5 ideas
21982 | I only wish I had such eyes as to see Nobody! It's as much as I can do to see real people. [Carroll,L] |
Full Idea: "I see nobody on the road," said Alice. - "I only wish I had such eyes," the King remarked. ..."To be able to see Nobody! ...Why, it's as much as I can do to see real people." | |
From: Lewis Carroll (C.Dodgson) (Through the Looking Glass [1886], p.189), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.7 | |
A reaction: [Moore quotes this, inevitably, in a chapter on Hegel] This may be a better candidate for the birth of philosophy of language than Frege's Groundwork. |
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. |
22518 | The actual must be possible, because it occurred [Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Actual events are evidently possible, otherwise they would not have occurred. | |
From: Aristotle (The Poetics [c.347 BCE], 1451b18) | |
A reaction: [quoted online by Peter Adamson] Seems like common sense, but it's important to have Aristotle assert it. |
16566 | Poetry is more philosophic than history, as it concerns universals, not particulars [Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars. | |
From: Aristotle (The Poetics [c.347 BCE], 1451b05) | |
A reaction: Hm. Characters in great novels achieve universality by being representated very particularly. Great depth of mind seems required to be a poet, but less so for a historian (though there is, I presume, no upward limit on the possible level of thought). |