127 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? |
| 20383 | The wisest man is full of contradictions, and attuned to other people, with occasional harmony [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The wisest man would be the one richest in contradictions, who has, as it were, antennae for all types of men - as well as his great moments of grand harmony - a rare accident even in us! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §259) | |
| A reaction: By 'us' does he mean himself? Whether the rest of us thought such a person to be wise would depend on whether we met them on a contradictory or a harmonious day. Permanent harmony should be viewed with suspicion. |
| 4520 | I don't want to persuade anyone to be a philosopher; they should be rare plants [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I do not wish to persuade anyone to philosophy: it is inevitable, it perhaps also desirable, that the philosopher should be a rare plant. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §420) | |
| A reaction: My immediate reaction is disagreement, but 'what if everybody' became a philosopher. The fear is that philosophy paralyses action, but it need not. Good philosophy is time-consuming. History would come to an end. The excitement of medieval history! |
| 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. |
| 4545 | Could not the objective character of things be merely a difference of degree within the subjective? [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Could not the objective character of things be merely a difference of degree within the subjective? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §560) | |
| A reaction: A reasonable speculation. I begin to feel my opinions are objective if they are reinforced by the agreement of others. One can believe in the facts, but despair of objectivity. It is called 'scepticism'. Buf cf. T.Nagel. |
| 4530 | Reason is a mere idiosyncrasy of a certain species of animal [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Reason is a mere idiosyncrasy of a certain species of animal. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §515) | |
| A reaction: Call me narrow-minded, prejudiced and arrogant, but I just don't believe this. Rational minds meet across cultures, and good reasons can rise above culture. However, I may be wrong about this… |
| 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! |
| 4523 | What can be 'demonstrated' is of little worth [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What can be 'demonstrated' is of little worth. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §431) | |
| A reaction: He admits that some things can be demonstrated, and that they have some worth. But demonstration may be a matter of coherence, so that anything can be demonstrated, by assuming a range of ideas as being beyond demonstration. |
| 4531 | Our inability to both affirm and deny a single thing is merely an inability, not a 'necessity' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We are unable to affirm and to deny one and the same thing: this is a subjective empirical law, not the expression of any 'necessity', but only an inability. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §516) | |
| A reaction: A remarkable claim, made by someone utterly gripped by relativism. I don't believe it. Why can't we do it? We experience it as a truth, not as a prejudice or mental block. I say it reflects reality - there is only one set of facts. |
| 4541 | Everything simple is merely imaginary [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Everything simple is merely imaginary. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §536) | |
| A reaction: A wonderful aphorism. This is one's worst fear, which is why it is suggested that ontological O's R is bad, though epistemological O's R ('be cautious') is fine. I have to admit that I have no idea whether reality is simple. |
| 20357 | Truth was given value by morality, but eventually turned against its own source [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Among the forces cultivated by morality was truthfulness: this eventually turned against morality, discovered its teleology, its partial perspective. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §015) | |
| A reaction: Just as 'duty' is said to have withered in modern times, because its religious underpinning has been lost, so this gives an account of the decline of the value of truth. It is still left to us to assert the value of truth, perhaps as the only value. |
| 4534 | 'Truth' is the will to be master over the multiplicity of sensations [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: 'Truth' is the will to be master over the multiplicity of sensations. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §517) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that this is a nice explanation of why we value truth, but says nothing at all about what truth actually is. I can't think of a better explanation of why we value truth. |
| 4548 | Only because there is thought is there untruth [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Only because there is thought is there untruth. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §574) | |
| A reaction: A nicely oblique place to start in one's study of truth. Untruth is a very human contribution to the world, making virtually no sense of animal thought. Meta-thought seems to be required. |
| 5652 | True beliefs are those which augment one's power [Nietzsche, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: For Nietzsche, the true belief is the one which augments one's power. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.13 | |
| A reaction: Sounds suspiciously like pragmatism. Sounds suspiciously unlike truth as we know it. So many philosophers seem to me to confuse the concept of the truth itself with the ability of humans grasp the truth, or be interested in it. Truth is not part of us. |
| 4508 | The truth is what gives us the minimum of spiritual effort, and avoids the exhaustion of lying [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What is true? Where an explanation is given which causes us the minimum of spiritual effort (moreover, lying is very exhausting). | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §279) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche is just being naughty here. Obviously lazy but intelligent people tell the truth, but to suggest that there is nothing more to truth means the collapse of language and thought. Which means no more reading Nietzsche… |
| 4538 | Judgements can't be true and known in isolation; the only surety is in connections and relations [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: An isolated judgement is never 'true', never knowledge; only in connection and relation of many judgements is there any surety. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §530) | |
| A reaction: It actually seems impossible to state an isolated judgement in language without having a mass of presuppositions and beliefs to support it. I don't think the full holistic thesis about language follows, however. |
| 8132 | We now have a much more sophisticated understanding of logical form in language [Burge] |
| Full Idea: The second half of the twentieth century has seen the development of a vastly more sophisticated sense of logical form, as applied to natural languages. | |
| From: Tyler Burge (Philosophy of Mind: 1950-2000 [2005], p.462) | |
| A reaction: Burge cites this as one of the three big modern developments (along with the critique of logical positivism, and direct reference/anti-individualism). Vagueness may be the last frontier for this development. |
| 20361 | We need 'unities' for reckoning, but that does not mean they exist [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We need 'unities' in order to be able to reckon: that does not mean we must suppose that such unities exist. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §635) | |
| A reaction: True. I takes this thought to be important in the Psychology of Metaphysics (an unfashionable branch). |
| 4533 | Logic and maths refer to fictitious entities which we have created [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Logic (like geometry and arithmetic) applies only to fictitious entities that we have created. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §516) | |
| A reaction: This finds Nietzsche on the relativist wing of logical empiricism. The thing is, fictitious entities can have a close relationship with truth, as in a great novel. I believe in necessary logical truth, but there are many ways of slicing it. |
| 20359 | The nature of being, of things, is much easier to understand than is becoming [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The doctrine of being, of things, of all sorts of fixed unities is a hundred times easier than the doctrine of becoming, of development. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §238) | |
| A reaction: I don't know if he intended it, but this is a fierce shaft hurled at Aristotle, who gives a wonderful essentialist account of the nature of things, but can offer nothing more on becoming than the doctrine of potentiality and actuality. |
| 4525 | There are no facts in themselves, only interpretations [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Against positivism, which halts at phenomena, and says "there are only facts", I would say: No, facts is precisely what there is not, only interpretations. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §481) | |
| A reaction: A cornerstone of relativism is the denial of facts. A cornerstone of realism is the affirmation of facts. Personally, I affirm facts. |
| 4543 | There are no 'facts-in-themselves', since a sense must be projected into them to make them 'facts' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There are no 'facts-in-themselves', for a sense must always be projected into them before they can be 'facts'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §556) | |
| A reaction: The relativist (and anti-realist) view. Any attempt at taking this proposal seriously induces a hopeless vertigo, a well known consequence of reading Nietzsche. I don't believe this. It is not to my taste. |
| 4484 | Nihilism results from valuing the world by the 'categories of reason', because that is fiction [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The faith in the categories of reason is the cause of nihilism; we have measured the value of the world according to categories that refer to a purely fictitious world. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §12B) | |
| A reaction: Presumably this refers to Kant, whose dogmatic assertions about the structure of human reason are as open to objection as those of Freud. Nietzsche may have a very profound truth here. |
| 4546 | We realise that properties are sensations of the feeling subject, not part of the thing [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There comes a point where one realises that what one calls a property of a thing is a sensation of the feeling subject; at this point the property ceases to belong to the thing. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §562) | |
| A reaction: I don't believe this. Has Nietzsche no theory about WHY we have one sensation rather than another? I prefer to distinguish primary from secondary qualities. |
| 4544 | A thing has no properties if it has no effect on other 'things' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The properties of a thing are effects on other 'things'; if one removes other 'things', then a thing has no properties. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §557) | |
| A reaction: This is a causal theory of properties. A counterexample is a potential property, like a bomb which never explodes. |
| 20362 | We saw unity in things because our ego seemed unified (but now we doubt the ego!) [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We borrowed the concept of unity from our 'ego' concept - our oldest article of faith. If we did not hold ourselves to be unified, we would never have formed the concept 'thing'. Now, somewhat late, we are convinced that the ego does not guarantee unity. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §635) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche tells a similar story about the emergence and subsequent undermining of truth. I am becoming an enthusiast for Nietzsche's account of how our psychology has generated out metaphysics - which doesn't make the metaphysics false. |
| 4528 | For me, a priori 'truths' are just provisional assumptions [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The most strongly believed a priori 'truths' are for me provisional assumptions (e.g. the law of causality). | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §497) | |
| A reaction: The example of causality would fit in with Humean scepticism, but presumably Nietzsche would also apply it to maths and logic, since he is a thorough-going relativist. I cautiously disagree. |
| 4537 | We can't know whether there is knowledge if we don't know what it is [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: If we do not know what knowledge is, we cannot possibly answer the question of whether there is knowledge. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §530) | |
| A reaction: Obviously Nietzsche is pessimistic about the prospects here, but this is a motto for the whole modern analysis of knowledge, and (besides) we have lots of things (like a concept of identity) which we can't define. |
| 4485 | Every belief is a considering-something-true [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Every belief is a considering-something-true. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §015) | |
| A reaction: This is correct, I think, but a little perplexing coming from Nietzsche, who seems to deny objective truth. Presumably we should follow instinct, rather than 'belief'. |
| 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. |
| 4487 | A note for asses: What convinces is not necessarily true - it is merely convincing [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What convinces is not necessarily true - it is merely convincing (a note for asses). | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §017) | |
| A reaction: I hope I am not such an ass that I need Nietzsche to explain this, as I have always thought it true. Many good modern epistemologists seem to me guilty of this error, though. Pragmatists, riff-raff like that… |
| 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! |
| 4539 | The forms of 'knowledge' about logic which precede experience are actually regulations of belief [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The basic laws of logic (identity and contradiction) are said to be forms of pure knowledge because they precede experience. But these are not forms of knowledge at all! They are regulative articles of belief. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §530) | |
| A reaction: This is a standard objection to foundationalism - that the basic beliefs (of reason, or raw experience) are not actually knowledge. We can all speculate about their origin and basis. Personally I think 'truth' must be somewhere in the explanation. |
| 4529 | All sense perceptions are permeated with value judgements (useful or harmful) [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It cannot be doubted that all sense perceptions are permeated with value judgements (useful and harmful - consequently, pleasant and unpleasant). | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §505) | |
| A reaction: A thesis expanded by Charles Taylor ('Sources of the Self'). This is a very modern view, but also a very Greek view, which slices through the is/ought distinction. |
| 4532 | We can have two opposite sensations, like hard and soft, at the same time [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There is a coarse sensualistic prejudice that sensations teach us truths about things - that I cannot say at the same time that a thing is hard and soft. To say that I cannot have two opposite sensations at the same time is quite coarse and false. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §516) | |
| A reaction: I am struggling to think of examples. I might experience something as cool, but judge it to be warm (because my hand is hot). I don't think I know what experience he is referring to. Interesting claim, though. |
| 4486 | The extreme view is there are only perspectives, no true beliefs, because there is no true world [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The most extreme form of nihilism would be the view that every belief, every considering-something-true, is necessarily false because there is simply no true world. Thus: a perspectival appearance, whose origin lies in us. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §015) | |
| A reaction: The idea that 'there is no true world' is incomprehensible to me. But note that here Nietzsche labels this an 'extreme' view, which he may not be asserting. He likes to flirt with danger. |
| 4536 | It is a major blunder to think of consciousness as a unity, and hence as an entity, a thing [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There is a tremendous blunder in absurdly overestimating consciousness, the transformation of it into a unity, an entity - 'spirit', 'soul', something that feels, thinks, wills. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §529) | |
| A reaction: This is a wonderfully modern and scientific view. Even strong materialists still make claims about mental unity, behind which an extravagent and contradictory metaphysics can be hidden. Was Nietzsche, then, an 'eliminativist' about mind? |
| 8126 | Anti-individualism says the environment is involved in the individuation of some mental states [Burge] |
| Full Idea: Anti-individualism is the view that not all of an individual's mental states and events can be type-individuated independently of the nature of the entities in the individual's physical or social environment environment. | |
| From: Tyler Burge (Philosophy of Mind: 1950-2000 [2005], p.453) | |
| A reaction: While the Twin Earth experiment emphasises the physical environment, Burge has been responsible for emphasising the social environment. The suspicion is that the whole concept of 'individual' minds will collapse on this view. |
| 8127 | Broad concepts suggest an extension of the mind into the environment (less computer-like) [Burge] |
| Full Idea: Certain thought experiments made trouble for standard functionalism, which limits input/output to the surface of an individual; proposals to extend this into the environment reduces the reliance on a computer paradigm, but increases complexity. | |
| From: Tyler Burge (Philosophy of Mind: 1950-2000 [2005], p.454) | |
| A reaction: [He has the Twin Earth experiment in mind] The jury is out on this, but it looks a bit of a slippery slope. Accounts of action and responsibility need a fairly sharp concept of an individual. Externalism begins to look like just a new scepticism. |
| 4551 | Great self-examination is to become conscious of oneself not as an individual, but as mankind [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Tremendous self-examination: becoming conscious of oneself, not as an individual but as mankind. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §575) | |
| A reaction: A lovely thought, which illustrates the fact that it is hard to be introspective without bringing an agenda to the process. |
| 8129 | Anti-individualism may be incompatible with some sorts of self-knowledge [Burge] |
| Full Idea: The idea of anti-individualism raised problems about self-knowledge. The question is whether anti-individualism is compatible with some sort of authoritative or privileged warrant for certain types of self-knowledge. | |
| From: Tyler Burge (Philosophy of Mind: 1950-2000 [2005], p.457) | |
| A reaction: [See under 'Nature of Minds' for 'Anti-individualism'] The thought is that if your mind is not entirely in your head, you can no longer be an expert on it. It might go the other way: obviously we can be self-experts, so anti-individualism is wrong. |
| 4527 | Perhaps we are not single subjects, but a multiplicity of 'cells', interacting to create thought [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The assumption of one single subject is perhaps unnecessary; perhaps we are a multiplicity of subjects, whose interaction and struggle is the basis of our thought and consciousness, an aristocracy of 'cells' in which dominion resides equally. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §490) | |
| A reaction: A nice combination of Humean scepticism, and an anticipation of the modularity of mind. Was Nietzsche thinking about evolution? It goes with his doubts about reason (if we are run by a committee). |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 20374 | Consciousness is a terminal phenomenon, and causes nothing [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Everything of which we become conscious is a terminal phenomenon, an end - and causes nothing. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §478) | |
| A reaction: This appears to endorse epiphenomenalism - which I take to be an incoherent concept. How can becoming fully aware of something, rather than subliminally or subconsciously aware, make no difference at all? If it exists, it has causal powers. |
| 8131 | Some qualities of experience, like blurred vision, have no function at all [Burge] |
| Full Idea: There appear to be qualitative aspects of experience that have no function in the life of the organism. They constitute dysfunction or noise. Blurriness in a visual experience is an example. | |
| From: Tyler Burge (Philosophy of Mind: 1950-2000 [2005], p.460) | |
| A reaction: The best account of blurred vision would seem to be adverbial - I see 'in a blurred way' (nay, blurredly). Hence maybe blurred vision is functional, but it just isn't functioning very well. |
| 23938 | Passions are ranked, as if they are non-rational and animal pleasure seeking [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The whole conception of an order of rank among the passions: as if it were the right and normal thing to be guided by reason - with the passions as abnormal, dangerous, semi-animal …and nothing other than desires for pleasure. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §387) | |
| A reaction: This thought of Nietzsche's seems to be very important, because the Enlightenment relegation of passions was inherited from Christianity, and dominated European culture (and Buddhism too, I think). |
| 23939 | We fail to see that reason is a network of passions, and every passion contains some reason [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The misunderstanding of passion and reason, as if the latter were an independent entity and not rather a system of relations between various passions and desires; and as if every passion did not possess its quantum of reason. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §387) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me a much more accurate account of the relation of reason and passion than almost anything in earlier philosophy (though Aristotle is quite good on it). I am retraining myself to see my mental life in this way. |
| 4554 | The concept of the 'will' is just a false simplification by our understanding [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There is no such thing as 'will'; it is only a simplifying conception of understanding, as is 'matter'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §671) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche shares this view with British philosophers such as Hobbes and Bernard Williams. So what is the ontological status of the 'will to power'? |
| 4552 | There is no such things a pure 'willing' on its own; the aim must always be part of it [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There is no such thing as 'willing', but only willing something: one must not remove the aim from the total condition - as epistemologists do. 'Willing' as they understand it is as little a reality as 'thinking': it is a pure fiction. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §668) | |
| A reaction: This is parallel to the common modern assertion that emotions also have intentional content, and cannot be understood as having a 'pure' identity. |
| 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. |
| 4521 | None of the ancients had the courage to deny morality by denying free will [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Not one of the ancient philosophers had the courage for a theory of the 'unfree will' (i.e. for a theory that denies morality). | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §428) | |
| A reaction: The ancients were struck by fate, and by the elusiveness of truth, and Heraclitus said that "character is fate". But Nietzsche seems basically correct. |
| 4496 | 'Conscience' is invented to value actions by intention and conformity to 'law', rather than consequences [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: "Conscience" was created as an inner voice which does not measure the value of every action with regard to its consequences, but with regard to its intention, and the degree to which this intention conforms with the "laws". | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §141) | |
| A reaction: The idea of conscience does seem to preserve moral authority in the absence of gods, but intentions need not only be judged by their obedience to laws. |
| 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. |
| 20136 | There is an extended logic to a great man's life, achieved by a sustained will [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There is a logic in all of a great man's activities, hard to survey because of its length .... he has the ability to extend his will across great stretches of his life. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §962 (1885)) | |
| A reaction: This looks very close to Nietzsche's moral ideal - that one creates a life in impeccable taste, like a great work of art, by deliberately training one's nature, like a gardener. He talks of it as having 'style' in character. |
| 20358 | The highest man can endure and control the greatest combination of powerful drives [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The highest man has the greatest multiplicity of drives, in the relatively greatest strength that can be endured. Indeed, when the plant 'man' shows himself strongest one finds instincts that conflict powerfully (e.g. in Shakespeare), but are controlled. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §966) | |
| A reaction: Are there some people, perhaps in mental hospitals, who cannot endure or control such things? Do these people have some drives which the rest of us never experience? Do good people only have good drives? |
| 20369 | The highest man directs the values of the highest natures over millenia [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: He who determines values and directs the will of millenia by giving direction to the highest natures is the highest man. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §999) | |
| A reaction: The second half is the interesting bit. If Ghengis Khan inspires hordes to commit massacres, he certainly creates values, but he hasn't inspired highest natures. So who inspires highest natures? Who are the role models of role models? |
| 4506 | There is a conspiracy (a will to power) to make morality dominate other values, like knowledge and art [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Whose will to power is morality? - Since Socrates there has been a sustained attempt to make moral values dominate over other values, so that they guide living, but also knowledge, the arts, and political and social endeavour. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §274) | |
| A reaction: Is the 'will to power' really an explanation? If all human activity is the will to power, then you have to explain the difference between activities. Genocide and altruism are strikingly different manifestations of the will to power. |
| 4514 | The basic tendency of the weak has always been to pull down the strong, using morality [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The basic tendency of the weak and mediocre of all ages is to weaken and pull down the stronger: chief means, the moral judgement. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §345) | |
| A reaction: Obviously this contains some truth. Morality is a vast trade union movement by means of which the weak seek power and security. And good luck to them, I say. Why is mass power any worse than aristocratic or oligarchic power? |
| 20370 | All evaluation is from some perspective, and aims at survival [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: All evaluation is made from a definite perspective: that of the preservation of the individual, a community, a race, a state, a church, a faith, a culture. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §259) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be a tension over the source of values in Nietzsche. Are they the individualistic visions of an übermensch, or do they arise from the collective pressures of one of these social groups? I suspec that his answer tries to combine them. |
| 20354 | The ruling drives of our culture all want to be the highest court of our values [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What is common to all [the artistic, scientific, religious and moral views]: the ruling drives want to be viewed also as the highest courts of value in general, indeed as creative and ruling powers. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §677) | |
| A reaction: An interesting question is whether those four socially dominant forces could reach a consensus on a core of values. And also which value held by one of the groups is viewed as crazy by the other three. |
| 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. |
| 4505 | How can it be that I should prefer my neighbour to myself, but he should prefer me to himself? [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What does it mean that the welfare of my neighbour ought to possess for me a higher value than my own? But that my neighbour ought to subordinate his welfare to my welfare? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §269) | |
| A reaction: Interestingly, this is Nietzsche using a Kantian tool to criticise Christian morality. He is pointing out a logical inconsistency. It seems to me an excellent question, though Christians could say it is benignly circular. The most benign circle possible. |
| 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. |
| 4509 | Utilitarians prefer consequences because intentions are unknowable - but so are consequences! [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Utilitarians say actions must be judged by consequences, because it is impossible to know the origins. But one only knows the consequences about five steps ahead, and who knows what an action can stimulate, excite, provoke? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §291) | |
| A reaction: The utilitarian slogan seems to be 'do your best', but that could apply equally to intentions and consequences. Nietzsche seems to offer nothing to compensate us for our massive ignorance. Nihilism. |
| 4500 | It is a sign of degeneration when eudaimonistic values begin to prevail [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It is a sign of degeneration when eudaemonistic valuations begin to prevail (physiological fatigue, feebleness of the will). | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §222) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle's analysis of eudaimonia says that it is only achievable through action, and he considers consequences to be an essential part of an action. Surely hedonism is more degenerate than aiming at all-round success in life? |
| 4558 | We have no more right to 'happiness' than worms [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One has no right to 'happiness': the individual human being is in precisely the same case as the lowest worm. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §759) | |
| A reaction: This seems an obvious truth, but nicely made clear. It is, I suppose, aimed at Christians and socialists. |
| 4550 | Pleasure and pain are mere epiphenomena, and achievement requires that one desire both [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Brave and creative men never consider pleasure and pain as ultimate values - they are epiphenomena: one must desire both if one is to achieve anything. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §579) | |
| A reaction: I am struggling with the notion that I must desire pain if I am ambitious, but to label these feeling 'epiphenomena' is challenging and plausible. I certainly deny that they have intrinsic value, which is a matter of judgement, not feeling. |
| 4518 | The question about egoism is: what kind of ego? since not all egos are equal [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Egoism! But no one has yet asked: what kind of ego? On the contrary, everyone unconsciously thinks every ego equal to every other ego. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §364) | |
| A reaction: The implication, I presume, is that you should be egoistic if you have a really excellent ego, but very altruistic if you are a loser. Or a slave. Or a monk. |
| 4519 | The ego is only a fiction, and doesn't exist at all [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The 'subject' is only a fiction: the ego of which one speaks when one censures egoism does not exist at all. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §370) | |
| A reaction: This is the true Nietzsche, the nihilistic relativist. On optimistic days he thought some people had quivering dynamic egoes, to which they apparently owe duties, as one might to a great talent with which one was born. |
| 4517 | Egoism is inescapable, and when it grows weak, the power of love also grows weak [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There cannot be anything other than egoism; in men whose ego is weak and thin the power of great love also grows weak. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §362) | |
| A reaction: We have captured this now in the popular psychological notion of 'low self-esteem', which blights a persons behaviour. It runs counter to the Christian ideal of self-effacing altruism. |
| 4560 | The Golden Rule prohibits harmful actions, with the premise that actions will be requited [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The rule 'do nothing that ought not to be done to you' prohibits actions on account of their harmful consequences: the concealed premise is that an action will always be requited. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §925) | |
| A reaction: Indeed it seems to be a slogan for contractarians, though I don't see why you shouldn't be influenced by the thought that there might be reciprocation, even if you don't expect it. |
| 4555 | The great error is to think that happiness derives from virtue, which in turn derives from free will [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The tremendous rat's tail of errors that has hitherto counted as the highest inspiration of humanity: 'All happiness is a consequence of virtue, all virtue is a consequence of free will!' | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §705) | |
| A reaction: A nice suggestion about the hidden agenda of Greek and Christian philosophy. If one began to doubt free will, where would that leave Socrates and Aristotle? |
| 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. |
| 4493 | Be natural! But how, if one happens to be "unnatural"? [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Be natural! But how, if one happens to be "unnatural"? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §066) | |
| A reaction: Quite so, though Nietzsche isn't the person to offer a solution. Choose the route of Aristotle ('normal' human function), or Kant (escape from nature into reason). |
| 4494 | Not "return to nature", for there has never yet been a natural humanity [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Not "return to nature", for there has never yet been a natural humanity. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §120) | |
| A reaction: I like that. The notion of dividing humanity into natural and unnatural makes me uneasy (and certainly isn't PC), and yet us all having to be 'natural' seems a conservative straight-jacket. |
| 4498 | 'Love your enemy' is unnatural, for the natural law says 'love your neighbour and hate your enemy' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One drives nature out of morality when one say "love your enemies": for then the natural "Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thy enemy" in the law (in instinct) has become meaningless. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §204) | |
| A reaction: When the stoics said 'live according to nature' they meant according to reason, which presumably compromises with enemies. Profoundly Christian acts may be unnatural, but they are very moving. |
| 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. |
| 4511 | We would avoid a person who always needed reasons for remaining decent [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It would arouse doubts in us concerning a man if we heard he needed reasons for remaining decent: certainly, we would avoid him. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §313) | |
| A reaction: This is a perfect slogan for virtue theory, and so rather surprising coming from Nietzsche. And 'decent' isn't a great Nietzsche value (though he WAS a very decent man). |
| 4512 | Virtue is pursued from self-interest and prudence, and reduces people to non-entities [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Above all, gentlemen of virtue, you are not our superiors: it is a miserable self-interest and prudence that suggests virtue to you. If you had more strength and courage you would not reduce yourselves to virtuous nonentities in this way. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §318) | |
| A reaction: It is certainly true that virtue is about self-interest, and also that it tends to be rather conservative. But we recognise the virtues of adventure and risk. |
| 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. |
| 20372 | The instinct of the herd, the majority, aims for the mean, in the middle [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The instinct of the herd considers the middle and the mean as the highest and most valuable: the place where the majority finds itself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §280) | |
| A reaction: The reason, I think, for Nietzsche's hostility to Aristotle. But the doctrine of the mean doesn't just seek the middle. It seeks what is appropriate. The mean for bravery and cowardice is not somewhat timid bravery; it is alarmingly brave, but sensible. |
| 4510 | A path to power: to introduce a new virtue under the name of an old one [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: A path to power: to introduce a new virtue under the name of an old one. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §310) | |
| A reaction: A nicely wicked Nietzschean suggestion. One doesn't replace altruism, one 'reinterprets' it. Or democracy. Or 'true' courage. |
| 4515 | Modesty, industriousness, benevolence and temperance are the virtues of a good slave [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Modest, industrious, benevolent, temperate: is that how you would have men? good men? But to me that seems only the ideal slave, the slave of the future. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §356) | |
| A reaction: An extremely good critical observation on virtue theory. Start from scratch, and list the virtues you would want in a good slave. |
| 4516 | Many virtues are merely restraints on the most creative qualities of a human being [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Industry, modesty, benevolence, temperance are just so many hindrances to a sovereign disposition, great inventiveness, heroic purposiveness, noble being-for-oneself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §358) | |
| A reaction: The traditional virtues here are reasonably precise and clear, but Nietzsche's preferred virtues are vague, and open to bizarre interpretations. One foresees a bunch of obsessive arrogant fools trying to live up to Nietzsche's ideal. |
| 4559 | When powerless one desires freedom; if power is too weak, one desires equal power ('justice') [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One desires freedom as long as one does not possess power. Once one does possess it, one desires to overpower; if one cannot do that (if one is too weak), one desires 'justice', i.e. equal power. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §784) | |
| A reaction: Personally I hope the Martians have freedom and justice, but that is presumably just a sublimation. People have given up power for freedom and justice. |
| 4557 | The supposed great lovers of honour (Alexander etc) were actually great despisers of honour [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The type of the ambitious man who thirsts after honour is supposed to be Napoleon, or Caesar, or Alexander! As if these were not precisely the great despisers of honour! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §751) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure how Nietzsche knows this, but it sounds right. Great success comes from total focus on the end, not on incidental rewards. |
| 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. |
| 4507 | The categorical imperative needs either God behind it, or a metaphysic of the unity of reason [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One needed God as an unconditional sanction, as a 'categorical imperative'; or, if one believed in the authority of reason, one needed a metaphysic of unity, by virtue of which this was logical. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §275) | |
| A reaction: I am not sure what a 'metaphysic of unity' is, but this still captures the problem with Kant. The categorical imperative is purely formal, and will justify consistent principles of pain and destruction, without some value to get it off the ground. |
| 4501 | Utilitarianism criticises the origins of morality, but still believes in it as much as Christians [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Utilitarianism (socialism, democracy) criticises the origins of moral evaluations, but it believes them just as much as the Christian does. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §253) | |
| A reaction: It is a critique of both utilitarianism and Kantian deontology that they seem to rest on unquestioned assumptions about what has value (pleasure, happiness, reason). I think Aristotle offers a better answer to this problem than 'divine' authority. |
| 4489 | If faith is lost, people seek other authorities, in order to avoid the risk of willing personal goals [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Having unlearned faith, one still seeks another authority (in conscience, or reason, or social instinct, or history); one wants to get around the will, the willing of a goal, the risk of positing a goal for oneself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §020) | |
| A reaction: But what goal should you risk willing, and why? And what limits my goals? What is the hallmark of a healthy goal, or good taste in goals, or whatever it is Nietzsche aspires to? |
| 4513 | Virtuous people are inferior because they are not 'persons', but conform to a fixed pattern [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: A virtuous man is a lower species because he is not a "person" but acquires his value by conforming to a pattern of man that is fixed once and for all. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §319) | |
| A reaction: A penetrating critque of virtue theory. If, even now, we are trying to conform to Aristotle's model, that is VERY conservative. The obliteration of individual identity is also a charge against Kant and Bentham. Virtues are more flexible than rules. |
| 4504 | Morality used to be for preservation, but now we can only experiment, giving ourselves moral goals [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Formerly one employed morality for preservation: but nobody wants to preserve any longer, there is nothing to preserve. Therefore an experimental morality: to give oneself a goal. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §260) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as the essence of Nietzsche, and the relativist position. Exciting and dangerous. Let's kill someone (Gide). Take drugs (Manson). Betray friends (Genet). Be altruistic…? |
| 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. |
| 4495 | The high points of culture and civilization do not coincide [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The high points of culture and civilization do not coincide. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §121) | |
| A reaction: Intriguing. What can Nietzsche have meant by 'civilization'? Certainly not the English utilitarian ideal. He probably means aristocrats running slaves… |
| 4491 | In modern society virtue is 'equal rights', but only because everyone is zero, so it is a sum of zeroes [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Our entire sociology simply does not know any other instinct than that of the herd, i.e. that of the sum of zeroes - where every zero has "equal rights", where it is virtuous to be zero. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §053) | |
| A reaction: I see his point, but all social arrangements are a trade-off. It would be quite exciting if warlike aristocrats dragged us into massive conquest, but nuclear weapons seem to have ruined that game. |
| 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. |
| 4542 | Science has taken the meaning out of causation; cause and effect are two equal sides of an equation [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Science has emptied the concept of causality of its content and retained it as a formula of an equation, in which it has become at bottom a matter of indifference on which side cause is placed and on which side effect. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §551) | |
| A reaction: What a perceptive remark in the nineteenth century. Science is notoriously uninterested in the direction of time, and such a symmetry seems to make the concept of causation redundant. |
| 4553 | We derive the popular belief in cause and effect from our belief that our free will causes things [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The popular belief in cause and effect is founded on the presupposition that free will is the cause of every effect: it is only from this that we derive the feeling of causality. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §667) | |
| A reaction: It may be that our first experiences of causation involve the wil, though I don't see why babies shouldn't also observe. Nietzsche is muddling the epistemology with the ontology. |
| 4535 | A 'species' is a stable phase of evolution, implying the false notion that evolution has a goal [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: When a 'species' appears, it is a phase in which evolution is not visible, so an equilibrium seems to have been attained, making possible the false notion that a goal has been attained, and that evolution has a goal. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §521) | |
| A reaction: A penetrating explanation of a crucial that won't go away, and that still grips people's minds. Even if we all want a particular goal, evolution will ignore our dreams and go another way. |
| 4497 | The concept of 'God' represents a turning away from life, and a critique of life [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The concept 'God' represents a turning away from life, a critique of life, even a contempt for it. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §141) | |
| A reaction: Clearly Nietzsche has the same view of Platonism, and any view which aspires to 'higher' things, and views humans as being potentially divine (even Aristotle's dream of pure 'contemplation'). |
| 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. |
| 4488 | Those who have abandoned God cling that much more firmly to the faith in morality [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Those who have abandoned God cling that much more firmly to the faith in morality. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §018) | |
| A reaction: A nice remark. The interesting implication is that theists do NOT cling so strongly to morality (perhaps because they hope for mercy, or ultimate justice). |
| 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. |
| 4502 | Morality cannot survive when the God who sanctions it is missing [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Morality cannot survive when the God who sanctions it is missing! The "beyond" is absolutely necessary if faith in morality is to be maintained. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §253) | |
| A reaction: It strikes me that Nietzsche is self-evidently wrong. We must ask why people hang on to moral absolutes after they lose religious faith. Nietzsche seems to think it is a comfort blanket. But he admits the contractarian origins of morality. |
| 4499 | Primitive Christianity is abolition of the state; it is opposed to defence, justice, patriotism and class [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Primitive Christianity is abolition of the state: it forbids oaths, war service, courts of justice, defence of self or community, the distinction between citizens and foreigners, and differences of class. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §207) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. This tension is still in Christianity, and permeates international socialism movements. But then Diogenes the Cynic said he was a citizen of the world. |
| 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. |