18 ideas
| 13917 | Metaphysics aims to identify categories of being, and show their interdependency [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: The central task of metaphysics is to chart the possibilities of existence by identifying the categories of being and the relations of ontological dependency in which beings of different categories stand to one another. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence [2008], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I am beginning to think that he is right about the second one, and that dependency and grounding relations are the name of the game. I don't have Lowe's confidence that philosophers can parcel up reality in neat and true ways. |
| 13919 | Philosophy aims not at the 'analysis of concepts', but at understanding the essences of things [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: The central task of philosophy is the cultivation of insights into natures or essences, and not the 'analysis of concepts', with which it is apt to be confused. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence [2008], 1) | |
| A reaction: This immediately strikes me as a false dichotomy. I like the idea of trying to understand the true natures of things, but how are we going to do it in our armchairs? |
| 23277 | Modern pragmatism sees objectivity as possible, despite its gradual evolution [Misak] |
| Full Idea: One of the pillars of the new pragmatism is the thought that the standards of objectivity come into being and evolve over time, but that being historically situated in this way does not detract from their objectivity. | |
| From: Cheryl Misak (Introduction to 'New Pragmatists' [2007], p.2) | |
| A reaction: This looks to me like pragmatism finally coming to its senses. I would say that being any sort of 'social construct' (beloved of cultural relativists) in no way detracts from its capacity for objectivity and truth. |
| 22227 | For Sartre there is only being for-itself, or being in-itself (which is beyond experience) [Sartre, by Daigle] |
| Full Idea: The two most fundamental modes of being in Sartre's ontology are being in-itself, and being for-itself. ...The in-itself lies beyond our experience of it. | |
| From: report of Jean-Paul Sartre (Being and Nothingness [1943]) by Christine Daigle - Jean-Paul Sartre 2.2 | |
| A reaction: This appears to be Kant's ding-an-sich, paired with Heidegger's Dasein. If those are the only options, then reality is either subjective or unknown, which seems to make Sartre an idealist, but he asserted that phenomena vindicate the in-itself. |
| 13918 | Holes, shadows and spots of light can coincide without being identical [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Holes are things of such a kind that they can coincide without being identical - as are, for example, shadows and spots of light. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence [2008], 1) | |
| A reaction: His point is that they thereby fail one of the standard tests for being an 'object'. |
| 13921 | All things must have an essence (a 'what it is'), or we would be unable to think about them [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Things must have an essence, in the sense of 'what it is to be the individual of that kind', or it would make no sense to say we can talk or think comprehendingly about things at all. If we don't know what it is, how can we think about it? | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence [2008], 2) | |
| A reaction: Lowe presents this as a sort of Master Argument for essences. I think he is working with the wrong notion of essence. All he means is that things must have identities to be objects of thought. Why equate identity with essence, and waste a good concept? |
| 13922 | Knowing an essence is just knowing what the thing is, not knowing some further thing [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: To know something's essence is not to be acquainted with some further thing of a special kind, but simply to understand what exactly that thing is. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence [2008], 2) | |
| A reaction: I think he is wrong about this, or at least is working with an unhelpful notion of essence. Identity is one thing, and essence is another. I take essences to be certain selected features of things, which explain their nature. |
| 13920 | Each thing has to be of a general kind, because it belongs to some category [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Any individual thing must be a thing of some general kind - because, at the very least, it must belong to some ontological category. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence [2008], 2) | |
| A reaction: Where does the law that 'everything must have a category' come from? I'm baffled by remarks of this kind. Where do we get the categories from? From observing the individuals. So which has priority? Not the categories. Is God a kind? |
| 20743 | Appearances do not hide the essence; appearances are the essence [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: We reject the dualism of appearance and essence. The appearance does not hide the essence, it reveals it; it is the essence. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Being and Nothingness [1943], p.4-5), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 2 'Phenomenology' | |
| A reaction: This idea, expressed in the language of Hegel and Husserl, strikes me as the same as the analytic phenomenalism of Mill and Ayer. Hence I take it to be wrong. |
| 6151 | Sartre says consciousness is just directedness towards external objects [Sartre, by Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: Sartre defends a view of consciousness as nothing but a directedness towards objects, insisting that these objects are transcendent with respect to that consciousness; hence Sartre is one of the first genuine externalists. | |
| From: report of Jean-Paul Sartre (Being and Nothingness [1943]) by Mark Rowlands - Externalism Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: An ancestor here is, I think, Schopenhauer (Idea 4166). The idea is attractive, as we are brought up with idea that we have a thing called 'consciousness', but if you removed its contents there would literally be nothing left. |
| 6164 | Sartre rejects mental content, and the idea that the mind has hidden inner features [Sartre, by Rowlands] |
| Full Idea: Sartre's attack on the idea that consciousness has contents is an attack on the idea that the mental possesses features that are hidden, inner and constituted or revealed by the individual's inwardly directed awareness. | |
| From: report of Jean-Paul Sartre (Being and Nothingness [1943]) by Mark Rowlands - Externalism Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: This is part of the move towards 'externalism' about the mind. The notion of 'content' implies a container. It seems slightly ridiculous, though, to try to say that the mind just 'is the world'. How is reasoning possible, and the relation of ideas? |
| 7074 | Man is a useless passion [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: Man is a useless passion. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Being and Nothingness [1943], IV.2.III) | |
| A reaction: Memorable and neat. Since all of existence is ultimately 'useless', that part of it is not a revelation. The notion that we are essentially a 'passion' chimes nicely with David Hume's view, against the enlightenment rational view, and against Aristotle. |
| 6687 | Man is the desire to be God [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: Man fundamentally is the desire to be God. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Being and Nothingness [1943], p.556?), quoted by Gordon Graham - Eight Theories of Ethics Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: It is better to see man (as seen all the way through the European tradition) as caught between the self-images of being an angel and being a 'quintessence of dust' (Hamlet). |
| 22228 | Sartre's freedom is not for whimsical action, but taking responsibility for our own values [Sartre, by Daigle] |
| Full Idea: Readers often confuse Sartre's notion of freedom with the freedom of acting whimsically ....but since there is no God, we must create our own values. Freedom is not merely a licence to act whimsically.; it entails responsibility. | |
| From: report of Jean-Paul Sartre (Being and Nothingness [1943]) by Christine Daigle - Jean-Paul Sartre 2.3 | |
| A reaction: The idea that we create our values comes from Nietzsche. Did Sartre want everyone to behave like an übermensch? How can you form a society from individuals who create private values, even if they (somehow) take responsibility for them? |
| 22233 | Love is the demand to be loved [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: Love is the demand to be loved. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Being and Nothingness [1943], p.488), quoted by Christine Daigle - Jean-Paul Sartre 2.5 | |
| A reaction: Is that all love is? Hard to imagine someone loving another person without hoping that the other person will reciprocate. You need high self-esteem to 'demand' it. Low self-esteem merely hopes for it. He says the other person may feel the same. |
| 20755 | Fear concerns the world, but 'anguish' comes from confronting my self [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: Anguish is distinguished from fear in that fear is fear of being in the world whereas anguish is anguish before myself. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Being and Nothingness [1943], p.65), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 5 'Radical' | |
| A reaction: I'm guessing that the anguish comes from the horror of the infinite choices available to me. Once you've made major life choices with full commitment (such as marriage), does that mean that existentialism becomes irrelevant? |
| 20760 | Sincerity is not authenticity, because it only commits to one particular identity [Sartre, by Aho] |
| Full Idea: Being sincere [in Sartre] has nothing to do with authenticity because, in committing ourselves to a particular identity, we strip away the possibility of transcendence by reducing ourselves to a thing. | |
| From: report of Jean-Paul Sartre (Being and Nothingness [1943]) by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 6 'Bad' | |
| A reaction: I take this to mean that sincerity says genuinely what role you are playing (such as a waiter), but authenticity is recognition that you don't have to play that role. I think. |
| 22231 | We flee from the anguish of freedom by seeing ourselves objectively, as determined [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: We are always ready to take refuge in a belief in determinism if this freedom weighs upon us or if we need an excuse. Thus we flee from anguish by attempting to apprehend ourselves from without as an Other or a thing. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Being and Nothingness [1943], p.82), quoted by Christine Daigle - Jean-Paul Sartre 2.4 | |
| A reaction: I would have thought we blame social pressures, or biological pressures, rather than metaphysical determinism, but it amounts to the same thing. If we are not free then probably nothing else is. |