Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'fragments/reports' and 'Letters to Jacques Lenfant'

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5 ideas

2. Reason / C. Styles of Reason / 1. Dialectic
20768 Like spiderswebs, dialectical arguments are clever but useless [Ariston, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: He said that dialectical arguments were like spiderswebs: although they seem to indicate craftsmanlike skill, they are useless.
     From: report of Ariston (fragments/reports [c.250 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.161
     A reaction: Useful for the spider, but useless to Ariston.
8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 2. Powers as Basic
12723 The most primitive thing in substances is force, which leads to their actions and dispositions [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: Since everything that one conceives in substances reduces to their actions and passions and to the dispositions that they have for this effect, I don't see how one can find there anything more primitive than the principle of all of this, which is force.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Jacques Lenfant [1693], 1693.11.25), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 4
     A reaction: This is an attempt to connect Aristotelian essentialism with the notion of force in the new physics, and strikes me as an improvement on the original, and as good a basis for metaphysics as any I have heard of.
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 2. Elements of Virtue Theory / f. The Mean
3049 The chief good is indifference to what lies midway between virtue and vice [Ariston, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: The chief good is to live in perfect indifference to all those things which are of an intermediate character between virtue and vice.
     From: report of Ariston (fragments/reports [c.250 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.2.1
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / a. Virtues
7903 The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna]
     Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom.
     From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88)
     A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate').
23. Ethics / D. Deontological Ethics / 1. Deontology
3549 Ariston says rules are useless for the virtuous and the non-virtuous [Ariston, by Annas]
     Full Idea: Ariston says that rules are useless if you are virtuous, and useless if you are not.
     From: report of Ariston (fragments/reports [c.250 BCE]) by Julia Annas - The Morality of Happiness 2.4