Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Courtier and the Heretic', 'Episteme and Logos in later Plato' and 'Events'

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4 ideas

2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 2. Logos
17950 The logos enables us to track one particular among a network of objects [Nehamas]
     Full Idea: The logos (the definition) is a summary statement of the path within a network of objects that one will have to follow in order to locate a particular member of that network.
     From: Alexander Nehamas (Episteme and Logos in later Plato [1984], p.234)
     A reaction: I like this because it confirms that Plato (as well as Aristotle) was interested in the particulars rather than in the kinds (which I take to be general truths about particulars).
17951 A logos may be short, but it contains reference to the whole domain of the object [Nehamas]
     Full Idea: A thing's logos, apparently short as it may be, is implicitly a very rich statement since it ultimately involves familiarity with the whole domain to which that particular object belongs.
     From: Alexander Nehamas (Episteme and Logos in later Plato [1984], p.234)
     A reaction: He may be wrong that the logos is short, since Aristotle (Idea 12292) says a definition can contain many assertions.
7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 4. Events / c. Reduction of events
9413 An event is a change in or to an object [Lombard, by Mumford]
     Full Idea: Lombard holds that an event is a change in or to an object.
     From: report of Lawrence B. Lombard (Events [1986]) by Stephen Mumford - Laws in Nature 2.1
     A reaction: This strikes me as more plausible than Davidson's view that events are primitive, or Kim's that they are exemplifications of properties. Events then exist just insofar as we wish to (or are able to) discriminate them.
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 10. Theocracy
7825 The politics of Leibniz was the reunification of Christianity [Stewart,M]
     Full Idea: The politics of Leibniz may be summed up in one word: theocracy. The specific agenda motivating much of his work was to reunite the Protestant and Catholic churches
     From: Matthew Stewart (The Courtier and the Heretic [2007], Ch. 5)
     A reaction: This would be a typical project for a rationalist philosopher, who thinks that good reasoning will gradually converge on the one truth.