41 ideas
2922 | All intelligent Romans were Epicureans [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Every mind of any account in the Roman Empire was an Epicurean. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 58) |
21887 | Derrida focuses on other philosophers, rather than on science [Derrida] |
Full Idea: We should focus on other philosophers, and not on science. | |
From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
21888 | Philosophy is just a linguistic display [Derrida] |
Full Idea: Philosophy is entirely linguistic, and is a display. | |
From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
21896 | Philosophy aims to build foundations for thought [Derrida, by May] |
Full Idea: Derrida points out that the project of philosophy consists largely in attempting to build foundations for thought. | |
From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 1.04 | |
A reaction: You would first need to be convinced that there could be such a thing as foundations for thinking. Derrida thinks the project is hopeless. I think of it more as building an ideal framework for thought. |
21893 | Philosophy is necessarily metaphorical, and its writing is aesthetic [Derrida] |
Full Idea: All of philosophy is necessarily metaphorical, and hence aesthetic. | |
From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
21892 | Interpretations can be interpreted, so there is no original 'meaning' available [Derrida] |
Full Idea: Because interpretations of texts can be interpreted, they can therefore have no 'original meaning'. | |
From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
20925 | Hermeneutics blunts truth, by conforming it to the interpreter [Derrida, by Zimmermann,J] |
Full Idea: Derrida worried that hermeneutics blunts the disruptive power of truth by forcing it conform to the interpreter's mental horizon. | |
From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Jens Zimmermann - Hermeneutics: a very short introduction 3 'The heart' | |
A reaction: Good heavens - I agree with Derrida. Very French, though, to see the value of truth in its disruptiveness. I tend to find the truth reassuring, but then I'm English. |
20934 | Hermeneutics is hostile, trying to overcome the other person's difference [Derrida, by Zimmermann,J] |
Full Idea: Derrida described the hermeneutic impulse to understand another as a form of violence that seeks to overcome the other's particularity and unique difference. | |
From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Jens Zimmermann - Hermeneutics: a very short introduction App 'Derrida' | |
A reaction: I'm not sure about 'violence', but Derrida was on to somethng here. The 'hermeneutic circle' sounds like a creepy process of absorption, where the original writer disappears in a whirlpool of interpretation. |
21895 | Structuralism destroys awareness of dynamic meaning [Derrida] |
Full Idea: Structuralism destroys awareness of dynamic meaning. | |
From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
21934 | The idea of being as persistent presence, and meaning as conscious intelligibility, are self-destructive [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
Full Idea: The tradition of conceiving being in terms of persisting presence, and meaning in terms of pure intelligibility or logos potentially present to the mind, finds itself dismantled by resources internal to its own construction. | |
From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 6 | |
A reaction: [compressed] Glendinning says this is the basic meaning of de-construction. My personal reading of this is that Aristotle is right, and grand talk of Being is hopeless, so we should just aim to understand objects. I also believe in propositions. |
21883 | Sincerity can't be verified, so fiction infuses speech, and hence reality also [Derrida] |
Full Idea: Sincerity can never be verified, so fiction infuses all speech, which means that reality is also fictional. | |
From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
21882 | Sentences are contradictory, as they have opposite meanings in some contexts [Derrida] |
Full Idea: Sentences are implicitly contradictory, because they can be used differently in different contexts (most obviously in 'I am ill'). | |
From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
21881 | We aim to explore the limits of expression (as in Mallarmé's poetry) [Derrida] |
Full Idea: The aim is to explore the limits of expression (which is what makes the poetry of Mallarmé so important). | |
From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
2914 | One must never ask whether truth is useful [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: One must never ask whether truth is useful. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], Fore) |
23520 | Truth has had to be fought for, and normal life must be sacrificed to achieve it [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Truth has had to be fought for every step of the way, almost everything else dear to our hearts, on which our love and our trust in life depend, has had to be sacrificed to it. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 50) | |
A reaction: This, in one of his final works, seems to contradict every idea that Nietzsche is the high priest of relativism about truth. He (and Foucault) and interested in the social role of truth, but are not so daft as to reject its possibility. |
4756 | Derrida says that all truth-talk is merely metaphor [Derrida, by Engel] |
Full Idea: Derrida's view is that every discourse is metaphorical, and there is no difference between truth-talk and metaphor. | |
From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Pascal Engel - Truth §2.5 | |
A reaction: Right. Note that this is a Frenchman's summary. How would one define metaphor, without mentioning that it is parasitic on truth? Certainly some language tries to be metaphor, and other language tries not to be. |
21877 | True thoughts are inaccessible, in the subconscious, prior to speech or writing [Derrida] |
Full Idea: 'True' thoughts are inaccessible, buried in the subconscious, long before they get to speech or writing. | |
From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction | |
A reaction: [My reading of some Derrida produced no quotations. I've read two commentaries, which were obscure. The Derrida ideas in this db are my simplistic tertiary summaries. Experts can chuckle over my failure] |
21878 | Names have a subjective aspect, especially the role of our own name [Derrida] |
Full Idea: We can give a subjective account of names, by considering our own name. | |
From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
21889 | 'I' is the perfect name, because it denotes without description [Derrida] |
Full Idea: 'I' is the perfect name, because it denotes without description. | |
From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
21879 | Even Kripke can't explain names; the word is the thing, and the thing is the word [Derrida] |
Full Idea: Even Kripke can't explain names, because the word is the thing, and also the thing is the word. | |
From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
21890 | Heidegger showed that passing time is the key to consciousness [Derrida] |
Full Idea: Heidegger showed us the importance of transient time for consciousness. | |
From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
21880 | 'Tacit theory' controls our thinking (which is why Freud is important) [Derrida] |
Full Idea: All thought is controlled by tacit theory (which is why Freud is so important). | |
From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction | |
A reaction: This idea is said to be the essential thought of Derrida's Deconstruction. The aim is liberation of thought, by identifying and bypassing these tacit metaphysical schemas. |
21884 | Capacity for repetitions is the hallmark of language [Derrida] |
Full Idea: The capacity for repetitions is the hallmark of language. | |
From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
21935 | The sign is only conceivable as a movement between elusive presences [Derrida] |
Full Idea: The sign is conceivable only on the basis of the presence that it defers, and moving toward the deferred presence that it aims to reappropriate. | |
From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 6 | |
A reaction: [Glendinning gives no source for this] I take the fundamental idea to be that meanings are dynamic, when they are traditionally understood as static (and specifiable in dictionaries). |
21930 | For Aristotle all proper nouns must have a single sense, which is the purpose of language [Derrida] |
Full Idea: A noun [for Aristotle] is proper when it has but a single sense. Better, it is only in this case that it is properly a noun. Univocity is the essence, or better, the telos of language. | |
From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 5 | |
A reaction: [no ref given] His target seem to be Aristotelian definition, and also formal logic, which usually needs unambiguous meanings. {I'm puzzled that he thinks 'telos' is simply better than 'essence', since it is quite different]. |
21933 | Writing functions even if the sender or the receiver are absent [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
Full Idea: Writing can and must be able to do without the presence of the sender. ...Also writing can and must he able to do without the presence of the receiver. | |
From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 6 | |
A reaction: In simple terms, one of them could die during the transmission. This is the grounds for the assertion of the primacy of writing. It opposes orthodox views which define language in terms of sender and receiver. |
21894 | Madness and instability ('the demonic hyperbole') lurks in all language [Derrida] |
Full Idea: Madness and instability ('the demonic hyperbole') lurks behind all language. | |
From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
21886 | Meanings depend on differences and contrasts [Derrida] |
Full Idea: Meaning depends on 'differences' (contrasts). | |
From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
21931 | 'Dissemination' is opposed to polysemia, since that is irreducible, because of multiple understandings [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
Full Idea: The intention to oppose polysemia with dissemination does not aim to affirm that everything we say is ambiguous, but that polysemia is irreducible in the sense that each and every 'meaning' is itself subject to more than one understanding. | |
From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 5 | |
A reaction: The key point, I think, is that ambiguity and polysemia are not failures of language (which is the way most logicians see it), but part of the essential and irreducible nature of language. Nietzsche started this line of thought. |
21885 | Words exist in 'spacing', so meanings are never synchronic except in writing [Derrida] |
Full Idea: Words only exist is 'spacings' (of time and space), so there are no synchronic meanings (except perhaps in writing). | |
From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
20443 | The aesthetic attitude is nothing more than paying close attention [Dickie, by Giovannelli] |
Full Idea: Once analysed, Dickie claimed, the so-called aesthetic attitude is not special at all, but is rather just a matter of close attention and focus on the subject. | |
From: report of George Dickie (The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude [1964]) by Alessandro Giovannelli - Some contemporary developments (aesthetics) 1 | |
A reaction: Sounds wrong. If a paint specialist gives close attention to a painting, they do not necessarily have an aesthetic view of it. You need to know the aim of the activity, just as when you watch a game. |
2921 | Philosophy grasps the limits of human reason, and values are beyond it [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: All the supreme problems of value are beyond human reason. …To grasp the limits of human reason, only this is philosophy. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 55) | |
A reaction: The single most powerful idea in the writings of Nietzsche. Reason and truth are values. Why do we value philosophy? There is no escaping Nietzsche's question. |
20138 | Christianity is at war with the higher type of man, and excommunicates his basic instincts [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Christianity has waged a war to the death against the higher type of man, it has excommunicated all the fundamental instincts of this type. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 05) | |
A reaction: It seems rather insulting to say that the finest and most dedicated altruism practised by the most admirable Christians is the expression of a 'lower' instinct. |
21891 | The good is implicitly violent (against evil), so there is no pure good [Derrida] |
Full Idea: Even the good is implicitly violent (against evil), so there can be no 'pure' good. | |
From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction | |
A reaction: Is good implicitly non-violent? Appropriate anger seems to be good behaviour, and I can't see why it is impure. Maybe anger and violence lack the control needed for pure goodness. |
20375 | Virtues must be highly personal; if not, it is merely respect for a concept [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: A virtue has to be our invention, our most personal defence and necessity: in any other sense it is merely a danger. What does not condition our life harms it: a virtue merely from a feeling of respect for the concept 'virtue', as Kant desires it, is harm | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], §11) | |
A reaction: Presumably he sees virtue as the cutting edge of stiffling conventional morality. I'm a bit nervous about embracing highly personal virtues, partly because they might isolate me from my community. I ain't no übermensch. |
2915 | Each person should devise his own virtues and categorical imperative [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Each one of us should devise his own virtue, his own categorical imperative. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 11) |
2920 | A God who cures us of a head cold at the right moment is a total absurdity [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: A God who cures a headcold for us at the right moment is so absurd a God he would have to be abolished even if he existed. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 52) |
2917 | Christianity is a revolt of things crawling on the ground against elevated things [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Christianity is a revolt of everything which crawls along the ground against everything which is elevated. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 43) |
2918 | The story in Genesis is the story of God's fear of science [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Has the famous story which stands at the beginning of the Bible really been understood - the story of God's mortal terror of science? | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 48) |
2919 | 'Faith' means not wanting to know what is true [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: 'Faith' means not wanting to know what is true. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 52) |
2916 | The great lie of immortality destroys rationality and natural instinct [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The great lie of personal immortality destroys all rationality, all naturalness of instinct. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 43) |