5 ideas
| 22026 | Philosophy is homesickness - the urge to be at home everywhere [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is actually homesickness - the urge to be everywhere at home. | |
| From: Novalis (General Draft [1799], 45) | |
| A reaction: The idea of home [heimat] is powerful in German culture. The point of romanticism was seen as largely concerning restless souls like Byron and his heroes, who do not feel at home. Hence ironic detachment. |
| 23900 | Chance is compatible with necessity, and the two occur together [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Chance is not the contrary of necessity; it is not incompatible with necessity. On the contrary, it never appears except at the same time as necessity. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Scientific Image [1941], p.175) | |
| A reaction: She illustrates it with the six terminating results of a die throw, and the innumerabe ways the throw can occur. This thought strikes me as relevant to discussions of free will. …But I'm not sure I fully understand it. |
| 14367 | An explanation is a causal graph [Woodward,J, by Strevens] |
| Full Idea: On Woodward's manipulationist view, an explanation would take the form of a causal graph. | |
| From: report of James Woodward (Making Things Happen [2003]) by Michael Strevens - No Understanding without Explanation 1 | |
| A reaction: The idea is that causation is all to do with how nature responds when you try to manipulate it. I'm certainly in favour of tying explanation closely to causation. |
| 19591 | Desire for perfection is an illness, if it turns against what is imperfect [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: An absolute drive toward perfection and completeness is an illness, as soon as it shows itself to be destructive and averse toward the imperfect, the incomplete. | |
| From: Novalis (General Draft [1799], 33) | |
| A reaction: Deep and true! Novalis seems to be a particularist - hanging on to the fine detail of life, rather than being immersed in the theory. These are the philosophers who also turn to literature. |
| 23899 | The secret of art is that beauty is a just blend of unity and its opposite [Weil] |
| Full Idea: A just blend of unity and that which opposes it is the condition of the beautiful, and it is the secret of art. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Scientific Image [1941], p.169) | |
| A reaction: Rather sweeping, but the observation strikes me as fairly accurate. It seems to work for most novels, paintings and music, though more recent art may provide counterexamples. |