6 ideas
| 9786 | Philosophers working like teams of scientists is absurd, yet isolation is hard [Cartwright,R] |
| Full Idea: The notion that philosophy can be done cooperatively, in the manner of scientists or engineers engaged in a research project, seems to me absurd. And yet few philosophers can survive in isolation. | |
| From: Richard Cartwright (Intro to 'Philosophical Essays' [1987], xxi) | |
| A reaction: This why Nietzsche said that philosophers were 'rare plants'. |
| 9198 | It is no longer possible to be a sage, but we can practice the exercise of wisdom [Hadot] |
| Full Idea: Personally I firmly believe, perhaps naively, that it is possible for modern man to live, not as a sage (sophos) - most of the ancients did not hold this to be possible - but as a practitioner of the ever-fragile exercise of wisdom. | |
| From: Pierre Hadot (Philosophy as a way of life [1987], 7) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me quite plausible that the philosophical life might yet become a widespread ideal, even though philosophers seem to still be sheltering from storms two thousand years after Plato gave us that image. |
| 9197 | The logos represents a demand for universal rationality [Hadot] |
| Full Idea: The logos represents a demand for universal rationality. | |
| From: Pierre Hadot (Philosophy as a way of life [1987], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: That is at one end of the spectrum. At the other, in parts of 'Theaetetus', it is just a polite request to be given a few reasons, instead of a splattering of hopes and prejudices. |
| 9784 | A false proposition isn't truer because it is part of a coherent system [Cartwright,R] |
| Full Idea: You do not improve the truth value of a false proposition by calling attention to a coherent system of propositions of which it is one. | |
| From: Richard Cartwright (Intro to 'Philosophical Essays' [1987], xi) | |
| A reaction: We need to disentangle the truth-value from the justification here. If it is false, then we can safely assume that is false, but we are struggling to decide whether it is false, and we want all the evidence we can get. Falsehood tends towards incoherence. |
| 1556 | By nature people are close to one another, but culture drives them apart [Hippias] |
| Full Idea: I regard you all as relatives - by nature, not by convention. By nature like is akin to like, but convention is a tyrant over humankind and often constrains people to act contrary to nature. | |
| From: Hippias (fragments/reports [c.430 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Protagoras 337c8 |
| 9196 | The pleasure of existing is the only genuine pleasure [Hadot] |
| Full Idea: For epicureans, the only genuine pleasure there is is the pleasure of existing. | |
| From: Pierre Hadot (Philosophy as a way of life [1987], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: I don't know Hadot's source for this claim, but it is a nice idea, which I shall endeavour to incorporate into my own attitude to daily living. I'm not quite clear, though, why the pleasure of music is not a 'genuine' one. |