Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Courtier and the Heretic', 'Toward a Philosophy of History' and 'Explanation in Mathematics'

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4 ideas

7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / h. Dasein (being human)

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.

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / b. Essence not necessities

13166	Essences are no use in mathematics, if all mathematical truths are necessary [Mancosu]
	Full Idea: Essences and essential properties do not seem to be useful in mathematical contexts, since all mathematical truths are regarded as necessary (though Kit Fine distinguishes between essential and necessary properties).
	From: Paolo Mancosu (Explanation in Mathematics [2008], §6.1)
	A reaction: I take the proviso in brackets to be crucial. This represents a distortion of notion of an essence. There is a world of difference between the central facts about the nature of a square and the peripheral inferences derivable from it.

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / e. Human nature

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'?

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.