24 ideas
| 21793 | Genuine truth is the resolution of the highest contradiction [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The highest truth, truth as such, is the resolution of the highest opposition and contradiction. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826], I: 99), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 09 'Art' | |
| A reaction: Uneasy about the word 'highest', and the general Hegelian dream of 'resolving' contradictions, rather than just eliminating at least one component of them. No one else uses the word 'truth' like this. I suppose this Truth has a capital 'T'. |
| 21795 | What I hold true must also be part of my feelings and character [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Whatever I hold as true, whatever ought to be valid for me, must also be in my feeling, must belong to my being and character. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826], I: 97), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 09 'Philosophy' | |
| A reaction: I can see that truths do tend to become part of our character, but not that they ought to do so. I suppose I try to live my life enmeshed in the many truths which I have personally selected from the maelstrom of possibilities that engulf us. |
| 12056 | An ancestral relation is either direct or transitively indirect [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: x bears to y the 'ancestral' of the relation R just if either x bears R to y, or x bears R to some w that bears R to y, or x bears R to some w that bears R to some z that bears R to y, or..... | |
| From: David Wiggins (Substance [1995], 4.10.1) | |
| A reaction: A concept invented by Frege (1879). |
| 12050 | Substances contain a source of change or principle of activity [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Substances are things that have a source of change or principle of activity within them. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Substance [1995], 4.4.1) | |
| A reaction: A vey significant concession. I think we can talk of 'essences' and 'powers', and drop talk of 'substances'. 'Powers' is a much better word, because it immediately pushes the active ingredient to the forefront. |
| 12052 | We never single out just 'this', but always 'this something-or-other' [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: What is singled out is never a bare this or that, but this or that something or other. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Substance [1995], 4.5.1) | |
| A reaction: I like, in ontological speculation, to contemplate the problem of the baffling archaeological find. 'This thing I have dug up - what the hell IS it?'. Wiggins is contemptuous of the term 'thisness', and the idea of bare particulars. |
| 12055 | Sortal predications are answers to the question 'what is x?' [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Predications which answer the question 'what is x?' are often called 'sortal predications' in present-day philosophy. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Substance [1995], 4.10.1) | |
| A reaction: The word 'sortal' comes from Locke. Wiggins is the guru of 'sortal essentialism'. I just can't believe that in answer to the question 'what really is David Wiggins?' that he would be happy with a sequence of categorisations. |
| 12059 | A river may change constantly, but not in respect of being a river [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: To say that the river is changing constantly in every respect is not to say that it is changing in respect of being a river. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Substance [1995], 4.11.2) | |
| A reaction: Can't a river become a lake, or a mere stream? Wiggins's proposal does not help with the problem of a river which sometimes dries up (as my local river sometimes does). At what point do we decide it is no longer a river? |
| 12063 | Sortal classification becomes science, with cross reference clarifying individuals [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: The sense of the sortal term under which we pick out an individual expands into the scientific account of things of that kind, where the account clarifies what is at issue in questions of sameness and difference of specimens of that kind. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Substance [1995], 4.13.1) | |
| A reaction: This is how the sortal approach is supposed to deal with individuals. So the placid tiger reveals much by falling under 'tiger', and a crucial extra bit by falling under 'placid'. See Idea 12053 for problems with this proposal. |
| 12051 | If the kinds are divided realistically, they fall into substances [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Substance are what the world is articulated into when the segments of kinds corresponds to the real divisions in reality. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Substance [1995], 4.5.1) | |
| A reaction: This is very helpful in clarifying Wiggins's very obscurely expressed views. He appears to be saying that if we divide the sheep from the goats correctly, we reveal sheep-substance and goat-substance (one substance per species). Crazy! |
| 12053 | 'Human being' is a better answer to 'what is it?' than 'poet', as the latter comes in degrees [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: One person can be more or less of a poet than another, so 'poet' is not a conclusory answer to the question 'What is it that is singled out here?' 'Poet' rides on the back of the answer 'human being'. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Substance [1995], 4.5.1) | |
| A reaction: So apparently one must assign a natural kind, and not just a class. Wiggins lacks science fiction imagination. In the genetic salad of the far future, being a poet may be more definitive than being a human being. See Idea 12063. |
| 12054 | Secondary substances correctly divide primary substances by activity-principles and relations [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: A system of secondary substances with a claim to separate reality into its genuine primary substances must arise from an understanding of a set of principles of activity on the basis of which identities can be glossed in terms of determinate relations. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Substance [1995], 4.5.1) | |
| A reaction: I translate this as saying that individual essences are categorised according to principles which explain behaviour and relations. I'm increasingly bewildered by the 'secondary substances' Wiggins got from 'Categories', and loves so much. |
| 12047 | We refer to persisting substances, in perception and in thought, and they aid understanding [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: A substance is a persisting and somehow basic object of reference that is there to be discovered in perception and thought, an object whose claim to be recognized as a real entity is a claim on our aspirations to understand the world. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Substance [1995], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: A lot of components are assigned by Wiggins to the concept, and the tricky job, inititiated by Aristotle, is to fit all the pieces together nicely. Personally I am wondering if the acceptance of 'essences' implies dropping 'substances'. |
| 12057 | Matter underlies things, composes things, and brings them to be [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Matter ex hypothesi is what ultimately underlies (to huperkeimenon) a thing; it is that from which something comes to be and which remains as a non-coincidental component in the thing's make-up. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Substance [1995], 192a30) | |
| A reaction: This is an interesting prelude to the much more comprehensive discussion of matter in Metaphysics, where he crucially adds the notion of 'form', and gives it priority over the underlying matter. |
| 12064 | The category of substance is more important for epistemology than for ontology [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: For us the importance of the category of substance, if it has any importance, is not so much ontological as relative to our epistemological circumstances and the conditions under which we have to undertake inquiry. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Substance [1995], 4.13.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a rather significant concession. Wiggins has revived the notion of substance in recent times, but he is not quite adding it to the furniture of the world. Personally I increasingly think we can dump it, in ontology and epistemology. |
| 12049 | Naming the secondary substance provides a mass of general information [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Answering 'what is it?' with the secondary substance identifies an object with a class of continuants which survive certain changes, come into being in certain ways, are qualified in certain ways, behave in certain ways, and cease to be in certain ways. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Substance [1995], 4.3.3) | |
| A reaction: Thus the priority of this sort of answer is that a huge range of explanations immediately flow from it. I take the explanation to be prior, and the primary substance to be prior, since secondary substance is inductively derived from it. |
| 12065 | Seeing a group of soldiers as an army is irresistible, in ontology and explanation [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: It seems mandatory to an observer of soldiers to give 'the final touch of unity' to their aggregate entity (the army). ...Similar claims arise with the ontological and explanatory claims of other corporate entities. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Substance [1995], 4.13.3) | |
| A reaction: Wiggins must say (following Leibniz Essays II.xxiv,1) that we add the unity, but I take the view that an army has powers, and hence offers explanations, which are lacking in a merely group of disparate soldiers. So an army has an essence and identity. |
| 18549 | Nineteenth century aesthetics focused on art rather than nature (thanks to Hegel) [Hegel, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Only In the course of the nineteenth century, and in the wake of Hegel's posthumously published lectures on aesthetics, did the topic of art come to replace that of natural beauty as the core subject-matter of aesthetics. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826], 5) by Roger Scruton - Beauty: a very short introduction |
| 22043 | Hegel largely ignores aesthetic pleasure, taste and beauty, and focuses on the meaning of artworks [Hegel, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Unlike his predecessors (including Kant), Hegel does not focus on aesthetic pleasure, nor on good taste, nor even on the nature and criteria for beauty. Instead he focuses on the meaning of artworks and their role in forming mankind's self-consciousness. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 11 | |
| A reaction: Personally I dislike over-intellectualising art. The aim of a work of art is to give a certain experience, not to generate an ensuing sequence of theorising. I doubt whether Vermeer had any 'meaning' in mind in his obsessive work. |
| 22042 | Natural beauty is unimportant, because it doesn't show human freedom [Hegel, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Hegel thinks that natural beauty is of no real significance since it cannot display our freedom to us; nature per se is meaningless. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 11 | |
| A reaction: Presumably freedom is in the creation, and so creativity is what matters in aesthetics. But what are the criteria of good creativity? |
| 20413 | For Hegel the importance of art concerns the culture, not the individual [Hegel, by Eldridge] |
| Full Idea: Hegel locates the significance of art in its role in cultural life in general, not in relation to the psychological needs of individuals. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826]) by Richard Eldridge - G.W.F. Hegel (aesthetics) 1 | |
| A reaction: I'm beginning to see that art is a wonderful focus and test case for political attitudes. Roughly, liberalism focuses on individual responses, but more societal views (from right and left) see it in terms of role in the community. Which are you? |
| 20394 | The purpose of art is to reveal to Spirit its own nature [Hegel, by Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: According to Hegel, the goal of art was to serve as a phase in a process by which Spirit would come to understand its own nature. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826]) by Stephen Davies - The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) 2.7 | |
| A reaction: I try very hard to understand ideas like this. Really really hard. However, since I see little sign of 'Spirit' really understanding its own nature, I'm guessing that the project is not going well. |
| 21794 | The main purpose of art is to express the unity of human life [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Art's primary function, for Hegel, is to give expression to the unity and wholeness of life - especially human life - that the contingencies of everyday existence frequently conceal. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826]), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 09 'Beauty' | |
| A reaction: I don't find the view that human life is 'unified' and 'whole' vary illuminating, and I have no objection to art which reflects the fragmentary and unstable aspects of life. I suspect Hegel would just prefer it if life were a unity. |
| 20415 | Art forms a bridge between the sensuous world and the world of pure thought [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Spirit generates out of itself works of fine art as the first reconciling middle term between pure thought and what is merely external, sensuous and transient - between finite natural reality and the infinite freedom of conceptual thinking. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826], p.8), quoted by Richard Eldridge - G.W.F. Hegel (aesthetics) | |
| A reaction: This apparently says that there is necessarily an intellectual and conceptual component in art. This means little to me. Does he include portraits? Dutch domestic scenes? Would photography qualify? |
| 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'). |