35 ideas
2930 | The main aim of philosophy must be to determine the order of rank among values [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The future task of the philosophers is the solution of the problem of value, the determination of the order of rank among values. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], I.§17 note) | |
A reaction: 'Determine' is presumably either a power struggle, or needs criteria by which to do the judging. |
20143 | Scientific knowledge is nothing without a prior philosophical 'faith' [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Strictly speaking there is no knowledge [science] without presuppositions; a philosophy, a 'faith', must always be there first of all, for knowledge to win from it a direction, a meaning, a limit, a method, a right to exist. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], III.§24) | |
A reaction: He sees philosophers as the creators of this faith, and laughs at anyone who tries to set philosophy on a scientific basis. |
23722 | Objectivity is not disinterestedness (impossible), but the ability to switch perspectives [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: 'Objectivity' should be understood not as 'contemplation without interest' (a non-concept and an absurdity), but as having in our power the ability to engage and disengage our 'pros' and 'cons'; we can use the difference in perspectives for knowledge. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], III.§12) | |
A reaction: Note that he will use perspectives to achieve knowledge. The idea that Perspectivalism is mere relativism is labelled as 'extreme' in Idea 4486. He is right that objectivity is a mental capacity and achievement of individuals. |
4417 | Only that which has no history is definable [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Only that which has no history is definable. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], II.§13) | |
A reaction: Too subtle to evaluate! It sounds as if it could be right, that some things are definable, but when the accretions of human history are interwoven into an identity, we can forget it. |
9331 | How do we determine which of the sentences containing a term comprise its definition? [Horwich] |
Full Idea: How are we to determine which of the sentences containing a term comprise its definition? | |
From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §2) | |
A reaction: Nice question. If I say 'philosophy is the love of wisdom' and 'philosophy bores me', why should one be part of its definition and the other not? What if I stipulated that the second one is part of my definition, and the first one isn't? |
23715 | Psychologists should be brave and proud, and prefer truth to desires, even when it is ugly [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: I hope [psychologists] are actually brave, generous, proud animals, who know how to control their own pleasure and pain and are taught to sacrifice desirability to truth, even a bitter, ugly, unchristian, immoral truth - Because there are such truths. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], I.§01) | |
A reaction: A nice expression of Nietzsche's values, which makes truth central, contrary to the widespread modern view that he was the high priest of relativism. If you think that, read him more carefully. |
4421 | Philosophers have never asked why there is a will to truth in the first place [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Both the earliest and most recent philosophers are all oblivious of how much the will to truth itself first requires justification: here there is a gap in every philosophy - how did this come about? | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], III.§24) | |
A reaction: This seems to me a meta-philosophical question which will lead off into (quite interesting) cultural studies and (trite) evolutionary theory. Truth isn't a value, it is the biological function of brains. |
9333 | A priori belief is not necessarily a priori justification, or a priori knowledge [Horwich] |
Full Idea: It is one thing to believe something a priori and another for this belief to be epistemically justified. The latter is required for a priori knowledge. | |
From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §8) | |
A reaction: Personally I would agree with this, because I don't think anything should count as knowledge if it doesn't have supporting reasons, but fans of a priori knowledge presumably think that certain basic facts are just known. They are a priori justified. |
9342 | Understanding needs a priori commitment [Horwich] |
Full Idea: Understanding is itself based on a priori commitment. | |
From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §12) | |
A reaction: This sounds plausible, but needs more justification than Horwich offers. This is the sort of New Rationalist idea I associate with Bonjour. The crucial feature of the New lot is, I take it, their fallibilism. All understanding is provisional. |
9332 | Meaning is generated by a priori commitment to truth, not the other way around [Horwich] |
Full Idea: Our a priori commitment to certain sentences is not really explained by our knowledge of a word's meaning. It is the other way around. We accept a priori that the sentences are true, and thereby provide it with meaning. | |
From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §8) | |
A reaction: This sounds like a lovely trump card, but how on earth do you decide that a sentence is true if you don't know what it means? Personally I would take it that we are committed to the truth of a proposition, before we have a sentence for it. |
9341 | Meanings and concepts cannot give a priori knowledge, because they may be unacceptable [Horwich] |
Full Idea: A priori knowledge of logic and mathematics cannot derive from meanings or concepts, because someone may possess such concepts, and yet disagree with us about them. | |
From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §12) | |
A reaction: A good argument. The thing to focus on is not whether such ideas are a priori, but whether they are knowledge. I think we should employ the word 'intuition' for a priori candidates for knowledge, and demand further justification for actual knowledge. |
9334 | If we stipulate the meaning of 'number' to make Hume's Principle true, we first need Hume's Principle [Horwich] |
Full Idea: If we stipulate the meaning of 'the number of x's' so that it makes Hume's Principle true, we must accept Hume's Principle. But a precondition for this stipulation is that Hume's Principle be accepted a priori. | |
From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §9) | |
A reaction: Yet another modern Quinean argument that all attempts at defining things are circular. I am beginning to think that the only a priori knowledge we have is of when a group of ideas is coherent. Calling it 'intuition' might be more accurate. |
9339 | A priori knowledge (e.g. classical logic) may derive from the innate structure of our minds [Horwich] |
Full Idea: One potential source of a priori knowledge is the innate structure of our minds. We might, for example, have an a priori commitment to classical logic. | |
From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §11) | |
A reaction: Horwich points out that to be knowledge it must also say that we ought to believe it. I'm wondering whether if we divided the whole territory of the a priori up into intuitions and then coherent justifications, the whole problem would go away. |
23719 | Forgetfulness is a strong positive ability, not mental laziness [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Forgetfulness is not just a vis inertiae, as superficial people believe, but is rather an active ability to suppress, positive in the strongest sense of the word. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], II.§01) | |
A reaction: It is unimpressive when people remember small slights and grievances for a long time - and even being owed small sums - so the ability to forget such things is admirable. But wilfully forgetting some things is obviously shameful. |
4420 | There is only 'perspective' seeing and knowing, and so the best objectivity is multiple points of view [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective "knowing", and the more different eyes we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our "concept" of this thing, our "objectivity", be. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], III.§12) | |
A reaction: A very perceptive statement of the most plausible and sophisticated version of relativism. It is hard to see how we could distinguish multiple viewpoints from pure objectivity. |
4414 | Philosophers invented "free will" so that our virtues would be permanently interesting to the gods [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The philosophers invented "free will" - absolute human spontaneity in good and evil - to furnish a right to the idea that the interest of the gods in man, in human virtue, could never be exhausted. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], II.§07) | |
A reaction: Wonderfully outrageous suggestion! If we had true metaphysical 'absolute' free will, we would be much more interesting, and have a much higher status in the cosmos. Nietzsche is probably right. |
4419 | People who think in words are orators rather than thinkers, and think about facts instead of thinking facts [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Whoever thinks in words thinks as an orator and not as a thinker (it shows that he does not think facts, but only in relation to facts). | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], III.§08) | |
A reaction: Good. It is certainly not true that we have to think in words, or else animals wouldn't think. Good thinking should focus on reality, and be too fast for words to keep up. |
4411 | It is a delusion to separate the man from the deed, like the flash from the lightning [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Just as the popular mind separates the lightning from its flash and takes the latter for a 'action', so they separate strength from expressions of strength, but there is no such substratum; the deed is everything. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], I.§13) | |
A reaction: Of course, there is no reason why an analysis should not separate the doer and the deed (to explain, for example, a well-meaning fool), but it is a blunder to think of a human action as a merely physical event. |
3793 | We must question the very value of moral values [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: We need a critique of moral values; the value of these values themselves must just be called in question. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], Pre f§3) | |
A reaction: But we must start somewhere with values, to avoid an infinite regress. |
4408 | The concept of 'good' was created by aristocrats to describe their own actions [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The judgement 'good' did not first originate with those to whom goodness was shown! Rather it was the 'good' themselves, that is to say the noble, powerful, high-stationed and high-minded who established themselves and their action as good. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], I.§02) | |
A reaction: This may be right, but not very profound. Virtually all concepts are created by the most educated classes. The first recipient of charity may not have had the concept, but they would have been gobsmacked by the novelty. |
23716 | A strong rounded person soon forgets enemies, misfortunes, and even misdeeds [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: To be unable to take his enemies, his misfortunes and even his misdeeds seriously for long - that is the sign of strong, rounded natures with a superabundance of power. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], I.§10) | |
A reaction: An aspect of the 'higher man' that I don't recall being mentioned elsewhere. I basically approve of this, if it means not holding grudges, and living for the future rather than for the past. |
20129 | All animals strive for the ideal conditions to express their power, and hate any hindrances [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Every animal instinctively strives for an optimum of favourable conditions under which it can expend all its strength and achieve its maximal feeling of power; every animal abhors ...every hindrance that obstructs this path to the optimum. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], III.§07) | |
A reaction: This became the lynchpin of Nietzsche's account of the source of values. It is a highly naturalistic view, fitting it into evolutionary theory (thought running deeper than that), so I have a lot of sympathy with the view. |
4409 | Only the decline of aristocratic morality led to concerns about "egoism" [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: It was only when aristocratic value judgements declined that the whole antithesis of "egoistic" and "unegoistic" obtruded itself more and more on the human conscience. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], I.§02) | |
A reaction: But Aristotle, who is no aristocrat, has a balanced and sensible view of 'egoism', where it isn't the patronising arrogance that Nietzsche seems to like, but a proper concern with one's own character. |
3259 | Nietzsche rejects impersonal morality, and asserts the idea of living well [Nietzsche, by Nagel] |
Full Idea: Nietzsche's rejection of impersonal morality is an assertion of the dominance of the ideal of living well. | |
From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], I) by Thomas Nagel - The View from Nowhere X.2 |
4416 | Basic justice is the negotiation of agreement among equals, and the imposition of agreement [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Justice on the elementary level is good will among parties of approximately equal power to come to terms with one another, and to compel parties of lesser power to reach a settlement among themselves. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], II.§08) | |
A reaction: This pinpoints a key problem with the social contract as a moral theory - that it requires equals, and recognises only terror of superiors, and indifference to useless inferiors who have nothing to offer (paraplegics and animals). |
4418 | A masterful and violent person need have nothing to do with contracts [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: He who can command, he who is "master", he who is violent in act and bearing - what has he to do with contracts! | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], II.§17) | |
A reaction: The persistent problem with social contract theory is that those much stronger or much weaker seem to have no interest in morality at all, and yet they can all have standards of behaviour. |
4407 | Plato, Spinoza and Kant are very different, but united in their low estimation of pity [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Plato, Spinoza, La Rochefoucauld, and Kant are four spirits very different from one another, but united in one thing: their low estimation of pity. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], Pref §5) | |
A reaction: Plato is no surprise, as virtually no Greeks value pity. Spinoza and Kant are interesting. Presumably Kant's 'contractualism' places respect far above pity, and is theoretical neglect of animals would fit. Remember Nietzsche embraced a horse in Turin. |
4415 | Guilt and obligation originated in the relationship of buying and selling, credit and debt [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The feeling of guilt, of personal obligation, had its origin in the oldest and most primitive personal relationship, that between buyer and seller, between creditor and debtor. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], II.§08) | |
A reaction: In other words, lofty Kantian ideals started life in the grubby world of the Hobbesian social contract, and self-seeking has been disguised by idealism. Too harsh on Kant, who explains why contracts have force, not just convenience. |
23718 | If we say birds of prey could become lambs, that makes them responsible for being birds of prey [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Scientists …do not defend any belief more strongly than that the strong are free to be weak, and the birds of prey are free to be lambs: - in this way, they gain the right to make the birds of prey responsible for being birds of prey. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], I.§13) | |
A reaction: This is a flat rejection of the Sartrean idea that we can what sort of person we want to be. He cares about birds of prey, but also lambs can't become eagles. I would say that adolescents have a reasonable degree of choice about what they will become. |
23717 | Modern nihilism is now feeling tired of mankind [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The sight of man now makes us tired - what is nihilism today if it is not that? …We are tired of man… | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], I.§12) | |
A reaction: That is close to Hume's nihilist, who would destroy the world to protect his own finger from a scratch. The actor George Sanders committed suicide because he was bored. Don't ever think that Nietzsche was a nihilist, just because he mentions it a lot! |
7073 | I am a creative nothing, out of which I myself create everything [Stirner] |
Full Idea: I am not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing, the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything. | |
From: Max Stirner (The Ego and Its Own [1844]), quoted by Simon Critchley - Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro Ch.2 | |
A reaction: This appears to be the germ of the entire existentialist view, which gives a helpful gloss on the concept of 'nothing' - as the motivation for human creation, the vacuum in the mind that has to be filled. Call it 'creative boredom'. |
23721 | Old tribes always felt an obligation to the earlier generations, and the founders [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Within the original tribal association the living generation always acknowledged a legal obligation towards the earlier generation, and in particular towards the earliest. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], II.§19) | |
A reaction: This is still a factor in modern politics, though the people remember are either military heroes or the great figures of a particular political movement. We remember the big artists and personalities, but don't feel obligated to them. |
20142 | The state begins with brutal conquest of a disorganised people, not with a 'contract' [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Some pack of blond beasts of prey, on a war footing, unscrupulously lays its dreadful paws on a populace which is shapeless. In this way the 'state' began on earth. I think I have dispensed with the fantasy which has it begin with a 'contract'. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], II.§17) | |
A reaction: [compressed] It is certainly likely that a tribe which got itself well organised and focused on some end would achieve total dominance over other tribes that just focus on food. |
23720 | Punishment makes people harder, more alienated, and hostile [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: On the whole, punishment makes men harder and colder, it concentrates, it sharpens the feeling of alienation; it strengthens the power to resist. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], II.§14) | |
A reaction: If the school system involves routine harsh punishments, that means that the whole population ends up in that state. I would have thought that this was an obvious truth about punishment, but no one seems to want to face up to it. |
4410 | The truly great haters in world history have always been priests [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The truly great haters in world history have always been priests. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], I.§07) | |
A reaction: Wicked, but it has a lot of truth. Priests have a lot to defend, and a lot of reasons for feeling threatened. |