58 ideas
| 6200 | Wisdom is knowing the highest good, and conforming the will to it [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Wisdom, theoretically regarded, means the knowledge of the highest good and, practically, the conformability of the will to the highest good. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.II.II.V) | |
| A reaction: This seems a narrow account of wisdom, focusing entirely on goodness rather than truth. A mind that valued nothing but understood everything would have a considerable degree of wisdom, in the normal use of that word. |
| 7490 | Because of Darwin, wisdom as a definite attainable state has faded [Watson] |
| Full Idea: As well as killing the need for God, Darwin's legacy transformed the idea of wisdom, as some definite attainable state, however far off. | |
| From: Peter Watson (Ideas [2005], Ch.31) | |
| A reaction: Where does this leave philosophy, if it is still (as I like to think) the love of wisdom? The best we can hope for is wisdom as a special sort of journey - touring, rather than arriving. |
| 7461 | The three key ideas are the soul, Europe, and the experiment [Watson] |
| Full Idea: The three key ideas that I have settled on in the history of ideas are: the soul, Europe, and the experiment. | |
| From: Peter Watson (Ideas [2005], Intro) | |
| A reaction: The soul is a nice choice (rather than God). 'Europe' seems rather vast and indeterminate to count as a key idea. |
| 7464 | The big idea: imitation, the soul, experiments, God, heliocentric universe, evolution? [Watson] |
| Full Idea: Candidates for the most important idea in human history are: mimetic thinking (imitation), the soul, the experiment, the One True God, the heliocentric universe, and evolution. | |
| From: Peter Watson (Ideas [2005], Ch.03) | |
| A reaction: From this list I would choose the heliocentric universe, because it so dramatically downgraded the importance of our species (effectively we went from everything to nothing). We still haven't recovered from the shock. |
| 6207 | What fills me with awe are the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], Concl) | |
| A reaction: I am beginning to think that the two major issues of all philosophy are ontology and metaethics, and Kant is close to agreeing with me. He certainly wasn't implying that astronomy was a key aspect of philosophy. |
| 6184 | Consistency is the highest obligation of a philosopher [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Consistency is the highest obligation of a philosopher and yet the most rarely found. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.1.1.§3) | |
| A reaction: I agree with this, and it also strikes me as the single most important principle of Kant's philosophy, which is the key to his whole moral theory. |
| 6203 | Metaphysics is just a priori universal principles of physics [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysics only contains the pure a priori principles of physics in their universal import. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.II.II.VI) | |
| A reaction: 'Universal' seems to imply 'necessary'. If you thought that no a priori universal principles were possible, you would be left with physics. I quite like the definition, except that I think there would still be metaphysics even if there were no physics. |
| 7465 | Babylonian thinking used analogy, rather than deduction or induction [Watson] |
| Full Idea: In Babylon thought seems to have worked mainly by analogy, rather than by the deductive or inductive processes we use in the modern world. | |
| From: Peter Watson (Ideas [2005], Ch.04) | |
| A reaction: Analogy seems to be closely related to induction, if it is comparing instances of something. Given their developments in maths and astronomy, they can't have been complete strangers to the 'modern' way of thought. |
| 7466 | Mesopotamian numbers applied to specific things, and then became abstract [Watson] |
| Full Idea: To begin with, in Mesopotamia, counting systems applied to specific commodities (so the symbol for 'three sheep' applied only to sheep, and 'three cows' applied only to cows), but later words for abstract qualities emerged. | |
| From: Peter Watson (Ideas [2005], Ch.04) | |
| A reaction: It seems from this that we actually have a record of the discovery of true numbers. Delightful. I think the best way to describe what happened is that they began to spot patterns. |
| 18933 | Not-Being obviously doesn't exist, and the five modes of Being are all impossible [Gorgias, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: I. Nothing exists. a) Not-Being does not exist. b) Being does not exist as everlasting, as created, as both, as One, or as Many. II. If anything does exist, it is incomprehensible. III. If existence is comprehensible, it is incommunicable. | |
| From: report of Gorgias (fragments/reports [c.443 BCE], B03) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09 | |
| A reaction: [Also Sextus Empiricus, Against Logicians I.65-] For Part I he works through all the possible modes of being he can think of, and explains why none of them are possible. It is worth remembering that Gorgias loved rhetoric, not philosophy! |
| 6181 | Necessity cannot be extracted from an empirical proposition [Kant] |
| Full Idea: It is a clear contradiction to try to extract necessity from an empirical proposition. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], Pref) | |
| A reaction: This is precisely the idea which Kripke challenged, claiming that the necessary essences of natural kinds such as gold have to be discovered empirically. All my intuitions are with Kant (and Hume) on this, but it is a complex issue… |
| 5864 | Destroy seriousness with laughter, and laughter with seriousness [Gorgias] |
| Full Idea: Destroy the seriousness of others with laughter, and their laughter with seriousness. | |
| From: Gorgias (fragments/reports [c.443 BCE]), quoted by Aristotle - The Art of Rhetoric 1419b | |
| A reaction: This sounds like brilliant tactical advice, which should be on the wall of every barrister's chambers. This is a case of rhetoric having something to teach us which is nothing at all to do with truth. It is more like learning karate. |
| 9866 | Gorgias says rhetoric is the best of arts, because it enslaves without using force [Gorgias, by Plato] |
| Full Idea: Gorgias insists that the art of persuasion is superior to all others because it enslaves all the rest, with their own consent, not by force, and is therefore by far the best of all the arts. | |
| From: report of Gorgias (fragments/reports [c.443 BCE]) by Plato - Philebus 58a | |
| A reaction: A nice point, and it is not unreasonable to rank the arts in order of their power. To enchant, without achieving agreement, and to speak truth without persuading, are both very fine, but there is something about success that cannot be gainsaid. |
| 6183 | Can pure reason determine the will, or are empirical conditions relevant? [Kant] |
| Full Idea: This is the first question: Is pure reason sufficient of itself to determine the will, or is it only as empirically conditioned that it can do so? | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the core question of intellectualism, which goes back to Socrates. You can only accept the question if you accept the concept of 'pure' reason. Values seem to be needed for action, as well as empirical circumstances. |
| 6191 | The will is the faculty of purposes, which guide desires according to principles [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The will could be defined as the faculty of purposes, since they are always determining grounds of the faculty of desire according to principles. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.1.II) | |
| A reaction: Do animals have wills? Kant implies that you can only have a will if you have principles. Compare Hobbes' rather less elevated definition of the will (Idea 2362). |
| 6190 | The sole objects of practical reason are the good and the evil [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The sole objects of a practical reason are thus those of the good and the evil. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.1.II) | |
| A reaction: Of course, you may aim to achieve x because it is good, while I judge x to be evil. |
| 18235 | Only human reason can confer value on our choices [Kant, by Korsgaard] |
| Full Idea: Kant argues that only human reason is in a position to confer value on the objects of human choice. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788]) by Christine M. Korsgaard - Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value 8 'Kant' | |
| A reaction: If the source of value is humans, then it is not immediately clear why it is only our reason that does the conferring. What is the status of a choice on which reason fails to confer value? The idea is that reason, unlike desire, has intrinsic value. |
| 6196 | People cannot come to morality through feeling, because morality must not be sensuous [Kant] |
| Full Idea: In the subject there is no antecedent feeling tending to morality; that is impossible, because all feeling is sensuous, and the drives of the moral disposition must be free from every sensuous condition. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.1.III) | |
| A reaction: I'm not quite clear (even after reading Kant) why moral drives 'must' be free of sensuousness. Aristotle gives a much better account, when he tells us that the sensuous drives must be trained in the right way, and must be in harmony with the reason. |
| 18675 | Kant may rate two things as finally valuable: having a good will, and deserving happiness [Orsi on Kant] |
| Full Idea: In some interpretations it appears that for Kant two things are finally valuable: good will (unconditionally), and deserved happiness (conditionally on the value of good will). | |
| From: comment on Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788]) by Francesco Orsi - Value Theory 2.2 | |
| A reaction: It doesn't sound difficult to reconcile these two. Just ask 'what is required of someone to deserve happiness?'. |
| 22007 | An autonomous agent has dignity [Würde], which has absolute worth [Kant, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: For Kant, there is something about beings that can act autonomously that is itself of 'absolute worth', which Kant calls the 'dignity' [Würde] of each such agent. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 02 | |
| A reaction: This answers my puzzle about where Kant's fundamental values come from. Surely wicked actions can be autonomous? Autonomous actions aren't thereby good actions. A 'good' will, course, whatever that is. Rational? My problem with existentialist ethics. |
| 18234 | The good will is unconditionally good, because it is the only possible source of value [Kant, by Korsgaard] |
| Full Idea: Kant argues that the good will is unconditionally good because it is the only thing able to be a source of value. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788]) by Christine M. Korsgaard - Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value 8 'Kant' | |
| A reaction: The obvious worry is the circularity of resting a theory of value on identifying a 'good' will as its source. |
| 6192 | Good or evil cannot be a thing, but only a maxim of action, making the person good or evil [Kant] |
| Full Idea: If something is held to be absolutely good or evil in all respects and without qualification, it could not be a thing but only the manner of acting, i.e., it could only be the maxim of the will, and consequently the acting person himself is good or evil. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.1.II) | |
| A reaction: It goes on to deny that pain is intrinsically evil, but his reason for the claim is not clear. Nevetheless, I think he is right. This remark is an important bridge between Enlightenment concerns with law and Greek concerns with character. |
| 6197 | Morality involves duty and respect for law, not love of the outcome [Kant] |
| Full Idea: All the morality of actions may be placed in their necessity from duty and from respect for the law, and not from love for or leaning toward that which the action is to produce. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.1.III) | |
| A reaction: Kant tries to reject consequentialism, but you cannot assess your duty or the universal law without an assessment of probable consequences, and we could never choose between laws if we did not already see value in the outcome. |
| 6193 | Our happiness is all that matters, not as a sensation, but as satisfaction with our whole existence [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Our happiness is the only thing of importance, provided this is judged, as reason requires, not according to transitory sensation but according to the influence which this contingency has on our whole existence and our satisfaction with it. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.1.II) | |
| A reaction: This is closer to the Greek eudaimonia than to the modern conception of happiness, which is largely just a feeling. Kant's view seems more like a private judgement on your whole life, where the Greek idea seems more public and objective. |
| 1452 | Happiness is the condition of a rational being for whom everything goes as they wish [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Happiness is the condition of a rational being in the world with whom everything goes according to his wish and will. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.II.II.V) | |
| A reaction: For such a sophisticated and rational philosopher this seems a rather crude notion. Reluctant alcoholics don't fit. Bradley has a much better definition (Idea 5655). |
| 1454 | Morality is not about making ourselves happy, but about being worthy of happiness [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we should make ourselves happy, but how we should become worthy of happiness. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.II.II.V) | |
| A reaction: Whatever else you think of Kant's moral theory, this remark is a clarion call we can all recognise. Suppose we all somehow ended up in a state of maximal happiness by systematically betraying one another. |
| 6194 | The highest worth for human beings lies in dispositions, not just actions [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The highest worth which human beings can and should procure for themselves lies in dispositions and not in actions only. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.1.II) | |
| A reaction: This leaves the problem of the well-meaning fool, who has wonderful dispositions but poor judgement. What Kant is describing here is better known as virtue. See Idea 58. |
| 6198 | Virtue is the supreme state of our pursuit of happiness, and so is supreme good [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Virtue (as the worthiness to be happy) is the supreme condition of whatever appears to us to be desirable and thus of all our pursuit of happiness and, consequently, the supreme good. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.II.II) | |
| A reaction: Thus Kant can claim to be a virtue theorist, but giving us a very different account of how virtue arises. He emphasises elsewhere (Idea 6197) that the supreme good must be in the will, not in the outcome. 'Virtue' is here a rather thin concept. |
| 1456 | Moral law is holy, and the best we can do is achieve virtue through respect for the law [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The moral law is holy (unyielding), although all the moral perfection to which man can attain is still only virtue, that is, a rightful disposition arising from respect for the law. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.II.II.V) | |
| A reaction: In comparison with Aristotle's view of virtue this is very passive and external. Aristotle doesn't need laws for virtue, he needs inner harmony and a grasp of what has high value. |
| 6185 | No one would lend money unless a universal law made it secure, even after death [Kant] |
| Full Idea: If my maxim is 'augment my property by all safe means', I can't make that a law allowing me to keep a dead man's loan, because no one would make a loan if that were the moral law. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.1.1.§4) | |
| A reaction: This is a simple illustration of Kant's strategy and it shows clearly how, for all his talk of 'pure reason', his moral law is strongly guided by consequences, and that these can only judged by prior values - for example, that loans are a good thing. |
| 6187 | Universality determines the will, and hence extends self-love into altruism [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The form of universality is itself the determining ground of the will, …and from this limitation alone, and not from the addition of any exernal drive, the concept of obligation arises to extend the maxim of self-love also to the happiness of others. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.1.1.§8) | |
| A reaction: This is the heroic and optimistic part of Kant's philosophy, the attempt to derive altruism from pure reason. The claim seems to be that maxims don't motivate until they have been universalised. I fear that only altruism could add such motivation. |
| 6201 | Everyone (even God) must treat rational beings as ends in themselves, and not just as means [Kant] |
| Full Idea: In the order of ends, man (and every rational being) is an end in himself, i.e., he is never to be used merely as a means for someone (even for God) without at the same time being himself an end. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.II.II.V) | |
| A reaction: The worry here is that Kant has set up an exam that you have to pass before you can be treated as a moral end. Animals and the ecosystem will fail the exam, and even some human beings will be borderline cases. We should respect everything. |
| 6186 | A holy will is incapable of any maxims which conflict with the moral law [Kant] |
| Full Idea: A holy will is one which is incapable of any maxims which conflict with the moral law | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.1.1.§7) | |
| A reaction: If such a will is 'incapable' of conflicting with moral law, it will not need to think or assess before action. This means that Kant's moral ideal can ultimately exclude the free-thinking intellect. Kant is describing a state of true Aristotelian virtue. |
| 6195 | Reason cannot solve the problem of why a law should motivate the will [Kant] |
| Full Idea: How a law in itself can be the direct motive of the will (which is the essence of morality) is an insoluble problem for the human reason. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.1.III) | |
| A reaction: If that is the great man's final word, then it is tempting to switch to an empirical moral theory, such as that of Hobbes or Hume or E.O. Wilson, which starts from what motivations are available, and builds morality up from that. |
| 7477 | Modern democracy is actually elective oligarchy [Watson] |
| Full Idea: What we regard as democracy in the twenty-first century is actually elective oligarchy. | |
| From: Peter Watson (Ideas [2005], Ch.06) | |
| A reaction: Even dictatorships want to be called 'democracies'. The modern system is a bit of a concession to Plato, and he would probably have preferred it to his system, because at least the rulers tend to be more educated than the direct assembly. |
| 6188 | A permanent natural order could not universalise a rule permitting suicide [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The maxim of freely disposing of my life could not hold as a universal law of nature, …because no one could choose to end his life, for such an arrangement could not constitute a permanent natural order. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.1.1.I) | |
| A reaction: This sort of claim brings out the advantanges of Aristotelian 'particularism' (expounded by Dancy). Obviously universal suicide isn't promising, but no one wants that. A few suicides in extreme cases will have no effect at all on the natural order. |
| 7478 | Greek philosophers invented the concept of 'nature' as their special subject [Watson] |
| Full Idea: Greek philosophers may have invented the concept of 'nature' to underline their superiority over poets and religious leaders. | |
| From: Peter Watson (Ideas [2005], Ch.06) | |
| A reaction: Brilliant. They certainly wrote a lot of books entitled 'Peri Physis' (Concerning Nature), and it was the target of their expertise. A highly significant development, along with their rational methods. Presumably Socrates extends nature to include ethics. |
| 7462 | DNA mutation suggests humans and chimpanzees diverged 6.6 million years ago [Watson] |
| Full Idea: The basic mutation rate in DNA is 0.71 percent per million years. Working back from the present difference between human and chimpanzee DNA, we arrive at 6.6 million years ago for their divergence. | |
| From: Peter Watson (Ideas [2005], Ch.01) | |
| A reaction: This database is committed to evolution (a reminder that even databases have commitments), and so facts of this kind are included, even though they are not strictly philosophical. All complaints should be inwardly digested and forgotten. |
| 6199 | Obligation does not rest on the existence of God, but on the autonomy of reason [Kant] |
| Full Idea: It is not to be understood that the assumption of the existence of God is necessary as a ground for all obligation in general (for this rests, as has been shown, solely on the autonomy of reason itself). | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.II.II.V) | |
| A reaction: This shows that Kant agrees with Plato about the Euthyphro Question - that is, they both think that morality is logically and naturally prior to any gods. I agree. Why would we admire or worship or obey gods if we didn't think they were good? |
| 1453 | We have to postulate something outside nature which makes happiness coincide with morality [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The existence must be postulated of a cause of the whole of nature, itself distinct from nature, which contains the ground of the exact coincidence of happiness with morality. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.II.II.V) | |
| A reaction: I can see that we need a concept of how happiness could be made proportional to morality, but I can't make sense of the assumption that it is actually possible, and hence something must exist that would achieve it. |
| 1455 | Belief in justice requires belief in a place for justice (heaven), a time (eternity), and a cause (God) [Kant, by PG] |
| Full Idea: To believe in justice in an unjust world, you have to believe in a place of perfect justice (heaven), a time for perfect justice (eternity), and a cause of perfect justice (God). | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.II.II.V) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: Compare Boethius in Idea 5765. I can see that we might need to grasp the ideals of eternal justice in order to understand morality, but belief in their genuine possibility, or even actuality, doesn't seem to follow. |
| 6205 | To know if this world must have been created by God, we would need to know all other possible worlds [Kant] |
| Full Idea: We can't infer the existence of God from knowledge of this world, because we should have to know all possible worlds in order to compare them - in short, we should have to be omniscient - in order to say that it is possible only through a God. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.II.II.VI) | |
| A reaction: A nice remark, but not wholly convincing. This argument would block all attempts to work out necessities a priori, such as those of maths and logic. Must we know all possible worlds intimately to know that 2+2 is always 4? |
| 6204 | Using God to explain nature is referring to something inconceivable to explain what is in front of you [Kant] |
| Full Idea: To have recourse to God in explaining the arrangements of nature is not a physical explanation but a confession that one has come to the end of philosophy, since one assumes something of which one has no concept to conceive what is before one's eyes. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.II.II.VI) | |
| A reaction: Hume had many objections to the design argument, some of them positively sarcastic, but none as ruthless as this, since Kant (here) seems to find God to be a totally empty concept, and hence a complete non-starter as explanation for anything. |
| 6206 | From our limited knowledge we can infer great virtues in God, but not ultimate ones [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Since we know only a small part of the world, and cannot compare it with all possible worlds, we can infer from the order, design and magnitude to a wise, beneficent and powerful Author, but not that He is all-knowing, all-good, and all-powerful. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.II.II.VI) | |
| A reaction: This is very much in the spirit of David Hume, who inferred from the flaws in the world that God did not seem to be entirely competent. Hume is also more imaginative, in seeing that God might be a committee, or a hired workman. |
| 6202 | In all naturalistic concepts of God, if you remove the human qualities there is nothing left [Kant] |
| Full Idea: One can confidently challenge all pretended natural theologians to cite one single definitive attribute of their object, of which one could not irrefutably show that, when everything anthropomorphic is removed, only the word remains. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.II.II.VI) | |
| A reaction: This idea derives from Hume's very empiricist view of our understanding of God (Idea 2185), but Kant is (remarkably) more hostile than Hume, because he actually implies that most people's concept of God is totally vacuous. |
| 7470 | During the rise of civilizations, the main gods changed from female to male [Watson] |
| Full Idea: Around the time of the rise of the first great civilizations, the main gods changed sex, as the Great Goddess, or a raft of smaller goddesses, were demoted and male gods took their place. | |
| From: Peter Watson (Ideas [2005], Ch.05) | |
| A reaction: Why? War, perhaps? |
| 7474 | Hinduism has no founder, or prophet, or creed, or ecclesiastical structure [Watson] |
| Full Idea: Traditional Hinduism has been described as more a way of living than a way of thought; it has no founder, no prophet, no creed and no ecclesiastical structure. | |
| From: Peter Watson (Ideas [2005], Ch.05) | |
| A reaction: This contrast strikingly with all later religions, which felt they had to follow the Jews in becoming a 'religion of the book', with a sacred text, and hence a special status for the author(s) of that text. |
| 7480 | Monotheism was a uniquely Israelite creation within the Middle East [Watson] |
| Full Idea: No one questions the fact that monotheism was a uniquely Israelite creation within the Middle East. | |
| From: Peter Watson (Ideas [2005], Ch.07) | |
| A reaction: I take the Middle East to exclude Greece, where they were developing similar ideas. Who knows? |
| 7479 | Modern Judaism became stabilised in 200 CE [Watson] |
| Full Idea: The Judaism we know today didn't become stabilized until roughly 200 CE. | |
| From: Peter Watson (Ideas [2005], Ch.07) | |
| A reaction: By that stage it would have been subject to the influences of Christianity, ancient Greek philosophy, and neo-Platonism. |
| 7481 | The Israelites may have asserted the uniqueness of Yahweh to justify land claims [Watson] |
| Full Idea: Archaeology offers datable figures that seem to support the idea that the Israelites of the 'second exile' period converted Yahweh into a special, single God to justify their claims to the land. | |
| From: Peter Watson (Ideas [2005], Ch.07) | |
| A reaction: The implications for middle eastern politics of this wicked observation are beyond the remit of a philosophy database. |
| 7471 | The Gathas (hymns) of Zoroastrianism date from about 1000 BCE [Watson] |
| Full Idea: The Gathas, the liturgical hymns that make up the 'Avesta', the Zoroastrian canon, are very similar in language to the oldest Sanskrit of Hinduism, so they are not much younger than 1200 BCE. | |
| From: Peter Watson (Ideas [2005], Ch.05) | |
| A reaction: This implies a big expansion of religion before the well-known expansion of the sixth century BCE. |
| 7473 | Zoroaster conceived the afterlife, judgement, heaven and hell, and the devil [Watson] |
| Full Idea: Life after death, resurrection, judgement, heaven and paradise, were all Zoroastrian firsts, as were hell and the devil. | |
| From: Peter Watson (Ideas [2005], Ch.05) | |
| A reaction: He appears to be the first 'prophet'. |
| 7484 | Jesus never intended to start a new religion [Watson] |
| Full Idea: Jesus never intended to start a new religion. | |
| From: Peter Watson (Ideas [2005], Ch.08) | |
| A reaction: An intriguing fact, which makes you wonder whether any of the prophets ever had such an intention. |
| 7483 | Paul's early writings mention few striking episodes from Jesus' life [Watson] |
| Full Idea: Paul's writings - letters mainly - predate the gospels and yet make no mention of many of the more striking episodes that make up Jesus' life. | |
| From: Peter Watson (Ideas [2005], Ch.07) | |
| A reaction: This is not proof of anything, but it seems very significant if we are trying to get at the facts about Jesus. |
| 7475 | Confucius revered the spiritual world, but not the supernatural, or a personal god, or the afterlife [Watson] |
| Full Idea: Confucius was deeply religious in a traditional sense, showing reverence towards heaven and an omnipresent spiritual world, but he was cool towards the supernatural, and does not seem to have believed in either a personal god or an afterlife. | |
| From: Peter Watson (Ideas [2005], Ch.05) | |
| A reaction: The implication is that the spiritual world was very remote from us, and beyond communication. Sounds like deism. |
| 7476 | Taoism aims at freedom from the world, the body, the mind, and nature [Watson] |
| Full Idea: Underlying Taoism is a search for freedom - from the world, from the body, from the mind, from nature. | |
| From: Peter Watson (Ideas [2005], Ch.05) | |
| A reaction: Of all the world's religions, I think Taoism is the most ridiculouly misconceived. |
| 7463 | The three basic ingredients of religion are: the soul, seers or priests, and ritual [Watson] |
| Full Idea: Anthropologist distinguish three requirements for religion: a non-physical soul which can survive death; individuals who can receive supernatural inspiration; and rituals which can cause changes in the present world. | |
| From: Peter Watson (Ideas [2005], Ch.01) | |
| A reaction: The latter two, of course, also imply belief in supernatural powers. |
| 7468 | In ancient Athens the souls of the dead are received by the 'upper air' [Watson] |
| Full Idea: An official Athenian war monument of 432 BCE says the souls of the dead will be received by the aither (the 'upper air'), though their bodies remain on earth. | |
| From: Peter Watson (Ideas [2005], Ch.05) | |
| A reaction: Intriguing. Did they think anything happened when they got there? There are also ideas about Hades, and the Isles of the Blessed floating around. |