69 ideas
| 326 | For relaxation one can consider the world of change, instead of eternal things [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If, for relaxation, one gives up discussing eternal things, it is pleasant to consider likely accounts of the world of change. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 59c) | |
| A reaction: To understand this, examine Plato's example of the Line at 'Republic' 509d. |
| 315 | Philosophy is the supreme gift of the gods to mortals [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is the greatest gift the gods have ever given or ever will give to mortals. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 47b) | |
| A reaction: I wonder why they gave it to us? |
| 22223 | Being-in-the-world is projection to possibilities, thrownness among them, and fallenness within them [Heidegger, by Caputo] |
| Full Idea: Being-in-the-world is a phenomenon of 'care' with a tripartite structure: a) projection towards its possibilities, b) thrownness among those possibilities, so Dasein is not free, and c) fallenness among worldly possibilities, to neglect of its own. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by John D. Caputo - Heidegger p.227 | |
| A reaction: Sounds a bit Californian to me. Just living among the world's possibilities is evidently a bad thing, because you could be concentrating on yourself and your own development instead? |
| 22158 | Pheomenology seeks things themselves, without empty theories, problems and concepts [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: 'Phenomenology' can be formulated as 'To the things themselves!' It is opposed to all free-floating constructions and accidental findings, and to conceptions which only seem to have been demonstrated. It is opposed to traditiona' pseudo-problems. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], Intro II.07) | |
| A reaction: It sounds as if we are invited to look at the world the way a dog might look at it. I am not at all clear what it to be gained from this approach. |
| 15574 | 'Logos' really means 'making something manifest' [Heidegger, by Polt] |
| Full Idea: Heidegger concludes that 'logos' essentially means 'making something manifest'. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], 56/33) by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 3.§7 | |
| A reaction: It would at least seem to involve revealing the truth of something, though truth doesn't seem to be central to Heidegger's thought. 'Logos' is often translated as 'an account', as well as a 'reason', so Heidegger may be right. |
| 306 | Nothing can come to be without a cause [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Nothing can come to be without a cause. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 28a) |
| 15569 | Heidegger says truth is historical, and never absolute [Heidegger, by Polt] |
| Full Idea: Heidegger is a relentless enemy of ahistorical, absolutist concepts of truth. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 1 | |
| A reaction: I presume that if truth is not absolute then it must be relative, but Polt is a little coy about saying so. For me, anyone who says truth is relative doesn't understand the concept, and is talking about something else. |
| 21897 | Reducing being to the study of beings too readily accepts the modern scientific view [Heidegger, by May] |
| Full Idea: Continental philosophers, following Heidegger, see in the attempt to reduce the question of being to that of beings a symptom of an age that is too ready to accept the terms in which science conceives the world. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 1.04 | |
| A reaction: Interesting. I take the idea that this is a failing of the modern age to be ridiculous, since I take it to be the key metaphysical move made by Aristotle. Neverthless, Aristotle is closely in tune with modern science. For 'beings', read 'objects'. |
| 15573 | For us, Being is constituted by awareness of other sorts of Being [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: We are Dasein - the entity who possesses - as constitutive for its understanding of existence - an understanding of the Being of all entities of a character other than its own. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], 34/13), quoted by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 3.§4 | |
| A reaction: This seems to connect to the emerging 'externalist' view of mind that comes with the external view of content coming from Purnam's Twin Earth idea. |
| 324 | Before the existence of the world there must have been being, space and becoming [Plato] |
| Full Idea: There were, before the world came into existence, being, space, and becoming, three distinct realities. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 52d) |
| 20364 | The apprehensions of reason remain unchanging, but reasonless sensation shows mere becoming [Plato] |
| Full Idea: That which is apprehended by intelligence and reason is always in the same state, but that which is conceived by opinion with the help of sensation and without reason is always in a process of becoming and perishing, and never really is. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 28a) | |
| A reaction: Lots of problems with this, of which I take the main one to be the idea that sensation is 'without reason', as if there were a sharp dichotomy in our ways of evaluating reality. Laws of nature seem to be laws of change, not of stasis. |
| 9273 | Heidegger turns to 'Being' to affirm the uniqueness of humans in the world [Heidegger, by Gray] |
| Full Idea: Heidegger turns to 'Being' for the same reason that Christians turn to God - to affirm the unique place of humans in the world. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by John Gray - Straw Dogs 2.4 | |
| A reaction: This is the first remark I have encountered that makes sense of Heidegger's Being to me! It places Heidegger as a modernist philosopher, trying to grapple with the decline of religion. I'll stick with Bertrand Russell on that. |
| 22157 | Dasein is a mode of Being distinguished by concern for its own Being [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: Dasein is an entity which does not just occur among other entities. Rather it is ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its very Being, that Being is an issue for it. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], Intro I.04) | |
| A reaction: How do you distinguish the Being of normal humans from the Being of someone in a deep coma, who has no existential issues? Has that Dasein ceased to be? Why does angst create a new mode of Being, but flying doesn't? |
| 8137 | Dasein is ahead of itself in the world, and alongside encountered entities [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: The formal existential totality of Dasein's ontological structural whole is: the Being of Dasein means ahead-of-itself-Being-already-in-(the-world) as Being-alongside (entities encountered within-the-world). | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.6 41) | |
| A reaction: If you find that thought really illuminating, you are probably on the wrong website. However, the thought that we exist 'ahead of ourselves' might be a fruitful line for existentialists to explore. |
| 21951 | In company with others one's Dasein dissolves, and even the others themselves dissolve [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: This being-with-one-another dissolves one's own Dasein completely into the kind of being of 'the others', in such a way, indeed, that the others, as distinguishable and explicit, vanish more and more. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.164), quoted by Mark Wrathall - Heidegger: how to read 5 | |
| A reaction: He seems to be describing the psychology of someone who joins a small crowd which gradually increases in size. I take this relation to others to be the basic existential dilemma, of retaining individual authenticity within a community. |
| 20745 | 'Dasein' expresses not 'what' the entity is, but its being [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: When we designate this entity with the term 'Dasein' we are expressing not its 'what' (as if it were a table, house, or tree) but its being. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.297), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 2 'Phenomenology' | |
| A reaction: Presumably analytic discussions of persons try to be too objective. Heidegger is trying to capture the thought at the heart of Kierkegaard's existentialism. Objectivity and subjectivity are never in conflict. Is there really a different mode of existence? |
| 8134 | The word 'dasein' is used to mean 'the manner of Being which man possesses', and also the human creature [Heidegger, by Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: Heidegger borrows a common German word 'dasein', meaning 'being' or 'existence', to refer both to 'the manner of Being which... man... possesses', and to the creature which possesses it. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.32) by David E. Cooper - Heidegger Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: This just strikes me as an elementary ontological mistake. Because something has startling properties it doesn't follow that we have a different type of Being. Magnets don't have a different type of being from ordinary iron. |
| 8135 | 'Dasein' is Being which is laid claim to, and which matters to its owner [Heidegger, by Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: We each of us not only have Dasein (our kind of Being), but we can lay claim to it. Also the Dasein of a thing 'is an issue for it' - we care about the kinds of creatures we can make ourselves into. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.67) by David E. Cooper - Heidegger Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: Heidegger says other more puzzling things about Dasein. The second half of the idea is what makes Heidegger an existentialist, and an inspiration for Sartre. |
| 21948 | Dasein is being which can understand itself, and possess itself in a way allowing authenticity [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: Dasein is an entity which, in its very being, comports itself understandingly towards that being. ...Mineness belongs to an existent Dasein, and belongs to it as the condition which makes authenticity and inauthenticity possible. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.78), quoted by Mark Wrathall - Heidegger: how to read 1 | |
| A reaction: He might eventually persuade me that Dasein is so different from mere material being that it deserves a category of its own. But a reductive account of mind is also a reductive account of being. |
| 7680 | Ontology is possible only as phenomenology [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: Ontology is possible only as phenomenology. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.31), quoted by Dale Jacquette - Ontology Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: Jacquette argues against this claim. The idea seems to be the ultimate extension of Kant, and it is not a big move to say that the only real phenomenology we can discuss is our semantics. Wrong, wrong, wrong. |
| 22161 | Readiness-to-hand defines things in themselves ontologically [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: Readiness-to-hand is the way in which entities as they are 'in themselves' are defined ontologico-categorially. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.3.15) | |
| A reaction: I assume this is a direct reference to the problem idealists had with the thing-in-itself. It seems that the reality of a thing consists of the strengthened relationship it has with Dasein, which sounds fairly idealist to me. |
| 12042 | Plato's Forms were seen as part of physics, rather than of metaphysics [Plato, by Annas] |
| Full Idea: In the ancient world Plato's Theory of Forms was mostly seen as one aspect of Plato's 'physics' or theory of the world (rather than as 'metaphysics'). | |
| From: report of Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE]) by Julia Annas - Ancient Philosophy: very short introduction Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: This is how I also see the theory, but then I am inclined to see religion as a rather startling branch of speculative physics. Annas cites 'Timaeus' as the key text for this. |
| 307 | Something will always be well-made if the maker keeps in mind the eternal underlying pattern [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Whenever the maker of anything keeps his eye on the eternally unchanging and uses it as his pattern for the form and function of his product the result must be good. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 28b) |
| 318 | In addition to the underlying unchanging model and a changing copy of it, there must also be a foundation of all change [Plato] |
| Full Idea: In addition to an eternal unchanging model and a visible and changing copy of reality, there must be a third part, the receptacle and nurse of all becoming and change. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 49b) | |
| A reaction: cf Aristotle's criticism in Metaphysics |
| 321 | For knowledge and true opinion to be different there must be Forms; otherwise we are just stuck with sensations [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If intelligence and true opinion are different, then the forms must exist, but if they are the same, then what our senses perceive must be the most certain reality. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 51d) |
| 317 | The universe is basically an intelligible and unchanging model, and a visible and changing copy of it [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Our basic description of the universe contained an intelligible and unchanging model, and a visible and changing copy of it. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 48e) |
| 15576 | Heidegger seeks a non-traditional concept of essence as 'essential unfolding' [Heidegger, by Polt] |
| Full Idea: Heidegger tries to develop a non-traditional concept of essence as 'essential unfolding' ('wesen' as a verb). | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.4.27) by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 3.§25-7 |
| 15578 | Propositions don't provide understanding, because the understanding must come first [Heidegger, by Polt] |
| Full Idea: Propositions are not a good clue to the essence of understanding, because we must already understand things before we formulate propositions about them. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.5.31) by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 3.§31-3 | |
| A reaction: I like this, because I think the most important aspects of our thought and understanding are entirely non-verbal - even in cases where they seem to be highly specific and verbal. We don't understand ourselves at all! |
| 22159 | If we posit 'I' as the starting point, we miss the mind's phenomenal content [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: One of our first tasks will be to prove that if we posit an 'I' or subject as that which is proximally given, we shall completely miss the phenomenal content of Dasein. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.1.10) | |
| A reaction: Descartes had thrown doubt on the informativeness of the phenomena, so presumably your phenomenologist is not interested in whether they reveal any truth. So why are unreliable phenomena of any interest? |
| 22160 | Our relationship to a hammer strengthens when we use [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: The less we stare at the hammer-Thing, and the more we seize hold of it and use it, the more primordial does our relationship to it become. ...The kind of Being which equipment possesses... we call 'readiness-to-hand' [Zuhandenheit]. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.3.15) | |
| A reaction: This example would be well at home in the writings of the pragmatists. It is also an important example for existentialists. In analytic philosophy we might say the experience combines perception with direct exerience of causation. |
| 15580 | There are no raw sense-data - our experiences are of the sound or colour of something [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: We always take a noise as the sound of something; we always take a hue as the color of something. We simply do not experience raw, uninterpreted sense-data - these are the inventions of philosophers. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], 207/163-4), quoted by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 3.§31-3 | |
| A reaction: This is something like the modern view of sense-data as promoted by John McDowell, rather than the experiential atoms of Russell and Moore. Experience is holistic, but that doesn't mean we can't analyse it into components. |
| 20749 | Perceived objects always appear in a context [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: The perceptual 'something' is always in the middle of something else, it always forms part of a 'field'. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.4), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 3 'Perceptual' | |
| A reaction: Sounds like our knowledge of electrons. Nice point. Standard analytic discussions of perceiving a glass always treat it in isolation, when it is on an expensive table near a brandy bottle. Or near a hammer. |
| 334 | Only bird-brained people think astronomy is entirely a matter of evidence [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Birds are empty-headed men who grew feathers instead of hair, because they were interested in astronomy but thought it was entirely a matter of physical evidence. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 91d) |
| 22163 | The scandal of philosophy is expecting to prove reality when the prover's Being is vague [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: The 'scandal of philosophy' is not that this proof [of external things] has yet to be given, but that such proofs are expected and attempted again and again. ...The kind of Being of the entity which does the proving has not been made definite enough. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.6.43a) | |
| A reaction: The 'scandal' was a remark of Kant's. Presumably Heidegger's exploration of Dasein aims to establish the Being of the prover sufficiently to solve this problem (via phenomenology). |
| 21949 | Having thoughts and feelings need engagement in the world [Heidegger, by Wrathall] |
| Full Idea: Heidegger argues that having thoughts and feelings is only possible for entity that is actually engaged in the world. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by Mark Wrathall - Heidegger: how to read 1 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be an a priori exclusion of the possibility of a brain in a vat. I guess the ancestor of this idea is Schopenhauer. |
| 5962 | Plato says the soul is ordered by number [Plato, by Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Plato regards the substance of soul not as number but as being ordered by number. | |
| From: report of Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE]) by Plutarch - 68: Generation of the soul in 'Timaeus' 1023 | |
| A reaction: This remark points towards Plato's esoteric doctrines, which are some sort of mathematical metaphysics. The idea that order and numbers are in some way connected is one of the most powerful in western civilization, with undeniable appeal. |
| 22222 | Dasein finds itself already amongst others [Heidegger, by Caputo] |
| Full Idea: The world is a world shared with others, so that far from being a solipsistic ego ...Dasein finds itself already amongst others. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by John D. Caputo - Heidegger p.226 | |
| A reaction: Phenomenologists don't seem bothered about the problem of knowing other minds. If you take something for granted, it ceases to be a problem to be solved! |
| 8136 | If we work and play with other people, they are bound to be 'Dasein', intelligent agents [Heidegger, by Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: How do I know that other people have minds? The question is a bad one. Precisely because I encounter them at work, play and the like, it is guaranteed that they, too, are Dasein, intelligent agents. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.153-) by David E. Cooper - Heidegger Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: I've seen film of someone playing peek-a-boo with a bonobo ape, so presumably they have Dasein. It might be easier for the AI community to aim at building a robot with Dasein, than one which was simply conscious. |
| 22164 | When Dasein grasps something it exists externally alongside the thing [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: When Dasein directs itself towards something and grasps it, it does not somehow first get out of an inner sphere in which it has been proximally encapsulated, but its primary kind of Being is such that it is always 'outside' alongside entities. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.2.13) | |
| A reaction: This is the first plausible fruit of phenomenology I have been able to discover. Analysing the passive mind is not very promising, but seeing what happens when we become more proactive is revealing. |
| 22162 | There is an everyday self, and an authentic self, when it is grasped in its own way [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: The self of everyday Dasein is the they-self [das Man-selbst], which we distinguish from the authentic self - that is, from the Self which has been taken hold of in its own way. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.4.27) | |
| A reaction: To a novice this sounds like a requirement for increased self-consciousness during daily activity. 'Be a good animal, true to your animal self' said one of Lawrence's characters. |
| 20114 | Everyone is other, and no one is himself [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: Everyone is other, and no one is himself. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.165), quoted by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 09 | |
| A reaction: Safranski describes this as the idea of 'structural self-evasion'. He detects the same idea in Nietzsche's 'Daybreak'. |
| 330 | No one wants to be bad, but bad men result from physical and educational failures, which they do not want or choose [Plato] |
| Full Idea: No one wishes to be bad, but a bad man is bad because of some flaw in his physical makeup and failure in his education, neither of which he likes or chooses. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 86e) |
| 15577 | Moods are more fundamentally revealing than theories - as when fear reveals a threat [Heidegger, by Polt] |
| Full Idea: For Heidegger moods are disclosive; they show us things in a more fundamental way than theoretical propositions ever can. For example, fear reveals something as a threat. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.5.30) by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 3.§30 | |
| A reaction: Most modern students of emotion seem to agree. Even though they may not have specific content, it is always possible to consider the underlying cause of the mood. |
| 316 | Music has harmony like the soul, and serves to reorder disharmony within us [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Music has harmonic motions like the orbits of the soul, and is not for irrational pleasure, but to reduce to order any disharmony in the revolutions within us. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 47d) |
| 20748 | We do not add value to naked things; its involvement is disclosed in understanding it [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: We do not throw a 'signification' over some naked thing which is present-at-hand, we do not stick a value on it; but when something is encountered as such, the thing in question has an involvement which is disclosed in our understanding of the world. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.190-1), quoted by George Dickie - The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude 3 'Undoing' | |
| A reaction: Analytic philosophy and science have tried to dismantle experience, and Heidegger wants to put it back together. I would say there is a big difference between encountering a thing (which is a bit facty), and understanding it (which is more valuey). |
| 332 | One should exercise both the mind and the body, to avoid imbalance [Plato] |
| Full Idea: One should preserve a balance and avoid exercising the mind or body without the other; mathematicians should exercise physically, and athletes mentally. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 88c) | |
| A reaction: Excellent, and very modern. Use it or lose it. It suggests that Plato had a fairly holistic view of a human being, and saw mind and body as closely integrated. |
| 328 | Everything that takes place naturally is pleasant [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Everything that takes place naturally is pleasant. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 81e) | |
| A reaction: Not many people would agree with this. I recently watched a sparrowhawk eat a pigeon in my garden. This is the source of the stoic formula of living according to nature. |
| 20725 | The idea of duty in one's calling haunts us, like a lost religion [Weber] |
| Full Idea: The idea of duty in one's calling prowls about in our lives like the ghost of dead religious beliefs. | |
| From: Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [1904], 5) | |
| A reaction: Great sentence! Vast scholarship boiled down to a simple and disturbing truth. I recognise this in me. Having been 'Head of Philosophy' once is partly what motivates me to compile these ideas. |
| 22166 | Dasein has the potential to be itself, but must be shown this in the midst of ordinariness [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: Because Dasein is lost in the 'they', it must first find itself. It must be 'shown' to itself in its possible authenticity. In terms of its possibility, Dasein is already a potentiality-for-Being-its-self, but it needs to have this potentiality attested. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], II.2.54) | |
| A reaction: I wish there was some criterion for knowing when you are being yourself and when you are not. |
| 22165 | Anxiety reveals the possibility and individuality of Dasein [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: Anxiety discloses Dasein as Being-possible, and indeed as the only kind of thing which it can be of its own accord as something individualised in individualisation. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.6.40) | |
| A reaction: Is sounds like insecurity, as a sort of trauma that shocks one into self-realisation. The idea means very little to me personally. |
| 21952 | Anxiety about death frees me to live my own life [Heidegger, by Wrathall] |
| Full Idea: For Heidegger, as a consequence of my anxiety in the face of death, I am set free to live my life as my own rather than doing things merely because others expect me to do them. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by Mark Wrathall - Heidegger: how to read 7 | |
| A reaction: Contrary to Epicurus, Heidegger thinks anxiety about death is a good thing. The point is, I suppose, that we all die alone, and people who are very socially contrained need to face up to death in order to grasp their autonomy. |
| 22224 | Anxiety is the uncanniness felt when constantly fleeing from asserting one's own freedom [Heidegger, by Caputo] |
| Full Idea: Anxiety [angst] is the disturbing sense of uncanniness by which Dasein is overtaken (thrownness) when it discovers there is nothing other than its own freedom to sustain its projects (projection), and from which Dasein constantly takes flight (falling). | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by John D. Caputo - Heidegger p.227 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be Kierkegaard's idea, unamended. In my experience anxiety only comes when I am forced into making decisions by worldly situations. An 'existential crisis' is a sort of blankness appearing where a future life was supposed to be. |
| 15572 | Being what it is (essentia) must be conceived in terms of Being (existence) [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: Dasein's Being-what-it-is (essentia) must….be conceived in terms of its Being (existentia). | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], 67/42), quoted by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 3.§2 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the origin of Sartre's famous slogan 'existence before essence'. It seems to be a rebellion against Husserl's quest for essences. |
| 20453 | Heidegger says we must either choose an inauthentic hero, or choose yourself as hero [Heidegger, by Critchley] |
| Full Idea: Heidegger says you must choose your hero; either you choose 'das Man', the inauthentic life, or you choose yourself - the point being that you have to choose yourself as your hero in order to be authentic. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by Simon Critchley - Impossible Objects: interviews 5 | |
| A reaction: If Nietzsche's 'Ecce Homo' is the model for choosing yourself as hero, I am not too sure about this idea. Needing a hero seems awfully German and romantic. Ein Heldenleben. Be your own anit-hero (like a standup comedian)? |
| 20722 | Acquisition and low consumption lead to saving, investment, and increased wealth [Weber] |
| Full Idea: If people are acquisitive but consumption is limited, the inevitable result is the accumulation of capital through the compulsion to save. The restraints on consumption naturally served to increase wealth by enabling the productive investment of capital. | |
| From: Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [1904], 5) | |
| A reaction: [compressed. He also quotes John Wesley saying this] In a nutshell, this is how the protestant ethic (esp. if puritan) drives capitalism. It also needs everyone to have a 'calling', and a rebellion against monasticism in favour of worldly work. |
| 20724 | When asceticism emerged from the monasteries, it helped to drive the modern economy [Weber] |
| Full Idea: When asceticism was carried out of the monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. | |
| From: Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [1904], 5) | |
| A reaction: Since Max Weber's time I should think this is less and less true. If you hunt for ascetics in the modern world, they are probably dropped out, and pursuing green politics. Industrialists are obsessed with property and wine. |
| 20717 | Capitalism is not unlimited greed, and may even be opposed to greed [Weber] |
| Full Idea: Unlimited greed for gain is not in the least identical with capitalism, and is still less in its spirit. Capitalism may even be identical with the restraint, or at least a rational tempering, of this irrational impulse. | |
| From: Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [1904], Author's Intro) | |
| A reaction: The point is that profits have to be re-invested, rather than spent on pleasure. If we are stuck with capitalism we need a theory of Ethical Capitalism. |
| 20718 | Modern western capitalism has free labour, business separate from household, and book-keeping [Weber] |
| Full Idea: The modern Occident has developed a very different form of capitalism: the rational capitalist organisation of free labour …which needed two other factors: the separation of the business from the household, and the closely connected rational book-keeping. | |
| From: Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [1904], Author's Intro) | |
| A reaction: For small businesses the separation has to be maintained by a ruthless effort of imagination. Book-keeping is because the measure of loss and profit is the engine of the whole game. Labour had to be dragged free of family and community. |
| 322 | Intelligence is the result of rational teaching; true opinion can result from irrational persuasion [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Intelligence is produced by teaching, involves truth and reason, and cannot be moved; true opinion involves persuasion, is irrational and can be moved. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 51e) |
| 331 | Bad governments prevent discussion, and discourage the study of virtue [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Under a bad government discussion, both public and private, is bad, and no courses of study are available to cure faults of character. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 87b) |
| 311 | The cosmos must be unique, because it resembles the creator, who is unique [Plato] |
| Full Idea: So that our universe can resemble the perfect living creature in being unique, the universe was, is and will continue to be its maker's only creation. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 31c) |
| 310 | The creator of the cosmos had no envy, and so wanted things to be as like himself as possible [Plato] |
| Full Idea: This changing cosmos was made because its maker is good, and therefore lacks envy; he therefore wished all things to be as like himself as possible. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 29e) |
| 325 | We must consider the four basic shapes as too small to see, only becoming visible in large numbers [Plato] |
| Full Idea: We must think of the individual units of all four basic shapes as being far too small to be visible, and only becoming visible when massed together in large numbers. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 56c) |
| 327 | There are two types of cause, the necessary and the divine [Plato] |
| Full Idea: We must distinguish two types of cause, the necessary and the divine. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 68e) |
| 314 | Heavenly movements gave us the idea of time, and caused us to inquire about the heavens [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Days, months, years and solstices have caused the invention of number, given us the notion of time, and caused us to inquire into the nature of the universe. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 47a) |
| 312 | Time came into existence with the heavens, so that there will be a time when they can be dissolved [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Time came into being with the heavens, so that they should be dissolved together if ever they are dissolved. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 38c) |
| 309 | Clearly the world is good, so its maker must have been concerned with the eternal, not with change [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If the world is beautiful and its maker good, he had an eye on the eternal; if not, on that which is subject to change; clearly the world is the fairest of things, and he the best of causes, so it is eternal. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 29a) |
| 308 | If the cosmos is an object of perception then it must be continually changing [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The cosmos is visible, tangible and corporeal, and therefore perceptible by the senses; therefore it is an object of opinion and sensation, and therefore change and coming into being. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 28d) |
| 20719 | Punish the heretic, but be indulgent to the sinner [Weber] |
| Full Idea: The rule of the Catholic church is 'punishing the heretic, but indulgent of the sinner'. | |
| From: Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [1904], 1) | |
| A reaction: Weber cites this as if it is a folklore saying. It seems to fit the teachings of Jesus, who is intensely keen on unwavering faith, but very kind to those who stray morally. Hence Graham Greene novels, all about sinners. |