15 ideas
| 7426 | Critical philosophy is what questions domination at every level [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: In its critical aspect, philosophy is that which calls into question domination at every level | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Ethics of the Concern for Self as Freedom [1984], p.300) | |
| A reaction: A very French view of the subject. It is tempting to say that they had their adolescent outburst in 1789, and it is time to grow up. With rights come responsibilities... |
| 7423 | Philosophy and politics are fundamentally linked [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: The relationship between philosophy and politics is permanent and fundamental. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Ethics of the Concern for Self as Freedom [1984], p.293) | |
| A reaction: This idea is one of the biggest gulfs between continental and analytical philosophy. Many aspects of philosophy are turning out to be much more social than analytical philosophers might have thought - epistemology, for example. |
| 7420 | When logos controls our desires, we have actually become the logos [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: Plutarch says if you have mastered principles then logos will silence your desires like a master silencing a dog - in which case the logos functions without intervention on your part - you have become the logos, or the logos has become you. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Ethics of the Concern for Self as Freedom [1984], p.286) | |
| A reaction: If you believe that logos is pure reason, you might be quite happy with this, but if you thought it was a cultural construct, you might feel that you had been cunningly enslaved. If I ask 'what is 7+6?', logos interrupts me to give the answer. |
| 13152 | We can talk of 'innumerable number', about the infinite points on a line [Newton] |
| Full Idea: If any man shall take the words number and sum in a larger sense, to understand things which are numberless and sumless (such as the infinite points on a line), I could allow him the contradictious phrase 'innumerable number' without absurdity. | |
| From: Isaac Newton (Letters to Bentley [1692], 1693.02.25) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] I take the key point here to be the phrase of taking number 'in a larger sense'. Like the word 'atom' in physics, the word 'number' retains its traditional reference, but has considerably shifted its scope. Amateurs must live with this. |
| 13151 | Not all infinites are equal [Newton] |
| Full Idea: It is an error that all infinites are equal. | |
| From: Isaac Newton (Letters to Bentley [1692], 1693.01.17) | |
| A reaction: There follows a discussion of the mathematicians' view of infinity. Cantor was not the first to notice that there is more than one sort of of infinity. |
| 7424 | Saying games of truth were merely power relations would be a horrible exaggeration [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: When I talk about power relations and games of truth, I am absolutely not saying that games of truth are just concealed power relations - that would be a horrible exaggeration. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Ethics of the Concern for Self as Freedom [1984], p.296) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a denial of the more absurd forms of relativism. I think there is an interesting convergence between this kind of continental thinking, and the social view of justification found in the later work of Alvin Goldman. |
| 7422 | A subject is a form which can change, in (say) political or sexual situations [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: The subject is not a substance but a form, which is not always identical to itself. You do not have the same relation to yourself when you go to vote and when you seek to fulfil your desires in a sexual relationship. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Ethics of the Concern for Self as Freedom [1984], p.290) | |
| A reaction: I don't think I believe this. If it were true, the concept of 'sexual politics' would mean nothing to me. A brutal or sympathetic nature is likely to express itself in both situations. |
| 20329 | A work of art is an artifact created for the artworld [Dickie] |
| Full Idea: A work of art is an artifact of a kind created to be presented to an artworld public. | |
| From: George Dickie (The New Institutional Theory of Art [1983], p.53) | |
| A reaction: This is the culminating definition in his paper, deriving originally from Danto, and an improvement of his earlier more complex definition. Since this definition amounts to 'this is art if I say it is art', it doesn't seem to reveal much. |
| 7419 | Ethics is the conscious practice of freedom [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: What is ethics, if not the practice of freedom, the conscious [réfléchie] practice of freedom? | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Ethics of the Concern for Self as Freedom [1984], p.284) | |
| A reaction: Makes Foucault sound very existentialist. I'm not sure I understand this kind of remark, given that serial killers seem to be exceptionally good at 'practising their freedom'. However, the idea is akin to Kant's notion of a truly good will (Idea 3710). |
| 7425 | The aim is not to eliminate power relations, but to reduce domination [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: The problem is not to dissolve power relations in a utopia of transparent communications, but to acquire the rules of law, the management techniques, the morality, the practice of the self, that allows games of power with minimum domination. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Ethics of the Concern for Self as Freedom [1984], p.298) | |
| A reaction: If you are a democrat it is hard to disagree with this, though I am still unclear why being dominated should rank as a total disaster. A healthy personal relationship might involve domination. 'Management techniques' is interesting. |
| 7418 | The idea of liberation suggests there is a human nature which has been repressed [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: I am somewhat suspicious of the notion of liberation, because one runs the risk of falling back on the idea that there is a human nature, that has been concealed or alienated by mechanisms of repression. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Ethics of the Concern for Self as Freedom [1984], p.282) | |
| A reaction: Personally I think there is (to some extent) a human nature, and that it fails to flourish if it gets too much 'liberation. However, the world contains a lot more repression than liberation, so we should all be fans of liberty. |
| 15863 | The principles of my treatise are designed to fit with a belief in God [Newton] |
| Full Idea: When I wrote my treatise about our system, I had an eye upon such principles as might work with considering men, for the belief of a deity. | |
| From: Isaac Newton (Letters to Bentley [1692], 1692.12.10) | |
| A reaction: Harré quotes this, and it shows that the rather passive view of nature Newton developed was to be supplemented by the active power of God. Without God, we need a more active view of nature. |
| 8340 | I do not pretend to know the cause of gravity [Newton] |
| Full Idea: You sometimes speak of gravity as essential and inherent in matter. Pray do no ascribe that notion to me; for the cause of gravity is what I do not pretend to know. | |
| From: Isaac Newton (Letters to Bentley [1692], 1693.01.17) | |
| A reaction: I take science to be a two-stage operation - first we discern the regularities, and then we explain them. Evolution was spotted, then explained by Darwin. Cancer from cigarettes was spotted, but hasn't been explained. Regularity is the beginning. |
| 13150 | The motions of the planets could only derive from an intelligent agent [Newton] |
| Full Idea: The motions which the planets now have could not spring from any natural cause alone, but were impressed by an intelligent agent. | |
| From: Isaac Newton (Letters to Bentley [1692], 1692.12.10) | |
| A reaction: He is writing to a cleric, but seems to be quite sincere about this. Elsewhere he just says he doesn't know what causes gravity. |
| 12178 | That gravity should be innate and essential to matter is absurd [Newton] |
| Full Idea: That gravity should be innate, inherent and essential to matter ...is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it. | |
| From: Isaac Newton (Letters to Bentley [1692], 1693.02.25) | |
| A reaction: He is replying to some sermons, and he pays vague lip service to a possible divine force. Nevertheless, this is thoroughgoing anti-essentialism, and he talks of external 'laws' in the next sentence. Newton still sought the cause of gravity. |