7 ideas
| 16643 | Accidents always remain suited to a subject [Bonaventura] |
| Full Idea: An accident's aptitudinal relationship to a subject is essential, and this is never taken away from accidents….for it is true to say that they are suited to a subject. | |
| From: Bonaventura (Commentary on Sentences [1252], IV.12.1.1.1c) | |
| A reaction: This is the compromise view that allows accidents to be separated, for Transubstantiation, while acknowledging that we identify them with their subjects. |
| 16696 | Successive things reduce to permanent things [Bonaventura] |
| Full Idea: Everything successive reduces to something permanent. | |
| From: Bonaventura (Commentary on Sentences [1252], II.2.1.1.3 ad 5), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 18.2 | |
| A reaction: Avicenna first took successive entities seriously, but Bonaventure and Aquinas seem to have rejected them, or given reductive accounts of them. It resembles modern actualists versus modal realists. |
| 18239 | What is contemplated must have a higher value than contemplation [Kant, by Korsgaard] |
| Full Idea: Kant objects that the world must have a final purpose in order to be worth contemplating, so contemplation cannot be that final purpose. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement II: Teleological [1790]) by Christine M. Korsgaard - Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value 8 'Arist and' | |
| A reaction: That is a very good objection. If we contemplate the ordered heavens, the ordering of the heavens seems to have a greater value than our contemplation of them. The reply is that the contemplation is the final purpose being contemplated! |
| 18238 | Only a good will can give man's being, and hence the world, a final purpose [Kant] |
| Full Idea: A good will is that whereby alone [man's] being can have an absolute worth and in reference to which the being of the world can have a final purpose. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement II: Teleological [1790], C3 443), quoted by Christine M. Korsgaard - Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value 8 'Kant' | |
| A reaction: I wish Kant gave a better account of what a 'good' will consists of. This is an awful burden to bear when you are making decisions. |
| 22053 | The Critique of Judgement aims for a principle that unities humanity and nature [Kant, by Bowie] |
| Full Idea: The Critique of Judgement aims to show how judgement functions 'according to the principle of the appropriateness of nature to our capacity for cognition'. It is meant to provide a principle of the unity of humankind and nature. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement II: Teleological [1790]) by Andrew Bowie - German Philosophy: a very short introduction 1 | |
| A reaction: Hence this work is often overlooked as a key part of Kant's 'system'. At first he probably didn't realise he was creating a system. Kant set an agenda for the philosophy of the ensuing thirty years. |
| 18237 | Without men creation would be in vain, and without final purpose [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Without men the whole creation would be mere waste, in vain, and without final purpose. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement II: Teleological [1790], C3 442), quoted by Christine M. Korsgaard - Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value 8 'Kant' | |
| A reaction: The standard early twenty-first century response to that is 'get over it'! The remark shows how deep religion runs in Kant, despite his great caution about the existence of God. His notion of 'duty' is similarly religious. |
| 5467 | Euler said nature is instrinsically passive, and minds cause change [Euler, by Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Euler thought the powers necessary for the maintenance of the changing universe would turn out to be just the passive ones of inertia and impenetrability. There are no active powers, he urged, other than those of God and living beings. | |
| From: report of Leonhard Euler (Letters to a German Princess [1765]) by Brian Ellis - The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: Very significant, I think, for revealing the religious framework behind early theories of natural laws. If there is nothing external to impose powers and movements on nature, the source must be sought within - hence essentialism. |