18 ideas
| 22070 | Irony is consciousness of abundant chaos [Schlegel,F] |
| Full Idea: Irony is the clear conscousness of eternal agility, of an infinitely abundant chaos. | |
| From: Friedrich Schlegel (works [1798], Vol 2 p.263), quoted by Ernst Behler - Early German Romanticism p.81 | |
| A reaction: [1800, in Athenaum] The interest here is irony as a reaction to chaos, which has made systematic thought impossible. Do romantics necessarily see reality as beyond our grasp, even if not chaotic? This must be situational, not verbal irony. |
| 22069 | Plato has no system. Philosophy is the progression of a mind and development of thoughts [Schlegel,F] |
| Full Idea: Plato had no system, but only a philosophy. The philosophy of a human being is the history, the becoming, the progression of his mind, the gradual formation and development of his thoughts. | |
| From: Friedrich Schlegel (works [1798], Vol.11 p.118), quoted by Ernst Behler - Early German Romanticism | |
| A reaction: [1804] Looks like the first sign of rebellion against the idea of having a 'system' in philosophy, making it a key idea of romanticism. Systems are classical? This looks like an early opposition of a historical dimension to static systems. Big idea. |
| 23657 | The existence of tensed verbs shows that not all truths are necessary truths [Reid] |
| Full Idea: If all truths were necessary truths, there would be no occasion for different tenses in the verbs by which they are expressed. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 6: Judgement [1785], 5) | |
| A reaction: This really is like modern linguistic analysis. Of course the tensed verbs might only indicate times when the universal necessities have been noticed by speakers. …But then the noticing would be contingent! |
| 23655 | An ad hominem argument is good, if it is shown that the man's principles are inconsistent [Reid] |
| Full Idea: It is a good argument ad hominem, if it can be shewn that a first principle which a man rejects, stands upon the same footing with others which he admits, …for he must then be guilty of an inconsistency. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 6: Judgement [1785], 4) | |
| A reaction: Good point. You can't divorce 'pure' reason from the reasoners, because the inconsistency of two propositions only matters when they are both asserted together. …But attacking the ideas isn't quite the same as attacking the person. |
| 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? |
| 23659 | If someone denies that he is thinking when he is conscious of it, we can only laugh [Reid] |
| Full Idea: If any man could be found so frantic as to deny that he thinks, while he is conscious of it, I may wonder, I may laugh, or I may pity him, but I cannot reason the matter with him. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 6: Judgement [1785], 5) | |
| A reaction: An example of the influence of Descartes' Cogito running through all subsequent European philosophy. There remain the usual questions about personal identity which then arise, but Reid addresses those. |
| 23662 | The existence of ideas is no more obvious than the existence of external objects [Reid] |
| Full Idea: If external objects be perceived immediately, we have the same reason to believe their existence as philosophers have to believe the existence of ideas. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 6: Judgement [1785], 5) | |
| A reaction: He doesn't pay much attention to mirages and delusions, but in difficult conditions of perception we are confident of our experiences but doubtful about the objects they represent. |
| 22068 | Poetry is transcendental when it connects the ideal to the real [Schlegel,F] |
| Full Idea: There is a kind of poetry whose essence lies in the relation between the ideal and the real, and which therefore, by analogy with philosophical jargon, should be called transcendental poetry. | |
| From: Friedrich Schlegel (works [1798], Vol 2 p.204), quoted by Ernst Behler - Early German Romanticism p.78 | |
| A reaction: I think the basic idea is that the imaginative creation of poetry has the power to bridge the gap between the transcendental (presupposed) ideal in Fichte, and nature (which Fichte seems to have excluded from his system). |
| 23661 | We are only aware of other beings through our senses; without that, we are alone in the universe [Reid] |
| Full Idea: We can have no communication, no correspondence or society with any created being, but by means of our senses. And, until we rely on their testimony, we must consider ourselves as being alone in the universe. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 6: Judgement [1785], 5) | |
| A reaction: I'm not aware of any thinker before this so directly addressing solipsism. Even the champion of direct and common sense realism has to recognise the intermediary of our senses when accepting other minds. |
| 23654 | In obscure matters the few must lead the many, but the many usually lead in common sense [Reid] |
| Full Idea: In matters beyond the reach of common understanding, the many are led by the few, and willingly yield to their authority. But, in matters of common sense, the few must yield to the many, when local and temporary prejudices are removed. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 6: Judgement [1785], 4) | |
| A reaction: Wishful thinking in the 21st century, when the many routinely deny the authority of the expert few, and the expert few occasionally prove that the collective common sense of the many is delusional. I still sort of agree with Reid. |
| 23660 | The theory of ideas, popular with philosophers, means past existence has to be proved [Reid] |
| Full Idea: The theory concerning ideas, so generally received by philosophers, destroys all the authority of memory. …This theory made it necessary for them to find out arguments to prove the existence of external objects …and of things past. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 6: Judgement [1785], 5) | |
| A reaction: Reid was a very articulate direct realist. He seems less aware than the rest of us of the problem of delusions and false memories. Our strong sense that immediate memories are reliable is certainly inexplicable. |
| 23658 | Consciousness is an indefinable and unique operation [Reid] |
| Full Idea: Consciousness is an operation of the understanding of its own kind, and cannot be logically defined. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 6: Judgement [1785], 5) | |
| A reaction: It is interesting that has tried to define consciousness, rather than just assuming it. I note that he calls consciousness an 'operation', rather than an entity. Good. |
| 23656 | The structure of languages reveals a uniformity in basic human opinions [Reid] |
| Full Idea: What is common in the structure of languages, indicates an uniformity of opinion in those things upon which that structure is grounded. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 6: Judgement [1785], 4) | |
| A reaction: Reid was more interested than his contemporaries in the role of language in philosophy. The first idea sounds like Chomsky. I would add to this that the uniformity of common opinion reflects uniformities in the world they are talking about. |
| 23653 | If you can't distinguish the features of a complex object, your notion of it would be a muddle [Reid] |
| Full Idea: If you perceive an object, white, round, and a foot in diameter, if you had not been able to distinguish the colour from the figure, and both from the magnitude, your senses would only give you one complex and confused notion of all these mingled together | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 6: Judgement [1785], 1) | |
| A reaction: His point is that if you reject the 'abstraction' of these qualities, you still cannot deny that distinguishing them is an essential aspect of perceiving complex things. Does this mean that animals distinguish such things? |
| 23663 | There are axioms of taste - such as a general consensus about a beautiful face [Reid] |
| Full Idea: I think there are axioms, even in matters of taste. …I never heard of any man who thought it a beauty in a human face to want a nose, or an eye, or to have the mouth on one side. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 6: Judgement [1785], 6) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to disagree, but the human face may be a special case, since it is so deeply embedded in the minds of even the youngest infants. More recent artists seem able to discover beauty in very unlikely places. |
| 22030 | For poets free choice is supreme [Schlegel,F] |
| Full Idea: Romantic poetry recognises as its first commandment that the free choice [Wilkür] of the poet can tolerate no law above itself. | |
| From: Friedrich Schlegel (works [1798], Frag 116 p.32), quoted by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 06 | |
| A reaction: This leads to Shelley's 'poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the race'. We should also take it as a response to Kant's categorical imperative, which leads to the Gauguin Problem (wickedness justified by the art it leads to). |
| 22071 | True love is ironic, in the contrast between finite limitations and the infinity of love [Schlegel,F] |
| Full Idea: True irony is the irony of love. It arises from the feeling of finitude and one's own limitation, and the apparent contradiction of these feelings with the concept of infinity inherent in all true love. | |
| From: Friedrich Schlegel (works [1798], Vol.10 p.357), quoted by Ernst Behler - Early German Romanticism | |
| A reaction: [c.1827] This is more about idealist philosophy and its yearning for the Absolute than it is about the actual nature of love. Love is the door to the Absolute. The irony is our inability to pass through it. |
| 22029 | Irony is the response to conflicts of involvement and attachment [Schlegel,F, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Irony is thus the appropriate stance to feeling that is both inescapably committed and inescapably detached at the same time. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Schlegel (works [1798]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 06 | |
| A reaction: This is the epitome of romanticism, which carries over into the dilemmas of existentialism. Striking the right balance between caring and not caring seems to me to be the main focus of modern British people. |