64 ideas
23350 | A wise philosophers uses reason to cautiously judge each aspect of living [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: The sinews of a philosopher are desire that never fails in its achievement; aversion that never meets with what it would avoid; appropriate impulse; carefully considered purpose; and assent that is never precipitate. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 2.08.29) | |
A reaction: This is a very individual view of wisdom and the philosopher, whereas wisdom is often thought to have a social role. Is it not important for a philosopher to at least offer advice? |
23355 | The task of philosophy is to establish standards, as occurs with weights and measures [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: Things are judged and weighed, when we have the standards ready. This is the task of philosophy: to examine and establish the standards. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 2.11.24) | |
A reaction: It is interesting that this gives philosophers a very specific social role, and also that it seems to identify epistemology as First Philosophy. Other disciplines, of course, establish their own standards without reference to philosophy. |
21394 | Philosophy is knowing each logos, how they fit together, and what follows from them [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: [Philosophical speculation] consists in knowing the elements of 'logos', what each of them is like, how they fit together, and what follows from them. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 4.08.14), quoted by A.A. Long - Hellenistic Philosophy 4.1 | |
A reaction: [Said to echo Zeno] If you substitute understanding for 'logos' (plausibly), I think this is exactly the view of philosophy I would subscribe to. We want to understand each aspect of life, and we want those understandings to cohere with one another. |
20876 | Philosophy investigates the causes of disagreements, and seeks a standard for settling them [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: The start of philosophy is perception of the mutual conflict among people, and a search for its cause, plus the rejection and distrust of mere opinion, an investigation to see if opinion is right, and the discovery of some canon, like scales for weighing. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 2.11.13) | |
A reaction: So the number one aim of philosophy is epistemological, to find the criterion for true opinion. But it starts in real life, and would cease to trade if people would just agree. I think we should set the bar higher than that. |
23344 | Reason itself must be compounded from some of our impressions [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: What is reason itself? Something compounded from impressions of a certain kind. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 1.20.05) | |
A reaction: This seems to be the only escape from the dead end attempts to rationally justify reason. Making reason a primitive absolute is crazy metaphysics. |
23343 | Because reason performs all analysis, we should analyse reason - but how? [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: Since it is reason that analyses and completes all other things, reason itself should not be left unanalysed. But by what shall it be analysed? ..That is why philosophers put logic first, just as when measuring grain we first examine the measure. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 1.17.01) | |
A reaction: The problem of the definitive metre rule in Paris. I say we have to test reason against the physical world, and the measure of reason is truth. Something has to be primitive, but reason is too vague for that role. Idea 23344 agrees with me! |
16477 | Asserting not-p is saying p is false [Russell] |
Full Idea: When you do what a logician would call 'asserting not-p', you are saying 'p is false'. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: This is presumably classical logic. If we could label p as 'undetermined' (a third truth value), then 'not-p' might equally mean 'undetermined'. |
16484 | There are four experiences that lead us to talk of 'some' things [Russell] |
Full Idea: Propositions about 'some' arise, in practice, in four ways: as generalisations of disjunctions; when an instance suggests compatibility of terms we thought incompatible; as steps to a generalisation; and in cases of imperfect memory. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: Modern logicians seem to have no interest in the question Russell is investigating here, but I love his attempt, however vague the result, to connect logic to real experience and thought. |
16486 | The physical world doesn't need logic, but the mental world does [Russell] |
Full Idea: The non-mental world can be completely described without the use of any logical word, …but when it comes to the mental world, there are facts which cannot be mentioned without the use of logical words. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: He adds that logical words are not needed for physics, but are needed for psychology. I love Russell's interest in the psychology of logic (in defiance of the anti-psychologism of Frege). See also the ideas of Robert Hanna. |
2947 | Questions wouldn't lead anywhere without the law of excluded middle [Russell] |
Full Idea: Without the law of excluded middle, we could not ask the questions that give rise to discoveries. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], c.p.88) |
16480 | A disjunction expresses indecision [Russell] |
Full Idea: A disjunction is the verbal expression of indecision, or, if a question, of the desire to reach a decision. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: Russell is fishing here for Grice's conversational implicature. If you want to assert a simple proposition, you don't introduce it into an irrelevant disjunction, because that would have a particular expressive purpose. |
16479 | 'Or' expresses hesitation, in a dog at a crossroads, or birds risking grabbing crumbs [Russell] |
Full Idea: Psychologically, 'or' corresponds to a state of hesitation. A dog waits at a fork in the road, to see which way you are going. For crumbs on a windowsill, birds behave in a manner we would express by 'shall I be brave, or go hungry?'. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: I love two facts here - first, that Russell wants to link the connective to the psychology of experience, and second, that a great logician wants to connect his logic to the minds of animals. |
16481 | 'Or' expresses a mental state, not something about the world [Russell] |
Full Idea: When we assert 'p or q' we are in a state which is derivative from two previous states, and we express this state, not something about the world. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: His example: at a junction this road or that road goes to Oxford, but the world only contains the roads, not some state of 'this or that road'. He doesn't deny that in one sense 'p or q' tells you something about the world. |
16487 | Maybe the 'or' used to describe mental states is not the 'or' of logic [Russell] |
Full Idea: It might be contended that, in describing what happens when a man believes 'p or q', the 'or' that we must use is not the same as the 'or' of logic. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: This seems to be the general verdict on Russell's enquiries in this chapter, but I love any attempt, however lacking in rigour etc., to connect formal logic to how we think, and thence to the world. |
16483 | Disjunction may also arise in practice if there is imperfect memory. [Russell] |
Full Idea: Another situation in which a disjunction may arise is practice is imperfect memory. 'Either Brown or Jones told me that'. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) |
16475 | A 'heterological' predicate can't be predicated of itself; so is 'heterological' heterological? Yes=no! [Russell] |
Full Idea: A predicate is 'heterological' when it cannot be predicated of itself; thus 'long' is heterological because it is not a long word, but 'short' is homological. So is 'heterological' heterological? Either answer leads to a contradiction. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: [Grelling's Paradox] Yes: 'heterological' is heterological because it isn't heterological; No: it isn't, because it is. Russell says we therefore need a hierarchy of languages (types), and the word 'word' is outside the system. |
16014 | It is controversial whether only 'numerical identity' allows two things to be counted as one [Noonan] |
Full Idea: 'Numerical identity' implies the controversial view that it is the only identity relation in accordance with which we can properly count (or number) things: x and y are to be properly counted as one just in case they are numerically identical. | |
From: Harold Noonan (Identity [2009], §1) | |
A reaction: Noonan cites Geach, presumably to remind us of relative identity, where two things may be one or two, depending on what they are relative to. The one 'guard on the gate' may actually be two men. |
16024 | I could have died at five, but the summation of my adult stages could not [Noonan] |
Full Idea: Persons have different modal properties from the summations of person-stages. …I might have died when I was five. But the maximal summation of person-stages which perdurantists say is me could not have had a temporal extent of a mere five years. | |
From: Harold Noonan (Identity [2009], §5) | |
A reaction: Thus the summation of stages seems to fail Leibniz's Law, since truths about a part are not true of the whole. But my foot might be amputated without me being amputated. The objection is the fallacy of composition? |
16023 | Stage theorists accept four-dimensionalism, but call each stage a whole object [Noonan] |
Full Idea: Stage theorists, accepting the ontology of perdurance, modify the semantics to secure the result that fatness is a property of a cat. Every temporal part of a cat (such as Tabby-on-Monday) is a cat. …(but they pay a price over the counting of cats). | |
From: Harold Noonan (Identity [2009], §5) | |
A reaction: [Noonan cites Hawley and Sider for this view. The final parenthesis compresses Noonan] I would take the difficulty over counting cats to be fatal to the view. It produces too many cats, or too few, or denies counting altogether. |
16015 | Problems about identity can't even be formulated without the concept of identity [Noonan] |
Full Idea: If identity is problematic, it is difficult to see how the problem could be resolved, since it is difficult to see how a thinker could have the conceptual resources with which to explain the concept of identity whilst lacking that concept itself. | |
From: Harold Noonan (Identity [2009], §1) | |
A reaction: I don't think I accept this. We can comprehend the idea of a mind that didn't think in terms of identities (at least for objects). I suppose any relation of a mind to the world has to distinguish things in some way. Does the Parmenidean One have identity? |
16017 | Identity is usually defined as the equivalence relation satisfying Leibniz's Law [Noonan] |
Full Idea: Numerical identity is usually defined as the equivalence relation (or: the reflexive relation) satisfying Leibniz's Law, the indiscernibility of identicals, where everything true of x is true of y. | |
From: Harold Noonan (Identity [2009], §2) | |
A reaction: Noonan says this must include 'is identical to x' among the truths, and so is circular |
16016 | Identity definitions (such as self-identity, or the smallest equivalence relation) are usually circular [Noonan] |
Full Idea: Identity can be circularly defined, as 'the relation everything has to itself and to nothing else', …or as 'the smallest equivalence relation'. | |
From: Harold Noonan (Identity [2009], §2) | |
A reaction: The first one is circular because 'nothing else' implies identity. The second is circular because it has to quantify over all equivalence relations. (So says Noonan). |
16020 | Identity can only be characterised in a second-order language [Noonan] |
Full Idea: There is no condition in a first-order language for a predicate to express identity, rather than indiscernibility within the resources of the language. Leibniz's Law is statable in a second-order language, so identity can be uniquely characterised. | |
From: Harold Noonan (Identity [2009], §2) | |
A reaction: The point is that first-order languages only refer to all objects, but you need to refer to all properties to include Leibniz's Law. Quine's 'Identity, Ostension and Hypostasis' is the source of this idea. |
16018 | Indiscernibility is basic to our understanding of identity and distinctness [Noonan] |
Full Idea: Leibniz's Law (the indiscernibility of identicals) appears to be crucial to our understanding of identity, and, more particularly, to our understanding of distinctness. | |
From: Harold Noonan (Identity [2009], §2) | |
A reaction: True, but indiscernibility concerns the epistemology, and identity concerns the ontology. |
16019 | Leibniz's Law must be kept separate from the substitutivity principle [Noonan] |
Full Idea: Leibniz's Law must be clearly distinguished from the substitutivity principle, that if 'a' and 'b' are codesignators they are substitutable salva veritate. | |
From: Harold Noonan (Identity [2009], §2) | |
A reaction: He gives a bunch of well-known problem cases for substitutivity. The Morning Star, Giorgione, and the number of planets won't work. Belief contexts, or facts about spelling, may not be substitutable. |
16482 | All our knowledge (if verbal) is general, because all sentences contain general words [Russell] |
Full Idea: All our knowledge about the world, in so far as it is expressed in words, is more or less general, because every sentence contains at least one word that is not a proper name, and all such words are general. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: I really like this, especially because it addresses the excessive reliance of some essentialists on sortals, categories and natural kinds, instead of focusing on the actual physical essences of individual objects. |
23359 | We can't believe apparent falsehoods, or deny apparent truths [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: It is impossible to assent to an apparent falsehood, or to deny an apparent truth. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 3.07.15) | |
A reaction: The way some philosophers write you would think that most beliefs just result from private whims or social fashion. That happens, of course, but most beliefs result from direct contact with reality. |
4758 | Naïve realism leads to physics, but physics then shows that naïve realism is false [Russell] |
Full Idea: Naïve realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows that naïve realism is false. Therefore naïve realism, if true, is false, therefore it is false. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], p.13) | |
A reaction: I'm inclined to agree with this, though once you have gone off and explored representation and sense data you may be driven back to naïve realism again. |
23356 | Self-evidence is most obvious when people who deny a proposition still have to use it [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: It is about the strongest proof one could offer of a proposition being evident, that even he who contradicts it finds himself having to make use of it. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 2.20.01) | |
A reaction: Philosophers sometimes make fools of themselves by trying, by the use of elaborate sophistry, to demolish propositions which are self-evidently true. Don't be one of these philosophers! |
16476 | For simple words, a single experience can show that they are true [Russell] |
Full Idea: So long as a man avoids words which are condensed inductions (such as 'dog'), and confines himself to words that can describe a single experience, it is possible for a single experience to show that his words are true. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: One might question whether a line can be drawn between the inductive and the non-inductive in this way. I'm inclined just to say that the simpler the proposition the less room there is for error in confirming it. |
16485 | Perception can't prove universal generalisations, so abandon them, or abandon empiricism? [Russell] |
Full Idea: Propositions about 'some' may be proved empirically, but propositions about 'all' are difficult to know, and can't be proved unless such propositions are in the premisses. These aren't in perception, so forgo general propositions, or abandon empiricism? | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: This is obviously related to the difficulty empiricists have with induction. You could hardly persuade logicians to give up the universal quantifier, because it is needed in mathematics. Do we actually know any universal empirical truths? |
23329 | We make progress when we improve and naturalise our choices, asserting their freedom [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: Progress is when any of you turns to his own faculty of choice, working at it and perfecting it, so as to bring it fully into harmony with nature; elevated, free, unrestrained, unhindered, faithful, self-respecting. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 1.04.18) | |
A reaction: [See also Disc.3.5.7] Rationality is the stoic concept of being in 'harmony with nature'. It appears (from reading Frede) that this may be the FIRST EVER reference to free will. Note the very rhetorical way in which it is presented. |
23330 | Freedom is making all things happen by choice, without constraint [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: He is free for whom all things happen in accordance with his choice, and whom no one can constrain. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 1.12.09) | |
A reaction: The idea of 'free' will seems to have resulted from a wide extension of the idea of constraint, with global determinism lurking in the background. |
23342 | Freedom is acting by choice, with no constraint possible [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: He is free for whom all things happen in accordance with his choice, and whom no one can constrain. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 1.12.09) | |
A reaction: Presumable this means that constraint is absolutely impossible, even by Zeus, and not just contingent possibility, when no one sees me raid the fridge. |
23332 | Zeus gave me a nature which is free (like himself) from all compulsion [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: Zeus placed my good nature in my own power, and gave it to me as he has it himself, free from all hindrance, compulsion and restraint. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 3.03.10) | |
A reaction: Although Frede traces the origin of free will to the centrality of choice in moral life (and hence to the elevation of its importance), this remark shows that there is a religious aspect to it. Zeus is supreme, and obviously has free will. |
23331 | Not even Zeus can control what I choose [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: You can fetter my leg, but not even Zeus himself can get the better of my choice. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 1.01.23) | |
A reaction: This is the beginnings of the idea of free will. It is based on the accurate observation that the intrinsic privacy of a mind means that no external force can be assured of controlling its actions. Epictetus failed to think of internal forces. |
23338 | You can fetter my leg, but not even Zeus can control my power of choice [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: What are you saying, man? Fetter me? You will fetter my leg; but not even Zeus himself can get the better of my choice. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 1.01.23) | |
A reaction: This seems to be the beginning of the idea of 'absolute' freedom, which is conjured up to preserve perfect inegrity and complete responsibility. Obviously you can be prevented from doing what you choose, so this is not compatibilism. |
20875 | If we could foresee the future, we should collaborate with disease and death [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: The philosophers are right to say that if the honorable and good person knew what was going to happen, he would even collaborate with disease, death and lameness. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 2.10.05) | |
A reaction: The 'philosophers' must be the earlier stoics, founders of his school. |
23347 | If I know I am fated to be ill, I should want to be ill [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: If I really knew that it was ordained for me to be ill at this moment, I would aspire to be so. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 2.06.10) | |
A reaction: The rub, of course, is that it is presumably impossible to know what is fated. Book 2.7 is on divination. I don't see any good in a mortally ill person desiring, for that reason alone, to die. Rage against the dying of the light, I say. |
16478 | A mother cat is paralysed if equidistant between two needy kittens [Russell] |
Full Idea: I once, to test the story of Buridan's Ass, put a cat exactly half-way between her two kittens, both too young to move: for a time she found the disjunction paralysing. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: Buridan's Ass is said to have starved between two equal piles of hay. Reason can't be the tie-breaker; reason obviously says 'choose one!', but intellectualism demands a reason for the one you choose. |
23325 | Epictetus developed a notion of will as the source of our responsibility [Epictetus, by Frede,M] |
Full Idea: The notion of will in Epictetus is clearly developed to pinpoint the source of our responsibility for our actions and to identify precisely what it is that makes them our own doings. | |
From: report of Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56]) by Michael Frede - A Free Will 3 | |
A reaction: So the key move is that responsibility needs a 'source', rather than being a generalisation about how our actions arise. The next step is demand an 'ultimate' source, and this leads to the idea that this new will is 'free'. This will can be good or bad. |
20873 | Tragedies are versified sufferings of people impressed by externals [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: Tragedies are nothing but the sufferings of people who are impressed by externals, performed in the right sort of meter. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 1.04.26) | |
A reaction: The externals are things like honour, position and wealth. Wonderfully dismissive! |
23364 | Homer wrote to show that the most blessed men can be ruined by poor judgement [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: Did not Homer write to show us that the noblest, the strongest, the richest, the handsomest of men may nevertheless be the most unfortunate and wretched, if they do not hold the judgements that they ought to hold? | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 4.10.36) | |
A reaction: This seems to be right. He clearly wrote about the greatest and most memorable events of recent times, but not just to record triumphs, because almost every hero (in the Iliad, at least) ends in disaster. |
23340 | We consist of animal bodies and god-like reason [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: We have these two elements mingled within us, a body in common with the animals, and reason and intelligence in common with the gods. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 1.03.03) | |
A reaction: This is what I call Human Exceptionalism, but note that it doesn't invoke a Christian soul or spiritual aspect. This separation of reason goes back at least to Plato. High time we stopped thinking this way. Animals behave very sensibly. |
23358 | Every species produces exceptional beings, and we must just accept their nature [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: In every species nature produces some exceptional being, in oxen, in dogs, in bees, in horses. We do not say to them 'Who are you?' It will tell you 'I am like the purple in the robe. Do not expect me to be like the rest, or find fault with my nature'. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 3.01.23) | |
A reaction: This idea began with Aristotle's 'great soul', and presumably culminates in Nietzsche, who fills in more detail. In the modern world such people are mostly nothing but trouble. |
23339 | I will die as becomes a person returning what he does not own [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: When the time comes, then I will die - as becomes a person who gives back what is not his own. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 1.01.32) | |
A reaction: There is a tension between his demand that he have full control of his choices, and this humility that says his actual life is not his own. The things which can't be controlled, though, are 'indifferents' so life and death are indifferent. |
23345 | Don't be frightened of pain or death; only be frightened of fearing them [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: It is not pain or death that is to be feared, but the fear of pain or death. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 2.01.13) | |
A reaction: These two cases are quite different, I would say. I'm much more frightened of pain than I am of the fear of pain, and the opposite view seems absurd. About death, though, I think this is right. Mostly I'm with Spinoza: think about life, not death. |
23357 | Knowledge of what is good leads to love; only the wise, who distinguish good from evil, can love [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: Whoever has knowledge of good things would know how to love them; and how could he who cannot distinguish good things from evil still have to power to love? It follows that the wise man alone has the power to love. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 2.22.03) | |
A reaction: A rather heartwarming remark, but hard to assess for its truth. Evil people are unable to love? Not even love a cat, or their favourite car? We would never call someone wise if they lacked love. |
23363 | The evil for everything is what is contrary to its nature [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: Where is the paradox if we say that what is evil for everything is what is contrary to its nature? | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 4.01.125) | |
A reaction: A very Greek view. For humans, it must rely on the belief that human nature is essentially good. If I am sometimes grumpy and annoying, why is that not part of my nature? |
23328 | The essences of good and evil are in dispositions to choose [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: The essence of the good is a certain disposition of our choice, and essence of evil likewise. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 1.29.01) | |
A reaction: This is the origin of Kant's famous view, that the only true good is a good will. This is the alternative to good character or good states of affairs as the good. It points towards the modern more legalistic view of morality, as concerning actions. |
23362 | All human ills result from failure to apply preconceptions to particular cases [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: The cause of all human ills is that people are incapable of applying their general preconceptions to particular cases. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 4.01.42) | |
A reaction: I'm not sure whether 'preconceptions' is meant pejoratively (as unthinking, and opposed to true principles). This sounds like modern particularism (e.g. Jonathan Dancy) to the letter. |
23353 | We have a natural sense of honour [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: What faculty do you mean? - Have we not a natural sense of honour? - We have. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 2.10.22) | |
A reaction: This seems unlikely, given the lower status that honour now has with us, compared to two hundred years ago. But there may be a natural sense of status, and of humiliation and shame. |
23354 | If someone harms themselves in harming me, then I harm myself by returning the harm [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: Since he has harmed himself by wronging me, shall not I harm myself by harming him? | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 2.10.26) | |
A reaction: I am very keen on this idea. See Hamlet's remarks to Polonius about 'honour and dignity'. The best strategy for achieving moral excellence is to focus on our own characters, rather than how to act, and to respond to others. |
23324 | In the Discourses choice [prohairesis] defines our character and behaviour [Epictetus, by Frede,M] |
Full Idea: In Epictetus's 'Discourses' the notion of choice [prohairesis] plays perhaps the central role. It is our prohairesis which defines us a person, as the sort of person we are; it is our prohairesis which determines how we behave. | |
From: report of Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56]) by Michael Frede - A Free Will 3 | |
A reaction: Frede is charting the gradual move in Greek philosophy from action by desire, reason and habit to action by the will (which then turns out to be 'free'). Character started as dispositions and ended as choices. |
23361 | Health is only a good when it is used well [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: Is health a good and sickness an evil? No. Health is good when used well, and bad when used ill. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 3.20.04) | |
A reaction: Although I like the idea that health is a natural value, which bridges the gap from facts to values (as a successful function), there is no denying that the health of very evil people is not something the rest of us hope for. |
23346 | A person is as naturally a part of a city as a foot is part of the body [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: Just as the foot in detachment is no longer a foot, so you in detachment are not longer a man. For what is a man? A part of a city, first. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 2.05.26) | |
A reaction: It is, of course, not true that a detached foot ceases to be a foot (and an isolated human is still a human). This an extreme version of the Aristotelian idea that we are essentially social. It is, though, the sort of view favoured by totalitarianism. |
23351 | We are citizens of the universe, and principal parts of it [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: You are a citizen of the universe, and a part of it; and no subservient, but a principal part of it. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 2.10.03) | |
A reaction: He got this view from Diogenes of Sinope, one of his heroes. What community you are a part of seems to be a choice as much as a fact. Am I British or a European? |
20874 | A citizen is committed to ignore private advantage, and seek communal good [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: The commitment of the citizen is to have no private advantage, not to deliberate about anything as though one were a separate part. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 2.10.04) | |
A reaction: This is the modern problem of whether democratic voters are choosing for themselves or for the community. I think we should make an active effort at every election to persuade voters to aim for the communal good. Cf Rawls. |
23352 | A citizen should only consider what is good for the whole society [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: The calling of a citizen is to consider nothing in terms of personal advantage, never to deliberate on anything as though detached from the whole, but be like our hand or foot. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 2.10.04) | |
A reaction: Fat chance of that in an aggressively capitalist society. I've always voted for what I thought was the common good, and was shocked to gradually realise that many people only vote for what promotes their own interests. Heigh ho. |
22604 | Punishing a criminal for moral ignorance is the same as punishing someone for being blind [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: You should ask 'Ought not this man to be put to death, who is deceived in things of the greatest importance, and is blinded in distinguishing good from evil?' …You then see how inhuman it is, and the same as 'Ought not this blind man to be put to death?' | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 1.18.6-7) | |
A reaction: This is the doctrine of Socrates, that evil is ignorance (and weakness of will [akrasia] is impossible). Epictetus wants us to reason with the man, but what should be do if reasoning fails and he persists in his crimes? |
23349 | Asses are born to carry human burdens, not as ends in themselves [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: An ass is surely not born as an end in itself? No, but because we had need of a back that is able to carry burdens. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 2.08.07) | |
A reaction: This is the absurd human exceptionalism which plagues our thinking. It would be somewhat true of animals which are specifically bred for human work, such as large cart horses. |
23341 | God created humans as spectators and interpreters of God's works [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: God has introduced man into the world as a spectator of himself and of his works: and not only as a spectator of them, but an interpreter of them as well. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 1.06.19) | |
A reaction: This idea (which strikes me as bizarre) was picked up directly by the Christians. I can't imagine every Johnson wanting to creating their own Boswell. If you think we are divinely created, you have to propose some motive for it, I suppose. |
23348 | Both god and the good bring benefits, so their true nature seems to be the same [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: God brings benefits; but the good also brings benefit. It would seem, then, that where the true nature of god is, there too is the true nature of good. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 2.08.01) | |
A reaction: An enthymeme, missing the premise that there can only be one source of benefit (which sounds unlikely). Does god bring anything other than benefits? And does the good? I think this is an idea from later platonism. |
23360 | Each of the four elements in you is entirely scattered after death [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: Whatever was in you of fire, departs into fire; what was of earth, into earth; what of air, into air; what of water, into water. There is no Hades, nor Acheron. | |
From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 3.13.15) | |
A reaction: This sort of remark may explain why so few of the great Stoic texts (such as those of Chrysippus) survived the Christian era. |