5 ideas
| 8216 | Deconstruction is not neutral; it intervenes [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Deconstruction, I have insisted, is not neutral. It intervenes. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (Positions [1971], p.76) | |
| A reaction: This, I think, is because there is in Derrida, as in most French philosophers, a strong streak of Marxism, and a desire to change the world, rather than merely understanding it. Idea 8213 shows the sort of thing he wants to change. |
| 8213 | I try to analyse certain verbal concepts which block and confuse the dialectical process [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: I have tried to analyse certain marks in writing which are undecidables, false verbal properties, which inhabit philosophical opposition, resisting and disorganising it, without ever constituting a third term, withour ever leaving room for a solution. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (Positions [1971], p.40) | |
| A reaction: [I have simplified his sentence!] Much of Derrida seems to be a commentary on the Hegelian dialectic, and the project is presumably to figure out why philosophy is not advancing in the way we would like. Interesting... |
| 10247 | We have no adequate logic at the moment, so mathematicians must create one [Veblen] |
| Full Idea: Formal logic has to be taken over by mathematicians. The fact is that there does not exist an adequate logic at the present time, and unless the mathematicians create one, no one else is likely to do so. | |
| From: Oswald Veblen (Presidential Address of Am. Math. Soc [1924], 141), quoted by Stewart Shapiro - Philosophy of Mathematics | |
| A reaction: This remark was made well after Frege, but before the advent of Gödel and Tarski. That implies that he was really thinking of meta-logic. |
| 22745 | Pherecydes said the first principle and element is earth [Pherecydes, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: Pherecydes of Syros said that the principle and element of all things is earth. | |
| From: report of Pherecydes (fragments/reports [c.600 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Physicists (two books) I.360 | |
| A reaction: Sextus is giving the history, and mentions it before saying that Thales thought it was water. Earth seems a sensible starting point, and I am guessing that Thales was trying to think a bit more deeply than Pherecydes about it. |
| 5883 | Pherecydes was the first to say that the soul is eternal [Pherecydes, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: As far as the literature tells us, Pherecydes of Syros was the first who pronounced the souls of men to be eternal. | |
| From: report of Pherecydes (fragments/reports [c.600 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - Tusculan Disputations I.xvi.38 | |
| A reaction: Presumably before that it was the physical person who arrived in the Underworld. The Hindu tradition seems to require the soul to be very long-lived, if not eternal. Why did Pherecydes come up with this idea? |