48 ideas
| 24084 | Seeing with other eyes is more egoism, but exploring other perspectives leads to objectivity [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Wanting to know things as they are - that alone is the good inclination: not seeing ..with other eyes; that would be merely a change of place of egoistic seeing. …Practise at seeing with other eyes, and without human relationships, hence objectively! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[013]) | |
| A reaction: That Nietzsche thinks we should try to see things objectively will come as a bit of a shock to those who have him catalogued among the relativists. It's clear from other writings that he thinks (rightly) that perfect objectivity is unattainable. |
| 24092 | I tell the truth, even if it is repulsive [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: As a man I tell the truth, even the repulsive ones. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 12[86]) | |
| A reaction: I wonder if even Nietzsche had his limits. He is quite coy about sexual matters, for example, before Freud and various sexual revolutions. To ruthlessly tell difficult truths strikes me as a scientific approach to the world. |
| 24114 | The pain in truth is when it destroys a belief [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The truth hurts because it destroys a belief: not in itself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 9[48]) | |
| A reaction: There are hideous events, about which it can be dreadful to learn the truth, but the unpleasantness is in the fact, not in the truth of the fact. So, yes. |
| 24104 | We don't create logic, time and space! The mind obeys laws because they are true [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: That which is logical, time, space would have to be produced by us: nonsense! When the mind obeys its own laws, this because they are actually true, true in themselves! …An error with respect to these truths avenges itself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[023]) | |
| A reaction: So much for those who see Nietzsche as the embodiment of relativism. This is Nietzsche standing up to what I increasingly see as the pernicious influence of Kant. I agree with Nietzsche. Relations with the world keep our logic honest. |
| 24112 | To think about being we must have an opinion about what it is [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We are in the process of figuring out the being of things: consequently we must already have an opinion as to what being is. This can be an error! E.g., I. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 9[41]) | |
| A reaction: The point of 'I' is that we unquestioningly think the self is a given aspect of being, as in Descartes. |
| 7720 | Two things can only resemble one another in some respect, and that may reintroduce a universal [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: A problem for resemblance nominalism is that in saying that two particulars 'resemble' one another, it is necessary to specify in what respect they do so (e.g. colour, shape, size), and this threatens to reintroduce what appears to be talk of universals. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: We see resemblance between faces instantly, long before we can specify the 'respects' of the resemblance. This supports the Humean hard-wired view of resemblance, rather than some appeal to Platonic universals. |
| 7712 | On substances, Leibniz emphasises unity, Spinoza independence, Locke relations to qualities [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Later philosophers emphasised different strands of Aristotle's concept of substances: Leibniz (in his theory of monads) emphasised their unity; Spinoza emphasised their ontological independence; Locke emphasised their role in relation to qualities. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: Note that this Aristotelian idea had not been jettisoned in the late seventeenth century, unlike other Aristotelianisms. I think it is only with the success of atomism in chemistry that the idea of substance is forced to recede. |
| 24089 | Essences are fictions needed for beings who represent things [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The true essence of things is a fiction of representing being, without which being is unable to represent. 11[330] Thinking must assert substance and identity because a knowing of complete flux is impossible. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[329]) | |
| A reaction: I have defended (in my PhD) the thesis that the concept of essence is required for explanation. Do animals need the concept of essence in order to represent? I think people and animals ascribe essential natures to most things. |
| 7710 | Perception is a mode of belief-acquisition, and does not involve sensation [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: According to one school of thought, perception is simply a mode of belief-acquisition,and there is no reason to suppose that any element of sensation is literally involved in perception. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Blindsight would be an obvious supporting case for this view. I think this point is crucial in understanding what is wrong with Jackson's 'knowledge argument' (involving Mary, see Idea 7377). Sensation gives knowledge, so it can't be knowledge. |
| 7711 | Science requires a causal theory - perception of an object must be an experience caused by the object [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Only a causal theory of perception will respect the facts of physiology and physics ...meaning a theory which maintains that for a subject to perceive a physical object the subject should enjoy some appropriate perceptual experience caused by the object. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: If I hallucinate an object, then presumably I am not allowed to say that I 'perceive' it, but that seems to make the causal theory an idle tautology. If we are in virtual reality then there aren't any objects. |
| 24115 | There is no proof that we forget things - only that we can't recall [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: That forgetting exists has never yet been demonstrated, but only that many things do not occur to us when we want them to. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 12[1]123) | |
| A reaction: There is now quite a lot of evidence that there innumerable memories buried in that mind that we seem unable to directly recall. He is right that we can hardly demonstrate this negative fact. |
| 24090 | Our inclinations would not conflict if we were a unity; we imagine unity for our multiplicity [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: How is it that we satisfy our stronger inclinations at the expense of our weaker inclinations? - In itself, if we were a unity, this split could not exist. In fact we are a multiplicity that has imagined a unity for itself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 12[35]) | |
| A reaction: Plato had the same thought, but stopped at three parts, rather than a multiplicity. What Nietzsche fails to say, I think, is that this 'imagined' unity of the mind is not optional, and obviously has a real link to the one body and the one life. |
| 7714 | Personal identity is a problem across time (diachronic) and at an instant (synchronic) [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: There is the question of the identity of a person over or across time ('diachronic' personal identity), and there is also the question of what makes for personal identity at a time ('synchronic' personal identity). | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me to be the first and most important distinction in the philosophy of personal identity, and they regularly get run together. Locke, for example, has an account of synchronic identity, which is often ignored. It applies to objects too. |
| 24099 | We contain many minds, which fight for the 'I' of the mind [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Many minds are housed within humans like creatures of the sea - they battle one another for the mind 'I'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 4[207]) | |
| A reaction: I am happy to use the word 'I' for the sense of central control of focus and choice, but there doesn's seem to be an actual organ of the Self, so it is a fiction, but one which reflects the general picture of what happens. I can pick a drive to foster. |
| 24102 | Thoughts are signs (just as words are) [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Thoughts are merely signs, as words are signs for thoughts. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 5[1]272) | |
| A reaction: The obvious question he invites is 'signs of what?'. His point must be that most thinking is both non-verbal and non-conscious, which he took to be true even of intellectual thought. I sympathise with his view. |
| 7715 | Mentalese isn't a language, because it isn't conventional, or a means of public communication [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: 'Mentalese' would be neither conventional nor a means of public communication so that even to call it a language is seriously misleading. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: It is, however, supposed to contain symbolic representations which are then used as tokens for computation, so it seems close to a language, if (for example) symbolic logic or mathematics were accepted as languages. But who understands it? |
| 7722 | If meaning is mental pictures, explain "the cat (or dog!) is NOT on the mat" [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: If meaning is a private mental picture, what does 'the cat is NOT on the mat' mean, and how does it differ from 'the dog is not on the mat?'. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: Not insurmountable. We picture an empty mat, combined with a cat (or whatever) located somewhere else. A mental 'picture' of something shouldn't be contrued as a single image in a neat black frame. |
| 24120 | Great orators lead their arguments, rather than following them [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: For me there are no true orators and super-orators unless they can convince the arguments themselves to run after them. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 22[01]) | |
| A reaction: I translate this as great orators generating the mere appearance of good arguments. Both reason and feeling must be irrationally swept along. Nice. |
| 24097 | The pragmatics of language is more comprehensible than the meaning [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The most comprehensible part of language is not the word itself, but rather tone, force, modulation, tempo, with which a series of words is spoken. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 3[296]) | |
| A reaction: He exaggerates. If you watch someone talking vociferously in an unknown foreign language, the feeling of the exchange is obvious, but the content is quite unknown. I see his point that we underestimate body language etc. |
| 24108 | Actions are just a release of force. They seize on something, which becomes the purpose [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What is the source of actions? For what purpose? …People do not act for happiness, utility or pleasure. Rather, a certain amount of force is released. Seizes on something on which it can vent itself. 'Goal' and 'purpose' are the means for this process. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[077]) | |
| A reaction: Surprised at how little Nietzsche is discussed in modern theoretical accounts of action. I'm not sure what the evolutionary value might be of a blind force that produces action before its purpose has been decided. Not convinced. What triggers the force? |
| 24105 | Drives make us feel non-feelings; Will is the effect of those feelings [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: 'Drive' is only a translation from the language of nonfeeling into the language of feeling. 'Will' is what is communicated to our feelings as a result of that process - in other words an effect, and not the beginning and cause. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[025]) | |
| A reaction: This shows the link between his central idea of 'drives' in psychology, and the actions that result. Effectively this makes all our actions arise from the unconscious. Intention and choice are effectively epiphenomena. |
| 24117 | We need lower and higher drives, but they must be under firm control [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: All lower drives must be present and have fresh force if the highest ones want to exist and exist in abundance: but control of the whole must be in firm hands! otherwise the danger is too great. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 14[03]) | |
| A reaction: This is unusual, because he speaks of the Self as little more than the currently dominant drive, but here he postulates a controller of the drives, a ringmaster. A-krasia means lack of control. Nietzsche wants en-krateia. |
| 24113 | Our motives don't explain our actions [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Human actions can in no way be explained by reference to human motives. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 9[43]) | |
| A reaction: He takes motives to come after the event. His view seems to be that our actions are deeply inexplicable. But if we explain why we performed some action, are we all and always lying? We give reasons, even if we don't know the source of the reasons. |
| 23832 | We both desire what is beautiful, and want it to remain as it is [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Everything beautiful is the object of desire but one desires that it be not otherwise, that it be unchanged, that it be exactly what it is. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Prerequisite to Dignity of Labour [1941], p.268) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be mostly true, though I don't think it reveals the essence of beauty. I might love a particular landscape, but want to plant a carefully place tree within it. Or change one or two words in a great poem. |
| 24087 | People who miss beauty seek the sublime, where even the ugly shows its 'beauty' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Whoever does to achieve the beautiful seeks the wildly sublime, because there even the ugly can show its 'beauty'. Likewise we seek the wildly sublime morality. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[049]) | |
| A reaction: Is the 'we' here Nietzsche, or the herd? The former, I guess, since some the values he likes seem rather ugly to me. He is a fan of war, for example. I'm guessing that massive destruction is sublime but ugly. |
| 24091 | The sublimity of nature which dwarfs us was a human creation [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: This beauty and sublimity of nature, before which every human being seems small, was first imposed on nature by us. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 12[38]) | |
| A reaction: I was struck when I was 10 with how indifferent to a landscape I was, when my mother told me it was 'beautiful'. Five years later I saw it differently. I assume nature is not intrinsically sublime. Dwarfed by our own concept is a bit odd. |
| 24093 | We can aspire to greatness by creating new functions for ourselves [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: To see the new greatness not above oneself, not outside oneself, but to make a new function from it. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 13[19]) | |
| A reaction: Thus we might combine the Aristotelian and the existentialist views! Do we discover our function or invent it? Anyone who acquires an expertise is creating a new function for themselves, presumably with a high value. |
| 24121 | Greeks might see modern analysis of what is human as impious [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps a Greek would experience the way we have delved deeply in uncovering what is human to be an impiety against nature, a shameless act. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 34[01]) | |
| A reaction: Three instances come to mind: Vesalius, Kant and Darwin. That is, anatomical dissection, deep and critical introspection, and natural selection. Human dissection was certainly a Greek taboo. |
| 24107 | Once a drive controls the intellect, it rules, and sets the goals [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Once it has taken control of the intellect, every single human drive probably demands to be recognised as the ultimate lord and goal-setter of all human matters. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[057]) | |
| A reaction: This is the best line of attack against the view I like, that human values arise out of the central functions of human nature. It is roughly the existential objection. Is all intellect controlled by some drive, or can intellect seize control of a drive? |
| 24085 | For absolute morality a goal for mankind is needed [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I deny absolute morality because I do not know an absolute goal of mankind. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[037]) | |
| A reaction: Christianity dreams of union of souls with God (clustering around God like goldfish to food, according to Dante). That is an absolute goal, justifying an absolute morality. If Aristotelians could identify human nature, its flourishing might be absolute. |
| 24101 | We always assign values, but we may not value those values [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible to live without assigning value: but it is possible to live without assigning value to what you value. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 5[1]186) | |
| A reaction: True. In my terminology, we can't live without thinking some things are more important than others. But that is compatible with not assigning much importance to anything. |
| 24094 | Humans are vividly aware of short-term effects, and almost ignorant of the long-term ones [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: How weakly human beings feel responsible for their indirect and distant effects! And how cruelly and exaggeratedly the closest effect that we exert pounces on us - the effect we see, for which our myopic vision is still just sharp enough! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 15[11]) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as both accurate and important, because consequentialist ethics is largely committed to judging by a very distorted image of their own objective. |
| 24111 | Happiness is the active equilibrium of our drives [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Happiness would be the equilibrium of the triggering activities of all the drives. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[260]) | |
| A reaction: For Nietzsche, only the 'highest' sort of human being could achieve such happiness. I can certainly see that there is happiness when a person is fully focused on something that seems worth doing. |
| 24109 | Actual morality is more complicated and subtle than theory (which gets paralysed) [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Actual morality is infinitely more subtle, more complicated, more thoughtful than theoretical morality: the latter still stands awkward and embarrassed at the starting point. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[202]) | |
| A reaction: Glad to find an explicit endorsement of particularism in Nietzsche, since so much of his discussion points that way. |
| 24110 | Some things we would never do, even for the highest ideals [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There are actions that we will never allow ourselves to engage in, not even as a means to the noblest end e.g., betraying a friend. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[241]) | |
| A reaction: Jean Genet made a point of betraying his friends. I wonder why Nietzsche thinks we should not betray our friends? Being Nietzsche, he will certainly have asked the question. |
| 24103 | You should not want too many virtues; one is enough [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: You should not want to have too many virtues. One virtue is already a lot of virtue. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 5[18]) | |
| A reaction: A typically challenging thought from the great maverick of philosophy. Which virtue would you choose? Do some virtues entail further virtues? |
| 24106 | Talk of 'utility' presupposes that what is useful to people has been defined [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: All this chat about 'utility' already presupposes that what is useful to people has been defined: in other words, useful for what! i.e. the people's purposes are already taken for granted. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[030]) | |
| A reaction: When they stopped talking about utility they talked instead about 'benefit', but the same objection applies. This is the problem of paternalism in Utilitarianism, which leads to Preference Utilitarianism, which probably doesn't help. |
| 24086 | The goal is to settle human beings, like other animals, but humans are still changeable [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Obviously the goal is to make human beings as steady and firm as most animal species; they have adapted to the conditions of the earth etc. and do not change essentially. The human being is still changeable - is still becoming. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[044]) | |
| A reaction: I favour an Aristotelian view, based on the flourishing of human nature, but this thought obviously challenges such a view. Great changes to a culture can make some difference to the apparent nature of people. |
| 24123 | My eternal recurrence is opposed to feeling fragmented and imperfect [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I held up eternal recurrence against the numbing feeling of general disintegration and imperfection. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 24[28]) | |
| A reaction: I've heard people say that they think Nietzsche was a nihilist. This is nonsense. His whole career was an opposition to nihilism. His excitement over the idea of recurrence is that he sees a real answer to nihilism. You have to value a recurring life. |
| 24088 | See our present lives as eternal! Religions see it as fleeting, and aim at some different life [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Let us press the image of eternity on our life! This thought contains more than all religions that despise this life as fleeting and taught us to look toward an unspecified different life. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[159]) | |
| A reaction: This is the best statement of the idea of eternal recurrence I have so far found. His ideal is to design a life for ourselves which we would be happy to see endlessly repeated. A lot of thought would have to go into that! |
| 24119 | The eternal return of wastefulness is a terrible thought [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The most terrible thought of an eternal return of wastefulness. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 20[02]) | |
| A reaction: This illuminates quite well his notion of eternal recurrence. Not only what you would do in an eternally recurring life, but what you would avoid. |
| 24116 | Justice says people are not equal, and should become increasingly unequal [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: People are not equal: thus speaks justice. …Humans should keep becoming ever more unequal. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 12[43]) | |
| A reaction: Important to add a little dash of Nietzsche to the widespread modern mantras about equality. We must at least question the extent to which equality should be our aim. (Personally I am an egalitarian liberal). |
| 24098 | Reasons that justify punishment can also justify the crime [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The reasons used to justify the punishment for a crime can also be used to justify the crime. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 3[312]) | |
| A reaction: A splendid observation, even if it is not wholly true. The justification of capital punishment appeals in some way to the whole of society, but a murderer could hardly do that. |
| 24118 | Do away with punishment. Counter-retribution is as bad as the crime [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: My programme: do away with punishment: for us. Counter-retribution is nonsense. (If something is evil, then whoever performs the counter-retribution is certainly committing the same evil). | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 16[17]) | |
| A reaction: Note that he seems to have a perfectly orthodox concept of 'evil' here. I don't think he ever suggested a strategy to replace punishment. |
| 24100 | If you don't want war, remove your borders; but you set up borders because you want war [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: You are waging war? You fear your neighbour? So remove the border markers: then you will have no more neighbours. But you want war: and that's why you set up the border markers in the first place. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 5[1]145) | |
| A reaction: The only reason to demarcate some territory is to keep other people out of it, which is a first act of gentle hostility. The European Union is trying to gradually dismantle the borders. Nietzsche had a creepy liking for war. |
| 24095 | Our growth is too subtle to perceive, and long events are too slow for us to grasp [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The slowness of the events in the history of human beings is not suited to the human sense of time - and the subtlety and smallness of all growth defies human vision. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 15[41]) | |
| A reaction: The only way we can study history is by 'periods'. It is as if English history has its slate wiped clean in 1066, 1485, 1603 and 1689. All historians know that the reality of it all is totally beyond our grasp. |
| 24096 | Unlike time, space is subjective. Empty space was assumed, but it doesn't exist [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Space, like matter, is a subjective form. Time is not. Space first emerged through the assumption of empty space. This doesn't exist. Force is everything. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 1[003]) | |
| A reaction: I would think modern physics endorses his opinion of space. The original atomists proposed a 'void', to prevent traffic jams of atoms. Now we see space as fields, so it is never empty. |
| 24122 | Life is forces conjoined by nutrition, to produce resistance, arrangement and value [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: A multiplicity of forces, conjoined through a common nutritive process, is what we call 'life'. All so-called feeling, representing, thinking is part of this nutritive process to enable resistance to other forces, and arrangement, and an evaluation. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 24[14]) | |
| A reaction: [compressed at the end] Since no one else seems able to define life, this is quite a good attempt. Life is certainly a sort of unification of active energies, which than share goals. |