Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'God and Human Attributes', 'Religion and Respect' and 'Difference and Repetition'

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7 ideas

1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 1. Continental Philosophy

21901	'Difference' refers to that which eludes capture [Deleuze, by May]
	Full Idea: 'Difference' is a term which Deleuze uses to refer to that which eludes capture.
	From: report of Gilles Deleuze (Difference and Repetition [1968]) by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 3.03
	A reaction: Presumably its ancestor is Kant's noumenon. This is one of his concepts used to 'palpate' our ossified conceptual scheme.

7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / a. Nature of Being

21902	'Being' is univocal, but its subject matter is actually 'difference' [Deleuze]
	Full Idea: Being is said in a single and same sense of everything of which it is said, but that of which it is said differs: it is said of difference itself.
	From: Gilles Deleuze (Difference and Repetition [1968], p.36), quoted by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 3.03
	A reaction: This is an attempt to express the Heraclitean view of reality, as process, movement, multiplicity - something which always eludes our attempts to pin it down.

21908	Ontology can be continual creation, not to know being, but to probe the unknowable [Deleuze]
	Full Idea: Ontology can be an ontology of difference ....where what is there is not the same old things but a process of continual creation, an ontology that does not seek to reduce being to the knowable, but widens thought to palpate the unknowable.
	From: Gilles Deleuze (Difference and Repetition [1968]), quoted by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 5.05
	A reaction: I'm inclined to think that the first duty of ontology is to face up to the knowable. I'm not sure that probing the unknowable, with no success or prospect of it, is a good way to spend a life. Probing ('palpating') can sometimes discover things.

7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / i. Deflating being

21903	Ontology does not tell what there is; it is just a strange adventure [Deleuze, by May]
	Full Idea: In Deleuze's hands ontology is not a matter of telling us what there is, but of taking us on strange adventures.
	From: report of Gilles Deleuze (Difference and Repetition [1968]) by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 3.03
	A reaction: Presumably you only indulge in the strange adventure because you have no idea how to specify what there is. This sounds like the essence of post-modernism, in which life is just a game.

21904	Being is a problem to be engaged, not solved, and needs a new mode of thinking [Deleuze, by May]
	Full Idea: In Deleuze, Being is not a puzzle to be solved but a problem to be engaged. It is to be engaged by a thought that moves as comfortably among problems as it does among solutions, as fluidly among differences as it does among identities.
	From: report of Gilles Deleuze (Difference and Repetition [1968]) by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 4.01
	A reaction: This sounds like what I've always known as 'negative capability' (thanks to Keats). Is philosophy just a hobby, like playing darts? It seems that the aim of the process is 'liberation', about which I would like to know more.

23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / h. Respect

23223	The word 'respect' ranges from mere non-interference to the highest levels of reverence [Blackburn]
	Full Idea: The word 'respect' seems to span a spectrum from simply not interfering, passing by on the other side, through admiration, right up to reverence and deference. This makes it uniquely well placed for ideological purposes.
	From: Simon Blackburn (Religion and Respect [2005], p.2)
	A reaction: Most people understand the world perfectly well, but only when they fully understand the context. I've taken to distinguishing conditional from unconditional forms of respect. Everyone is entitled to the unconditional form, which has limits.

28. God / B. Proving God / 2. Proofs of Reason / c. Moral Argument

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?