35 ideas
6928 | Only that which can be an object of religion is an object of philosophy [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Only that which can be an object of religion is an object of philosophy. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §35) | |
A reaction: The temple of Pythagoras at Solon sounds like an embodiment of this idea. The obvious candidate would be truth, to which philosophers must show almost religious respect. Some what motivates the philosophy of a minimalist (Idea 3750)? |
12124 | Metaphysics is the best knowledge, because it is the simplest [Bacon] |
Full Idea: That knowledge is worthiest which is charged with least multiplicity, which appeareth to be metaphysic | |
From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.6) | |
A reaction: A surprising view, coming from the father of modern science, but essentially correct. Obviously metaphysics aspires to avoid multiplicity, but it is riddled not only with complexity in its researches, but massive uncertainties. |
12123 | Natural history supports physical knowledge, which supports metaphysical knowledge [Bacon] |
Full Idea: Knowledges are as pyramides, whereof history is the basis. So of natural philosophy, the basis is natural history, the stage next the basis is physic; the stage next the vertical point is metaphysic. | |
From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.6) | |
A reaction: The father of modern science keeps a place for metaphysics, as the most abstract level above the physical sciences. I would say he is right. It leads to my own slogan: science is the servant of philosophy. |
12119 | Physics studies transitory matter; metaphysics what is abstracted and necessary [Bacon] |
Full Idea: Physic should contemplate that which is inherent in matter, and therefore transitory; and metaphysic that which is abstracted and fixed | |
From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.3) | |
A reaction: He cites the ancients for this view, with which he agrees. One could do worse than hang onto metaphysics as the study of necessities, but must then face the attacks of the Quineans - that knowledge of necessities is beyond us. |
12120 | Physics is of material and efficient causes, metaphysics of formal and final causes [Bacon] |
Full Idea: Physic inquireth and handleth the material and efficient causes; and metaphysic handleth the formal and final causes. | |
From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.3) | |
A reaction: Compare Idea 12119. This divides up Aristotle's famous Four Causes (or Explanations), outlined in 'Physics' II.3. The concept of 'matter', and the nature of 'cause' seem to me to fall with the purview of metaphysics. Interesting, though. |
6918 | Philosophy should not focus on names, but on the determined nature of things [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Philosophy need not care about the conceptions that common usage or misuse attaches to a name; philosophy, however, has to bind itself to the determined nature of things, whose signs are names. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §23) | |
A reaction: I like this attempt to nip ordinary language philosophy in the bud. Indeed I like the notion of philosophy binding itself to the 'determined nature of things' (which sound like essences to me), rather than to their names or descriptions. |
6904 | Modern philosophy begins with Descartes' abstraction from sensation and matter [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: The beginning of Descartes' philosophy, namely, the abstraction from sensation and matter, is the beginning of modern speculative philosophy. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §10) | |
A reaction: In Britain it might be said that modern philosophy begins with a rebellion against Descartes' move. Feuerbach is charting the movement towards idealism. |
6931 | Empiricism is right about ideas, but forgets man himself as one of our objects [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Empiricism rightly derives the origin of our ideas from the senses; only it forgets that the most important and essential object of man is man himself. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §41) | |
A reaction: This seems to nicely pinpoint the objection of most 'continental' philosophy to British empiricism and analytic philosophy. It seems to point towards Husserl's phenomenology as the next step. It is true that empiricists divided person from world. |
6933 | The laws of reality are also the laws of thought [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: The laws of reality are also the laws of thought. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §45) | |
A reaction: I like this a lot, though it runs contrary to a lot of conventionalist thinking in the twentieth century. Russell, though, agrees with Feuerbach (Idea 5405). There is not much point to thought if it doesn't plug into reality at the roots. |
6919 | Absolute thought remains in another world from being [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Absolute thought never extricates itself from itself to become being. Being remains in another world. …If being is to be added to an object of thought, so must something distinct from thought be added to thought itself. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §24/5) | |
A reaction: This sounds a bit like a child wishing for the moon. Is he saying he doesn't just want to think about reality - he wants his mental states to BE external reality? The distinction between a thought and its content or intentionality would help here. |
19457 | Being is what is undetermined, and hence indistinguishable [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Being in the sense in which it is an object of speculative thought is that which is purely and simply unmediated, that is, undetermined; in other words, there is nothing to distinguish and nothing to think of in being. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], 26) | |
A reaction: This sounds remarkably like the idea of 'prime matter' used in scholastic Aristotelian philosophy. Matter existing without form is somehow ungraspable, but presented from Hegel onwards as the ultimate mystery. |
6920 | Being posits essence, and my essence is my being [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Being is the positing of essence. That which is my essence is my being. The fish exists in water; you cannot, however, separate its essence from this being. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §27) | |
A reaction: This throws a different light on later (e.g. Heidegger) discussions of 'being', which may map onto Aristotelian discussions of essences. |
6921 | Particularity belongs to being, whereas generality belongs to thought [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Particularity and individuality belong to being, whereas generality belongs to thought. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §29) | |
A reaction: This agrees with Russell's view that every sentence (and proposition) must contain a universal (i.e a generality). The very notion of thinking 'about' a horse seems to require a move to the universal concept of a horse. |
6926 | The only true being is of the senses, perception, feeling and love [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Being as an object of being - and only this being is being and deserves the name of being - is the being of the senses, perception, feeling, and love. …Only passion is the hallmark of existence. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §33) | |
A reaction: This remark seems to make Feuerbach a romantic and anti-Enlightenment figure. I don't see why there shouldn't be just as much 'being' in doing maths as in admiring a landscape. The mention of love links him to Empedocles (Ideas 459 + 630). |
6908 | Consciousness is absolute reality, and everything exists through consciousness [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Consciousness is the absolute reality, the measure of all existence; all that exists, exists only as being for consciousness, as comprehended in consciousness; for consciousness is first and foremost being. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §17) | |
A reaction: This is Feuerbach declaring himself in favour of idealism even as he was trying to rebel against it, and move towards a more sensuous and human view of the world. I just see idealists as confusing ontology and epistemology. |
6932 | Ideas arise through communication, and reason is reached through community [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Only through communication and conversation between man and man do ideas arise; not alone, but only with others, does one reach notions and reason in general. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §41) | |
A reaction: This is a strikingly modern view of the solipsism problem, and is close in spirit to Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument (Ideas 4143 +4158). Feuerbach is interested in universals rather than rules. I prefer Feuerbach. |
6935 | In man the lowest senses of smell and taste elevate themselves to intellectual acts [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Even the lowest senses, smell and taste, elevate themselves in man to intellectual and scientific acts. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §53) | |
A reaction: Since Darwin we have, I am glad to say, lost this need to distinguish what is 'low' or 'high', and to try to show that even our 'lowest' functions are on the 'high' side. Personally, though, I still need the low/high distinction in moral thinking. |
12121 | We don't assume there is no land, because we can only see sea [Bacon] |
Full Idea: They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea. | |
From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.5) | |
A reaction: Just the sort of pithy remark for which Bacon is famous. It is an obvious point, but a nice corrective to anyone who wants to apply empirical principles in a rather gormless way. |
12117 | Science moves up and down between inventions of causes, and experiments [Bacon] |
Full Idea: All true and fruitful natural philosophy hath a double scale or ladder, ascendent and descendent, ascending from experiments to the invention of causes, and descending from causes to the invention of new experiments. | |
From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.1) | |
A reaction: After several hundred years, I doubt whether anyone can come up with a better account of scientific method than Bacon's. |
12127 | Many different theories will fit the observed facts [Bacon] |
Full Idea: The ordinary face and view of experience is many times satisfied by several theories and philosophies. | |
From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VIII.5) | |
A reaction: He gives as his example that the Copernican system and the Ptolemaic system both seem to satisfy all the facts. He wrote in 1605, just before Galileo's telescope. His point is regularly made in modern discussions. In this case, he was wrong! |
12126 | People love (unfortunately) extreme generality, rather than particular knowledge [Bacon] |
Full Idea: It is the nature of the mind of man (to the extreme prejudice of knowledge) to delight in the spacious liberty of generalities, as in a champaign region, and not in the inclosures of particularity. | |
From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VIII.1) | |
A reaction: I have to plead guilty to this myself. He may have pinpointed the key motivation behind philosophy. We all want to know things, as Aristotle said, but some of us want the broad brush, and others want the fine detail. |
6925 | The new philosophy thinks of the concrete in a concrete (not a abstract) manner [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: The new philosophy is the philosophy that thinks of the concrete not in an abstract, but in a concrete manner. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §31) | |
A reaction: This leads to placing a high value on art, and on virtuous action through particulars rather than principles, and on empirical science. The only problem is that what he proposes is impossible. To think 'about' is to abstract from the particulars. |
8638 | Thomae's idea of abstract from peculiarities gives a general concept, and leaves the peculiarities [Frege on Thomae] |
Full Idea: When Thomae says "abstract from the peculiarities of the individual members of a set of items", or "disregard those characteristics which serve to distinguish them", we get a general concept under which they fall. The things keep their characteristics. | |
From: comment on C.J. Thomae (works [1869], §34) by Gottlob Frege - Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) §34 | |
A reaction: Interesting. You don't have to leave out their distinctive fur in order to count cats. But you have to focus on some aspect of them, because they aren't 'three meats'. |
6924 | Plotinus was ashamed to have a body [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Plotinus, according to his biographers, was ashamed to have a body. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §29) | |
A reaction: When Feuerbach draws our attention to this, we see what an astonishing state it is for a human being to have got into. Modern thought is appalled by it, but it also has something heroic about it, like swimming all the time because you want to be a fish. |
6927 | If you love nothing, it doesn't matter whether something exists or not [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: To him who loves nothing it is all the same whether something does or does not exist. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §33) | |
A reaction: This seems to me to be quite a good motto for the aim of education - just get them to love something, no matter what (well, almost!). Loving something, even if it is train-spotting, seems a good route to human happiness. |
6934 | Man is not a particular being, like animals, but a universal being [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Man is not a particular being, like the animals, but a universal being. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §53) | |
A reaction: This sounds a bit extravagent. The capacity of man to use universals in thought seems crucial to Feuerbach (though he doesn't directly address the problem). 'We are particulars with access to universals' sounds better. |
6936 | The essence of man is in community, but with distinct individuals [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: The essence of man is contained only in the community and unity of man and man; it is a unity, however, which rests only on the reality of the distinction between I and thou. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §59) | |
A reaction: In English provincial suburbs (where I live) it is astonishing how little interest in and need for their neighbours people seem to have. People seem to survive without community. Most of us, though, think full human happiness needs community. |
12125 | Teleological accounts are fine in metaphysics, but they stop us from searching for the causes [Bacon] |
Full Idea: To say 'leaves are for protecting of fruit', or that 'clouds are for watering the earth', is well inquired and collected in metaphysic, but in physic they are impertinent. They are hindrances, and the search of the physical causes hath been neglected. | |
From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.7) | |
A reaction: This is the standard rebellion against Aristotle which gave rise to the birth of modern science. The story has been complicated by natural selection, which bestows a sort of purpose on living things. Nowadays we pursue both paths. |
12118 | Essences are part of first philosophy, but as part of nature, not part of logic [Bacon] |
Full Idea: I assign to summary philosophy the operation of essences (as quantity, similitude, diversity, possibility), with this distinction - that they be handled as they have efficacy in nature, and not logically. | |
From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.3) | |
A reaction: I take this to be a splendid motto for scientific essentialism, in a climate where modal logicians appear to have taken over the driving seat in our understanding of essences. |
6913 | God's existence cannot be separated from essence and concept, which can only be thought as existing [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: God is the being in which existence cannot be separated from essence and concept and which cannot be thought except as existing. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §18) | |
A reaction: This shows how faith in God endured through the Idealist movement by means of the Ontological Argument, despite the criticisms of Hume and Kant. To me this now appears as an odd abberation in the history of human thought. |
6903 | If God is only an object for man, then only the essence of man is revealed in God [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: If God is only an object of man, what is revealed to us in his essence? Nothing but the essence of man. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §07) | |
A reaction: It is important to distinguish here between what we could know about God, and what we think God might actually be like. We may well only be able to read the essence of man into God, but we might speculate that God is more than that. |
6923 | God is what man would like to be [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: God is what man would like to be. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §29) | |
A reaction: It is hard to see how even the most devout person could deny the truth of this. Perhaps the essential hallmark of humanity is a desire to be different from the way we are. |
6911 | God is for us a mere empty idea, which we fill with our own ego and essence [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: God exists, but he is for us a tabula rasa, an empty being, a mere idea; God, as we conceive and think of him, is our ego, our mind, and our essence. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §17) | |
A reaction: He accepted God's existence because of the Ontological Argument. This is a little stronger than Hume's view (Idea 2185), because Hume seems to be talking about imagining God, but Feuerbach says this is our understanding of God. |
6902 | Catholicism concerns God in himself, Protestantism what God is for man [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Protestantism is no longer concerned, as Catholicism is, about what God is in himself, but about what he is for man. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §02) | |
A reaction: It is certainly true that the major religions in their origins seem to be almost exclusively concerned with God alone, and have little interest in human life (or morality). |
6905 | Absolute idealism is the realized divine mind of Leibnizian theism [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Absolute idealism is nothing but the realized divine mind of Leibnizian theism. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §10) | |
A reaction: In general it seems an accurate commentary that during the eighteenth century philosophers on the continent were designing a religion without God. Kantian duty tries to replace the authority of God with pure reason. |