15 ideas
| 7396 | Hobbes created English-language philosophy [Hobbes, by Tuck] |
| Full Idea: Hobbes created English-language philosophy. | |
| From: report of Thomas Hobbes (The Elements of Law [1640]) by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Pref | |
| A reaction: Tuck mentions Hooker as a predecessor in jurisprudence. Otherwise, an impressive label. |
| 16721 | Changes in secondary qualities are caused by changes in primary qualities [Giles of Orleans] |
| Full Idea: Every alteration in secondary qualities is caused by some alteration made in the primary qualities. | |
| From: Giles of Orleans (On 'Generation and Corruption' [1270], I.6c) | |
| A reaction: Pasnau calls this the 'supervenience' thesis, here with the addition of causation. Was this doctrine retained by Locke and Boyle? |
| 16638 | The qualities of the world are mere appearances; reality is the motions which cause them [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Whatsoever accidents or qualities our senses make us think there be in the world, they are not there, but are seemings and apparitions only. The things that really are in the world without us are those motions by which these seemings are caused. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (The Elements of Law [1640], I.2.10), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 10.2 | |
| A reaction: This seems to count as a sense-datum theory, rather than a representative theory of perception, since it makes no commitment to the qualities containing any accurate information at all. We just start from the qualities and try to work it out. |
| 16688 | Evidence is conception, which is imagination, which proceeds from the senses [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: All evidence is conception, as it is said, and all conception is imagination and proceeds from sense. And spirits we suppose to be those substances which work not upon the sense, and therefore not conceptible. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (The Elements of Law [1640], I.11.5), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 16.2 | |
| A reaction: This is exactly the same as Hume's claim that all ideas are the result of impressions, and is the very essence of empiricism. We see here that such an epistemology can have huge consequences. |
| 7405 | Experience can't prove universal truths [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Experience concludeth nothing universally. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (The Elements of Law [1640], I.4.10), quoted by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: Empiricists seem proud to claim this limitation on human understanding, where rationalists like Leibniz use it as an argument against empiricism. Kripke says (e.g. Idea 4966) they are both wrong! I sympathise with Kripke. |
| 22098 | Socrates neglects the gap between knowing what is good and doing good [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle] |
| Full Idea: There is a fundamental weakness in Socrates, that he does not take into account the gap between knowing what is good and actually putting this into action. | |
| From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (The Concept of Dread (/Anxiety) [1844]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 5 | |
| A reaction: This rejects Socrates's intellectualism about weakness of will. It is perhaps a better criticism that Aristotle's view that desires sometimes overcome the will. It is also the problem of motivation in Kantian deontology. Or utilitarianism. |
| 7408 | It is an error that reason should control the passions, which give right guidance on their own [Hobbes, by Tuck] |
| Full Idea: Hobbes (and Descartes, and many contemporaries) argued that the traditional idea that reason should control the passions was an error, and that (properly understood) our emotions would guide us in the right direction. | |
| From: report of Thomas Hobbes (The Elements of Law [1640]) by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: I'm an intellectualist on this one. It strikes me as rather naïve and romantic to think that unthinking emotion could ever consistently approach what is right. A recipe for disaster. |
| 7407 | Good and evil are what please us; goodness and badness the powers causing them [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: We call good and evil the things that please and displease us; and so we call goodness and badness, the qualities of powers whereby they do it. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (The Elements of Law [1640], I.7.3), quoted by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: It is pointed out by Tuck that this is just like his treatment of colour terms (values as secondary qualities). I would have thought it was obvious that I could say 'x pleases me, although I disapprove of it' (e.g. black humour). |
| 7410 | Self-preservation is basic, and people judge differently about that, implying ethical relativism [Hobbes, by Tuck] |
| Full Idea: If men are their own judges of what conduces to their preservation, ..all men make different decisions about what counts as a danger, so (for Hobbes) the grimmest version of ethical relativism seems to be the only possible ethical vision. | |
| From: report of Thomas Hobbes (The Elements of Law [1640]) by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This might depend on self-preservation being the only fundamental value. But if self-preservation is not a pressing issue, presumably other values might come into play, some of them less concerned with the individual's own interests. |
| 7409 | Hobbes shifted from talk of 'the good' to talk of 'rights' [Hobbes, by Tuck] |
| Full Idea: Hobbes (like Grotius) shifted from talking about 'the good', which had been the traditional subject for both ancient and Renaissance moralists, to talking instead about 'rights'. | |
| From: report of Thomas Hobbes (The Elements of Law [1640]) by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This is part of the crucial shift away from the Greek interest in excellence of character, towards the Enlightenment legalistic interest in right actions, as well as social rights. Bad move, well analysed by MacIntyre. |
| 22096 | Anxiety is not a passing mood, but a response to human freedom [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle] |
| Full Idea: For Kierkegaard anxiety is not simply a mood or an emotion that certain people experience at certain times, but a basic response to freedom that is part of the human condition. | |
| From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (The Concept of Dread (/Anxiety) [1844]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 5 | |
| A reaction: Outside of Christianity, this may be Kierkegaard's most influential idea - since existential individualism is floating around in the romantic movement. But the Byronic hero experiences a sort of anxiety. If you can't face anxiety, become a monk or nun. |
| 22097 | The ultimate in life is learning to be anxious in the right way [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Every human being must learn to be anxious in order that he might not perish either by never having been in anxiety or by succumbing in anxiety. Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learnt the ultimate. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (The Concept of Dread (/Anxiety) [1844], p.154), quoted by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 5 | |
| A reaction: I think this is the most existentialist quotation I have found in Kierkegaard. It sounds circular. You must be in anxiety because otherwise you won't be able to cope with anxiety? I suppose anxiety is facing up to his concept of truth. |
| 21909 | Ultimate knowledge is being anxious in the right way [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Whoever learns to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (The Concept of Dread (/Anxiety) [1844], p.187), quoted by Alastair Hannay - Kierkegaard 06 | |
| A reaction: This shows us that Kierkegaard had a rather bizarre mental life which the rest of us have little chance of penetrating. I'll have a go at cataloguing my types of anxiety, but I'm not hopeful. |
| 20758 | Anxiety is staring into the yawning abyss of freedom [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: One may liken anxiety to dizziness. He whose eyes chance to look down into a yawning abyss becomes dizzy. Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom which is when freedom gazes down into its own possibility, grasping at finiteness to sustain itself. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (The Concept of Dread (/Anxiety) [1844], p.55), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 6 'Moods' | |
| A reaction: Most of us rapidly retreat from the thought of the infinity of things we might choose. Choosing bizarrely merely to assert one's freedom is simple stupidity. |
| 7411 | The attributes of God just show our inability to conceive his nature [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: All the attributes of God signify our inability and defect of power to conceive any thing concerning his nature. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (The Elements of Law [1640], I.10.2), quoted by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: Presumably he means that 'omnipotence' should just be translated as 'mind-boggling power'. St Anselm's concept of God (Idea 1405) is helpful here, placing it at the upper limit of what can actually be conceived. |