48 ideas
| 3600 | Slow and accurate thought makes the greatest progress [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Those who go forward only very slowly can progress much further if they always keep to the right path, than those who run and wander off it. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §1.2) | |
| A reaction: Like Descartes' 'Method'. This seems to place a low value on 'nous' or intuition. |
| 7846 | Nietzsche thinks philosophy makes us more profound, but not better [Nietzsche, by Ansell Pearson] |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche does not think philosopher exists to make us better human beings - but it can make us more profound ones. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Keith Ansell Pearson - How to Read Nietzsche Intro | |
| A reaction: What is the point of being more 'profound' if that isn't 'better'? Are we sure that Kant is more 'profound' than a Yanomamo Indian? Personally I think philosophy tends to produce moral improvement, but I have seen a few striking counterexamples. |
| 3601 | Most things in human life seem vain and useless [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Looking at the various activities and enterprises of mankind with the eye of a philosopher, there is hardly one which does not seem to me vain and useless. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §1.3) | |
| A reaction: Well, yes. The obvious retort is that everything is vain and useless; or if not, then certainly metaphysics is. Useful for what? Is ornamental gardening useless, or sport? Art? What is the use of cosmology? He's right, of course. |
| 3602 | Almost every daft idea has been expressed by some philosopher [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: There is nothing one can imagine so strange or so unbelievable that has not been said by one or other of the philosophers. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §2.16) | |
| A reaction: Actually I think that extensive areas of logical possibilities for existence remain totally unexplored. On the other hand, most of the metaphysical beliefs of most of the human race, including the majority of philosophers, strike me as being false. |
| 20107 | How many mediocre thinkers are occupied with influential problems! [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It is a terrible thought to contemplate that an immense number of mediocre thinkers are occupied with really influential matters. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]), quoted by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 03 | |
| A reaction: [in a journal of 1867] What would he say now, with the plethora of academics and students aspiring to the highest levels of human thought? If I face up to the fact that I am 'mediocre', should I stop? And become mediocre at something else? |
| 20352 | Nietzsche has a metaphysics, as well as perspectives - the ontology is the perspectives [Nietzsche, by Richardson] |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche's thought includes both a metaphysics and a perspectivism, once these are more complexly grasped. But I argue that the metaphysics is basic: it's an ontology of perspectives. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by John Richardson - Nietzsche's System Intro | |
| A reaction: Very good. If it was just gormless relativism, which is what many people hope for in Nietzsche, why is it many perspectives? If they are just relative, having lots of them is no help. The point is they sum, and increase verisimilitude. |
| 3603 | Methodical thinking is cautious, analytical, systematic, and panoramic [Descartes, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Descartes' four principles for his method of thinking are: be cautious, analyse the problem, be systematic from simple to complex, and keep an overview of the problem | |
| From: report of René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §2.18) by PG - Db (ideas) |
| 20379 | Reason is just another organic drive, developing late, and fighting for equality [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Reason is a support organ that slowly develops itself, ...and emancipates itself slowly to equal rights with the organic drives - so that reason (belief and knowledge) fights with the drives, as itself a new drive, very late come to preponderance. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 9/11[243]), quoted by John Richardson - Nietzsche's System 4.3.2 n55 | |
| A reaction: A very powerful and fascinating idea. There is a silly post-modern tendency to think that Nietzsche denegrates and trivialises reason because of remarks like this, but he takes ranking the drives to be the supreme activity. I rank reason high. |
| 3612 | Clear and distinct conceptions are true because a perfect God exists [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: That the things we grasp very clearly and very distinctly are all true, is assured only because God is or exists, and because he is a perfect Being. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §4.38) |
| 3610 | Truth is clear and distinct conception - of which it is hard to be sure [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: I take it as a general rule that the things we conceive very clearly and very distinctly are all true, but that there is merely some difficulty in properly discerning which are those which we distinctly conceive. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §4.33) |
| 20123 | First see nature as non-human, then fit ourselves into this view of nature [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: My task is the dehumanisation of nature, and then the naturalisation of humanity once it has attained the pure concept of 'nature'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 9.525), quoted by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 10 | |
| A reaction: Safranski sees this as summarising Nietzsche's project, and it could be a mission statement for naturalism. This idea pinpoints why I take Nietzsche to be important - as a pioneer of the naturalistic view of people. |
| 20105 | Storms are wonderful expressions of free powers! [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: How different the lightning, the storm, the hail, free powers, without ethics! How happy, how powerful they are, pure will, untarnished by intellect! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 2.122), quoted by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 02 | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche was a perfect embodiment of the Romantic Movement! I take this to be a deep observation, since I think raw powers are the most fundamental aspect of nature. Schopenhauer is behind this idea. |
| 6019 | If someone squashed a horse to make a dog, something new would now exist [Mnesarchus] |
| Full Idea: If, for the sake of argument, someone were to mould a horse, squash it, then make a dog, it would be reasonable for us on seeing this to say that this previously did not exist but now does exist. | |
| From: Mnesarchus (fragments/reports [c.120 BCE]), quoted by John Stobaeus - Anthology 179.11 | |
| A reaction: Locke would say it is new, because the substance is the same, but a new life now exists. A sword could cease to exist and become a new ploughshare, I would think. Apply this to the Ship of Theseus. Is form more important than substance? |
| 20376 | We begin with concepts of kinds, from individuals; but that is not the essence of individuals [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The overlooking of individuals gives us the concept and with this our knowledge begins: in categorising, in the setting up of kinds. But the essence of things does not correspond to this. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], p.51) | |
| A reaction: [dated c1873] Aha! So Nietzsche agrees with me in my defence of individual essences, against kind essences (which seem to me to obviously derive from the nature of individuals). Deep in my heart I knew I would find this quotation one day. |
| 3605 | We can believe a thing without knowing we believe it [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: The action of thought by which one believes a thing, being different from that by which one knows that one believes it, they often exist the one without the other. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §3.23) |
| 1583 | In morals Descartes accepts the conventional, but rejects it in epistemology [Roochnik on Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Descartes' procedure for treating values (accepting normal conventions when faced with uncertainty) is the exact antithesis of that used to attain knowledge. | |
| From: comment on René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §3.23) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.73 |
| 3607 | In thinking everything else false, my own existence remains totally certain [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: While I decided to think that everything was false, it followed necessarily that I who thought thus must be something; the truth 'I think therefore I am' was so certain that the most extravagant scepticism could never shake it. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §4.32) |
| 3617 | I aim to find the principles and causes of everything, using the seeds within my mind [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: I have tried to find in general the principles or first causes of everything which is or which may be in the world, ..without taking them from any other source than from certain seeds of truth which are naturally in our minds. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §6.64) |
| 3611 | Understanding, rather than imagination or senses, gives knowledge [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Neither our imagination nor our senses could ever assure us of anything, if our understanding did not intervene. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §4.37) |
| 3606 | I was searching for reliable rock under the shifting sand [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: My whole plan had for its aim simply to give me assurance, and the rejection of shifting ground and sand in order to find rock or clay. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §3.29) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be characteristic of an age when religion is being quietly rocked by the revival of ancient scepticism. If he'd settled for fallibilism, our civilization would have gone differently. |
| 3604 | When rebuilding a house, one needs alternative lodgings [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Before beginning to rebuild the house in which one lives…. one must also provide oneself with some other accommodation in which to be lodge conveniently while the work is going on. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §3.22) |
| 3618 | Only experiments can settle disagreements between rival explanations [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: I observe almost no individual effect without immediately knowing that it can be deduced in many different ways, ..and I know of no way to resolve this but by experiments such that the results are different according to different explanations. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §6.65) |
| 3615 | Little reason is needed to speak, so animals have no reason at all [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Animals not only have less reason than men, but they have none at all; for we see that very little of it is required in order to be able to speak. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §5.58) |
| 3609 | I am a thinking substance, which doesn't need a place or material support [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: I concluded that I was a substance, of which the whole essence or nature consists in thinking, and which, in order to exist, needs no place and depends on no material thing. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §4.33) | |
| A reaction: To me that sounds like "I concluded that I wasn't a human being", which highlights the bizarre wishful thinking that seems to have gripped the human race for the first few thousand years of its serious thinking. |
| 3608 | I can deny my body and the world, but not my own existence [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: I could pretend that I had no body, and that there was no world or place that I was in, but I could not, for all that, pretend that I did not exist. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §4.32) | |
| A reaction: He makes the (in my opinion) appalling blunder of thinking that because he can pretend that he has no body, that therefore he might not have one. I can pretend that gold is an unusual form of cheese. However, "I don't exist" certainly sounds wrong. |
| 3613 | Reason is universal in its responses, but a physical machine is constrained by its organs [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Whereas reason is a universal instrument which can serve on any kind of occasion, the organs of a machine need a disposition for each action; so it is impossible to have enough different organs in a machine to respond to all the occurrences of life. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §5.57) | |
| A reaction: How can Descartes know that reason is 'universal' rather than just 'very extensive'? Is there any information which cannot be encoded in a computer? It doesn't feel as if there any intrinsic restrictions to reason, but note Idea 4688. |
| 3616 | The soul must unite with the body to have appetites and sensations [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: It is not sufficient that the reasonable soul should be lodged in the body like a pilot in a ship, unless perhaps to move its limbs, but it needs to be united more closely with the body in order to have sensations and appetites, and so be a true man. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §5.59) | |
| A reaction: The idea that the pineal gland is the link suggests that Descartes has the 'pilot' view, but this idea shows that he believes in very close and complex interaction between mind and body. But how can a mind 'have' appetites if it has no physical needs? |
| 3614 | A machine could speak in response to physical stimulus, but not hold a conversation [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: One may conceive of a machine made so as to emit words, and even emit them in response to a change in its bodily organs, such as being touched, but not to reply to the sense of everything said in its presence, as the most unintelligent men can. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §5.56) | |
| A reaction: A critique of the Turing Test, written in 1637! You have to admire. Because of the advent of the microprocessor, we can 'conceive' more sophisticated, multi-level machines than Descartes could come up with. |
| 22501 | Nietzsche classified actions by the nature of the agent, not the nature of the act [Nietzsche, by Foot] |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche thought profoundly mistaken a taxonomy that classified actions as the doing of this or that, insisting that the true nature of an action depended rather on the nature of the individual who did it. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 7) by Philippa Foot - Natural Goodness 7 | |
| A reaction: This is more in the spirit of Aristotle than in the modern legalistic style. It seems to totally ignore consequences, which would puzzle victims or beneficiaries of the action. |
| 22500 | Nietzsche failed to see that moral actions can be voluntary without free will [Foot on Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: To threaten morality Nietzsche needed to show not only that free will was an illusion, but also that no other distinction between voluntary and involuntary action (Aristotle's, for instance) would do instead. He seems to be wrong about this. | |
| From: comment on Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 7) by Philippa Foot - Natural Goodness | |
| A reaction: Just the idea I have been seeking! There is no free will, so in what way are we responsible? Simple: we are responsible for any act which can be shown to be voluntary. It can't just be any action we fully caused, because of accidents. |
| 20128 | Each person has a fixed constitution, which makes them a particular type of person [Nietzsche, by Leiter] |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche's view (which we may call the 'Doctrine of Types') is that each person has a fixed psycho-physical constitution, which defines him as a particular type of person. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Brian Leiter - Nietzsche On Morality 1 'What kind' | |
| A reaction: An interestesting variant, standing between the Aristotelian picture of one shared human nature, and the existentialist picture of our endlessly malleable nature. So what type am I, and what type are you? How many types are there? |
| 22503 | Nietzsche could only revalue human values for a different species [Nietzsche, by Foot] |
| Full Idea: It is only for a different species that Nietzsche's most radical revaluation of values could be valid. It is not valid for us as we are, or are ever likely to be. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Philippa Foot - Natural Goodness 7 | |
| A reaction: This is the Aristotelian view, that our values and virtues arise out of our human nature, with which I largely agree, though we should resist its rather conservative tendencies. |
| 8041 | The superman is a monstrous oddity, not a serious idea [MacIntyre on Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The Übermensch belongs in the pages of a philosophical bestiary rather than in serious discussion. | |
| From: comment on Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: It may just be an empirical and historical fact that the value-systems of a culture arise from the characters of a few strong-willed and charismatic individuals, rather than from collective need - let along collective philosophising. |
| 20135 | Nietzsche's higher type of man is much more important than the idealised 'superman' [Nietzsche, by Leiter] |
| Full Idea: The 'superman' has received far more attention from commentators than it warrants: the higher type of human being (a Goethe or a Nietzsche) is much more important than the hyperbolic, and often obscure, Zarathustrian rhetoric about the über-mensch. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Brian Leiter - Nietzsche On Morality 4 'Higher' n2 | |
| A reaction: Leiter says the über-mensch idea almost entirely drops out of Nietzsche's mature work. |
| 20353 | The 'will to power' is basically applied to drives and forces, not to people [Nietzsche, by Richardson] |
| Full Idea: 'Will to power' is most basically applied not to people but to 'drives' or 'forces', simpler units which Nietzsche sometimes calls 'points' and 'power quanta'. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 1) by John Richardson - Nietzsche's System 1 | |
| A reaction: This strikes as a correct account of Nietzsche, and a hugely important interpretative point. He wasn't saying that all human beings would conquer the world if they could. The point is there are many conflicting and combining wills to power. |
| 20113 | Friendly chats undermine my philosophy; wanting to be right at the expense of love is folly [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: My entire philosophy wavers after just an hour of friendly conversation with complete strangers. It strikes me as so foolish to insist on being right at the expense of love. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 6.37), quoted by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 09 | |
| A reaction: [Letter to Gast, 1880] Strangers who met Nietzsche on walks reported how kind and friendly he was. Most people want to be right most of the time, but a few people have this vice in rather excessive form. Especially philosophers! |
| 22475 | Moral generalisation is wrong, because we should evaluate individual acts [Nietzsche, by Foot] |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche believed that moral generalisation was impossible because the proper subject of evaluation was, instead, a person's individual act. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Philippa Foot - Nietzsche's Immoralism p.155 | |
| A reaction: This suggests a different type of particularism, focusing on the particular decision, rather than on the details of the situation. Presumable no two moral decisions are ever sufficiently the same to be compared. But a lie is a lie. |
| 22476 | Nietzsche thought our psychology means there can't be universal human virtues [Nietzsche, by Foot] |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche believed, in effect, that as the facts of human psychology really were, there could be no such thing as human virtues, dispositions good in any man. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Philippa Foot - Nietzsche's Immoralism p.157 | |
| A reaction: Presumably each individual can only have virtues appropriate to their individual nature, which is something like channelling their personal psychological drives. Can't we each have our individual version of courage or honesty? |
| 1581 | Greeks elevate virtues enormously, but never explain them [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: The ancient pagans place virtues on a high plateau and make them appear the most valuable thing in the world, but they do not sufficiently instruct us about how to know them. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §1.8) |
| 20104 | Nietzsche tried to lead a thought-provoking life [Safranski on Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: All of us ponder our existences, but Nietzsche strove to lead the kind of life that would yield food for thought. | |
| From: comment on Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 01) by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 01 | |
| A reaction: Could Nietzsche possibly be a role model for us in this respect? If I were starting afresh, guided by this thought, I'm not sure how I would go about it. It is Nietzsche's astonishing independence of thought that hits you. |
| 7847 | Initially nihilism was cosmic, but later Nietzsche saw it as a cultural matter [Nietzsche, by Ansell Pearson] |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche's first presentation of nihilism is an existential affair arising from cosmic problems, but he later stressed nihilism as a historical and cultural problem of values, where mankind's highest values reach a point of devaluation. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Keith Ansell Pearson - How to Read Nietzsche Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: The second version seems to imply a quasi-Marxist determinism about social progress. Then you would have to ask, what is the point of fighting against it? I wonder if Nietzsche's values are anti-nihilist, but his metaethics makes nihilism unavoidable? |
| 9782 | Nietzsche urges that nihilism be active, and will nothing itself [Nietzsche, by Zizek] |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche opposes active to passive nihilism - it is better to actively will nothing itself than not to will anything. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Slavoj Zizek - Conversations, with Glyn Daly §3 | |
| A reaction: To 'actively will nothing' sounds to me indistinguishable from suicide, which I don't believe was ever on Nietzsche's agenda. It is hard, though, to disentangle Nietzsche's attitude to nihilism. |
| 20102 | Flight from boredom leads to art [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Flight from boredom is the mother of all art. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 8.432), quoted by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography Intro | |
| A reaction: I might even say that all human achievement comes from boredom. |
| 20106 | Nietzsche was fascinated by a will that can turn against itself [Nietzsche, by Safranski] |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche was fascinated by the idea of a will that turns against itself, against its usual impulses. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 03 | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as very existentialist - a case of existence before essence. |
| 20367 | Individual development is more important than the state, but a community is necessary [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: All states and communities are something lower than the individual, but necessary kinds for his higher development. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 10/7[98]), quoted by John Richardson - Nietzsche's System 2.4 n104 | |
| A reaction: This indicates why Nietzsche should not really be taken as a political thinker, though I would say there is a sort of communitarianism implied in this, just as for Aristotle virtue is supreme, which needs social expression. |
| 20371 | Nietzsche thinks we should join a society, in order to criticise, heal and renew it [Nietzsche, by Richardson] |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche thinks the best way of both joining and opposing a society is to find where it's sick, to be its merciless critic and exposer, and to help heal and renew it. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by John Richardson - Nietzsche's System 3.3 | |
| A reaction: This sounds like the great Victorian sages, such as Ruskin and Arnold. Christopher Hitchens was a nice recent example. Maybe these have been the finest British citizens? |
| 20108 | Every culture loses its identity and power if it lacks a major myth [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Without myth every culture loses its natural healthy creating power: only a horizon encircled with myths can mark off a cultural movement as a discrete unit. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 1.145) | |
| A reaction: In the early part of his career this was a big idea for Nietzsche, especially associated with Wagner's Ring, but he moved away from the idea later. |
| 16686 | God has established laws throughout nature, and implanted ideas of them within us [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: I have noticed certain laws that God has so established in nature, and of which he has implanted such notions in our souls, that …we cannot doubt that they are exactly observed in everything that exists or occurs in the world. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], pt 5), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 15.5 | |
| A reaction: This is the view of laws which still seems to be with us (and needs extirpating) - that some outside agency imposes them on nature. I suspect that even Richard Feynman thought of laws like that, because he despised philosophy, and was thus naďve. |