11 ideas
7823 | Lucretius was rediscovered in 1417 [Grayling] |
Full Idea: Lucretius's 'De Rerum Natura' was rediscovered in 1417, after languishing forgotten for six centuries. | |
From: A.C. Grayling (What is Good? [2003], Ch.5) | |
A reaction: A wonder. Is it the greatest book of the ancient world - because it partially preserves the lost philosophy of great Democritus? |
12732 | Some necessary truths are brute, and others derive from final causes [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: There is a difference between truths whose necessity is brute and geometric and those truths which have their source in fitness and final causes. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Remond de Montmort [1715], 1715.06.22/G III 645), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 6 | |
A reaction: The second one is a necessity deriving from God's wisdom. Strictly it could have been otherwise, unlike 'geometrical' necessity, which is utterly fixed. |
19438 | Our large perceptions and appetites are made up tiny unconscious fragments [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: Our great perceptions and our great appetites of which we are conscious, are composed of innumerable little perceptions and little inclinations of which we cannot be conscious. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Remond de Montmort [1715], 1715 §2) | |
A reaction: I think this is a wonderfully accurate report of how the mind is, in comparison with the much more simplistic views presented by most philosophers of that era. And so much understanding flows from Leibniz's account. |
19415 | Passions reside in confused perceptions [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: The passions of monads reside in their confused perceptions. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Remond de Montmort [1715], 1715) | |
A reaction: He thinks perceptions come in degrees of confusion, all the way up to God, who alone has fully clear perceptions. He blames in on these confused perceptions. |
7809 | In an honour code shame is the supreme punishment, and revenge is a duty [Grayling] |
Full Idea: An honour code is one in which the greatest punishment is shame, and in which revenge is a duty. | |
From: A.C. Grayling (What is Good? [2003], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: Is this really what Nietzsche wanted to revive? Shame isn't a private matter - it needs solidarity of values in the community, and contempt for dishonour, so that it becomes everyone's worst fear. |
7824 | If suicide is lawful, but assisting suicide is unlawful, powerless people are denied their rights [Grayling] |
Full Idea: An anomaly created by England's 1961 Suicide Act is that it is lawful to take one's own life, but unlawful to help anyone else to do it. This means anyone unable to commit suicide without help is denied one of their fundamental rights. | |
From: A.C. Grayling (What is Good? [2003], Ch.8) | |
A reaction: There is a difference, not really captured either by law or by reason, between tolerating an activity, and encouraging and helping it. I think the test question is "this activity is legal, but would you want your child to do it?" |
19399 | Prime matter is nothing when it is at rest [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: Primary matter is nothing if considered at rest. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Aristotle and Descartes on Matter [1671], p.90) | |
A reaction: This goes with Leibniz's Idea 13393, that activity is the hallmark of existence. No one seems to have been able to make good sense of prime matter, and it plays little role in Aristotle's writings. |
19439 | God produces possibilities, and thus ideas [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: God is the source of possibilities and consequently of ideas. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Remond de Montmort [1715], 1715 §8) | |
A reaction: A wonderfully individual conception of the nature of God. He produces the possibilities from which creation is chosen, and ideas and concepts are of everything which is non-contradictory, and thus possible. It all makes lovely sense! |
7819 | Religion gives answers, comforts, creates social order, and panders to superstition [Grayling] |
Full Idea: The four standard explanations given for religion are that it provides answer, that it gives comfort, that it makes for social order, and that it rests on mere superstition. | |
From: A.C. Grayling (What is Good? [2003], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: All four of these could be correct, though the first and fourth would be incompatible if religion gives correct answers. Why religion begins might be not the same as the reason why it continues. |
7817 | To make an afterlife appealing, this life has to be denigrated [Grayling] |
Full Idea: It is remarkable how much the life of this world has to be denigrated to make the promise of happiness after death appealing. | |
From: A.C. Grayling (What is Good? [2003], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: This seems to be true of most religions, but it could be otherwise. Surely you want such a wonderful life to continue after death? But then you would not be obliged to do anything difficult to achieve immortality. Power comes into it... |
7818 | In Greek mythology only heroes can go to heaven [Grayling] |
Full Idea: In Greek mythology only a hero like Hercules could hope to go to heaven (by becoming a god himself). | |
From: A.C. Grayling (What is Good? [2003], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: This illustrates Nietsche's 'inversion of morality' most clearly, because Christianity says that the person most likely to go to heaven is the humblest person. |