20 ideas
| 19441 | All philosophies presuppose their historical moment, and arise from it [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Every philosophy originates as a manifestation of its time; its origin presupposes its historical time. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy [1839], p.59) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be widespread agreement among continental philosophers about this idea, whereas analytic philosophers largely ignore, and treat Plato as if he were a current professor in Chicago. |
| 19442 | I don't study Plato for his own sake; the primary aim is always understanding [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Plato in writing is only a means for me; that which is primary and a priori, that which is the ground to which all is ultimately referred, is understanding. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy [1839], p.63) | |
| A reaction: It always seems to that the main aim of philosophy is understanding - which is why its central activity is explanation. |
| 19444 | Each proposition has an antithesis, and truth exists as its refutation [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Every intellectual determination has its antithesis, its contradiction. Truth exists not in unity with, but in refutation of its opposite. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy [1839], p.72) | |
| A reaction: This appears to be a rejection of the 'synthesis' in Hegel, in favour of what strikes me as a rather more sensible interpretation of the modern dialectic. Being exists in contrast to nothingness, and truth exists in contrast to its negation? |
| 19445 | A dialectician has to be his own opponent [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: A thinker is a dialectician only insofar as he is his own opponent. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy [1839], p.72) | |
| A reaction: Quite an inspirational slogan for beginners in philosophy. How many non-philosophers are willing to be their own opponent. In law courts and the House of Commons we assign the roles to separate persons. Hence rhetoric replaces reason? |
| 19443 | Truth forges an impersonal unity between people [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: The urge to communicate is a fundamental urge - the urge for truth. ...That which is true belongs neither to me nor exclusively to you, but is common to all. The thought in which 'I' and 'You' are united is a true thought. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy [1839], p.65) | |
| A reaction: Sceptics may doubt that there are such truths, but this is certainly how we experience agreement - that there is some truth shared between us which is no longer the possession of either of us. Nice idea. |
| 19446 | To our consciousness it is language which looks unreal [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: To sensuous consciousness it is precisely language that is unreal, nothing. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy [1839], p.77) | |
| A reaction: Offered as a corrective to the view that our ontological commitments entirely concern what we are willing to say. |
| 4483 | If abstract terms are sets of tropes, 'being a unicorn' and 'being a griffin' turn out identical [Loux] |
| Full Idea: If trope theorists say abstract singular terms name sets of tropes, what is the referent of 'is a unicorn'? The only candidate is the null set (with no members), but there is just one null set, so 'being a unicorn' and 'being a griffin' will be identical. | |
| From: Michael J. Loux (Metaphysics: contemporary introduction [1998], p.86) | |
| A reaction: Not crucial, I would think, given that a unicorn is just a horse with a horn. Hume explains how we do that, combining ideas which arose from actual tropes. |
| 4481 | Austere nominalists insist that the realist's universals lack the requisite independent identifiability [Loux] |
| Full Idea: Austere nominalists insist that the realist's universals lack the requisite independent identifiability. | |
| From: Michael J. Loux (Metaphysics: contemporary introduction [1998], p.60) | |
| A reaction: Plato's view seems to be that we don't identify universals independently. We ascend The Line, or think about the shadows in The Cave, and infer the universals from an array of particulars (by dialectic). |
| 4477 | Universals come in hierarchies of generality [Loux] |
| Full Idea: Universals come in hierarchies of generality. | |
| From: Michael J. Loux (Metaphysics: contemporary introduction [1998], p.24) | |
| A reaction: If it is possible to state facts about universals, this obviously encourages a rather Platonic approach to them, as existent things with properties. But maybe the hierarchies are conventional, not natural. |
| 4482 | Austere nominalism has to take a host of things (like being red, or human) as primitive [Loux] |
| Full Idea: In return for a one-category ontology (with particulars but no universals), the austere nominalist is forced to take a whole host of things (like being red, or triangular, or human) as unanalysable or primitive. | |
| From: Michael J. Loux (Metaphysics: contemporary introduction [1998], p.68) | |
| A reaction: I see that 'red' might have to be primitive, but being human can just be a collection of particulars. It is no ontologically worse to call them 'primitive' than to say they exist. |
| 4478 | Nominalism needs to account for abstract singular terms like 'circularity'. [Loux] |
| Full Idea: Nominalists have been very concerned to provide an account of the role of abstract singular terms (such as 'circularity'). | |
| From: Michael J. Loux (Metaphysics: contemporary introduction [1998], p.34) | |
| A reaction: Whether this is a big problem depends on our view of abstraction. If it only consists of selecting one property of an object and reifying it, then we can give a nominalist account of properties, and the problem is solved. |
| 4480 | Times and places are identified by objects, so cannot be used in a theory of object-identity [Loux] |
| Full Idea: Any account of the identity of material objects which turns on the identity of places and times must face the objection that the identity of places and times depends, in turn, on the identities of the objects located at them. | |
| From: Michael J. Loux (Metaphysics: contemporary introduction [1998], p.56) | |
| A reaction: This may be a benign circle, in which we concede that there are two basic interdependent concepts of objects and space-time. If you want to define identity - in terms of what? |
| 13804 | A property is essential iff the object would not exist if it lacked that property [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: A property P is an essential property of an object x iff x could not exist and lack P, that is, as they say, iff x has P at every world at which x exists. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 1) | |
| A reaction: This immediately places the existence of x outside the normal range of its properties, so presumably 'existence is not a predicate', but that dictum may be doubted. As it stands this definition will include trivial and vacuous properties. |
| 13805 | Properties are trivially essential if they are not grounded in a thing's specific nature [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: Essential properties may be trivial or nontrivial. It is characteristic of P's being trivially essential to x that x's possession of P is not grounded in the specific nature of x. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 2) | |
| A reaction: This is where my objection to the modal view of essence arises. How is he going to explain 'grounded' and 'specific nature' without supplying an entirely different account of essence? |
| 13808 | A relation is essential to two items if it holds in every world where they exist [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: A relation R is essential to x and y (in that order) iff Rxy holds at every world where x and y both exist. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 2) | |
| A reaction: I find this bizarre. Not only does this seem to me to have nothing whatever to do with essence, but also the relation might hold even though it is a purely contingent matter. All rabbits are a reasonable distance from the local star. Essence of rabbit? |
| 13806 | Trivially essential properties are existence, self-identity, and de dicto necessities [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: The main groups of trivially essential properties are (a) existence, self-identity, or their consequences in S5; and (b) properties possessed in virtue of some de dicto necessary truth. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 2) | |
| A reaction: He adds 'extraneously essential' properties, which also strike me as being trivial, involving relations. 'Is such that 2+2=4' or 'is such that something exists' might be necessary, but they don't, I would say, have anything to do with essence. |
| 13807 | A property is 'extraneously essential' if it is had only because of the properties of other objects [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: P is 'extraneously essential' to x iff it is possessed by x at any world w only in virtue of the possession at w of certain properties by other objects. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 2) | |
| A reaction: I would say that these are the sorts of properties which have nothing to do with being essential, even if they are deemed to be necessary. |
| 13809 | One might be essentialist about the original bronze from which a statue was made [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: In the case of artefacts, there is an essentialism about original matter; for instance, it would be said of any particular bronze statue that it could not have been cast from a totally different quantity of bronze. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 3) | |
| A reaction: Forbes isn't endorsing this, and it doesn't sound convincing. He quotes the thought 'I wish I had made this pot from a different piece of clay'. We might corrupt a statue by switching bronze, but I don't think the sculptor could do so. |
| 13810 | The source of de dicto necessity is not concepts, but the actual properties of the thing [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: It is widely held that the source of de dicto necessity is in concepts, ..but I deny this... even with simple de dicto necessities, the source of the necessity is to be found in the properties to which the predicates of the de dicto truth refer. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 3) | |
| A reaction: It is normal nowadays to say this about de re necessities, but this is more unusual. |
| 19447 | The Absolute is the 'and' which unites 'spirit and nature' [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: The Absolute is spirit and nature. ...But what then is the Absolute? Nothing other than this 'and', that is, the unity of spirit and nature. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy [1839], p.82) | |
| A reaction: This is Feuerbach's spin on Hegel. He has been outlining idealist philosophy and the philosophy of nature in Schelling. Is this Spinoza's one substance? |