40 ideas
| 23247 | The need to act produces consciousness, and practical reason is the root of all reason [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Consciousness of the real world proceeds from the need to act, not the other way around. …Practical reason is the root of all reason. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 3.I) | |
| A reaction: Strongly agree with the last part. In my conceptual scheme 'sensible' behaviour (e.g. of animals) precedes, in every way, rational behaviour. Sensible attitudes to quantity and magnitude precede mathematical logic. Minds exist for navigation. |
| 23232 | Sufficient reason makes the transition from the particular to the general [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: The principle of sufficient reason is the point of transition from the particular, which is itself, to the general, which is outside it. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: Not sure I understand this, but it seems worth passing on. Personally I would say that we have a knack of generalising, triggered when we spot patterns. |
| 23227 | Each object has a precise number of properties, each to a precise degree [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Each object has a definite number of properties, no more, no less. …Each of these objects possesses each of these properties to a definite degree. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: Quine flatly disagrees with this. Fichte offers no grounds for his claim. On the whole I think of properties as psychologically abstracted by us from holistic objects, so there is plenty of room for error. The underlying powers are real. |
| 23228 | The principle of activity and generation is found in a self-moving basic force [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: The principle of activity, of generation and becoming in and for itself, is purely in that force itself and not in anything outside it…; the force is not driven or set in motion, it sets itself in motion. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: A good account of primitive powers, as self-motivating forces. I can't think what else could be fundamental to nature. This whole passage of Fichte expounds a powers ontology. |
| 23241 | I am myself, but not the external object; so I only sense myself, and not the object [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: I sense in myself, not in the object, for I am myself and not the object; therefore I sense only myself and my condition, and not the condition of the object. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 2) | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear why anyone would have total confidence in internal experience and almost no confidence in experience of externals. In daily life I am equally confident about both. In philosophical mode I make equally cautious judgements about both. |
| 21969 | Awareness of reality comes from the free activity of consciousness [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: It is the necessary faith in our freedom of power, in our own real activity, and in the definite laws of human action, which lies at the root of all our consciousness of a reality external to ourselves. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], p.98), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 06.4 | |
| A reaction: I'd love to know what the 'laws of human action' are. Is it what Hume was trying to do? Moore says there is an 'element of self-creation' in Fichte's account of the source of reality. This is Descartes' dream argument biting back. |
| 21966 | Self-consciousness is the basis of knowledge, and knowing something is knowing myself [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: The immediate consciousness of myself is the condition of all other consciousness; and I know a thing only in so far as I know that I know it; no element can enter into the latter cognition which is not contained in the former. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], p.37), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 06.2 | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as false, and a lot of intellectual contortion would be needed to believe it. Is knowing this pen is in front of me a case of knowing that I have knowledge of this pen, or is it just knowledge of this pen? [cf Kant 1781:A129] |
| 21967 | There is nothing to say about anything which is outside my consciousness [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Of any connection beyond the limits of my consciousness I cannot speak. ...I cannot proceed a hair's breadth beyond this consciousness, any more than I can spring out of myself. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], p.74), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 06.3 | |
| A reaction: I can't see that this is any different from the idealism of Berkeley, although they get there from different starting points. Idealist seem unable to even begin explaining consciousness. |
| 23231 | I immediately know myself, and anything beyond that is an inference [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Immediately I know only of myself. What I am able to know beyond that I am only able to know through inference. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: A direct descendant of the Cartesian Cogito, I assume. Personally, if I bang my head on a beam I take the beam to be a full paid-up member of reality. Is it not possible that he also knows himself through inference? Do animals infer reality? |
| 23246 | Faith is not knowledge; it is a decision of the will [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Faith is no knowledge, but a decision of the will to recognise the validity of knowledge. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 3.I) | |
| A reaction: What matters is the grounds for the decision. Mad conspiracy theories are decisions of the will which are false. Legitimate faith is an intuition of coherence which cannot be fully articulated. |
| 23245 | Knowledge can't be its own foundation; there has to be regress of higher and higher authorities [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: No knowledge can be its own foundation and proof. Every knowledge presupposes something still higher as its foundation, and this ascent has no end. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 3.I) | |
| A reaction: A metaphor that's hard to visualise! He must have in mind a priori as well as empirical knowledge. The 'higher' levels don't seem to be God, but some region of absolute rationality, to which free minds have access. I think. |
| 23242 | Consciousness has two parts, passively receiving sensation, and actively causing productions [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: My immediate consciousness is composed of two constituent parts, the consciousness of my passivity, the sensation; and the consciousness of my activity, in the production of an object according to the principle of causality. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 2) | |
| A reaction: Kind of obvious, but unusual to make this sharp binary division. Modern neuroscience strongly militates against any and every simple binary division of brain activities. |
| 23240 | We can't know by sight or hearing without realising that we are doing so [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Q. Could you not perhaps know an object through sight or hearing without knowing that you are seeing or hearing? A. Not at all. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 2) | |
| A reaction: A nice statement of the traditional view which seemed to be demolished by the discovery of blindsight. In the light of modern brain research, the views of the mind found in past philosophers mostly seem very naïve. |
| 23243 | Consciousness of external things is always accompanied by an unnoticed consciousness of self [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Q. So that constantly and under all circumstances my consciousness of things outside of me is accompanied by an unnoticed consciousness of myself? A. Quite so. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 2) | |
| A reaction: He should be more cautious about asserting the existence of something 'unnoticed'. The Earth's core is unnoticed by me, but there is plenty of evidence for it. Not so sure about unnoticed self. Still, I think central control of the mind is indispensable. |
| 23244 | Forming purposes is absolutely free, and produces something from nothing [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: My thinking and originating of a purpose is in its nature absolutely free and brings forth something from nothing. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 3.I) | |
| A reaction: Modern fans of free will are more equivocal in their assertions, and would be uncomfortable bluntly claiming to 'get something from nothing'. But that's what free will is! Embrace it, or run for your life. |
| 23237 | The capacity for freedom is above the laws of nature, with its own power of purpose and will [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: This capacity [for freedom], once it exists, is in the servitude of a power which is higher than nature and quite free of its laws, the power of purposes, and the will. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: You would think this could only refer to God, but he in fact is referring to the power of human free will. The clearest statement I have found of the weird human exceptionalism implied by a strong commitment to free will. |
| 23235 | I want independent control of the fundamental cause of my decisions [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: I want to be independent - not to be in and through another but to be something for myself: and as such I want myself to be the fundamental cause of all my determinations. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: I think this sums up the absurdity of the concept of free will. The only reason he gives for his passionate belief in free will is that he desperately wants some imagined 'fundamental cause' for his action, and he wants full control of that chimera. |
| 23230 | Nature contains a fundamental force of thought [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: There is an original force of thought in nature just as there is an original formative force. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: I think this idea is false, but it helps to understand Fichte. |
| 23233 | The will is awareness of one of our inner natural forces [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: To will is to be immediately conscious of the activity of one of our inner natural forces. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: A more Nietzschean view would be that to will is to be conscious of the victor among our inner natural drives. It can't just be awareness of one force, because the will feels conflicts. |
| 12157 | Kant gave form and status to aesthetics, and Hegel gave it content [Kant, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Kant gave form and status to aesthetics, and Hegel endowed it with content. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790]) by Roger Scruton - Recent Aesthetics in England and America p.3 |
| 20346 | The aesthetic attitude is a matter of disinterestedness [Kant, by Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: The aesthetic attitude is defined by Kant in terms of disinterestedness. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790]) by Richard Wollheim - Art and Its Objects 54 | |
| A reaction: This is presumably, mainly, to explain our enjoyment of the miseries of tragedy. We just give ourselves up to a merry jig by Haydn. |
| 18547 | Only rational beings can experience beauty [Kant, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Kant is surely right that the experience of beauty, like the judgements in which it issues, is the prerogative of rational beings. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790]) by Roger Scruton - Beauty: a very short introduction 1 | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure how Scruton can say that Kant is 'surely right'. It is an interesting speculation. Are we to dogmatically affirm that bees get no aesthetic thrill when they spot a promising flower? Something in their little brains attracts them. |
| 24172 | It is hard to see why we would have developed Kant's 'disinterested' aesthetic attitude [Cochrane on Kant] |
| Full Idea: The Kantian notion of disinterest isolated aesthetic value from the rest of our lives. It is hard to understand why we should have developed a tendency that is detached from our everyday practical purposes. | |
| From: comment on Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790], §2) by Tom Cochrane - The Aesthetic Value of the World 1.4 | |
| A reaction: Cochrane always seeks an evolutionary framework for accounts of aesthetics, and I agree with him. That doesn't devalue them. The best things in life, like piano music, are obviously offshoots of things which evolved for other reasons. |
| 20408 | With respect to the senses, taste is an entirely personal matter [Kant] |
| Full Idea: With regard to the agreeable, the principle Everyone has his own taste (of the senses) is valid. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790], CUP 7 5:212), quoted by Elizabeth Schellekens - Immanuel Kant (aesthetics) 1 | |
| A reaction: This is a preliminary concession, and he goes on to defend more objective views of taste. |
| 20409 | When we judge beauty, it isn't just personal; we judge on behalf of everybody [Kant] |
| Full Idea: It is ridiculous if someone justifies his tast by saying 'this object is beautiful for me'. . .If he pronounces that something is beautiful, then he expects the very same satisfaction of others: he judges not merely for himself, but for everyone. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790], CUP 7 5:213), quoted by Elizabeth Schellekens - Immanuel Kant (aesthetics) 1 | |
| A reaction: For Kant this would also be the hallmark of rationality - that we expect, or hope for, a consensus when we express a rational judgement. But this expectation is far less in cases of beauty. We do not expect total agreement from very tasteful people. |
| 20411 | Saying everyone has their own taste destroys the very idea of taste [Kant] |
| Full Idea: To say thast 'Everyone has his special taste' would be to dismiss the very possibility of aesthetic taste, and to deny that there could be aesthetic judgement 'that could make a rightful claim to the assent of everyone'. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790], CUP 7 5:213), quoted by Elizabeth Schellekens - Immanuel Kant (aesthetics) 2.2 | |
| A reaction: I am a great believer in the objectivity of taste (within sensible reason). But the great evidence against it is the shifting standards of taste over the centuries. Nineteenth century collectors wasted fortunes on inferior works, it seems to us. |
| 24170 | Kant thinks beauty ignores its objects, because it is only 'form' engaging with mind [Cochrane on Kant] |
| Full Idea: Kant thinks that the ideal of beauty requires no concept of what the object is. Universality demands that appreciation be purely a matter of the way the form of the object fits one's cognitive machinery. | |
| From: comment on Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790]) by Tom Cochrane - The Aesthetic Value of the World 1.3 | |
| A reaction: This confirms further my increasingly negative view of Kant. Everything in him points to idealism (despite denials by his fans), and via Hegel we arrive at the idea that our values are all 'cultural constructs', rather than responses to reality. |
| 22711 | The beautiful is not conceptualised as moral, but it symbolises or resembles goodness [Kant, by Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: Kant insists that the beautiful must not be tainted with the good (that is, not conceptualised in any way which would bring it into the sphere of moral judgement) yet he says that the beautiful symbolises the good, it is an analogy of the good. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790]) by Iris Murdoch - The Sublime and the Good p.209 | |
| A reaction: Kant evidently wanted a very pure view of the aesthetic experience, drained of any overlapping feelings or beliefs. I'm not sure I understand how the beautiful can symbolise or be analogous to the good, while being devoid of it. |
| 4025 | Kant saw beauty as a sort of disinterested pleasure, which has become separate from the good [Kant, by Taylor,C] |
| Full Idea: Kant, in his third critique, defined beauty in terms of a certain kind of disinterested pleasure;….this is the basis for a declaration of independence of the beautiful relative to the good. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790]) by Charles Taylor - Sources of the Self §23.1 | |
| A reaction: This is a rebellion against the Greeks, especially Plato, and prepares the ground for the idea of 'art for art's sake'. Personally, I'm with Plato. |
| 20412 | Beauty is only judged in pure contemplation, and not with something else at stake [Kant] |
| Full Idea: If the question is whether something is beautiful, one does not want to know whether there is something that is or that could be at stake, for us or for someone else, in the existence of the thing, but rather how we judge it in mere contemplation. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790], CUP 2 5:204), quoted by Elizabeth Schellekens - Immanuel Kant (aesthetics) 2.3 | |
| A reaction: This evidently denies that function has anything to do with beauty, and seems to be a prelude to 'art for art's sake'. But a running cheetah cannot be separated from the sheer efficiencey and focus of the performance. |
| 22046 | The mathematical sublime is immeasurable greatness; the dynamical sublime is overpowering [Kant, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Kant distinguished the 'mathematical' and 'dynamical' sublime. The former involves immeasurable greatness (or smallness) such that we cannot even present them to ourselves. The latter is of something large and overpowering, which we can morally resist. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 13 | |
| A reaction: Presumably Cantor revealed the full extent of the mathematical sublime ('heaven', according to Hilbert). We await the comet that destroys the Earth to fully experience the other one. |
| 21458 | The sublime is a moral experience [Kant, by Gardner] |
| Full Idea: The sublime is understood by Kant as a moral experience. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790], 28-9) by Sebastian Gardner - Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason 09 'Judgment' | |
| A reaction: Gardner give the source in Kant. I can't accept that the initial experience of the sublime is moral in character. It could easily acquire a moral character after contemplation by someone who had such inclinations. |
| 5643 | Aesthetic values are not objectively valid, but we must treat them as if they are [Kant, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: The 'Critique of Judgement' argues, then, not for the objective validity of aesthetic values, but for the fact that we must think of them as objectively valid. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy §11.7 | |
| A reaction: The trouble with these transcendental arguments of Kant is that they render you powerless to discuss the question of whether values are actually objective. We are all trapped in presuppositions, instead of testing suppositions. |
| 20410 | The judgement of beauty is not cognitive, but relates, via imagination, to pleasurable feelings [Kant] |
| Full Idea: In order to understand whether or not something is beautiful, we do not relate the representation by means of understanding to the object for cognition, but relate it by means of the imagination ..to the subject and its feeling of pleasure or displeasure. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790], CUP 1 5:203), quoted by Elizabeth Schellekens - Immanuel Kant (aesthetics) 2.1 | |
| A reaction: This is to distinguish the particular type of judgement which counts as 'aesthetic' - the point being that it is not cognitive - it is not a matter of knowledge and facts, but a cool judgement made about a warm feeling of pleasure. I think. |
| 23234 | I cannot change the nature which has been determined for me [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: I cannot will the intention of making myself something other than what I am determined to be by nature, for I don't make myself at all but nature makes me and whatever I become. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a lot more accurate than Sartre's claim that we can re-make ourselves, but Fichte doesn't seem quite right. Don't I get any credit at all if I give up smoking, or train myself to treat someone more sympathetically? |
| 23239 | The self is, apart from outward behaviour, a drive in your nature [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: This 'you' for which you show such a lively interest is, so far as it is not overt behaviour, at least a drive in your own peculiar nature. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: I assume this use of 'drive' is the origin of Nietzsche's picture of such things, focused on the basic will to power. I like Fichte's emphasis on active forces as the basis of nature. |
| 23238 | If life lacks love it becomes destruction [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Only in love is there life; without it there is death and annihilation. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: He gives not context of justification for this sudden claim. Watching from a melancholy distance the current 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, I take this idea to be a profound truth. If you let go of love, you float away down a dark stream. |
| 23236 | Freedom means making yourself become true to your essential nature [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: I want to be free means: I myself want to make myself be whatever I will be. I would therefore …already have to be, in a certain sense, what I am to become, so that I could make myself be it. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is much closer to the existenial picture of the malleable self, which Fichte arrives out once he commits to his desperate desire to have free will. [Not sure if my gist captures what he says]. |
| 23229 | Nature is wholly interconnected, and the tiniest change affects everything [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Nature is an interconnected whole; …you could shift no grain of sand from its spot without thereby, perhaps invisibly to your eyes, changing something in all parts of the immeasurable whole. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: Sounds like idealist daydreaming, but might it actually be true with respect to gravity? |
| 20713 | God must be fit for worship, but worship abandons morally autonomy, but there is no God [Rachels, by Davies,B] |
| Full Idea: Rachels argues 1) If any being is God, he must be a fitting object of worship, 2) No being could be a fitting object of worship, since worship requires the abandonment of one's role as an autonomous moral agent, so 3) There cannot be a being who is God. | |
| From: report of James Rachels (God and Human Attributes [1971], 7 p.334) by Brian Davies - Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion 9 'd morality' | |
| A reaction: Presumably Lionel Messi can be a fitting object of worship without being God. Since the problem is with being worshipful, rather than with being God, should I infer that Messi doesn't exist? |