18 ideas
22024 | Fichte's subjectivity struggles to then give any account of objectivity [Pinkard on Fichte] |
Full Idea: For Fichte 'subjectivity' came first, and he was then stuck with the (impossible) task of showing how 'objectivity' arose out of it. | |
From: comment on Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 06 | |
A reaction: The best available answer to this problem (for idealists) is, I think, Nietzsche's perspectives, in which multiple subjectivities are summed to produce a blurred picture which has a degree of consensus. Fichte later embraced other minds. |
15457 | Interdefinition is useless by itself, but if we grasp one separately, we have them both [Lewis] |
Full Idea: All circles of interdefinition are useless by themselves. But if we reach one of the interdefined pair, then we have them both. | |
From: David Lewis (Defining 'Intrinsic' (with Rae Langton) [1998], IV) |
22017 | Normativity needs the possibility of negation, in affirmation and denial [Fichte, by Pinkard] |
Full Idea: To adopt any kind of normative stance is to commit oneself necessarily to the possibility of negation. It involves doing something correctly or incorrectly, so there must exist the possibility of denying or affirming. | |
From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 05 | |
A reaction: This seems to be the key idea for understanding Hegel's logic. Personally I think animals have a non-verbal experience of negation - when a partner dies, for example. |
15400 | We must avoid circularity between what is intrinsic and what is natural [Lewis, by Cameron] |
Full Idea: Lewis revised his analysis of duplication because he had assumed that as a matter of necessity perfectly natural properties are intrinsic, and that necessarily how a thing is intrinsically is determined completely by the natural properties it has. | |
From: report of David Lewis (Defining 'Intrinsic' (with Rae Langton) [1998]) by Ross P. Cameron - Intrinsic and Extrinsic Properties 'Analysis' | |
A reaction: [This compares Lewis 1986:61 with Langton and Lewis 1998] I am keen on both intrinsic and on natural properties, but I have not yet confronted this little problem. Time for a displacement activity, I think.... |
15458 | A property is 'intrinsic' iff it can never differ between duplicates [Lewis] |
Full Idea: A property is 'intrinsic' iff it never can differ between duplicates; iff whenever two things (actual or possible) are duplicates, either both of them have the property or both of them lack it. | |
From: David Lewis (Defining 'Intrinsic' (with Rae Langton) [1998], IV) | |
A reaction: This leaves me wondering how one could arrive at a precise definition of 'duplicates'. Can it be done without mentioning that they have the same intrinsic properties? |
15459 | Ellipsoidal stars seem to have an intrinsic property which depends on other objects [Lewis] |
Full Idea: The property of being an ellipsoidal star would seem offhand to be a basic intrinsic property, but it is incompatible (nomologically) with being an isolated object. | |
From: David Lewis (Defining 'Intrinsic' (with Rae Langton) [1998], V) | |
A reaction: Another nice example from Lewis. It makes you wonder whether the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction should go. Modern physics, with its 'entanglements', doesn't seem to suit the distinction. |
22018 | Necessary truths derive from basic assertion and negation [Fichte, by Pinkard] |
Full Idea: Fichte thought that everything that involves necessary truths - even mathematics and logic - should be shown to follow from the more basic principles involved in assertion and negation. | |
From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 05 | |
A reaction: An interesting proposal, though I am struggling to see how it works. Fichte sees assertion and negation as foundational (Idea 22017), but I take them to be responses to the real world. |
22064 | Fichte's logic is much too narrow, and doesn't deduce ethics, art, society or life [Schlegel,F on Fichte] |
Full Idea: Only Fichte's principles are deduced in his book, that is, the logical ones, and not even these completely. And what about the practical, the moral and ethical ones. Society, learning, wit, art, and so on are also entitled to be deduced here. | |
From: comment on Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Friedrich Schlegel - works Vol 18 p.34 | |
A reaction: This is the beginnings of the romantic rebellion against a rather narrowly rationalist approach to philosophy. Schlegel also objects to the fact that Fichte only had one axiom (presumably the idea of the not-Self). |
21971 | Transcendental philosophy is the subject becoming the originator of unified reality [Kant] |
Full Idea: Transcendental philosophy is the act of consciousness whereby the subject becomes the originator of itself and, thereby, of the whole object of technical-practical and moral-practical reason in one system - ordering all things in God | |
From: Immanuel Kant (Posthumous notes [1799], 21:78, p.245), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 06 App | |
A reaction: This is evidently Kant's last word on the matter (c.1799), and Moore says he was drifting close to Fichte's idealism, in which reality is actually (sort of) created by our own minds. Disappointing! God's role here is unclear. |
22032 | Fichte's key claim was that the subjective-objective distinction must itself be subjective [Fichte, by Pinkard] |
Full Idea: Fichte's key claim was that the difference between the subjective and the objective points of view had to be itself a subjective distinction, something that the 'I' posits. | |
From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 09 | |
A reaction: This seems to lock us firmly into the idealist mental prison and throw away the key. |
22020 | We only see ourselves as self-conscious and rational in relation to other rationalities [Fichte] |
Full Idea: A rational creature cannot posit itself as such a creature with self-consciousness without positing itself as an individual, as one among many rational creatures. | |
From: Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794], p.8), quoted by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 05 n25 | |
A reaction: [1796 book about his Wissenschaftlehre] This is the transcendental (Kantian) approach to other minds. Wittgenstein's private language argument is similar. Hegel was impressed by this idea (I think). |
22060 | The Self is the spontaneity, self-relatedness and unity needed for knowledge [Fichte, by Siep] |
Full Idea: According to Fichte, spontaneity, self-relatedness, and unity are the basic traits of knowledge (which includes conscience). ...This principle of all knowledge is what he calls the 'I' or the Self. | |
From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Ludwig Siep - Fichte p.58 | |
A reaction: This is the idealist view. He gets 'spontaneity' from Kant, which is the mind's contribution to experience. Self-relatedness is the distinctive Fichte idea. Unity presumably means total coherence, which is typical of idealists. |
22066 | Novalis sought a much wider concept of the ego than Fichte's proposal [Novalis on Fichte] |
Full Idea: Novalis aimed to create a theory of the ego with a much wider scope than Fichte's doctrine of knowledge had been able to establish. ....Without philosophy, imperfect poet - without poetry, imperfect thinker. | |
From: comment on Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Novalis - Logological Fragments I vol.3 p.531 | |
A reaction: [in his 'Fichte Studies] Since this is at the heart of early romanticism, I take the concept to embrace nature, as well as creative imagination. There is a general rebellion against the narrowness of Fichte. |
22016 | The self is not a 'thing', but what emerges from an assertion of normativity [Fichte, by Pinkard] |
Full Idea: Fichte said the self is not a natural 'thing' but is itself a normative status, and 'it' can obtain this status, so it seems, only by an act of attributing it to itself. ...He continually identified the 'I' with 'reason' itself. | |
From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 05 | |
A reaction: Pinkard says Fichte gradually qualified this claim. Fichte struggled to state his view in a way that avoided obvious paradoxes. 'My mind produces decisions, so there must be someone in charge of them'? Is this transcendental? |
22019 | Consciousness of an object always entails awareness of the self [Fichte] |
Full Idea: I can be conscious of any object only on the condition that I am also conscious of myself, that is, of the conscious subject. This proposition is incontrovertible. | |
From: Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794], p.112), quoted by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 05 | |
A reaction: [from the 1797/8 version of Wissenschaftslehre] Russell might be cross to find that his idea on this was anticipated by Fichte. I still approve of the idea. |
22061 | Judgement is distinguishing concepts, and seeing their relations [Fichte, by Siep] |
Full Idea: For Fichte, to judge means to distinguish concepts from one another and to place them in relationship to one another. | |
From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Ludwig Siep - Fichte p.59 | |
A reaction: This idea of Fichte's seems to be the key one for Hegel, and hence (I presume) it is the lynchpin of German Idealism. It seems to describe mathematical knowledge quite well. I don't think it fits judging whether there is a snake in the grass. |
22023 | Fichte's idea of spontaneity implied that nothing counts unless we give it status [Fichte, by Pinkard] |
Full Idea: Fichte placed emphasis on human spontaneity, on nothing 'counting' for us unless we somehow bestowed some kind of status on it. | |
From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 06 | |
A reaction: This idea evidentally arises from Kant's account of thought. Pinkard says this idea inspired the early Romantics. I would have thought the drive to exist (Spinoza's conatus) would make things count whether we liked it or not. |
22065 | Fichte reduces nature to a lifeless immobility [Schlegel,F on Fichte] |
Full Idea: Fichte reduces the non-Ego or nature to a state of constant calm, standstill, immobility, lack of all change, movement and life, that is death. | |
From: comment on Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Friedrich Schlegel - works vol 12 p.190 | |
A reaction: The point is that Fichte's nature is a merely logical or conceptual deduction from the spontaneous reason of the self, so it can't have the lively diversity we find in nature. |