21 ideas
| 1606 | You have to be a Platonist to debate about reality, so every philosopher is a Platonist [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Everyone who enters into a debate about reality automatically becomes a Platonist. Since such debates are the essence of philosophy, every philosopher is a Platonist. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.199) | |
| A reaction: This is correct |
| 1595 | Philosophy aims to satisfy the chief human desire - the articulation of beauty itself [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy, the attempt to articulate the vision of beauty itself, is the attempt to satisfy the highest human desire. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.120) | |
| A reaction: A million miles away from modern philosophy, but still an ideal to be taken seriously. |
| 1571 | 'Logos' ranges from thought/reasoning, to words, to rational structures outside thought [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Logos can mean i) a thought or reasoning, ii) the word which expresses a thought, iii) a rational structure outside human thought. These meanings give 'logos' an extraordinary range. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], Intro. 12) |
| 1572 | In the seventeenth century the only acceptable form of logos was technical knowledge [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: In the seventeenth century only a certain type of logos was deemed legitimate, namely that identified with technical knowledge (or 'techné'). | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], Intro. 15) |
| 1573 | The hallmark of a person with logos is that they give reasons why one opinion is superior to another [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: What is supposed to identify the person of logos from the one without is the commitment to giving reasons explaining why one opinion is superior to another. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], Intro. 17) |
| 1592 | Logos cannot refute the relativist, and so must admit that it too is a matter of desire (for truth and agreement) [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Logos cannot refute the radical, consistent and self-conscious relativist. Therefore it must admit that, like the relativist, it itself is essentially a matter of desire. It wants to say what is right and wrong, true and false, and for others to agree. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.108) |
| 1593 | Human desire has an ordered structure, with logos at the pinnacle [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Human desire has an ordered structure, with logos at the pinnacle. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.109) |
| 1603 | Logos is not unconditionally good, but good if there is another person willing to engage with it [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Logos is not unconditionally good, but good contingent on there being some other person (out there) who is willing to talk with logos, to approach it even as an opponent. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.175) |
| 1598 | We prefer reason or poetry according to whether basics are intelligible or not [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Is the arché (basis) intelligible, or is it chaos? Upon this question hinges all, for answering it determines whether poetry or logos is the form of human speech that best does justice to the world. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.139) |
| 1584 | Modern science, by aiming for clarity about the external world, has abandoned rationality in the human world [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: The modern scientific world view, with all its hope for clarity and precision, has a flipside, …which is its abandonment of rationality in the world of human significance. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.74) |
| 1591 | Unfortunately for reason, argument can't be used to establish the value of argument [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Unfortunately for the logos there is no argument that can, without begging the question, establish the goodness of argumentation. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.106) |
| 1599 | Attempts to suspend all presuppositions are hopeless, because a common ground must be agreed for the process [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: To debate about suspending all our presuppositions requires a common ground which, upon being established, immediately renders the debate superfluous. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.144) |
| 1605 | Reality can be viewed neutrally, or as an object of desire [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: There are two extremes: the Aristotelian views reality simply as reality, and the sophist or poet view reality only as an object of desire. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.199) |
| 1577 | Relativism is a disease which destroys the possibility of rational debate [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Relativism is disease, is pollution, for it negates the efficacy of logos. It destroys the possibility of a complete rational debate of fundamental questions. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.41) |
| 16736 | Explanation is generally to deduce it from something better known, which comes in degrees [Boyle] |
| Full Idea: Generally speaking, to render a reason of an effect or phenomenon is to deduce it from something else in nature more known than itself, and consequently there may be diverse kinds of degrees of explication of the same thing. | |
| From: Robert Boyle (Certain Physical Essays [1672], II:21), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 23.4 | |
| A reaction: There is a picture of a real explanatory structure to nature, from which we pick bits that interest us for entirely pragmatic reasons. Boyle and I are as one on this matter. |
| 16737 | The best explanations get down to primary basics, but others go less deep [Boyle] |
| Full Idea: Explications be most satisfactory that show how the effect is produced by the more primitive affects of matter (bulk, shape and motion) but are not to be despised that deduce them from more familiar qualities such as heat, weight, fluidity, fermentation. | |
| From: Robert Boyle (Certain Physical Essays [1672], II:22), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 23.4 | |
| A reaction: [Compressed, and continued from Idea 16736] So there is a causal structure, and the best explanations go to the bottom of it, but lesser explanations only go half way down. So a very skimpy explanation ('dormative power') is still an explanation. |
| 1578 | If relativism is the correct account of human values, then rhetoric is more important than reasoning [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: If relativism offers an accurate description of human values, then rhetoric replaces logos as the most fundamental human activity. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.47) | |
| A reaction: Or putting it another way, logos (reason) becomes meaningless. I suppose, though, that a relativist can conduct conditional reasoning (but must belief in some rules of reason). |
| 1596 | Reasoning aims not at the understanding of objects, but at the desire to give beautiful speeches [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Logos originates not in a cognitive capacity for the apprehension of objects, but in the desire to give birth to beautiful speeches. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.124) | |
| A reaction: It is hard for us to grasp this, but it might be quite life-enhancing if we could return to that old way of thought. |
| 23279 | It is important that a person can change their character, and not just be successive 'selves' [Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: I want to emphasise the basic importance of the ordinary idea of a self or person which undergoes changes of character, as opposed to dissolving a changing person into a series of 'selves'. | |
| From: Bernard Williams (Persons, Character and Morality [1976], II) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] He mentions Derek Parfit for the rival view. Williams has the Aristotelian view, that a person has an essential nature, which endures through change, and explains that change. But that needs some non-essential character traits. |
| 23280 | Kantians have an poor account of individuals, and insist on impartiality, because they ignore character [Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: The Kantians' omission of character is a condition of their ultimate insistence on the demands of impartial morality, just as it is a reason to find inadequate their account of the individual. | |
| From: Bernard Williams (Persons, Character and Morality [1976], II) | |
| A reaction: This is also why the Kantian account of virtue is inadequate, in comparison with the Aristotelian view. |
| 23278 | For utilitarians states of affairs are what have value, not matter who produced them [Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: The basic bearer of value for Utilitarianism is the state of affairs, and hence, when the relevant causal differences have been allowed for, it cannot make any further difference who produces a given state of affairs. | |
| From: Bernard Williams (Persons, Character and Morality [1976], I) | |
| A reaction: Which is morally better, that I water your bed of flowers, or that it rains? Which is morally better, that I water them from love, or because you threaten me with a whip? |