125 ideas
| 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! |
| 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… |
| 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. |
| 15901 | Trying to represent curves, we study arbitrary functions, leading to the ordinals, which produces set theory [Cantor, by Lavine] |
| Full Idea: The notion of a function evolved gradually from wanting to see what curves can be represented as trigonometric series. The study of arbitrary functions led Cantor to the ordinal numbers, which led to set theory. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Shaughan Lavine - Understanding the Infinite I |
| 13444 | Cantor's Theorem: for any set x, its power set P(x) has more members than x [Cantor, by Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: Cantor's Theorem says that for any set x, its power set P(x) has more members than x. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by William D. Hart - The Evolution of Logic 1 |
| 18098 | Cantor proved that all sets have more subsets than they have members [Cantor, by Bostock] |
| Full Idea: Cantor's diagonalisation argument generalises to show that any set has more subsets than it has members. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by David Bostock - Philosophy of Mathematics 4.5 | |
| A reaction: Thus three members will generate seven subsets. This means that 'there is no end to the series of cardinal numbers' (Bostock p.106). |
| 15505 | If a set is 'a many thought of as one', beginners should protest against singleton sets [Cantor, by Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Cantor taught that a set is 'a many, which can be thought of as one'. ...After a time the unfortunate beginner student is told that some classes - the singletons - have only a single member. Here is a just cause for student protest, if ever there was one. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by David Lewis - Parts of Classes 2.1 | |
| A reaction: There is a parallel question, almost lost in the mists of time, of whether 'one' is a number. 'Zero' is obviously dubious, but if numbers are for counting, that needs units, so the unit is the precondition of counting, not part of it. |
| 10701 | Cantor showed that supposed contradictions in infinity were just a lack of clarity [Cantor, by Potter] |
| Full Idea: Cantor's theories exhibited the contradictions others had claimed to derive from the supposition of infinite sets as confusions resulting from the failure to mark the necessary distinctions with sufficient clarity. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Michael Potter - Set Theory and Its Philosophy Intro 1 |
| 10865 | The continuum is the powerset of the integers, which moves up a level [Cantor, by Clegg] |
| Full Idea: Cantor discovered that the continuum is the powerset of the integers. While adding or multiplying infinities didn't move up a level of complexity, multiplying a number by itself an infinite number of times did. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Brian Clegg - Infinity: Quest to Think the Unthinkable Ch.14 |
| 13016 | The Axiom of Union dates from 1899, and seems fairly obvious [Cantor, by Maddy] |
| Full Idea: Cantor first stated the Union Axiom in a letter to Dedekind in 1899. It is nearly too obvious to deserve comment from most commentators. Justifications usually rest on 'limitation of size' or on the 'iterative conception'. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Penelope Maddy - Believing the Axioms I §1.3 | |
| A reaction: Surely someone can think of some way to challenge it! An opportunity to become notorious, and get invited to conferences. |
| 14199 | Cantor's sets were just collections, but Dedekind's were containers [Cantor, by Oliver/Smiley] |
| Full Idea: Cantor's definition of a set was a collection of its members into a whole, but within a few years Dedekind had the idea of a set as a container, enclosing its members like a sack. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Oliver,A/Smiley,T - What are Sets and What are they For? Intro | |
| A reaction: As the article goes on to show, these two view don't seem significantly different until you start to ask about the status of the null set and of singletons. I intuitively vote for Dedekind. Set theory is the study of brackets. |
| 10082 | There are infinite sets that are not enumerable [Cantor, by Smith,P] |
| Full Idea: Cantor's Theorem (1874) says there are infinite sets that are not enumerable. This is proved by his 1891 'diagonal argument'. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Peter Smith - Intro to Gödel's Theorems 2.3 | |
| A reaction: [Smith summarises the diagonal argument] |
| 13483 | Cantor's Paradox: the power set of the universe must be bigger than the universe, yet a subset of it [Cantor, by Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: The problem of Cantor's Paradox is that the power set of the universe has to be both bigger than the universe (by Cantor's theorem) and not bigger (since it is a subset of the universe). | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by William D. Hart - The Evolution of Logic 3 | |
| A reaction: Russell eliminates the 'universe' in his theory of types. I don't see why you can't just say that the members of the set are hypothetical rather than real, and that hypothetically the universe might contain more things than it does. |
| 8710 | The powerset of all the cardinal numbers is required to be greater than itself [Cantor, by Friend] |
| Full Idea: Cantor's Paradox says that the powerset of a set has a cardinal number strictly greater than the original set, but that means that the powerset of the set of all the cardinal numbers is greater than itself. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Michčle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics | |
| A reaction: Friend cites this with the Burali-Forti paradox and the Russell paradox as the best examples of the problems of set theory in the early twentieth century. Did this mean that sets misdescribe reality, or that we had constructed them wrongly? |
| 15910 | Cantor named the third realm between the finite and the Absolute the 'transfinite' [Cantor, by Lavine] |
| Full Idea: Cantor believed he had discovered that between the finite and the 'Absolute', which is 'incomprehensible to the human understanding', there is a third category, which he called 'the transfinite'. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Shaughan Lavine - Understanding the Infinite III.4 |
| 15905 | Cantor proved the points on a plane are in one-to-one correspondence to the points on a line [Cantor, by Lavine] |
| Full Idea: In 1878 Cantor published the unexpected result that one can put the points on a plane, or indeed any n-dimensional space, into one-to-one correspondence with the points on a line. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Shaughan Lavine - Understanding the Infinite III.1 |
| 9983 | Cantor took the ordinal numbers to be primary [Cantor, by Tait] |
| Full Idea: Cantor took the ordinal numbers to be primary: in his generalization of the cardinals and ordinals into the transfinite, it is the ordinals that he calls 'numbers'. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by William W. Tait - Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind VI | |
| A reaction: [Tait says Dedekind also favours the ordinals] It is unclear how the matter might be settled. Humans cannot give the cardinality of large groups without counting up through the ordinals. A cardinal gets its meaning from its place in the ordinals? |
| 17798 | Cantor presented the totality of natural numbers as finite, not infinite [Cantor, by Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: Cantor taught us to regard the totality of natural numbers, which was formerly thought to be infinite, as really finite after all. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by John Mayberry - What Required for Foundation for Maths? p.414-2 | |
| A reaction: I presume this is because they are (by definition) countable. |
| 9971 | Cantor introduced the distinction between cardinals and ordinals [Cantor, by Tait] |
| Full Idea: Cantor introduced the distinction between cardinal and ordinal numbers. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by William W. Tait - Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind Intro | |
| A reaction: This seems remarkably late for what looks like a very significant clarification. The two concepts coincide in finite cases, but come apart in infinite cases (Tait p.58). |
| 9892 | Cantor showed that ordinals are more basic than cardinals [Cantor, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Cantor's work revealed that the notion of an ordinal number is more fundamental than that of a cardinal number. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.23 | |
| A reaction: Dummett makes it sound like a proof, which I find hard to believe. Is the notion that I have 'more' sheep than you logically prior to how many sheep we have? If I have one more, that implies the next number, whatever that number may be. Hm. |
| 14136 | A cardinal is an abstraction, from the nature of a set's elements, and from their order [Cantor] |
| Full Idea: The cardinal number of M is the general idea which, by means of our active faculty of thought, is deduced from the collection M, by abstracting from the nature of its diverse elements and from the order in which they are given. | |
| From: George Cantor (works [1880]), quoted by Bertrand Russell - The Principles of Mathematics §284 | |
| A reaction: [Russell cites 'Math. Annalen, XLVI, §1'] See Fine 1998 on this. |
| 15906 | Cantor tried to prove points on a line matched naturals or reals - but nothing in between [Cantor, by Lavine] |
| Full Idea: Cantor said he could show that every infinite set of points on the line could be placed into one-to-one correspondence with either the natural numbers or the real numbers - with no intermediate possibilies (the Continuum hypothesis). His proof failed. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Shaughan Lavine - Understanding the Infinite III.1 |
| 11015 | Cantor's diagonal argument proved you can't list all decimal numbers between 0 and 1 [Cantor, by Read] |
| Full Idea: Cantor's diagonal argument showed that all the infinite decimals between 0 and 1 cannot be written down even in a single never-ending list. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Stephen Read - Thinking About Logic Ch.6 |
| 15903 | A real is associated with an infinite set of infinite Cauchy sequences of rationals [Cantor, by Lavine] |
| Full Idea: Cantor's theory of Cauchy sequences defines a real number to be associated with an infinite set of infinite sequences of rational numbers. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Shaughan Lavine - Understanding the Infinite II.6 | |
| A reaction: This sounds remarkably like the endless decimals we use when we try to write down an actual real number. |
| 18251 | Irrational numbers are the limits of Cauchy sequences of rational numbers [Cantor, by Lavine] |
| Full Idea: Cantor introduced irrationals to play the role of limits of Cauchy sequences of rational numbers. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Shaughan Lavine - Understanding the Infinite 4.2 |
| 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). |
| 15902 | Irrationals and the Dedekind Cut implied infinite classes, but they seemed to have logical difficulties [Cantor, by Lavine] |
| Full Idea: From the very nature of an irrational number, it seems necessary to understand the mathematical infinite thoroughly before an adequate theory of irrationals is possible. Infinite classes are obvious in the Dedekind Cut, but have logical difficulties | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Shaughan Lavine - Understanding the Infinite II Intro | |
| A reaction: Almost the whole theory of analysis (calculus) rested on the irrationals, so a theory of the infinite was suddenly (in the 1870s) vital for mathematics. Cantor wasn't just being eccentric or mystical. |
| 15908 | It was Cantor's diagonal argument which revealed infinities greater than that of the real numbers [Cantor, by Lavine] |
| Full Idea: Cantor's 1891 diagonal argument revealed there are infinitely many infinite powers. Indeed, it showed more: it shows that given any set there is another of greater power. Hence there is an infinite power strictly greater than that of the set of the reals. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Shaughan Lavine - Understanding the Infinite III.2 |
| 13464 | Cantor proposes that there won't be a potential infinity if there is no actual infinity [Cantor, by Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: What we might call 'Cantor's Thesis' is that there won't be a potential infinity of any sort unless there is an actual infinity of some sort. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by William D. Hart - The Evolution of Logic 1 | |
| A reaction: This idea is nicely calculated to stop Aristotle in his tracks. |
| 10112 | The naturals won't map onto the reals, so there are different sizes of infinity [Cantor, by George/Velleman] |
| Full Idea: Cantor showed that the complete totality of natural numbers cannot be mapped 1-1 onto the complete totality of the real numbers - so there are different sizes of infinity. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by A.George / D.J.Velleman - Philosophies of Mathematics Ch.4 |
| 8733 | The Continuum Hypothesis says there are no sets between the natural numbers and reals [Cantor, by Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Cantor's 'continuum hypothesis' is the assertion that there are no infinite cardinalities strictly between the size of the natural numbers and the size of the real numbers. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Stewart Shapiro - Thinking About Mathematics 2.4 | |
| A reaction: The tricky question is whether this hypothesis can be proved. |
| 17889 | CH: An infinite set of reals corresponds 1-1 either to the naturals or to the reals [Cantor, by Koellner] |
| Full Idea: Cantor's Continuum Hypothesis (CH) says that for every infinite set X of reals there is either a one-to-one correspondence between X and the natural numbers, or between X and the real numbers. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Peter Koellner - On the Question of Absolute Undecidability 1.2 | |
| A reaction: Every single writer I read defines this differently, which drives me crazy, but is also helpfully illuminating. There is a moral there somewhere. |
| 13447 | Cantor: there is no size between naturals and reals, or between a set and its power set [Cantor, by Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: Cantor conjectured that there is no size between those of the naturals and the reals - called the 'continuum hypothesis'. The generalized version says that for no infinite set A is there a set larger than A but smaller than P(A). | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by William D. Hart - The Evolution of Logic 1 | |
| A reaction: Thus there are gaps between infinite numbers, and the power set is the next size up from any infinity. Much discussion as ensued about whether these two can be proved. |
| 10883 | Cantor's Continuum Hypothesis says there is a gap between the natural and the real numbers [Cantor, by Horsten] |
| Full Idea: Cantor's Continuum Hypothesis states that there are no sets which are too large for there to be a one-to-one correspondence between the set and the natural numbers, but too small for there to exist a one-to-one correspondence with the real numbers. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Leon Horsten - Philosophy of Mathematics §5.1 |
| 13528 | Continuum Hypothesis: there are no sets between N and P(N) [Cantor, by Wolf,RS] |
| Full Idea: Cantor's conjecture (the Continuum Hypothesis) is that there are no sets between N and P(N). The 'generalized' version replaces N with an arbitrary infinite set. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Robert S. Wolf - A Tour through Mathematical Logic 2.2 | |
| A reaction: The initial impression is that there is a single gap in the numbers, like a hole in ozone layer, but the generalised version implies an infinity of gaps. How can there be gaps in the numbers? Weird. |
| 9555 | Continuum Hypothesis: no cardinal greater than aleph-null but less than cardinality of the continuum [Cantor, by Chihara] |
| Full Idea: Cantor's Continuum Hypothesis was that there is no cardinal number greater than aleph-null but less than the cardinality of the continuum. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Charles Chihara - A Structural Account of Mathematics 05.1 | |
| A reaction: I have no view on this (have you?), but the proposal that there are gaps in the number sequences has to excite all philosophers. |
| 18174 | Cantor extended ordinals into the transfinite, and they can thus measure infinite cardinalities [Cantor, by Maddy] |
| Full Idea: Cantor's second innovation was to extend the sequence of ordinal numbers into the transfinite, forming a handy scale for measuring infinite cardinalities. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Penelope Maddy - Naturalism in Mathematics I.1 | |
| A reaction: Struggling with this. The ordinals seem to locate the cardinals, but in what sense do they 'measure' them? |
| 15893 | Cantor's theory concerns collections which can be counted, using the ordinals [Cantor, by Lavine] |
| Full Idea: Cantor's set theory was not of collections in some familiar sense, but of collections that can be counted using the indexes - the finite and transfinite ordinal numbers. ..He treated infinite collections as if they were finite. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Shaughan Lavine - Understanding the Infinite I |
| 18173 | Cardinality strictly concerns one-one correspondence, to test infinite sameness of size [Cantor, by Maddy] |
| Full Idea: Cantor's first innovation was to treat cardinality as strictly a matter of one-to-one correspondence, so that the question of whether two infinite sets are or aren't of the same size suddenly makes sense. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Penelope Maddy - Naturalism in Mathematics I.1 | |
| A reaction: It makes sense, except that all sets which are infinite but countable can be put into one-to-one correspondence with one another. What's that all about, then? |
| 10232 | Property extensions outstrip objects, so shortage of objects caused the Caesar problem [Cantor, by Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Cantor's theorem entails that there are more property extensions than objects. So there are not enough objects in any domain to serve as extensions for that domain. So Frege's view that numbers are objects led to the Caesar problem. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Stewart Shapiro - Philosophy of Mathematics 4.6 | |
| A reaction: So the possibility that Caesar might have to be a number arises because otherwise we are threatening to run out of numbers? Is that really the problem? |
| 18176 | Pure mathematics is pure set theory [Cantor] |
| Full Idea: Pure mathematics ...according to my conception is nothing other than pure set theory. | |
| From: George Cantor (works [1880], I.1), quoted by Penelope Maddy - Naturalism in Mathematics I.1 | |
| A reaction: [an unpublished paper of 1884] So right at the beginning of set theory this claim was being made, before it was axiomatised, and so on. Zermelo endorsed the view, and it flourished unchallenged until Benacerraf (1965). |
| 8631 | Cantor says that maths originates only by abstraction from objects [Cantor, by Frege] |
| Full Idea: Cantor calls mathematics an empirical science in so far as it begins with consideration of things in the external world; on his view, number originates only by abstraction from objects. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Gottlob Frege - Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) §21 | |
| A reaction: Frege utterly opposed this view, and he seems to have won the day, but I am rather thrilled to find the great Cantor endorsing my own intuitions on the subject. The difficulty is to explain 'abstraction'. |
| 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'. |
| 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… |
| 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? |
| 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. |
| 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). |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 8715 | Infinities expand the bounds of the conceivable; we explore concepts to explore conceivability [Cantor, by Friend] |
| Full Idea: Cantor (in his exploration of infinities) pushed the bounds of conceivability further than anyone before him. To discover what is conceivable, we have to enquire into the concept. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Michčle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics 6.5 | |
| A reaction: This remark comes during a discussion of Husserl's phenomenology. Intuitionists challenge Cantor's claim, and restrict what is conceivable to what is provable. Does possibility depend on conceivability? |
| 13454 | Cantor says (vaguely) that we abstract numbers from equal sized sets [Hart,WD on Cantor] |
| Full Idea: Cantor thought that we abstract a number as something common to all and only those sets any one of which has as many members as any other. ...However one wants to see the logic of the inference. The irony is that set theory lays out this logic. | |
| From: comment on George Cantor (works [1880]) by William D. Hart - The Evolution of Logic 1 | |
| A reaction: The logic Hart has in mind is the notion of an equivalence relation between sets. This idea sums up the older and more modern concepts of abstraction, the first as psychological, the second as logical (or trying very hard to be!). Cf Idea 9145. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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? |
| 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. |
| 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). |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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…? |
| 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. |
| 1743 | The greatest deterrence for injustice is if uninjured parties feel as much indignation as those who are injured [Solon, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Men can be most effectively deterred from committing injustice if those who are not injured feel as much indignation as those who are. | |
| From: report of Solon (reports [c.600 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 01.So.10 |
| 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. |
| 10863 | Cantor proved that three dimensions have the same number of points as one dimension [Cantor, by Clegg] |
| Full Idea: Cantor proved that one-dimensional space has exactly the same number of points as does two dimensions, or our familiar three-dimensional space. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by Brian Clegg - Infinity: Quest to Think the Unthinkable Ch.14 |
| 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'). |
| 13465 | Only God is absolutely infinite [Cantor, by Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: Cantor said that only God is absolutely infinite. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (works [1880]) by William D. Hart - The Evolution of Logic 1 | |
| A reaction: We are used to the austere 'God of the philosophers', but this gives us an even more austere 'God of the mathematicians'. |
| 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). |
| 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. |