Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'On Hippocrates and Plato', 'Ars Magna' and 'Toward a Philosophy of History'

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6 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 2. History of Logic

19369	Lull's combinatorial art would articulate all the basic concepts, then show how they combine [Lull, by Arthur,R]
	Full Idea: Lull proposed a combinatorial art. He wanted to reconcile Islam and Christianity by articulating the basic concepts that their belief systems held in common, and then inventing a device that would allow these concepts to be combined.
	From: report of Ramon (Ars Magna [1305]) by Richard T.W. Arthur - Leibniz 2 Intro
	A reaction: Leibniz's Universal Characteristic was an attempt at continuing Lull's project. Lull's plan rested on Aristotle's categories.

7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / h. Dasein (being human)

20752	For man, being is not what he is, but what he is going to be [Ortega y Gassett]
	Full Idea: Being consists not in what it is already, but in what it is not yet, a being that consists in not-yet-being. Everything else in the world is what it is….Man is the entity that makes himself….He has to determine what he is going to be.
	From: José Ortega y Gassett (Toward a Philosophy of History [1941], p.112,201-2), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 4 'Problem'
	A reaction: [p.112 and 201-2] This seems to be Ortega y Gasset's spin on Heidegger's concept, by adding a temporal dimension to it.

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 1. Mind / d. Location of mind

6003	Galen showed by experiment that the brain controls the body [Galen, by Hankinson]
	Full Idea: Galen established by experiments in neural anatomy that the brain really is, contra the Stoics and Aristotelians, the body's control centre.
	From: report of Galen (On Hippocrates and Plato [c.170]) by R.J. Hankinson - Galen (damaged)
	A reaction: And about time too. This is one of the most significant events in the development of human understanding. No one has been able to go back to the old view, even Descartes, no matter how much they may long to do so.

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / e. Human nature

20756	Instead of having a nature, man only has a history [Ortega y Gassett]
	Full Idea: Man lives in view of the past. Man, in a word, has no nature; what he has is history. Expressed differently: what nature is to things, history is to man.
	From: José Ortega y Gassett (Toward a Philosophy of History [1941], p.217), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 5 'Situated'
	A reaction: Makes explicit the existentialist denial of human nature. The foundation of ethics can only be total freedom, to choose both yourself and your actions. What is inescapable is the social and culture contexts. What is the role of the 'history'?

23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / a. Virtues

6030	Each part of the soul has its virtue - pleasure for appetite, success for competition, and rectitude for reason [Galen]
	Full Idea: We have by nature these three appropriate relationships, corresponding to each form of the soul's parts - to pleasure because of the appetitive part, to success because of the competitive part, and to rectitude because of the rational part.
	From: Galen (On Hippocrates and Plato [c.170], 5.5.8)
	A reaction: This is a nice combination of Plato's tripartite theory of soul (in 'Republic') and Aristotle's derivation of virtues from functions. Presumably, though, reason should master the other two, and there is nothing in Galen's idea to explain this.

28. God / A. Divine Nature / 3. Divine Perfections

19371	Nine principles of God: goodness, greatness, eternity, power, wisdom, will, virtue, truth and glory [Lull, by Arthur,R]
	Full Idea: Lull restricted himself to only nine 'absolute principles' of God: goodness, greatness, eternity, power, wisdom, will, virtue, truth and glory
	From: report of Ramon (Ars Magna [1305]) by Richard T.W. Arthur - Leibniz 2 'Combinatorics'
	A reaction: Leibniz responded that God's perfections are infinite in number, and thus beyond human comprehension. Lull cut them down to nine, because he was designing a sort of conceptual logic that employed them.