31 ideas
| 354 | Wisdom makes virtue and true goodness possible [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It is wisdom that makes possible courage and self-control and integrity or, in a word, true goodness. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 069b) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle also says that prudence (phronesis) makes virtue possible. |
| 370 | Philosophy is a purification of the soul ready for the afterlife [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Souls which have purified themselves sufficiently by philosophy will live after death without bodies. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 114b) | |
| A reaction: Purifying it of what? Error, or desire, or narrow-mindedness, or the physical? |
| 350 | In investigation the body leads us astray, but the soul gets a clear view of the facts [Plato] |
| Full Idea: When philosophers investigate with the help of the body they are led astray, but through reflection the soul gets a clear view of the facts. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 065c) |
| 362 | The greatest misfortune for a person is to develop a dislike for argument [Plato] |
| Full Idea: No greater misfortune could happen to anyone than developing a dislike for argument. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 089d) |
| 13155 | If you add one to one, which one becomes two, or do they both become two? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: I cannot convince myself that when you add one to one either the first or the second one becomes two, or they both become two by the addition of the one to the other, ...or that when you divide one, the cause of becoming two is now the division. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 097d) | |
| A reaction: Lovely questions, all leading to the conclusion that two consists of partaking in duality, to which you can come by several different routes. |
| 21347 | If Simmias is taller than Socrates, that isn't a feature that is just in Simmias [Plato] |
| Full Idea: When you say Simmias is taller than Socrates but shorter than Phaedo, so you mean there is in Simmias both tallness and shortness? - I do. ...But surely he is not taller than Socrates because he is Simmias but because of the tallness he happens to have? | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 102b-c) | |
| A reaction: He adds that both people must be cited. This appears to be what we now call a rejection relative height as an 'internal' relation, which is it would presumably be if it was a feature of one or of both men. |
| 360 | We must have a prior knowledge of equality, if we see 'equal' things and realise they fall short of it [Plato] |
| Full Idea: We must have some previous knowledge of equality, before the time when we saw equal things, but realised that they fell short of it. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 075a) |
| 1 | There is only one source for all beauty [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If anything is beautiful other than beauty itself, it is beautiful for no other reason but because it participates in that beautiful. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 100c) | |
| A reaction: The Greek word will be 'kalon' (beautiful, fine, noble). Like Aristotle, I find it baffling that such diversity could have a single source. Beautiful things have diverse aims. |
| 368 | Other things are named after the Forms because they participate in them [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The reason why other things are called after the forms is that they participate in the forms. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 102a) |
| 16516 | The ship which Theseus took to Crete is now sent to Delos crowned with flowers [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The day before the trial the prow of the ship that the Athenians send to Delos had been crowned with garlands. - Which ship is that? - It is the ship in which, the Athenians say, Theseus once sailed to Crete, taking the victims. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 058a) | |
| A reaction: Not philosophical, but this is the Ship of Theseus whose subsequent identity, Plutarch tells us, became a matter of dispute. |
| 357 | People are obviously recollecting when they react to a geometrical diagram [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The way in which people react to a geometrical diagram or anything like that is unmistakable proof of the theory of recollection. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 073a) |
| 359 | If we feel the inadequacy of a resemblance, we must recollect the original [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If someone sees a resemblance, but feels that it falls far short of the original, they must therefore have a recollection of the original. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 074e) |
| 9343 | To achieve pure knowledge, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things with the soul [Plato] |
| Full Idea: We are convinced that if we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 066c) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the original ideal which motivates the devotion to a priori knowledge - that it will lead to a 'pure' knowledge, which in Plato's case will be eternal and necessary knowledge, like taking lessons from the gods. Wrong. |
| 15859 | To investigate the causes of things, study what is best for them [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If one wished to know the cause of each thing, why it comes to be or perishes or exists, one had to find what was the best way for it to be, or to be acted upon, or to act. Then it befitted a man to investigate only ...what is best. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 097d) | |
| A reaction: A reversal of the modern idea of 'best explanation'. Socrates is citing Anaxagoras's proposal to understand things by interpreting the workings of a supreme Mind. It is the religious version of best explanation. |
| 13154 | Do we think and experience with blood, air or fire, or could it be our brain? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Is it with the blood that we think, or with the air or the fire that is in us? Or is it none of these, but the brain that supplies our senses of hearing and sight and smell. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 097a) | |
| A reaction: In retrospect it seems surprising that such clever people hadn't worked this one out, given the evidence of anatomy, in animals and people, and given brain injuries. By the time of Galen they appear to have got the answer. |
| 8130 | Qualities of experience are just representational aspects of experience ('Representationalism') [Harman, by Burge] |
| Full Idea: Harman defended what came to be known as 'representationalism' - the view that qualitative aspects of experience are nothing other than representational aspects. | |
| From: report of Gilbert Harman (The Intrinsic Quality of Experience [1990]) by Tyler Burge - Philosophy of Mind: 1950-2000 p.459 | |
| A reaction: Functionalists like Harman have a fairly intractable problem with the qualities of experience, and this may be clutching at straws. What does 'represent' mean? How is the representation achieved? Why that particular quale? |
| 364 | One soul can't be more or less of a soul than another [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Is one soul, even minutely, more or less of a soul than another? Not in the least. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 093b) | |
| A reaction: This idea is attractive because unconsciousness and death seem to be abrupt procedures, and so appear to be all-or-nothing, but I would personally view extreme Alzheimer's as an erasing of the soul, though a minimum level of it seems all-or-nothing. |
| 7404 | Nations are not obliged to help one-another, but are obliged not to harm one another [Grotius, by Tuck] |
| Full Idea: Grotius explored the implications of the idea that nation-states were under no obligation to help one another, but they were obliged not to harm each other. | |
| From: report of Hugo Grotius (On the Law of War and Peace [1625]) by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: This is quite a striking disanalogy between accepted personal morality and political morality. There are signs in recent years of some recognition that other nations should not just sit and watch suffering. |
| 361 | It is a mistake to think that the most violent pleasure or pain is therefore the truest reality [Plato] |
| Full Idea: When anyone's soul feels a keen pleasure or pain it cannot help supposing that whatever causes the most violent emotion is the plainest and truest reality - which it is not. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 084c) | |
| A reaction: Do people think that? Most people distinguish subjective from objective. Wounded soldiers are also aware of victory or defeat. |
| 351 | War aims at the acquisition of wealth, because we are enslaved to the body [Plato] |
| Full Idea: All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth, and we want this because of the body, to which we are slave. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 066c) |
| 7402 | Everyone has a right of self-preservation, and harming others is usually unjustifiable [Grotius, by Tuck] |
| Full Idea: Grotius said that all men would agree that everyone has a fundamental right to preserve themselves, and that wanton or unnecessary injury to another person is unjustifiable. | |
| From: report of Hugo Grotius (On the Law of War and Peace [1625]) by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: Who cares if it is 'justifiable'? Do I have to 'justify' killing a mosquito if it lands on my arm? Grotius is taking a step beyond saying that people should defend themselves, to say that they have a 'right' to - the only truly basic right. |
| 21938 | Democracy needs respect for individuality, but the 'community of friends' implies strict equality [Grotius] |
| Full Idea: There is no democracy without respect for irreducible singularity, but there is no democracy with the 'community of friends' without the calculation of majorities, without identifiable representable subjects, all equal. | |
| From: Hugo Grotius (On the Law of War and Peace [1625]), quoted by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 7 | |
| A reaction: [source not given] Derrida calls this conflict 'tragic'. The obvious reply is that equality is not an absolute. We can be equal in voting rights while being unequal in height or musical talent. |
| 19845 | A person is free to renounce their state, as long as it is not a moment of crisis [Grotius, by Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Grotius thinks that each person can renounce his state and leave the country. (n15: provided it is not to evade one's duty the moment the homeland needs us; this would be criminal and punishable; it would not be withdrawal, but desertion) | |
| From: report of Hugo Grotius (On the Law of War and Peace [1625]) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - The Social Contract (tr Cress) III.18 | |
| A reaction: The obvious example is Britons going to America in 1939, or (more controversially) conscripts going to Canada to avoid fighting in Vietnam. I'm unclear whether the idea in the note is that of Grotius or of Rousseau). Is tax exile OK, then? |
| 22133 | Grotius and Pufendorf based natural law on real (rather than idealised) humanity [Grotius, by Ford,JD] |
| Full Idea: Grotius and Pufendorf transformed the natural law tradition by starting from identifiable traits of human nature rather than ideas about what human beings ought to be. | |
| From: report of Hugo Grotius (On the Law of War and Peace [1625]) by J.D. Ford - Pufendorf, Samuel p.863 |
| 7406 | A natural right of self-preservation is balanced by a natural law to avoid unnecessary harm [Grotius, by Tuck] |
| Full Idea: For Grotius, there was a fundamental 'natural right' of self-preservation upon which all known moralities and codes of social behaviour must have been constructed, but it is balanced by a fundament duty or 'natural law' to abstain from harming others. | |
| From: report of Hugo Grotius (On the Law of War and Peace [1625]) by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This theory has the virtue of economy, but I don't see how you can clearly justify those particular natural rights and laws, without allowing others to creep in, such as a right to a decent share of food, or a law requiring some fairness. |
| 7403 | Grotius ignored elaborate natural law theories, preferring a basic right of self-preservation [Grotius, by Tuck] |
| Full Idea: Grotius said there was a minimum core of morality (based on self-preservation), and disregarded the elaborate accounts of principles of natural law which Aristotelians had always sought to develop. | |
| From: report of Hugo Grotius (On the Law of War and Peace [1625]) by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: Aquinas would be the key Aristotelian here. I tend towards the Aristotelian view. If you go for the minimal view, it is not clear why there is a 'right' to self-preservation, rather than a mere desire for it. |
| 23585 | It is permissible in a just cause to capture a place in neutral territory [Grotius] |
| Full Idea: It is permissible for one who is waging a just war to take possession of a place situated in a country free from hostilities. | |
| From: Hugo Grotius (On the Law of War and Peace [1625], II.ii.x), quoted by Michael Walzer - Just and Unjust Wars 15 n | |
| A reaction: This rejects Combatant Equality, allowing the just to do what is morally forbidden to the unjust. |
| 13156 | Fancy being unable to distinguish a cause from its necessary background conditions! [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Fancy being unable to distinguish between the cause of a thing, and the condition without which it could not be a cause. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 099c) | |
| A reaction: Not as simple as he thinks. It seems fairly easy to construct a case where the immediately impacting event remains constant, and the background condition is changed. Even worse when negligence is held to be the cause. |
| 369 | If the Earth is spherical and in the centre, it is kept in place by universal symmetry, not by force [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If the earth is spherical and in the middle of the heavens, it needs neither air nor force to keep it from falling. The uniformity of heaven and equilibrium of earth are sufficient support. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 108e) |
| 6892 | Moral principles have some validity without a God commanding obedience [Grotius, by Mautner] |
| Full Idea: In the Prolegomena to his work there is a famous statement that moral principles laid down in the work would have some degree of validity even if there was no God commanding obedience. | |
| From: report of Hugo Grotius (On the Law of War and Peace [1625]) by Thomas Mautner - Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy p.229 | |
| A reaction: I am not clear why Grotius felt obliged to qualify his claim with the phrase 'some degree'. I don't see how God's command can affect the 'validity' of morality, or how there can be a middle ground between dependence on and independence of God. |
| 363 | Whether the soul pre-exists our body depends on whether it contains the ultimate standard of reality [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The theory that our soul exists even before it enters the body surely stands or falls with the soul's possession of the ultimate standard of reality. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 092d) |