16 ideas
2118 | All other human gifts can harm us, but not correct reasoning [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: Although people can be made worse off by all other gifts, correct reasoning alone can only be for the good. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Preface to Universal Characteristic [1679]) | |
A reaction: How about a kind heart? Not everyone would agree with the remark, but philosophers should. |
22087 | Philosophy fails to articulate the continual becoming of existence [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle] |
Full Idea: Kierkegaard criticise philosophy for its inability to grasp and to articulate the movement, the continual becoming, that characterises existence. | |
From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 2 | |
A reaction: Heraclitus had a go, and Hegel's historicism focuses on dynamic thought, but this idea concerns the immediacy of individual life. |
5651 | Traditional views of truth are tautologies, and truth is empty without a subject [Kierkegaard, by Scruton] |
Full Idea: Kierkegaard developed the idea of 'truth as subjectivity'; the traditional conceptions of truth - correspondence or coherence - he regarded as equally empty, not because false, but because tautologous; truth ceases to be empty when related to a subject. | |
From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.13 | |
A reaction: It strikes me that the correspondence theory of truth also involves a subject. If you become too obsessed with the subject, you lose the concept of truth. You need a concept of the non-subject too. Truth concerns the contents of thought. |
16078 | Clay is intrinsically and atomically the same as statue (and that lacks 'modal properties') [Rudder Baker] |
Full Idea: Arguments for statue being the clay are: that the clay is intrinsically like the statue, that the clay has the same atoms as the statue', that objects don't have modal properties such as being necessarily F, and the reference of 'property' changes. | |
From: Lynne Rudder Baker (Why Constitution is not Identity [1997], II) | |
A reaction: [my summary of the arguments she identifies - see text for details] Rudder Baker attempts to refute all four of these arguments, in defence of constitution as different from identity. |
16077 | The clay is not a statue - it borrows that property from the statue it constitutes [Rudder Baker] |
Full Idea: I argue that a lump of clay borrows the property of being a statue from the statue. The lump is a statue because, and only because, there is something that the lump constitutes that is a statue. | |
From: Lynne Rudder Baker (Why Constitution is not Identity [1997], n9) | |
A reaction: It is skating on very thin metaphysical ice to introduce the concept of 'borrowing' a property. I've spent the last ten minutes trying to 'borrow' some properties, but without luck. |
16080 | Is it possible for two things that are identical to become two separate things? [Rudder Baker] |
Full Idea: A strong intuition shared by many philosophers is that some things that are in fact identical might not have been identical. | |
From: Lynne Rudder Baker (Why Constitution is not Identity [1997], IV) | |
A reaction: This flies in the face of the Kripkean view that if Hesperus=Phosphorus then the identity is necessary. I don't think I have an intuition that some given thing might have been two things - indeed the thought seems totally weird. Amoeba? Statue/clay? |
16076 | Constitution is not identity, as consideration of essential predicates shows [Rudder Baker] |
Full Idea: I want to resuscitate an essentialist argument against the view that constitution is identity, of the form 'x is essentially F, y is not essentially F, so x is not y'. | |
From: Lynne Rudder Baker (Why Constitution is not Identity [1997], Intro) | |
A reaction: The point is that x might be essentially F and y only accidentally F. Thus a statue is essentially so, but a lump if clay is not essentially a statue. Another case where 'necessary' would do instead of 'essentially'. |
16081 | The constitution view gives a unified account of the relation of persons/bodies, statues/bronze etc [Rudder Baker] |
Full Idea: Constitution-without-identity is superior to constitution-as-identity in that it provides a unified view of the relation between persons and bodies, statues and pieces of bronze, and so on. | |
From: Lynne Rudder Baker (Why Constitution is not Identity [1997], IV) | |
A reaction: I have a problem with the intrinsic dualism of this whole picture. Clay needs shape, statues need matter - there aren't two 'things' here which have a 'relation'. |
16082 | Statues essentially have relational properties lacked by lumps [Rudder Baker] |
Full Idea: The statue has relational properties which the lump of clay does not have essentially. | |
From: Lynne Rudder Baker (Why Constitution is not Identity [1997], V) | |
A reaction: She has in mind relations to the community of artistic life. I don't think this is convincing. Is something only a statue if it is validated by an artistic community? That sounds like relative identity, which she doesn't like. |
22090 | For me time stands still, and I with it [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle] |
Full Idea: Time flows, life is a stream, people say, and so on. I do not notice it. Time stands still, and I with it. | |
From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843], I:26) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 3 | |
A reaction: This is from the spokesman for the aesthetic option in life, which is largely pleasure-seeking. No real choices ever occur. |
9305 | The plebeians bore others; only the nobility bore themselves [Kierkegaard] |
Full Idea: Those who bore others are the plebeians, the crowd, the endless train of humanity in general; those who bore themselves are the chosen ones, the nobility. | |
From: Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843], Pt.1), quoted by Lars Svendsen - A Philosophy of Boredom Ch.2 | |
A reaction: [p.288 in Princeton Edn] Stunningly elitist, but ask where boredom is most overtly found. "Boring" was once a very fashionable word among the English upper classes. Education and wealth seem to intensify boredom. |
5650 | Reason is just abstractions, so our essence needs a subjective 'leap of faith' [Kierkegaard, by Scruton] |
Full Idea: For Kierkegaard, reason, which produces only abstractions, negates our individual essence; this essence is subjectivity, and subjectivity exists only in the 'leap of faith', whereby the individual casts in his lot with eternity. | |
From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.13 | |
A reaction: Interesting, but this strikes me as a confusion of reason and logic. A logical life would indeed be a sort of death, and need faith as an escape, but a broad view of the rational life includes emotion, imagination and laughter. Blind faith is disaster. |
22095 | There are aesthetic, ethical and religious subjectivity [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle] |
Full Idea: Kierkegaard distinguishes three main types of subjectivity: aesthetic, ethical and religious. But are these types of people, or different phases of one person's life? | |
From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 4 | |
A reaction: His picture of the religious mode holds no appeal for me. I also can't accept that the aesthetic and the moral are somewho distinct. People may discover they have slipped into one of these modes, but no one chooses them, do they? |
20747 | What matters is not right choice, but energy, earnestness and pathos in the choosing [Kierkegaard] |
Full Idea: In making a choice, it is not so much a question of choosing the right way as of the energy, the earnestness, and the pathos with which one chooses. | |
From: Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843], p.106), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 2 'Phenomenology' | |
A reaction: I'm struggling to identify with the experience he is describing. I can't imagine a more quintessentially existentialist remark than this. Reference to 'energy' in choosing strikes me as very romantic. Is 'the way not taken' crucial (in 'pathos')? |
22091 | Kierkegaard prioritises the inward individual, rather than community [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle] |
Full Idea: Whereas Hegel argues that individuals find fulfilment through participation in their community, Kierkegaard prioritises the inwardness of each person, which is shared only with God. | |
From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 3 | |
A reaction: Sounds like the protestant religion opposing the catholic religion (although Hegel was a protestant). Individual v community is the great debate of the last two centuries in Europe. |
22088 | Faith is like a dancer's leap, going up to God, but also back to earth [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle] |
Full Idea: Kierkegaard doesn't use the phrase 'leap of faith'. His metaphor of a dancer's leap expresses the way faith goes 'up' towards God, but also comes back down to earth, and is a way of living in the world. | |
From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 2 | |
A reaction: This entirely contradicts what I was taught about this idea many years ago. Memes turn into Chinese whispers. |