3 ideas
| 7073 | I am a creative nothing, out of which I myself create everything [Stirner] |
| Full Idea: I am not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing, the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything. | |
| From: Max Stirner (The Ego and Its Own [1844]), quoted by Simon Critchley - Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This appears to be the germ of the entire existentialist view, which gives a helpful gloss on the concept of 'nothing' - as the motivation for human creation, the vacuum in the mind that has to be filled. Call it 'creative boredom'. |
| 23261 | A people, not government, creates a constitution, which is essential for legitimacy [Paine] |
| Full Idea: A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government, and a government without a constitution is power without right. | |
| From: Thomas Paine (Rights of Man [1792], Ch.7), quoted by A.C. Grayling - The Good State 5 | |
| A reaction: A constitution looks like the ultimate focus of a social contract (though Greeks had them long ago). It is hard to say why a government should consider itself to be sovereign if it hasn't got it in writing. |
| 15877 | The aim of science is just to create a comprehensive, elegant language to describe brute facts [Poincaré, by Harré] |
| Full Idea: In Poincaré's view, we try to construct a language within which the brute facts of experience are expressed as comprehensively and as elegantly as possible. The job of science is the forging of a language precisely suited to that purpose. | |
| From: report of Henri Poincaré (The Value of Science [1906], Pt III) by Rom Harré - Laws of Nature 2 | |
| A reaction: I'm often struck by how obscure and difficult our accounts of self-evident facts can be. Chairs are easy, and the metaphysics of chairs is hideous. Why is that? I'm a robust realist, but I like Poincaré's idea. He permits facts. |