| 20107 | How many mediocre thinkers are occupied with influential problems! [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It is a terrible thought to contemplate that an immense number of mediocre thinkers are occupied with really influential matters. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]), quoted by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 03 | |
| A reaction: [in a journal of 1867] What would he say now, with the plethora of academics and students aspiring to the highest levels of human thought? If I face up to the fact that I am 'mediocre', should I stop? And become mediocre at something else? |
| 20352 | Nietzsche has a metaphysics, as well as perspectives - the ontology is the perspectives [Nietzsche, by Richardson] |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche's thought includes both a metaphysics and a perspectivism, once these are more complexly grasped. But I argue that the metaphysics is basic: it's an ontology of perspectives. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by John Richardson - Nietzsche's System Intro | |
| A reaction: Very good. If it was just gormless relativism, which is what many people hope for in Nietzsche, why is it many perspectives? If they are just relative, having lots of them is no help. The point is they sum, and increase verisimilitude. |
| 20379 | Reason is just another organic drive, developing late, and fighting for equality [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Reason is a support organ that slowly develops itself, ...and emancipates itself slowly to equal rights with the organic drives - so that reason (belief and knowledge) fights with the drives, as itself a new drive, very late come to preponderance. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 9/11[243]), quoted by John Richardson - Nietzsche's System 4.3.2 n55 | |
| A reaction: A very powerful and fascinating idea. There is a silly post-modern tendency to think that Nietzsche denegrates and trivialises reason because of remarks like this, but he takes ranking the drives to be the supreme activity. I rank reason high. |
| 20123 | First see nature as non-human, then fit ourselves into this view of nature [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: My task is the dehumanisation of nature, and then the naturalisation of humanity once it has attained the pure concept of 'nature'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 9.525), quoted by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 10 | |
| A reaction: Safranski sees this as summarising Nietzsche's project, and it could be a mission statement for naturalism. This idea pinpoints why I take Nietzsche to be important - as a pioneer of the naturalistic view of people. |
| 4444 | One moderate nominalist view says that properties and relations exist, but they are particulars [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: There is a 'moderate' nominalism (found in G.F.Stout, for example) which says that properties and relations do exist, but that they are particulars rather than universals. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Universals [1995], p.504) | |
| A reaction: Both this view and the 'mereological' view seem to be ducking the problem. If you have two red particulars and a green one, how do we manage to spot the odd one out? |
| 4445 | If properties and relations are particulars, there is still the problem of how to classify and group them [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: The view that properties exist, but are particulars rather than universals, is still left with the problem of classification. On what basis do we declare that different things have the same property? | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Universals [1995], p.504) | |
| A reaction: This seems like a fairly crucial objection. The original problem was how we manage to classify things (group them into sets), and it looks as if this theory leaves the problem untouched. |
| 20105 | Storms are wonderful expressions of free powers! [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: How different the lightning, the storm, the hail, free powers, without ethics! How happy, how powerful they are, pure will, untarnished by intellect! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 2.122), quoted by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 02 | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche was a perfect embodiment of the Romantic Movement! I take this to be a deep observation, since I think raw powers are the most fundamental aspect of nature. Schopenhauer is behind this idea. |
| 4448 | Should we decide which universals exist a priori (through words), or a posteriori (through science)? [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Should we decide what universals exist a priori (probably on semantic grounds, identifying them with the meanings of general words), or a posteriori (looking to our best general theories about nature to give revisable conjectures about universals)? | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Universals [1995], p.505) | |
| A reaction: Nice question for a realist. Although the problem is first perceived in the use of language, if we think universals are a real feature of nature, we should pursue them scientifically, say I. |
| 4446 | It is claimed that some universals are not exemplified by any particular, so must exist separately [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: There are some who claim that there can be uninstantiated universals, which are not exemplified by any particular, past, present or future; this would certainly imply that those universals have a Platonic transcendent existence outside time and space. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Universals [1995], p.504) | |
| A reaction: Presumably this is potentially circular or defeasible, because one can deny the universal simply because there is no particular. |
| 4440 | 'Resemblance Nominalism' finds that in practice the construction of resemblance classes is hard [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: It is difficult for Resemblance Nominalists to construct their interconnected classes in practice. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Universals [1995], p.503) | |
| A reaction: Given the complexity of the world this is hardly surprising, but it doesn't seem insuperable for the theory. It is hard to decide whether an object is white, or hot, whatever your theory of universals. |
| 4439 | 'Resemblance Nominalism' says properties are resemblances between classes of particulars [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Resemblance Nominalists say that to have a property is to be a member of a class which is part of a network of resemblance relations with other classes of particulars. ..'Resemblance' is taken to be a primitive notion, though one that admits of degrees. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Universals [1995], p.503) | |
| A reaction: Intuition suggests that this proposal has good prospects, as properties are neither identical, nor just particulars, but have a lot in common, which 'resemblance' captures. Hume saw resemblance as a 'primitive' process. |
| 4431 | 'Predicate Nominalism' says that a 'universal' property is just a predicate applied to lots of things [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: For a Predicate Nominalist different things have the same property, or belong to the same kind, if the same predicates applies to, or is 'true of', the different things. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Universals [1995], p.503) | |
| A reaction: This immediately strikes me as unlikely, because I think the action is at the proposition level, not the sentence level. And why do some predicates seem to be synonymous? |
| 4433 | Concept and predicate nominalism miss out some predicates, and may be viciously regressive [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: The standard objections to Predicate and Concept Nominalism are that some properties have no predicates or concepts, and that predicates and concepts seem to be types rather than particulars, and it is types the theory is seeking to analyse. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Universals [1995], p.503) | |
| A reaction: The claim that some properties have no concepts is devastating if true, but may not be. The regress problem is likely to occur in any explanation of universals, I suspect. |
| 4432 | 'Concept Nominalism' says a 'universal' property is just a mental concept applied to lots of things [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Concept Nominalism says different things have the same property, or belong to the same kind, if the same concept in the mind is applied to different things. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Universals [1995], p.503) | |
| A reaction: This is more appealing than Predicate Nominalism, and may be right. Our perception of the 'properties' of a thing may be entirely dictated by human interests, not by nature. |
| 4436 | 'Class Nominalism' may explain properties if we stick to 'natural' sets, and ignore random ones [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Class Nominalism can be defended (by Quinton) against the problem of random sets (with nothing in common), by giving an account of properties in terms of 'natural' classes, where 'natural' comes in degrees, but is fundamental and unanalysable. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Universals [1995], p.503) | |
| A reaction: This still seems to beg the question, because you still have to decide whether two things have anything 'naturally' in common before you assign them to a set. |
| 4434 | 'Class Nominalism' says that properties or kinds are merely membership of a set (e.g. of white things) [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Class Nominalists substitute classes or sets for properties or kinds, so that being white is just being a member of the set of white things; relations are treated as ordered sets. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Universals [1995], p.503) | |
| A reaction: This immediately seems wrong, because it invites the question of why something is a member of a set (unless membership is arbitrary and whimsical - which it usually isn't). |
| 4435 | 'Class Nominalism' cannot explain co-extensive properties, or sets with random members [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Class Nominalism cannot explain co-extensive properties (which qualify the same things), and also a random (non-natural) set has particulars with nothing in common, thus failing to capture an essential feature of a general property. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Universals [1995], p.503) | |
| A reaction: These objections strike me as conclusive, since we can assign things to a set quite arbitrarily, so membership of a set may signify no shared property at all (except, say, 'owned by me', which is hardly a property). |
| 4437 | 'Mereological Nominalism' sees whiteness as a huge white object consisting of all the white things [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Mereological Nominalism views a property as the omnitemporal whole or aggregate of all the things said to have the property, so whiteness is a huge white object whose parts are all the white things. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Universals [1995], p.503) | |
| A reaction: A charming proposal, in which bizarre and beautiful unities thread themselves across the universe, but white objects may also be soft and warm. |
| 4438 | 'Mereological Nominalism' may work for whiteness, but it doesn't seem to work for squareness [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Mereological Nominalism has some plausibility for a case like whiteness, but breaks down completely for other universals, such as squareness. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Universals [1995], p.503) | |
| A reaction: A delightful request that you attempt a hopeless feat of imagination, by seeing all squares as parts of one supreme square. A nice objection. |
| 20376 | We begin with concepts of kinds, from individuals; but that is not the essence of individuals [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The overlooking of individuals gives us the concept and with this our knowledge begins: in categorising, in the setting up of kinds. But the essence of things does not correspond to this. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], p.51) | |
| A reaction: [dated c1873] Aha! So Nietzsche agrees with me in my defence of individual essences, against kind essences (which seem to me to obviously derive from the nature of individuals). Deep in my heart I knew I would find this quotation one day. |
| 19392 | I don't recommend universal doubt; we constantly seek reasons for things which are indubitable [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: I do not think it necessary to recommend to people universal doubt ...in fact, we are constantly seeking reasons for thoughts about which there is no doubt at all. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Precepts for Advancing Science and Arts [1680], p.34) | |
| A reaction: Such confidence is, of course, asking for trouble. I prefer Peirce's fallibilism - that robust realism is the most coherent view, and the only one worth pursuing and relying on, but you never know.... |
| 22501 | Nietzsche classified actions by the nature of the agent, not the nature of the act [Nietzsche, by Foot] |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche thought profoundly mistaken a taxonomy that classified actions as the doing of this or that, insisting that the true nature of an action depended rather on the nature of the individual who did it. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 7) by Philippa Foot - Natural Goodness 7 | |
| A reaction: This is more in the spirit of Aristotle than in the modern legalistic style. It seems to totally ignore consequences, which would puzzle victims or beneficiaries of the action. |
| 22500 | Nietzsche failed to see that moral actions can be voluntary without free will [Foot on Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: To threaten morality Nietzsche needed to show not only that free will was an illusion, but also that no other distinction between voluntary and involuntary action (Aristotle's, for instance) would do instead. He seems to be wrong about this. | |
| From: comment on Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 7) by Philippa Foot - Natural Goodness | |
| A reaction: Just the idea I have been seeking! There is no free will, so in what way are we responsible? Simple: we are responsible for any act which can be shown to be voluntary. It can't just be any action we fully caused, because of accidents. |
| 20128 | Each person has a fixed constitution, which makes them a particular type of person [Nietzsche, by Leiter] |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche's view (which we may call the 'Doctrine of Types') is that each person has a fixed psycho-physical constitution, which defines him as a particular type of person. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Brian Leiter - Nietzsche On Morality 1 'What kind' | |
| A reaction: An interestesting variant, standing between the Aristotelian picture of one shared human nature, and the existentialist picture of our endlessly malleable nature. So what type am I, and what type are you? How many types are there? |
| 22503 | Nietzsche could only revalue human values for a different species [Nietzsche, by Foot] |
| Full Idea: It is only for a different species that Nietzsche's most radical revaluation of values could be valid. It is not valid for us as we are, or are ever likely to be. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Philippa Foot - Natural Goodness 7 | |
| A reaction: This is the Aristotelian view, that our values and virtues arise out of our human nature, with which I largely agree, though we should resist its rather conservative tendencies. |
| 8041 | The superman is a monstrous oddity, not a serious idea [MacIntyre on Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The Übermensch belongs in the pages of a philosophical bestiary rather than in serious discussion. | |
| From: comment on Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: It may just be an empirical and historical fact that the value-systems of a culture arise from the characters of a few strong-willed and charismatic individuals, rather than from collective need - let along collective philosophising. |
| 20135 | Nietzsche's higher type of man is much more important than the idealised 'superman' [Nietzsche, by Leiter] |
| Full Idea: The 'superman' has received far more attention from commentators than it warrants: the higher type of human being (a Goethe or a Nietzsche) is much more important than the hyperbolic, and often obscure, Zarathustrian rhetoric about the über-mensch. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Brian Leiter - Nietzsche On Morality 4 'Higher' n2 | |
| A reaction: Leiter says the über-mensch idea almost entirely drops out of Nietzsche's mature work. |
| 20353 | The 'will to power' is basically applied to drives and forces, not to people [Nietzsche, by Richardson] |
| Full Idea: 'Will to power' is most basically applied not to people but to 'drives' or 'forces', simpler units which Nietzsche sometimes calls 'points' and 'power quanta'. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 1) by John Richardson - Nietzsche's System 1 | |
| A reaction: This strikes as a correct account of Nietzsche, and a hugely important interpretative point. He wasn't saying that all human beings would conquer the world if they could. The point is there are many conflicting and combining wills to power. |
| 20113 | Friendly chats undermine my philosophy; wanting to be right at the expense of love is folly [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: My entire philosophy wavers after just an hour of friendly conversation with complete strangers. It strikes me as so foolish to insist on being right at the expense of love. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 6.37), quoted by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 09 | |
| A reaction: [Letter to Gast, 1880] Strangers who met Nietzsche on walks reported how kind and friendly he was. Most people want to be right most of the time, but a few people have this vice in rather excessive form. Especially philosophers! |
| 22475 | Moral generalisation is wrong, because we should evaluate individual acts [Nietzsche, by Foot] |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche believed that moral generalisation was impossible because the proper subject of evaluation was, instead, a person's individual act. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Philippa Foot - Nietzsche's Immoralism p.155 | |
| A reaction: This suggests a different type of particularism, focusing on the particular decision, rather than on the details of the situation. Presumable no two moral decisions are ever sufficiently the same to be compared. But a lie is a lie. |
| 22476 | Nietzsche thought our psychology means there can't be universal human virtues [Nietzsche, by Foot] |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche believed, in effect, that as the facts of human psychology really were, there could be no such thing as human virtues, dispositions good in any man. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Philippa Foot - Nietzsche's Immoralism p.157 | |
| A reaction: Presumably each individual can only have virtues appropriate to their individual nature, which is something like channelling their personal psychological drives. Can't we each have our individual version of courage or honesty? |
| 20104 | Nietzsche tried to lead a thought-provoking life [Safranski on Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: All of us ponder our existences, but Nietzsche strove to lead the kind of life that would yield food for thought. | |
| From: comment on Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 01) by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 01 | |
| A reaction: Could Nietzsche possibly be a role model for us in this respect? If I were starting afresh, guided by this thought, I'm not sure how I would go about it. It is Nietzsche's astonishing independence of thought that hits you. |
| 7847 | Initially nihilism was cosmic, but later Nietzsche saw it as a cultural matter [Nietzsche, by Ansell Pearson] |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche's first presentation of nihilism is an existential affair arising from cosmic problems, but he later stressed nihilism as a historical and cultural problem of values, where mankind's highest values reach a point of devaluation. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Keith Ansell Pearson - How to Read Nietzsche Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: The second version seems to imply a quasi-Marxist determinism about social progress. Then you would have to ask, what is the point of fighting against it? I wonder if Nietzsche's values are anti-nihilist, but his metaethics makes nihilism unavoidable? |
| 9782 | Nietzsche urges that nihilism be active, and will nothing itself [Nietzsche, by Zizek] |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche opposes active to passive nihilism - it is better to actively will nothing itself than not to will anything. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Slavoj Zizek - Conversations, with Glyn Daly §3 | |
| A reaction: To 'actively will nothing' sounds to me indistinguishable from suicide, which I don't believe was ever on Nietzsche's agenda. It is hard, though, to disentangle Nietzsche's attitude to nihilism. |
| 20102 | Flight from boredom leads to art [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Flight from boredom is the mother of all art. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 8.432), quoted by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography Intro | |
| A reaction: I might even say that all human achievement comes from boredom. |
| 20106 | Nietzsche was fascinated by a will that can turn against itself [Nietzsche, by Safranski] |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche was fascinated by the idea of a will that turns against itself, against its usual impulses. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 03 | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as very existentialist - a case of existence before essence. |
| 20124 | Reliving life countless times - this gives the value back to life which religion took away [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: "Is this something I want to do countless times?" ....Let us etch the image of eternity onto our own lives! This thought embodies more than all religions, which taught us to disdain life as something ephemeral and to look toward an unspecified other life. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 9.496,503), quoted by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 10 | |
| A reaction: You can't get away from eternal recurrence being an imaginative trick, to focus value onto our choices. For a while Nietzsche tried to persuade himself that the recurrence actually occurred, but we all know it doesn't. |
| 20367 | Individual development is more important than the state, but a community is necessary [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: All states and communities are something lower than the individual, but necessary kinds for his higher development. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 10/7[98]), quoted by John Richardson - Nietzsche's System 2.4 n104 | |
| A reaction: This indicates why Nietzsche should not really be taken as a political thinker, though I would say there is a sort of communitarianism implied in this, just as for Aristotle virtue is supreme, which needs social expression. |
| 20371 | Nietzsche thinks we should join a society, in order to criticise, heal and renew it [Nietzsche, by Richardson] |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche thinks the best way of both joining and opposing a society is to find where it's sick, to be its merciless critic and exposer, and to help heal and renew it. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by John Richardson - Nietzsche's System 3.3 | |
| A reaction: This sounds like the great Victorian sages, such as Ruskin and Arnold. Christopher Hitchens was a nice recent example. Maybe these have been the finest British citizens? |
| 20108 | Every culture loses its identity and power if it lacks a major myth [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Without myth every culture loses its natural healthy creating power: only a horizon encircled with myths can mark off a cultural movement as a discrete unit. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 1.145) | |
| A reaction: In the early part of his career this was a big idea for Nietzsche, especially associated with Wagner's Ring, but he moved away from the idea later. |