3 ideas
| 20110 | Hegel, Fichte and Schelling wanted to know Kant's thing-in-itself, as ego, or nature, or spirit [Safranski] |
| Full Idea: The 'thing in iself' acted on Kant's successors like a hole in the closed world of knowledge...Hegel, Fichte and Schelling wanted to penetrate into what they presumed to be the heart of things, by the invention of means of 'ego', or 'nature', or 'spirit., | |
| From: Rüdiger Safranski (Nietzsche: a philosophical biography [2000], 07) | |
| A reaction: [a bit compressed] Although no scientist claims to know the ultimate essence of matter, the authority of science largely comes from persuasively moving us several steps closer to the thing in itself (more persuasively than these three). |
| 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'). |
| 4677 | If suicide is wrong because only God disposes of our lives, it must also be wrong to save lives [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Were the disposal of human life so much the peculiar province of the Almighty that it were an encroachment on His right, for men to dispose of their own lives; it would be equally criminal to act for the preservation of life as for its destruction. | |
| From: David Hume (On suicide [1775]), quoted by Jonathan Glover - Causing Death and Saving Lives §13 | |
| A reaction: A characteristically wicked and neat point. Maybe we can intervene in the environment (diverting a falling stone), but not directly in a life? Life is sacred, but stones are not? |