19740
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A very hungry man cannot choose between equidistant piles of food [Aristotle]
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Full Idea:
The man who, though exceedingly hungry and thirsty, and both equally, yet being equidistant from food and drink, is therefore bound to stay where he is.
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From:
Aristotle (On the Heavens [c.336 BCE], 296b33)
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A reaction:
This is, of course, Buridan's famous Ass, but this quotation has the advantage of precedence, and also of being expressed in an original quotation (which does not exist for Buridan).
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20752
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For man, being is not what he is, but what he is going to be [Ortega y Gassett]
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Full Idea:
Being consists not in what it is already, but in what it is not yet, a being that consists in not-yet-being. Everything else in the world is what it is….Man is the entity that makes himself….He has to determine what he is going to be.
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From:
José Ortega y Gassett (Toward a Philosophy of History [1941], p.112,201-2), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 4 'Problem'
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A reaction:
[p.112 and 201-2] This seems to be Ortega y Gasset's spin on Heidegger's concept, by adding a temporal dimension to it.
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20756
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Instead of having a nature, man only has a history [Ortega y Gassett]
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Full Idea:
Man lives in view of the past. Man, in a word, has no nature; what he has is history. Expressed differently: what nature is to things, history is to man.
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From:
José Ortega y Gassett (Toward a Philosophy of History [1941], p.217), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 5 'Situated'
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A reaction:
Makes explicit the existentialist denial of human nature. The foundation of ethics can only be total freedom, to choose both yourself and your actions. What is inescapable is the social and culture contexts. What is the role of the 'history'?
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20239
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Unlike us, the early Greeks thought envy was a good thing, and hope a bad thing [Hesiod, by Nietzsche]
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Full Idea:
Hesiod reckons envy among the effects of the good and benevolent Eris, and there was nothing offensive in according envy to the gods. ...Likewise the Greeks were different from us in their evaluation of hope: one felt it to be blind and malicious.
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From:
report of Hesiod (works [c.700 BCE]) by Friedrich Nietzsche - Dawn (Daybreak) 038
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A reaction:
Presumably this would be understandable envy, and unreasonable hope. Ridiculous envy can't possibly be good, and modest and sensible hope can't possibly be bad. I suspect he wants to exaggerate the relativism.
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16102
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Aether moves in circles and is imperishable; the four elements perish, and move in straight lines [Aristotle, by Gill,ML]
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Full Idea:
For Aristotle, aether and the four sublunary elements obey different physical laws. Aether moves naturally in a circle and, unlike its lower counterparts, is not a source of perishability. The four sublunary elements move naturally in straight lines.
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From:
report of Aristotle (On the Heavens [c.336 BCE]) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Ch.2
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A reaction:
I think it is anachronistic for Gill to talk of 'obeying' and 'laws'. She should have said that they have different 'natures'. We can be amused by Greek errors, until we stare hard at the problems they were trying to solve.
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17463
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An element is what bodies are analysed into, and won't itself divide into something else [Aristotle]
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Full Idea:
An element is a body into which other bodies may be analyzed, present in them potentially or in actuality (which of these is still disputable), and not itself divisible into bodies different in form. That is what all men mean by element.
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From:
Aristotle (On the Heavens [c.336 BCE], 302a05), quoted by Weisberg/Needham/Hendry - Philosophy of Chemistry 1.1
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A reaction:
This is the classic definition of an element, which endured for a long time, and has been replaced by an 'actual components' view. Obviously analysis nowadays goes well beyond the atoms.
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