9 ideas
| 6840 | Derrida came to believe in the undeconstructability of justice, which cannot be relativised [Derrida, by Critchley] |
| Full Idea: In Derrida's later work we find him moving explicitly towards a belief in the undeconstructability of justice, as he puts it, which is an overarching value that cannot be relativised. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (later work [1980]) by Simon Critchley - Interview with Baggini and Stangroom p.191 | |
| A reaction: A nice corrective to the standard Anglo-Saxon assumption that Derrida is an extreme (and stupid) relativist. The notion of 'undeconstructability' is nice, just as Descartes found an idea that resisted the blasts of scepticism. |
| 23295 | Truth cannot be reduced to anything simpler [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: We cannot hope to underpin the concept of truth with something more transparent or easier to grasp. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (The Folly of Trying to Define Truth [1999], p.21) | |
| A reaction: I suppose precise accounts of correspondence or coherence are offered as replacements for truth, but neither of those ever seem to be possible. I agree with accepting truth as a primitive. |
| 23298 | Neither Aristotle nor Tarski introduce the facts needed for a correspondence theory [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Neither Aristotle's formula nor Tarski's truth definitions are sympathetic to the correspondence theory, because they don't introduce entities like facts or states of affairs for sentences to correspond. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (The Folly of Trying to Define Truth [1999], p.25) | |
| A reaction: This seems convincing, although it is often claimed that both theories offer a sort of correspondence. |
| 23297 | The language to define truth needs a finite vocabulary, to make the definition finite [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: If the definition of the truth predicate is to be finite (Tarski insisted on this), the definition must take advantage of the fact that sentences, though potentially infinite in number, are constructed from a finite vocabulary. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (The Folly of Trying to Define Truth [1999], p.23) | |
| A reaction: Not sure whether this is in the object language or the meta-language, though I guess the former. |
| 23296 | We can elucidate indefinable truth, but showing its relation to other concepts [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: We can still say revealing things about truth, by relating it to other concepts like belief, desire, cause and action. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (The Folly of Trying to Define Truth [1999], p.21) | |
| A reaction: The trickiest concept to link it to is meaning. I think Davidson's view points to the Axiomatic account of truth, which flourished soon after Davidson wrote this. We can give rules for the correct use of 'true'. |
| 23294 | It is common to doubt truth when discussing it, but totally accept it when discussing knowledge [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: You are following Plato's lead if you worry about the concept of truth when it is the focus of your attention, but you pretend you understand it when trying to cope with knowledge (or belief, memory, perception etc.). | |
| From: Donald Davidson (The Folly of Trying to Define Truth [1999], p.20) | |
| A reaction: Nice to find someone pointing out this absurdity. He says Hume does the same with doubts about the external world, which he ignores when discussing other minds. Belief is holding true; only truths are actually remembered…. |
| 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'). |
| 21936 | A community must consist of singular persons, with nothing in common [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| Full Idea: In Derrida's modal reversal (where the only possible forgiveness is forgiving the unforgivable), the only possible community is the impossible community, which is a 'community of singularities' without anything in common. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (later work [1980]) by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 7 | |
| A reaction: Since this seems to go beyond multiculturalism, I can only see it as hyper-liberalism - that isolated individuals have an absolute status. Sounds like Nozick, but Derrida saw himself as a non-Marxist left-winger. |
| 21937 | Can there be democratic friendship without us all becoming identical? [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| Full Idea: The question is whether it is possible to think of a politics of democratic friendship that could free itself from the terrifying threat of homogenization. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (later work [1980]) by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 7 | |
| A reaction: Being terrified of people becoming all the same links Derrida to existentialist individualism. Is he just a linguistic existentialist, trying to free us from the tyranny of linguistic uniformity? |