Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'works', 'Philosophy of Revelation' and 'The Poetics'

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4 ideas

10. Modality / B. Possibility / 1. Possibility

22518	The actual must be possible, because it occurred [Aristotle]
	Full Idea: Actual events are evidently possible, otherwise they would not have occurred.
	From: Aristotle (The Poetics [c.347 BCE], 1451b18)
	A reaction: [quoted online by Peter Adamson] Seems like common sense, but it's important to have Aristotle assert it.

11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 3. Idealism / d. Absolute idealism

22072	Schelling always affirmed the absolute status of freedom [Schelling, by Courtine]
	Full Idea: Throughout Schelling's work we find the affirmation of absolute freedom or of the absolute as freedom.
	From: report of Friedrich Schelling (Philosophy of Revelation [1843], Vol.13 p.359) by Jean-François Courtine - Schelling p.83
	A reaction: Of all of the German idealists, Schelling may be the closest to modern existentialism.

21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 8. The Arts / b. Literature

16566	Poetry is more philosophic than history, as it concerns universals, not particulars [Aristotle]
	Full Idea: Poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.
	From: Aristotle (The Poetics [c.347 BCE], 1451b05)
	A reaction: Hm. Characters in great novels achieve universality by being representated very particularly. Great depth of mind seems required to be a poet, but less so for a historian (though there is, I presume, no upward limit on the possible level of thought).

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / e. Human nature

7667	There are two sides to men - the pleasantly social, and the violent and creative [Diderot, by Berlin]
	Full Idea: Diderot is among the first to preach that there are two men: the artificial man, who belongs in society and seeks to please, and the violent, bold, criminal instinct of a man who wishes to break out (and, if controlled, is responsible for works of genius.
	From: report of Denis Diderot (works [1769], Ch.3) by Isaiah Berlin - The Roots of Romanticism
	A reaction: This has an obvious ancestor in Plato's picture (esp. in 'Phaedrus') of the two conflicting sides to the psuché, which seem to be reason and emotion. In Diderot, though, the suppressed man has virtues, which Plato would deny.