86 ideas
| 15447 | We shouldn't always follow where the argument leads! [Lewis on Plato] |
| Full Idea: There comes a time not to go on following where the argument leads! | |
| From: comment on Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 667b) by David Lewis - Against Structural Universals 'Variant' | |
| A reaction: Lewis is a fine one to talk, since he follows argument that take him past innumerable incredulous stares of onlookers. |
| 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. |
| 243 | It is foolish to quarrel with the mind's own reasoning processes [Plato] |
| Full Idea: When the soul quarrels with knowledge or opinion or reason, its natural ruling principles, you have there what I call 'folly'. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 689b) |
| 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. |
| 241 | We ought to follow where the argument leads us [Plato] |
| Full Idea: We ought to follow where the argument leads us. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 667a) |
| 21264 | Mortals are incapable of being fully rational [Plato] |
| Full Idea: We mustn't assume that mortal eyes will ever be able to look upon reason and get to know it adequately. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 897d) | |
| A reaction: This is in the context of the rational control of the whole Cosmos. I presume Plato would be flabbergasted by the findings of recent physics and cosmology. Did Kant believe that he was being completely rational about ethics? |
| 251 | Truth has the supreme value, for both gods and men [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Truth heads the list of all things good, for gods and men alike. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 730c) |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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 |
| 21259 | To grasp a thing we need its name, its definition, and what it really is [Plato] |
| Full Idea: There are three elements in any given thing: the first is what the object actually is, the second is the definition of this, and the third is the name. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 895d) | |
| A reaction: I take the importance of this to be its distinction between what it is, and the definition of what it is. Aristotle maintains this distinction, but some modern Aristotelians seem to get the confused. Plato worried a lot more about names than we do. |
| 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. |
| 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). |
| 22179 | Explanatory facts also predict, and predictive facts also explain [Hempel, by Okasha] |
| Full Idea: Hempel said every scientific explanation is potentially a prediction - it would have predicted the phenomenon in question, had it not already been known. But also the information used to make a prediction is potentially an explanation. | |
| From: report of Carl Hempel (Aspects of Scientific Explanation [1965]) by Samir Okasha - Philosophy of Science: Very Short Intro (2nd ed) 3 | |
| A reaction: Sounds too neatly glib to be quite true. If you explain a single event there is nothing to predict. You might predict accurately from a repetitive pattern, with no understanding at all of the pattern. |
| 17083 | The covering-law model is for scientific explanation; historical explanation is quite different [Hempel] |
| Full Idea: To put forward the covering-law models of scientific explanation is not to deny that there are other contexts in which we speak of explanation. ….That it does not fit explaining the rules of Hanoverian succession is to miss the intent of our model. | |
| From: Carl Hempel (Aspects of Scientific Explanation [1965], p. 412-3), quoted by David-Hillel Ruben - Explaining Explanation Ch 1 | |
| A reaction: Important to get that clear. It then requires a clear demarcation between science and the rest, and it had better not rule out biology because it is having a love affair with physics. |
| 6755 | For Hempel, explanations are deductive-nomological or probabilistic-statistical [Hempel, by Bird] |
| Full Idea: Hempel proposes that explanations involve covering laws and antecedent conditions; this view (the 'covering law' view) has two versions, the deductive-nomological model and the probabilistic-statistical model of explanation. | |
| From: report of Carl Hempel (Aspects of Scientific Explanation [1965]) by Alexander Bird - Philosophy of Science Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: The obvious problem with this approach, it seem to me, is that the laws themselves need explanation, and I don't see how a law can be foundational unless there is a divine law-giver. Are the laws arbitrary and axiomatic? |
| 13052 | Hempel rejects causation as part of explanation [Hempel, by Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Hempel explicitly rejects the idea that causality plays any essential explanatory role. | |
| From: report of Carl Hempel (Aspects of Scientific Explanation [1965], p.352) by Wesley Salmon - Four Decades of Scientific Explanation 1.1 | |
| A reaction: Hempel champions the 'covering-law' model of explanation. It strikes me that Hempel is so utterly wrong about this that his views aren't even a candidate for correctness, but then for a long time his views were orthodoxy. |
| 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. |
| 21260 | Soul is what is defined by 'self-generating motion' [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The entity which we call 'soul' is precisely that which is defined by the expression 'self-generating motion'. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 896a) | |
| A reaction: We may suspect that he defines soul in this way for a particular context, aimed at proving the existence of a First Mover. He must think there is more to soul than the generation of movement. |
| 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. |
| 276 | My individuality is my soul, which carries my body around [Plato] |
| Full Idea: While I am alive I have nothing to thank for my individuality except my soul, whereas my body is just the likeness that I carry around with me. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 959a) |
| 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'. |
| 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. |
| 249 | People who value beauty above virtue insult the soul by placing the body above it [Plato] |
| Full Idea: When a man values beauty above virtue, the disrespect he shows his soul is total and fundamental, because he argues that the body is more to be honoured than the soul. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 727e) |
| 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). |
| 265 | An action is only just if it is performed by someone with a just character and outlook [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The description 'just' is applicable only to the benefit conferred or injury inflicted by someone with a just character and outlook. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 862b) | |
| A reaction: How should we describe the occasional administering of good justice by a generally wicked judge. Greeks focus on character, but moderns focus on actions. |
| 269 | Attempted murder is like real murder, but we should respect the luck which avoided total ruin [Plato] |
| Full Idea: An attempted murder should be treated like a successful one, but with respect shown for the luck which saved him from total ruin. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 877a) | |
| A reaction: The earliest reference to moral luck, I think. 'Repect' sounds vague, but it is asking judges to 'take it into consideration', which is quite practical. Attempted murderers are just as dangerous. |
| 240 | It would be strange if the gods rewarded those who experienced the most pleasure in life [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It would be strange if the gods gave the greatest rewards in heaven to those who led the most pleasant life, rather than the most just. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 662c) | |
| A reaction: All of philosophy is just footnotes to Plato.... See Idea 1454. |
| 264 | The conquest of pleasure is the noblest victory of all [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The conquest of pleasure is the noblest victory of all. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 840c) | |
| A reaction: Plato's puritanical streak. Even Aristotle doesn't agree with this. Self-control does not imply conquest of pleasure. Has a good professional wine taster conquered pleasure? |
| 263 | The only worthwhile life is one devoted to physical and moral perfection [Plato] |
| Full Idea: A life devoted to every physical perfection and every moral virtue is the only life worth the name. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 807c) |
| 4332 | Virtue is a concord of reason and emotion, with pleasure and pain trained to correct ends [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Virtue is the general concord of reason and emotion, but there is one key element, which is the correct formation of our feelings of pleasure and pain, which makes us hate what we ought to hate, and love what we ought to love. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 653c) | |
| A reaction: An important truth, taken up by Aristotle. To see another person humiliated gives some people pleasure and other people pain. |
| 248 | A serious desire for moral excellence is very rare indeed [Plato] |
| Full Idea: People who are anxious to attain moral excellence with all possible speed are pretty thin on the ground. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 718e) |
| 253 | Every crime is the result of excessive self-love [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The cause of each and every crime we commit is precisely this excessive love of ourselves. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 731e) |
| 235 | Virtue is the aim of all laws [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Virtue is the aim of the laws the legislator lays down. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 631a) |
| 277 | The Guardians must aim to discover the common element in the four cardinal virtues [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The guardians of the state should aim to get an exact idea of the common element in all the four virtues. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 965d) |
| 254 | Excessive laughter and tears must be avoided [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Excessive laughter and tears must be avoided. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 732c) |
| 266 | Injustice is the mastery of the soul by bad feelings, even if they do not lead to harm [Plato] |
| Full Idea: My general description of injustice is this: the mastery of the soul by anger, fear, pleasure, pain, envy and desires, whether they lead to actual damage or not. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 863e) |
| 242 | The best people are produced where there is no excess of wealth or poverty [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The community in which neither wealth nor poverty exists will produce the finest characters. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 679b) |
| 256 | Virtue and great wealth are incompatible [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Virtue and great wealth are quite incompatible. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 742e) |
| 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)? |
| 245 | Totalitarian states destroy friendships and community spirit [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Excessively authoritarian government destroys all friendship and community of spirit in the state. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 697d) |
| 239 | Education in virtue produces citizens who are active but obedient [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Education in virtue produces a keen desire to become a perfect citizen who knows how to rule and be ruled as justice demands. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 643e) |
| 1402 | Friendship is impossible between master and slave, even if they are made equal [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Even if you proclaim that a master and a slave shall have equal status, friendship between them is inherently impossible. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 757a) |
| 262 | Men and women should qualify equally for honours on merit [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Men and women who have shown conspicuous merit should qualify for all honours without distinction of sex. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 802a) |
| 236 | Sound laws achieve the happiness of those who observe them [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Sound laws achieve the happiness of those who observe them. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 631b) |
| 259 | Justice is granting the equality which unequals deserve [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Justice consists of granting the 'equality' which unequals deserve to get. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 757d) | |
| A reaction: Beautifully simple, and hard to improve on. It shows the close link between equality and justice, but shows why they are not the same. The main debate about justice concerns the criteria for 'deserving'. |
| 257 | Mathematics has the widest application of any subject on the curriculum [Plato] |
| Full Idea: For domestic and public purposes, and all professional skills, no branch of a child's education has as big a range of applications as mathematics. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 747a) |
| 260 | Control of education is the key office of state, and should go to the best citizen [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The Minister of Education is by far the most important of all the supreme offices of the state; the best all-round citizen in the state should be appointed. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 765e) |
| 238 | Children's games should channel their pleasures into adult activity [Plato] |
| Full Idea: We should use children's games to channel their pleasures and desires towards activities in which they will have to engage when they are adult. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 643c) |
| 250 | The best way to educate the young is not to rebuke them, but to set a good example [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The best way to educate the younger generation (as well as yourself) is not to rebuke them but patently to practise all your life what you preach to others. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 729c) |
| 4331 | Education is channelling a child's feelings into the right course before it understands why [Plato] |
| Full Idea: I call 'education' the initial acquisition of virtue by the child, when the feelings of pleasure and affection, pain and hatred, are channelled in the right courses before he can understand the reason why. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 653b) | |
| A reaction: A precursor of Aristotle's view (Ethics 1104b11). A profound, simple and important insight. |
| 275 | Creation is not for you; you exist for the sake of creation [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Creation is not for your benefit; you exist for the sake of the universe. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 903c) |
| 273 | Movement is transmitted through everything, and it must have started with self-generated motion [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Motion is transmitted to innumerable things, and this must spring from some initial principle, which must be the change effected by self-generated motion. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 895a) |
| 8004 | In 'The Laws', to obey the law is to be obey god [Plato, by MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: The divine is important in 'The Laws' because it is identified with law; to be obedient before the law is to be obedient before god. | |
| From: report of Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.6 | |
| A reaction: Christian conservativism in a nutshell. Plato is rejecting his view in Euthyphro that piety (etc.) must precede the will of the gods. The obvious problem is bad laws, made by corrupt rulers. |
| 21257 | Self-generating motion is clearly superior to all other kinds of motion [Plato] |
| Full Idea: We can't resist the conclusion that the motion which can generate itself is infinitely superior, and all the others are inferior to it. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 894d) | |
| A reaction: Who said you can't get values from facts! Not that the argument depends on superiority. There could be an inferior First Mover, as a bus driver is subservient to the passengers, or (my favourite) a head teacher is inferior to the pupils. |
| 21261 | Self-moving soul has to be the oldest thing there is [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Soul, being the source of motion, is the most ancient thing there is. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 896b) | |
| A reaction: Plato seems to assume that the First Mover must still exist, which doesn't follow from anything in the argument. The First Pusher could be dead before the last domino falls. Why can't activity be the default state of everything? |
| 21258 | The only possible beginning for the endless motions of reality is something self-generated [Plato] |
| Full Idea: When the motion in reality is transmitted to thousands of things one after another, the entire sequence of their movements must surely spring from some initial principle, which can hardly be anything except the change effected by self-generated motion. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 895a) | |
| A reaction: This gives a domino picture of reality, with all of reality responding inertly to a first kick. Much better is to see self-generated motion in the active qualities of all matter, as seen in the sea of virtual subatomic particles at the smallest level. |
| 274 | Soul must be the cause of all the opposites, such as good and evil or beauty and ugliness [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Soul must be cause of good and evil, beauty and ugliness, justice and injustice, and all the opposites. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 896d) |
| 21263 | If all the motions of nature reflect calculations of reason, then the best kind of soul must direct it [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If the movement of the heavens and all that is in them reflects the motion and revolution and calculation of reason ...then clearly we have to admit that it is the best kind of soul that cares for the entire universe and directs it along the best path. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 897c) | |
| A reaction: Most of this passage reflects the cosmological argument - that without some initiating source natural events could not occur - but this slides into the design argument. So who designed mud (which is too inferior to have a Form)? |
| 278 | If astronomical movements are seen as necessary instead of by divine will, this leads to atheism [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If a man studying astronomy sees events apparently happening by necessity rather than being directed by the intention of a benevolent will, he will turn into an atheist. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 967a) |
| 21265 | The heavens must be full of gods, controlling nature either externally or from within [Plato] |
| Full Idea: A soul or souls have been shown to be cause of all the phenomena, and whether it is by their living presence in matter that they direct all the heavens, or by some other means, we insist that these souls are gods. So 'everything is full of gods'. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 899b) | |
| A reaction: This seems to have little to do with the pagan gods on Olympus. It is also notably not monotheistic. It is somewhere between animism and panpsychism. Does he think the rivers and woods contain gods? Probably not. Just the orderly heavens. |
| 21262 | There must be at least two souls controlling the cosmos, one doing good, the other the opposite [Plato] |
| Full Idea: There must be more than one soul (not fewer than two) controlling movement and the heavens: that which does good, and that which has the opposite capacity. | |
| From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 896e) | |
| A reaction: [Wording compressed - as often with the dialogues] This idea of controlling opposites is found in Empedocles. Presumably this good soul defers to the Form of the Good, as implied by the Euthyphro Question. |