8 ideas
| 23367 | Even pointing a finger should only be done for a reason [Epictetus] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy says it is not right even to stretch out a finger without some reason. | |
| From: Epictetus (fragments/reports [c.57], 15) | |
| A reaction: The key point here is that philosophy concerns action, an idea on which Epictetus is very keen. He rather despise theory. This idea perfectly sums up the concept of the wholly rational life (which no rational person would actually want to live!). |
| 4187 | 'There is nothing without a reason why it should be rather than not be' (a generalisation of 'Why?') [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: The Principle may be stated as 'There is nothing without a reason why it should be rather than not be', which is a generalisation of the assumption which justifies the question 'Why?', which is the mother of all science. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Abstract of 'The Fourfold Root' [1813], Ch.I) | |
| A reaction: This faith is the core of philosophy, to be maintained against all defeatists like Wittgenstein and Colin McGinn. Reality must be rational, or we wouldn't be here to think about it. (Maybe!) |
| 4192 | All necessity arises from causation, which is conditioned; there is no absolute or unconditioned necessity [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: Necessity has no meaning other than the irresistible sequence of the effect where the cause is given. All necessity is thus conditioned, and absolute or unconditioned necessity is a contradiction in terms. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Abstract of 'The Fourfold Root' [1813], Ch.VIII) | |
| A reaction: I.e. there is only natural necessity, and no such thing as metaphysical necessity. But what about logical necessity(e.g. 2+3=5)? I think there may be metaphysical necessity, but we can't know much about it, and we are over-confident in assessing it. |
| 4190 | All understanding is an immediate apprehension of the causal relation [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: All understanding is an immediate apprehension of the causal relation. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Abstract of 'The Fourfold Root' [1813], Ch.IV) | |
| A reaction: Based, I take it, on Hume. Presumably he means a posteriori understanding, as it hardly fits an understanding of arithmetic. Understanding needs more than just causation. What aspects of causation? |
| 6493 | We are not conscious of pure liquidity, but of the liquidity of water [Firth] |
| Full Idea: We are not conscious of liquidity, coldness, and solidity, but of the liquidity of water, the coldness of ice, and the solidity of rocks. | |
| From: Roderick Firth (Sense Data and the Percept Theory [1949]), quoted by Howard Robinson - Perception 1.7 | |
| A reaction: A nice point, but it might not be entirely true in a blindfold test, where one might only report properties like 'sticky' or 'warm', without having any clear concept of the substance being experienced. Firth is proposing the 'percept theory'. |
| 4191 | What we know in ourselves is not a knower but a will [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: What we know in ourselves is never what knows, but what wills, the will. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Abstract of 'The Fourfold Root' [1813], Ch.VII) | |
| A reaction: An interesting slant on Hume's scepticism about personal identity. Hume was hunting for a thing-which-experiences. If he had sought his will, he might have spotted it. |
| 21368 | The knot of the world is the use of 'I' to refer to both willing and knowing [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: The identity of the subject of willing with that of knowing by virtue whereof ...the word 'I' includes and indicates both, is the knot of the world, and hence inexplicable. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Abstract of 'The Fourfold Root' [1813], p.211-2), quoted by Christopher Janaway - Schopenhauer 4 'Self' | |
| A reaction: I'm struggling to see this as a deep mystery. If we look objectively at animals and ask 'what is their brain for?' the answer seems obvious. This may be a case of everything looking mysterious after a philosopher has stared at it for a while. |
| 4189 | Time may be defined as the possibility of mutually exclusive conditions of the same thing [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: Time may be defined as the possibility of mutually exclusive conditions of the same thing. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Abstract of 'The Fourfold Root' [1813], Ch.IV) | |
| A reaction: An off-beat philosophical view of the question. Sounds more like a consequence of time than its essential nature. |