3 ideas
20110 | Hegel, Fichte and Schelling wanted to know Kant's thing-in-itself, as ego, or nature, or spirit [Safranski] |
Full Idea: The 'thing in iself' acted on Kant's successors like a hole in the closed world of knowledge...Hegel, Fichte and Schelling wanted to penetrate into what they presumed to be the heart of things, by the invention of means of 'ego', or 'nature', or 'spirit., | |
From: Rüdiger Safranski (Nietzsche: a philosophical biography [2000], 07) | |
A reaction: [a bit compressed] Although no scientist claims to know the ultimate essence of matter, the authority of science largely comes from persuasively moving us several steps closer to the thing in itself (more persuasively than these three). |
16209 | How can point-duration slices of people have beliefs or desires? [Thomson] |
Full Idea: Can one really think that point-duration temporal slices of bodies believe things or want things? | |
From: Judith (Jarvis) Thomson (People and Their Bodies [1997], p.211), quoted by Katherine Hawley - How Things Persist 2.9 n21 | |
A reaction: There is a problem with a slice doing anything long-term. The bottom line is that things are said to 'endure', but that is precisely what time-slices are unable to do. Hawley rejects this idea. |
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. |