12 ideas
| 7914 | To try to be wise all on one's own is folly [Rochefoucauld] |
| Full Idea: To try to be wise all on one's own is sheer folly. | |
| From: La Rochefoucauld (Maxims [1663], 231) | |
| A reaction: I agree strongly with this. There are counter-examples, of whom Spinoza may be the greatest, and Nietzsche thought that philosophy was essentially a solitary business, but most of us are not Spinoza or Nietzsche. |
| 7118 | La Rochefoucauld's idea of disguised self-love implies an unconscious mind [Rochefoucauld, by Sartre] |
| Full Idea: La Rochefoucauld is one of the first to have made use of the unconscious without naming it: for him, amour-propre conceals itself in the most diverse disguises. | |
| From: report of La Rochefoucauld (Maxims [1663]) by Jean-Paul Sartre - Transcendence of the Ego I (C) | |
| A reaction: It seems odd that no one before that ever thought that someone might have hidden motives of which even they themselves were unaware. How about Iago, or Macbeth, or Hamlet? It is a profound change in our view of human nature. |
| 14802 | Physical and psychical laws of mind are either independent, or derived in one or other direction [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The question about minds is whether 1) physical and psychical laws are independent (monism, my neutralism), 2) the psychical laws derived and physical laws primordial (materialism), 3) physical law is derived, psychical law primordial (idealism). | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Architecture of Theories [1891], p.321) | |
| A reaction: I think you are already in trouble when you start proposing that there are two quite distinct sets of laws, and then worry about how they are related. Assume unity, and only separate them when the science forces you to (which it won't). |
| 7912 | Judging by effects, love looks more like hatred than friendship [Rochefoucauld] |
| Full Idea: If love be judged by its most visible effects it looks more like hatred than friendship. | |
| From: La Rochefoucauld (Maxims [1663], 072) | |
| A reaction: Presumably he is thinking of pursuit, possession and jealousy. The remark is plausible if you add the word 'sometimes' to it, but as a universal generalisation it is ridiculous, the product of a society where they competed to exceed in cynicism. |
| 7915 | Supreme cleverness is knowledge of the real value of things [Rochefoucauld] |
| Full Idea: Supreme cleverness is knowledge of the real value of things. | |
| From: La Rochefoucauld (Maxims [1663], 244) | |
| A reaction: Good. Right at the heart of wisdom is some kind of grasp of right values. It is so complex and subtle that it seems like pure intuition, but I am sure that reason is involved. 'Intelligent' people tend to be better at it. Some justifications can be given. |
| 7917 | Realising our future misery is a kind of happiness [Rochefoucauld] |
| Full Idea: To realise how much misery we have to face is in itself a kind of happiness. | |
| From: La Rochefoucauld (Maxims [1663], 570) | |
| A reaction: Probably true. Knowing that you have got hold of the truth is a sort of happiness in any area, no matter how grim the truth. However, a happy life could easily be poisoned by brooding on the future. Should the happily married brood on future solitude? |
| 7913 | Virtue doesn't go far without the support of vanity [Rochefoucauld] |
| Full Idea: Virtue would not go far without vanity to bear it company. | |
| From: La Rochefoucauld (Maxims [1663], 200) | |
| A reaction: Rochefoucauld's cynicism gets a bit tedious, but lovers of virtue must face up to this possibility when they consider what motivates them. At the heart of Aristotle there is a missing question, of what is so good about right-functioning and virtue. |
| 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'). |
| 7916 | True friendship is even rarer than true love [Rochefoucauld] |
| Full Idea: Rare though true love may be, true friendship is rarer still. | |
| From: La Rochefoucauld (Maxims [1663], 473) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be true. Our culture doesn't encourage friendship as a high ideal. Are women better at friendship than men? Which culture, past or present, led to the greatest flourishing of friendship? Epicurus's Garden? |
| 9299 | We are bored by people to whom we ourselves are boring [Rochefoucauld] |
| Full Idea: Almost always we are bored by people to whom we ourselves are boring. | |
| From: La Rochefoucauld (Maxims [1663], 555) | |
| A reaction: An obvious exception would be a celebrity being bored with their fans. Their very excess of interest is precisely what is boring. If two people communicate well, it is unlikely that either of them will ever be bored. |
| 14800 | The world is full of variety, but laws seem to produce uniformity [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Exact law obviously never can produce heterogeneity out of homogeneity; and arbitrary heterogeneity is the feature of the universe the most manifest and characteristic. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Architecture of Theories [1891], p.319) | |
| A reaction: This is the view of laws of nature now associated with Nancy Cartwright, but presumably you can explain the apparent chaos in terms of the intersection of vast numbers of 'laws'. Or, better, there aren't any laws. |
| 14801 | Darwinian evolution is chance, with the destruction of bad results [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Darwinian evolution is evolution by the operation of chance, and the destruction of bad results. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Architecture of Theories [1891], p.320) | |
| A reaction: The 'destruction of bad results' is a much better slogan for Darwin that Spencer's 'survival of the fittest'. It is, of course, a rather unattractive God who makes progress by endlessly destroying huge quantities of failed (but living) experiments. |