3 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!). |
| 12708 | The soul is not a substance but a substantial form, the first active faculty [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The soul, properly and accurately speaking, is not a substance, but a substantial form, or the primitive form existing in substances, the first act, the first active faculty. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Fardella [1690], A6.4.1670), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 2 | |
| A reaction: In all of Leibniz's many gropings towards what is at the heart of a unified object, I pounce on the phrase "the first active faculty" as the one that suits me. I take that to be a 'power'. It has two characteristics - it is active, and it is basic. |
| 19284 | Asserting a necessity just expresses our inability to imagine it is false [Blackburn] |
| Full Idea: To say that we dignify a truth as necessary we are expressing our own mental attitudes - our own inability to make anything of a possible way of thinking which denies it. It is this blank unimaginability which we voice when we use the modal vocabulary. | |
| From: Simon Blackburn (Spreading the Word [1984], 6.5) | |
| A reaction: Yes, but why are we unable to imagine it? I accept that the truth or falsity of Goldbach's Conjecture may well be necessary, but I have no imagination one way or the other about it. Philosophers like Blackburn are very alien to me! |