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All the ideas for 'works', 'talk' and 'Time and Free Will'

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4 ideas

1. Philosophy / B. History of Ideas / 4. Early European Thought

8011	Aristotle is a buffoon who has misled the Church [Luther, by MacIntyre]
	Full Idea: Aristotle is a buffoon who has misled the Church.
	From: report of Martin Luther (talk [1525]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.10
	A reaction: Before he became famous, Luther was a university lecturer on Aristotle. This remark was a hundred years before philosophers began serious criticism of Aristotle. Presumably Protestants just stopped reading him.

17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 5. Causal Argument

22100	Experienced time means no two mental moments are ever alike [Bergson]
	Full Idea: If duration [experienced time] is what we say, deep-seated psychic states are radically heterogeneous to each other, and it is impossible that any two of them should be quite alike, since they are two different moments in a life-story.
	From: Henri Bergson (Time and Free Will [1889], p.220), quoted by Pete A.Y. Gunter - Bergson p.174
	A reaction: This implies that we are intrinsically unpredictable, and there certainly can't be a regularity account of mental causation. The sense of time is said to make the self radically different from the rest of reality. Bergson later rejected dualism.

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.

29. Religion / D. Religious Issues / 1. Religious Commitment / e. Fideism

6609	With respect to religion, reason is a blind whore [Luther]
	Full Idea: With respect to the mysteries of the Christian religion, reason is a blind whore.
	From: Martin Luther (talk [1525]), quoted by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason n4.2
	A reaction: Reason is presumably a blind whore with respect to all impenetrable mysteries. Since the reason of Aquinas endorsed the mysteries of Christianity, the remark seems a bit strong, but it is appropriate if you think that only faith (in Christianity) matters.