88 ideas
| 18330 | Judging by the positive forces, the Renaissance was the last great age [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Ages are to be assessed by their positive forces - and by this assessment the age of the Renaissance, so prodigal and so fateful, appears as the last great age. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.37) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that Nietzsche places art very high among the positive forces. Science and technology showed barely a glimmer during the Renaissance. Mathematics moved very little, Copernicus was ignored, and logic was static. |
| 2900 | I revere Heraclitus [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I set apart with high reverence the name of Heraclitus. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.2) |
| 2913 | Thucydides was the perfect anti-platonist sophist [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: My recreation, my preference, my cure from all Platonism has always been Thucydides. …Sophist culture, by which I mean realist culture, attains in him its perfect expression. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 9.2) |
| 2909 | Thinking has to be learned in the way dancing has to be learned [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Thinking has to be learned in the way dancing has to be learned. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 7.7) | |
| A reaction: Nice. At its deepest level thinking isn't a rational process? |
| 2892 | Wanting a system in philosophy is a lack of integrity [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to system is a lack of integrity. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], Maxim 26) |
| 2896 | I want to understand the Socratic idea that 'reason equals virtue equals happiness' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I seek to understand out of what idiosyncrasy that Socratic equation 'reason equals virtue equals happiness' derives. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 1.04) |
| 2897 | With dialectics the rabble gets on top [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: With dialectics the rabble gets on top. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 1.05) |
| 2898 | Anything which must first be proved is of little value [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What has first to have itself proved is of little value. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 1.05) |
| 16357 | Mental files are the counterparts of singular terms [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: Mental files are the mental counterparts of singular terms. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: A thoroughly satisfactory theory. We can build up a picture of filing merging, duplication, ambiguity, error etc. Eventually neuroscience will map the whole system, and we will have cracked it. |
| 18317 | The 'real being' of things is a nothingness constructed from contradictions in the actual world [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The characteristics which have been assigned to the 'real being' of things are the characteristics of non-being, of nothingness - the 'real world has been constructed out of the contradiction of the actual world. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.6) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a critique of Hegel, in particular. Could we describe the metaphysics of Nietzsche as 'constructivist'? I certainly think he is underrated as a metaphysician, because the ideas are so fragmentary. |
| 18315 | We get the concept of 'being' from the concept of the 'ego' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Being is everywhere thought in, foisted on, as cause; it is only from the conception 'ego' that there follows, derivatively, the concept 'being'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: 'Being' is such a remote abstraction that I doubt whether we can say anything at all meaningful about where it 'comes from'. |
| 18316 | The grounds for an assertion that the world is only apparent actually establish its reality [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The grounds upon which 'this' world has been designated as apparent establish rather its reality - another kind of reality is absolutely undemonstrable. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.6) |
| 18314 | In language we treat 'ego' as a substance, and it is thus that we create the concept 'thing' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It is the metaphysics of language (that is, of reason) ....which believes in the 'ego', in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and which projects its belief in the ego-substance on to all things - only thus does it create the concept 'thing'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.5) |
| 16360 | Identity statements are informative if they link separate mental files [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: An identity statement 'A=B' is informative to the extent that the terms 'A' and 'B' are associated with distinct mental files. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: Hence the information in 'Scott is the author of 'Waverley'' is information about what is in your mind, not what is happening in Scotland. This is Recanati's solution to one of Frege's classic puzzles. 'Morning Star' and 'Evening Star' files. Nice. |
| 16374 | There is a continuum from acquaintance to description in knowledge, depending on the link [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: It is not too difficult to imagine a continuum of cases between straightforward instances of knowledge by acquaintance and straightforward instances of knowledge by description, with more or less tenuous informational links to the referent. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 12.2) |
| 18309 | The evidence of the senses is falsified by reason [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: 'Reason' is the cause of our falsification of the evidence of the senses. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: One for McDowell. |
| 18323 | Any explanation will be accepted as true if it gives pleasure and a feeling of power [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: To trace something unknown back to something known is alleviating, soothing, gratifying and gives moreover a feeling of power. ...First principle: any explanation is better than none. ...Proof by pleasure ('by potency') as criterion of truth. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: By 'proof by pleasure' he means that we find an explanation so satisfying that we cling to it. I assume it is a criterion of rationality (an epistemic virtue) to reject the principle 'any explanation is better than none'. Negative capability. |
| 18310 | The 'highest' concepts are the most general and empty concepts [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The 'highest concepts' ...are the most general, the emptiest concepts, the last fumes of evaporating reality. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: This could be seen as an attack on the aspirations of all of philosophy, which seeks general truths out of the chaos of experience. Should we shut up, then, and just be and do? |
| 20368 | There are no 'individual' persons; we are each the sum of humanity up to this moment [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The 'individual' ...is an error: he does not constitute a separate entity, an atom, a 'link in the chain', something merely inherited from the past - he constitutes the entire single line 'man' up to and including himself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.33) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure I understand this, but you can sort of imagine yourself as a culmination of something, rather than as an isolated entity. I'm not sure how that is supposed to affect my behaviour. |
| 2899 | The fanatical rationality of Greek philosophy shows that they were in a state of emergency [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The fanaticism with which the whole of Greek thought throws itself at rationality betrays itself as a state of emergency: one was in peril, one had only one choice: either to perish or- be absurdly rational. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 1.10) |
| 18409 | Indexicals apply to singular thought, and mental files have essentially indexical features [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: I defend the applicability of the indexical model to singular thought, and to mental files qua vehicles of singular thought. Mental files, I will argue, possess the essential features of indexicals. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 05.1) | |
| A reaction: I love mental files, but am now (thanks to Cappelen and Dever) deeply averse to giving great significance to indexicals. A revised account of files will be needed. |
| 16354 | Indexicality is closely related to singularity, exploiting our direct relations with things [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: Singularity and indexicality are closely related: for indexicals systematically exploit the contextual relations in which we stand to what we talk about. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: Recanati builds a nice case that we may only have an ontology of singular objects because we conceptualise and refer to things in a particular way. He denies the ontology, but that's the bit that interests me. |
| 16371 | Files can be confused, if two files correctly have a single name, or one file has two names [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: Paderewski cases are cases in which a subject associates two distinct files with a single name. Inverse Paderewski cases are cases in which there are two names but the subject associates them with a single file. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 10.1) | |
| A reaction: In the inverse there are two people with the same name, and someone thinks they are one person (with their combined virtues and vices). E.g. Einstein the famous physicist, and Einstein the famous musicologist. What a man! |
| 16373 | Encylopedic files have further epistemic links, beyond the basic one [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: The reference of a file is the object to which the subject stands in the relevant epistemic relation. In the case of encylopedic entries there is an arbitrary number of distinct relations. The file grows new links in an opportunistic manner. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 11.3) | |
| A reaction: I'm not convinced by Recanati's claim that encylopedic files are a distinct type. My files seem to grow these opportunistic links right from their inception. All files seem to have that feature. A file could have four links at its moment of launching. |
| 16375 | Singular thoughts need a mental file, and an acquaintance relation from file to object [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: The mental file framework rests on two principles: that the subject cannot entertain a singular thought about an object without possessing and exercising a mental file about it, and that this requires an acquaintance relation with the object. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 12.3) | |
| A reaction: I'm puzzled by the case where I design and build a completely new object. I seem to assemble a file, and only bestow singularity on it towards the end. Or the singularity can just be a placeholder, referred to as 'something'. […see p.158] |
| 16377 | Expected acquaintance can create a thought-vehicle file, but without singular content [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: On my view, actual acquaintance is not necessary to open a mental file; expected acquaintance will suffice; yet opening a mental file itself is not sufficient to entertain a singular thought-content. It only enables a thought-vehicle. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 13.1) | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear why I can't create a file with no expectation at all of acquaintance, as in a fictional case. Depends what 'acquaintance' means. Recanati longs for precise distinctions where they may not be available. |
| 16378 | An 'indexed' file marks a file which simulates the mental file of some other person [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: Files function metarepresentationally if they serve to represent how other subjects think about objects in the world. ..An 'indexed' file has an index referring to the other subject whose files the indexed file stands for or simulates. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 14.1) | |
| A reaction: Presumably there is an implicit index on all files, which says in a conversation whether my interlocutor does or does not hold the same file-type as me. Recanati wants many 'types' of files, but I suspect there is just one file type. |
| 16387 | Reference by mental files is Millian, in emphasising acquaintance, rather than satisfaction [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: The mental file account preserves the original, Millian inspiration of direct reference theories in giving pride of place to acquaintance relations and downplaying satisfaction factors. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 17.3) | |
| A reaction: I find this a very satisfying picture, in which reference links to the simple label of a file (which could be a number), and not to its contents. There are tricky cases of non-existents, fictional entities and purely possible entities to consider. |
| 16358 | The reference of a file is fixed by what it relates to, not the information it contains [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: What files refer to is not determined by properties which the subject takes the referent to have (information, or misinformation, in the file), but through the relations on which the files are based. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: Maybe. 'Lot 22'. I can build up a hypothetical file by saying 'Imagine an animal which is F, G, H…', and build a reference that relates to nothing. Maybe Recanati overestimates the role of his 'epistemically rewarding' relations in file creation. |
| 16361 | A mental file treats all of its contents as concerning one object [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: The role of a mental file is precisely to treat all the information as if it concerned one and the same object, from which it derives. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: Recanati's book focuses entirely on singular objects, but we presumably have files for properties, generalisation, groups etc. Can they only be thought about if they are reified? Maybe. |
| 16367 | There are transient 'demonstrative' files, habitual 'recognitional' files, cumulative 'encyclopedic' files [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: A 'demonstrative' file only exists during the demonstrative relation to something; …a 'recognitional' file is based on 'familiarity' (a disposition to recognise); …an 'encylopedic' file contains all the information on something, however it is gained. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 6.1-3) | |
| A reaction: [picked as samples of his taxonomy, pp.70-73] I'm OK with this as long as he doesn't think the categories are sharply separated. I'm inclined to think of files as a single type, drifting in and out of different of modes. |
| 16368 | Files are hierarchical: proto-files, then first-order, then higher-order encyclopedic [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: There is a hierarchy of files. Proto-files are the most basic; conceptual files are generated from them. First-order ones are more basic, as the higher-order encylopedic entries presuppose them. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: This hierarchy might fit into a decent account of categories, if a plausible one could be found. A good prospect for exploring categories would be to start with mental file-types, and work outwards through their relations. |
| 16370 | A file has a 'nucleus' through its relation to the object, and a 'periphery' of links to other files [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: I take a file to have a dual structure, with a 'nucleus' of the file consisting of information derived through the relevant epistemically rewarding relation, while the 'periphery' consists of information derived through linking with other files. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 8.3) | |
| A reaction: This sounds strikingly like essentialism to me, though what constitutes the essence is different from the usual explanatory basics. The link, though, is in the causal connection. If we naturally 'essentialise', that will control file-formation. |
| 16381 | The content of thought is what is required to understand it (which involves hearers) [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: As Evans emphasises, what matters when we want to individuate semantic content is what would count as a proper understanding of an utterance; but 'understanding' defines the task of the hearer. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 16.2) | |
| A reaction: [cites Evans 1982: 92, 143n, 171] I like to place (following Aristotle) understanding at the centre of all of philosophy, so this seems to me an appealing idea. It makes misunderstandings interesting. |
| 16365 | Mental files are individual concepts (thought constituents) [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: I want mental files (properly speaking) to serve as individual concepts, i.e. thought constituents. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: This is why the concept of mental files is so neat - it gives you a theory of reference and a theory of concepts. I love the files approach because it precisely fits my own introspective experiences. Hope I'm not odd in that way. |
| 16356 | There may be two types of reference in language and thought: descriptive and direct [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: A widely held view, originating with Russell, says there are two types of reference (both in language and thought): descriptive reference, and direct reference. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: I would rather say is there is just one sort of reference, and as many ways of achieving it as you care to come up with. With that view, most of the problems vanish, as far as I can see. People refer. Sentences are nothing but trouble. |
| 16393 | In super-direct reference, the referent serves as its own vehicle of reference [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: In super-direct reference, the sort of thing Russell was after, there is no mode of presentation: the referent itself serves as its own vehicle, as it were. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 18.2) | |
| A reaction: To me this is a step too far, because reference is not some physical object like a chair; it is a mental or linguistic phenomenon. Chair's don't refer themselves; it is people who refer. |
| 16386 | Direct reference is strong Millian (just a tag) or weak Kaplanian (allowing descriptions as well) [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: There are two notions of direct reference, the strong Millian notion (where the expression is like a 'tag' with no satisfaction mechanism), and the weaker Kaplanian notion (where reference is compatible with carrying a descriptive meaning). | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 17.3) | |
| A reaction: I immediately favour the Millian view, which gives a minimal basis for reference, as just a 'peg' (Marcus) to hang things on. I don't take a Millian reference to be the object itself. The concept of a 'tag' or 'label' is key. Mental files have tags. |
| 16372 | Sense determines reference says same sense/same reference; new reference means new sense [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: To say that sense determines reference is to say that the same sense cannot determine distinct referents - any distinction at the level of reference entails a corresponding distinction at the level of sense. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 10.2) | |
| A reaction: Does 'the sentry at the gate' change its sense when the guard is changed? Yes. 'The sentry at the gate will stop you'. 'The sentry at the gate is my cousin'. De re/de dicto reference. So changes of de re reference seem to change the sense? |
| 16388 | We need sense as well as reference, but in a non-descriptive form, and mental files do that [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: My view inherits from Frege 'modes of presentation'. Reference is not enough, and sense is needed. …We must make room for non-descriptive modes of presentation, and these are mental files. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 18.1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Recanati aims to avoid the standard Kripkean criticisms of descriptivism, while being able to handle Frege's puzzles. I take Recanati's mental files theory to be the most promising approach. |
| 16359 | Sense is a mental file (not its contents); similar files for Cicero and Tully are two senses [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: What plays the role of sense is not information in a file, but the file itself. If there are two distinct files, one for 'Cicero' and one for 'Tully', then there are two distinct (non-descriptive) senses, even if the information in both files is the same. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 3.4) | |
| A reaction: This may be the best idea in Recanati's book. A sense might be a 'way of coming at the information', rather than some set of descriptions. |
| 16355 | Problems with descriptivism are reference by perception, by communications and by indexicals [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: Three problems with Frege's idea of descriptions in the head are: reference through perception, reference through communicative chains, and reference through indexicals. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: In the end reference has to occur in the head, even if it is social or causal or whatever, so these are not problems that worry me. |
| 16348 | Descriptivism says we mentally relate to objects through their properties [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: Descriptivism is the view that our mental relation to individual objects goes through properties of those objects. …This is so because our knowledge of objects is mediated by our knowledge of their properties. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: The implication is that if you view an object as just a bundle of properties, then you are obliged to hold a descriptive theory of reference. Hence a 'singularist' theory of reference seems to need a primitive notion of an object's identity. |
| 16384 | Definite descriptions reveal either a predicate (attributive use) or the file it belongs in (referential) [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: A definite description may contribute either the singular predicate it encodes (attributive use) or the mental file to what that predicate belongs (referential use). | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 17.1) | |
| A reaction: This nicely explains Donnellan's distinction in terms of mental files. 'Green' may refer in a shop, but isn't much use in a wood. What to make of 'He's a bit of a Bismark'? |
| 16352 | A rigid definite description can be attributive, not referential: 'the actual F, whoever he is….' [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: A rigid use of a definite description need not be referential: it may be attributive. Thus I may say: 'The actual F, whoever he is, is G'. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: Recanati offers this as a criticism of the attempted 2-D solution to descriptivist accounts of singularity. The singularity is not strong enough, he says. |
| 16353 | Singularity cannot be described, and it needs actual world relations [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: As Peirce insisted, singularity as such cannot be described, it can only be given through actual world relations. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: [Peirce - Exact Logic, Papers 3, 1967, §419] This is the key idea for Recanati's case for basing our grasp of singular things on their relation to a mental file. |
| 16382 | Fregean modes of presentation can be understood as mental files [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: A mental file plays the role which Fregean theory assigns to modes of presentation. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 17.1) | |
| A reaction: I'm a fan of mental files, and this is a nice pointer to how the useful Fregean insights can be written in a way better grounded in brain operations. Rewriting Frege in neuroscience terms is a nice project for someone. |
| 16389 | If two people think 'I am tired', they think the same thing, and they think different things [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: If you and I think 'I am tired', there is a sense in which we think the same thing, and another sense in which we think different things. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 18.1) | |
| A reaction: This is a very nice simple account of the semantic distinctiveness of indexicals, which obviously requires a 'two-tiered framework'. He cites Kaplan and Perry as background. |
| 16363 | Indexicals (like mental files) determine their reference relationally, not by satisfaction [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: The class of indexicals have the same property as mental files, that their reference is determined relationally rather than satisfactionally. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: Recanati is building an account of reference through mental files. This idea may be the clearest point I have yet encountered about indexicals, showing why they are of particular interest to philosophers. |
| 16364 | Indexical don't refer; only their tokens do [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: Indexicals do not refer; only tokens of an indexical refer | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: Thus 'Thurs 23rd March 2013' refers, but 'now' doesn't, unless someone produces an utterance of it. This is why indexicals are sometimes called 'token-reflexives'. |
| 16351 | In 2-D semantics, reference is determined, then singularity by the truth of a predication [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: In the two-dimensional framework, what characterises the singular case is the fact that truth-evaluation (of possessing of the reference-fixing property) takes place at a later stage than reference determination. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: This sounds psychologically plausible, which is a big (and unfashionable) plus for me. 1) what are we talking about? 2) what are we saying about it, 3) is it true? |
| 16350 | Two-D semantics is said to help descriptivism of reference deal with singular objects [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: Descriptivism has trouble catching the singularity of objects, construing them as only directly about properties. …To get the truth-conditions right, it is claimed, the descriptivist only as to go two-dimensional. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that the descriptivist only has a problem here because context is being ignored. 'That man on the beach' can quickly be made uniquely singular after a brief chat. |
| 16380 | Russellian propositions are better than Fregean thoughts, by being constant through communication [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: The Russellian notion of a proposition is arguably a better candidate for the status of semantic content than the Fregean notion of a thought. For the proposition remains constant from one person to the next. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 16.2) | |
| A reaction: A good point, though I rebel against Russellian propositions because they are too much out in the world, and propositions strike me as features of minds. We need to keep propositions separate from facts. |
| 18313 | The big error is to think the will is a faculty producing effects; in fact, it is just a word [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: At the beginning stands the great fateful error that the will is something which produces an effect - that will is a faculty.... Today we know it is merely a word. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: This is despite Nietzsche's insistence that 'will to power' is the central fact of active existence. The misreading of Nietzsche is to think that this refers to the conscious exercising of a mental faculty. |
| 20133 | The 'motive' is superficial, and may even hide the antecedents of a deed [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The so-called 'motive' is another error. Merely a surface phenomenon of consciousness - something alongside the deed which is more likely to cover up the antecedents of the deed than to represent them. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: [Leiter gives 'VI.3', but I can't find it] As far as you can get from intellectualism about action, and is more in accord with the picture found in modern neuro-science. No one knows why they are 'interested' in something, and that's the start of it. |
| 18326 | The beautiful never stands alone; it derives from man's pleasure in man [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Anyone who tried to divorce the beautiful from man's pleasure in man would at once feel the ground give way beneath him. The 'beautiful in itself' is not even a concept, merely a phrase. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.19) | |
| A reaction: I love the insult 'not even a concept'! It's like Pauli's 'not even wrong'! |
| 20101 | Without music life would be a mistake [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Without music life would be a mistake. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], Maxim 33) | |
| A reaction: Cf Schopenhauer in Idea 21469. If you, dear reader, don't love music, then I sincerely hope that there is something in your life which can match it. |
| 2902 | Healthy morality is dominated by an instinct for life [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: All naturalism in morality, that is all healthy morality, is dominated by an instinct for life. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: Sounds right. There is no reasoning against a moral nihilist, because they seem to have no instinct in favour of life. It is the given of morality. |
| 18311 | Philosophers hate values having an origin, and want values to be self-sufficient [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: For philosophers, the higher must not be allowed to grow out of the lower, must not be allowed to have grown at all ...Moral: everything of the first rank must be causa sui. Origin in something else counts as an objection, as casting a doubt on value. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: This is so deep and central that I wrote a paper on it, advocating that the theory of values should focus of value-makers. |
| 18324 | There are no moral facts, and moralists believe in realities which do not exist [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: An insight formulated by me: that there are no moral facts whatever. Moral judgement has this in common with religious judgement that it believes in realities which do not exist. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 6.1) | |
| A reaction: Not only a slogan for non-cognitivism, but also a clear statement of the error theory about morality, a century before John Mackie. |
| 2904 | The doctrine of free will has been invented essentially in order to blame and punish people [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The doctrine of will has been invented essentially for the purpose of punishment, that is of finding guilty. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 5.7) | |
| A reaction: Michael Frede says free will was invented to feel wholly in charge of our own actions. I doubt whether punishment was the first motive. The will just gives a simple explanation of actions. |
| 2894 | Value judgements about life can never be true [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Judgements, value judgements concerning life, for or against it, can in the last resort never be true. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 1.02) | |
| A reaction: I suppose this is in the same spirit as judging whether celery tastes nice. Are you for or against the Moon? |
| 18321 | To evaluate life one must know it, but also be situated outside of it [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One would have to be situated outside life ....[and yet know it thoroughly] ....to be permitted to touch on the problem of the value of life at all. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: Can practising artists question the value of their art? The whole point of objectivity is that we can mentally step 'outside' of something, without actually withdrawing from it. |
| 2895 | The value of life cannot be estimated [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The value of life cannot be estimated. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 1.02) | |
| A reaction: Military leaders apparently judge that the death of one of their own soldiers is worth between 12 and 20 enemy deaths (so history suggests). How about ransom money? |
| 18322 | When we establish values, that is life itself establishing them, through us [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: When we speak of values we do so under the inspiration and from the perspective of life: life itself evaluates through us when we establish values | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: I love Nietzsche's ideas about the source of values, and his remarks about the value of life. Other thinkers sound so simplistic in comparison. |
| 2893 | In every age the wisest people have judged life to be worthless [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: In every age the wisest have passed the identical judgement on life: it is worthless. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 1.01) | |
| A reaction: I guess he was having a bad day. Since the whole universe is clearly 'worthless', this judgement must in some sense be correct. But I love my books. |
| 18308 | A philosopher fails in wisdom if he thinks the value of life is a problem [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: For a philosopher to see a problem in the value of life thus even constitutes an objection to him, a question-mark as to his wisdom, a piece of unwisdom. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 1.02) | |
| A reaction: I take his point to be neither that life is unquestionably valuable nor that it is valueless, but that the very question is ridiculous. If we live, we value living. Sounds right. |
| 18319 | Love is the spiritualisation of sensuality [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The spiritualization of sensuality is called 'love': it is a great triumph over Christianity. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: I'm not quite clear what 'spiritualization' means, particularly when it comes from Nietzsche. |
| 2903 | A good human will be virtuous because they are happy [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: A well-constituted human being, a 'happy one', must perform certain actions and shrink from other actions. In a formula: his virtue is the consequence of his happiness. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 5.2) | |
| A reaction: A nice reversal of basic Aristotle, though Aristotle does say that the truly virtuous person is happy in their actions. Treat unhappy people with caution! |
| 2891 | Only the English actually strive after happiness [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Man does not strive after happiness; only the Englishman does that. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], Maxim 12) | |
| A reaction: The Danes keeping being voted the happiest nation, so presumably that results from some sort of effort on their part. The easiest is happiness is to achieve security, then do nothing. |
| 18327 | A wholly altruistic morality, with no egoism, is a thoroughly bad thing [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: An 'altruistic' morality, a morality under which egoism languishes - is under all circumstances a bad sign. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.35) |
| 15606 | Military idea: what does not kill me makes me stronger [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: From the military school of life. - What does not kill me makes me stronger. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], Maxim 08) | |
| A reaction: The published version! Perhaps the most famous remark in all of Nietzsche, and no one realises it is ironic! It is a sarcastic remark about the battering ram mentality of the Prussian militarist! He had served in the army. |
| 18328 | Invalids are parasites [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The invalid is a parasite on society. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.36) | |
| A reaction: I'll skip the rest, but you get the idea. The point (with which I sympathise) is that life is primarily about what healthy people do. Something has gone wrong if all we do is worry about the sick and the suffering. |
| 18331 | Democracy is organisational power in decline [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Democracy has always been the declining form of the power to organise. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.39) | |
| A reaction: Even when Nietzsche is wrong (and who knows, here?) he always challenges you to think! |
| 18332 | The creation of institutions needs a determination which is necessarily anti-liberal [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: For institutions to exist there must exist the kind of will, instinct, imperative which is anti-liberal to the point of malice: the will to tradition, to authority, to centuries-long responsibility, to solidarity between succeeding generations. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.39) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a lovely challenge to Popper, who seems to have been a liberal who pinned his faith on institutions. |
| 20575 | Socialist economics needs a very strong central power, virtually leading to slavery [Hayek, by Oksala] |
| Full Idea: Hayek argues that socialist economic equality can only be effectively put into practice by a strong, dictatorial government. Planning has to be imposed by force, and centralised economic power creates a dependency scarcely distingishable from slavery. | |
| From: report of F.A. Hayek (The Road to Serfdom [1944]) by Johanna Oksala - Political Philosophy: all that matters Ch.7 | |
| A reaction: I don't see much sign of the post-war British Labour government being anything like this, even though they nationalised the railways and introduce a national health service. Hayek was mesmerised by Russia. |
| 22599 | Hayek was a liberal, but mainly concerned with market freedom [Hayek, by Dunt] |
| Full Idea: Hayek was a liberal (rather than a conservative), …but the individual liberty he cared about was not diversity or freedom of thought. It was freedom to operate in the market. | |
| From: report of F.A. Hayek (The Road to Serfdom [1944]) by Ian Dunt - How to be a Liberal 7 | |
| A reaction: There seems to have been a drift from obsession with freedom to participate in the market, towards the less plausible idea that market forces can solve everything. I once met someone who was convinced the market could solve environmental problems. |
| 22600 | Impeding the market is likely to lead to extensive state control [Hayek] |
| Full Idea: Once the free working of the market is impeded beyond a certain degree, the planner will be forced to extend his controls until they become all comprehensive. | |
| From: F.A. Hayek (The Road to Serfdom [1944]), quoted by Ian Dunt - How to be a Liberal 7 | |
| A reaction: Hayek was terrified of totalitarianism (quite reasonably), but fascism and communism don't seem to have arisen in the way he describes. I'm not clear why sensible intervention in the market should slide down into nightmare. |
| 2911 | True justice is equality for equals and inequality for unequals [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: 'Equality for equals, inequality for unequals' - that would be the true voice of justice. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.48) |
| 18320 | To renounce war is to renounce the grand life [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One has renounced grand life when one renounces war. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche was a medical orderly in the 1870 Franco-Prussian war, so he had seen it at first hand. I think the machine gun and the heavy bomber would have changed his attitude to warfare. He sounds a bit silly now. Nostalgia for the Iliad. |
| 2908 | There is a need for educators who are themselves educated [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There is a need for educators who are themselves educated. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 7.5) |
| 18329 | Sometimes it is an error to have been born - but we can rectify it [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We have no power to prevent ourselves being born: but we can rectify this error - for sometimes it is an error. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.36) |
| 2905 | 'Purpose' is just a human fiction [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We invented the concept 'purpose': in reality purpose is lacking. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 5.8) |
| 18312 | The supreme general but empty concepts must be compatible, and hence we get 'God' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The supreme concepts of philosophers cannot be incommensurate with one another, be incompatible with one another... Thus they acquired their stupendous concept 'God'.... The last, thinnest, emptiest is placed as the first, as cause in itself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.4) |
| 2906 | By denying God we deny human accountability, and thus we redeem the world [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We deny God; in denying God we deny accountability; only by doing that do we redeem the world. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 5.8) |
| 2901 | How could the Church intelligently fight against passion if it preferred poorness of spirit to intelligence? [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The primitive church fought against the 'intelligent' in favour of the 'poor in spirit': how could one expect from it an intelligent war against passion? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 4.1) |
| 18325 | Christians believe that only God can know what is good for man [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Christianity presupposes that man does not know, cannot know what is good for him and what evil: he believes in God, who alone knows. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.05) |
| 18318 | People who disparage actual life avenge themselves by imagining a better one [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: If there is a strong instinct for slandering, disparaging and accusing life within us, then we revenge ourselves on life by means of the phantasmagoria of 'another', a 'better' life. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.6) |