9 ideas
| 22115 | Wise people should contemplate and discuss the truth, and fight against falsehood [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: The role of the wise person is to meditate on the truth, especially the truth regarding the first principle, and to discuss it with others, but also to fight against the falsity that is its contrary. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Summa Contra Gentiles [1268], I.1.6), quoted by Kretzmann/Stump - Aquinas, Thomas 14 | |
| A reaction: So nice to hear someone (from no matter how long ago) saying that wisdom is concerned with truth. If you lose your grip on truth (which many thinkers seem to have done) you must also abandon wisdom. Then fools rule. |
| 22002 | Wolff's version of Leibniz dominated mid-18th C German thought [Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: The dominant philosophy of mid-eighteenth century Germany was Wolffianism, a codified and almost legalistically organised form of Leibnizian thought. | |
| From: Terry Pinkard (German Philosophy 1760-1860 [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Kant grew up in this intellectual climate. |
| 22021 | Romantics explored beautiful subjectivity, and the re-enchantment of nature [Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Early Romanticism can be seen as the exploration of subjective interiority and as the re-enchantment of nature (as organic). Hegel said they had the idea of a 'beautiful soul', which (he said) either paralysed action, or made them smug. | |
| From: Terry Pinkard (German Philosophy 1760-1860 [2002], 06) | |
| A reaction: [compressed, inc Note 1] A major dilemma of life is the extent of our social engagement, because it makes life worthwhile, but pollutes the mind with continual conflicts. |
| 22010 | The combination of Kant and the French Revolution was an excited focus for German philosophy [Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: After the French Revolution, philosophy suddenly became the key rallying point for an entire generation of German intellectuals, who had been reading Kant as the harbinger of a new order. | |
| From: Terry Pinkard (German Philosophy 1760-1860 [2002], Pt II Intro) | |
| A reaction: Kant was a harbinger because he offered an autonomous status to each individual, rather than being subservient to a social order. |
| 22036 | In Hegel's time naturalism was called 'Spinozism' [Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: In Hegel's time the shorthand for the Naturalistic worldview was 'Spinozism'. | |
| From: Terry Pinkard (German Philosophy 1760-1860 [2002], 10) | |
| A reaction: Spinozism hit Germany like a bomb in 1786, when it was reported that the poet Hölderlin was a fan of Spinoza. |
| 490 | Everything happens by reason and necessity [Leucippus] |
| Full Idea: Nothing happens at random; everything happens out of reason and by necessity. | |
| From: Leucippus (fragments/reports [c.435 BCE], B002), quoted by (who?) - where? |
| 22048 | Idealism is the link between reason and freedom [Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Idealism was conceived as a link between reason and freedom. | |
| From: Terry Pinkard (German Philosophy 1760-1860 [2002], 14 Conc) | |
| A reaction: I'm beginning to see the Romantic era as the Age of Freedom, which followed the Age of Reason. This idea fits that picture nicely. Pinkard says that paradoxes resulted from the attemptl |
| 20700 | Without God's influence every operation would stop, so God causes everything [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: If God's divine influence stopped, every operation would stop. Every operation, therefore, of everything is traced back to him as cause. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Summa Contra Gentiles [1268], III.67), quoted by Brian Davies - Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion 3 'Freedom' | |
| A reaction: If the systematic interraction of mind and body counts as an 'operation', then this seems to imply Occasionalism. |
| 15202 | Eternity coexists with passing time, as the centre of a circle coexists with its circumference [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: The centre of a circle is directly opposite any designated point on the circumference. In this way, whatever is in any part of time coexists with what is eternal as being present to it even though past or future with respect to another part of time. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Summa Contra Gentiles [1268], I.66), quoted by Robin Le Poidevin - Past, Present and Future of Debate about Tense 2 c | |
| A reaction: A nice example of a really cool analogy which almost gets you to accept something which is actually completely incomprehensible. |