5 ideas
| 20752 | For man, being is not what he is, but what he is going to be [Ortega y Gassett] |
| Full Idea: Being consists not in what it is already, but in what it is not yet, a being that consists in not-yet-being. Everything else in the world is what it is….Man is the entity that makes himself….He has to determine what he is going to be. | |
| From: José Ortega y Gassett (Toward a Philosophy of History [1941], p.112,201-2), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 4 'Problem' | |
| A reaction: [p.112 and 201-2] This seems to be Ortega y Gasset's spin on Heidegger's concept, by adding a temporal dimension to it. |
| 22062 | Mental presentation are not empirical, but concern the strivings of the self [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: The intelligence has as the object of its presentation not an empirical perception, but rather only the necessary striving of the self. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (Review of 'Aenesidemus' [1792], Wks I:22), quoted by Ludwig Siep - Fichte p.62 | |
| A reaction: The embodiment of Fichte's idealism. The 'striving' is the spontaneous application of concepts described the Kant. Kant looks outwards, but Fichte sees only the striving. |
| 22015 | The thing-in-itself is an empty dream [Fichte, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Fichte said that the thing-in-itself (which both Reinhold and Schulze accepted) is only "a piece of whimsy, a pipe-dream, a non-thought". | |
| From: report of Johann Fichte (Review of 'Aenesidemus' [1792]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 05 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a key moment in German philosophy, and the first step towards the idealist interpretation of Kant. |
| 20756 | Instead of having a nature, man only has a history [Ortega y Gassett] |
| Full Idea: Man lives in view of the past. Man, in a word, has no nature; what he has is history. Expressed differently: what nature is to things, history is to man. | |
| From: José Ortega y Gassett (Toward a Philosophy of History [1941], p.217), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 5 'Situated' | |
| A reaction: Makes explicit the existentialist denial of human nature. The foundation of ethics can only be total freedom, to choose both yourself and your actions. What is inescapable is the social and culture contexts. What is the role of the 'history'? |
| 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. |