45 ideas
| 23890 | For Plato true wisdom is supernatural [Plato, by Weil] |
| Full Idea: It is evident that Plato regards true wisdom as something supernatural. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Simone Weil - God in Plato p.61 | |
| A reaction: Taken literally, I assume this is wrong, but we can empathise with the thought. Wisdom has the feeling of rising above the level of mere knowledge, to achieve the overview I associate with philosophy. |
| 3060 | Plato never mentions Democritus, and wished to burn his books [Plato, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Plato, who mentions nearly all the ancient philosophers, nowhere speaks of Democritus; he wished to burn all of his books, but was persuaded that it was futile. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.7.8 |
| 23891 | Two contradictories force us to find a relation which will correlate them [Plato, by Weil] |
| Full Idea: Where contradictions appear there is a correlation of contraries, which is relation. If a contradiction is imposed on the intelligence, it is forced to think of a relation to transform the contradiction into a correlation, which draws the soul higher. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Simone Weil - God in Plato p.70 | |
| A reaction: A much better account of the dialectic than anything I have yet seen in Hegel. For the first time I see some sense in it. A contradiction is not a falsehood, and it must be addressed rather than side-stepped. A kink in the system, that needs ironing. |
| 17962 | The truth-maker principle is that every truth has a sufficient truth-maker [Forrest] |
| Full Idea: Item x is said to be a sufficient truth-maker for truth-bearer p just in case necessarily if x exists then p is true. ...Every truth has a sufficient truth-maker. Hence, I take it, the sum of all sufficient truth-makers is a universal truth-maker. | |
| From: Peter Forrest (General Facts,Phys Necessity, and Metaph of Time [2006], 1) | |
| A reaction: Note that it is not 'necessary', because something else might make p true instead. |
| 14502 | Plato's idea of 'structure' tends to be mathematically expressed [Plato, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: 'Structure' tends to be characterized by Plato as something that is mathematically expressed. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects V.3 iv | |
| A reaction: [Koslicki is drawing on Verity Harte here] |
| 17948 | Plato's Forms meant that the sophists only taught the appearance of wisdom and virtue [Plato, by Nehamas] |
| Full Idea: Plato's theory of Forms allowed him to claim that the sophists and other opponents were trapped in the world of appearance. What they therefore taught was only apparent wisdom and virtue. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Alexander Nehamas - Eristic,Antilogic,Sophistic,Dialectic p.118 |
| 3039 | When Diogenes said he could only see objects but not their forms, Plato said it was because he had eyes but no intellect [Plato, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: When Diogenes told Plato he saw tables and cups, but not 'tableness' and 'cupness', Plato replied that this was because Diogenes had eyes but no intellect. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 06.2.6 |
| 20906 | Platonists argue for the indivisible triangle-in-itself [Plato, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The Platonists, on the basis of purely logical arguments, posit the existence of an indivisible 'triangle in itself'. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) 316a15 | |
| A reaction: A helpful confirmation that geometrical figures really are among the Forms (bearing in mind that numbers are not, because they contain one another). What shape is the Form of the triangle? |
| 556 | If there is one Form for both the Form and its participants, they must have something in common [Aristotle on Plato] |
| Full Idea: If there is the same Form for the Forms and for their participants, then they must have something in common. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 991a |
| 563 | If gods are like men, they are just eternal men; similarly, Forms must differ from particulars [Aristotle on Plato] |
| Full Idea: We say there is the form of man, horse and health, but nothing else, making the same mistake as those who say that there are gods but that they are in the form of men. They just posit eternal men, and here we are not positing forms but eternal sensibles. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 997b |
| 557 | A Form is a cause of things only in the way that white mixed with white is a cause [Aristotle on Plato] |
| Full Idea: A Form is a cause of things only in the way that white mixed with white is a cause. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 991a |
| 565 | The Forms cannot be changeless if they are in changing things [Aristotle on Plato] |
| Full Idea: The Forms could not be changeless if they were in changing things. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 998a |
| 9607 | The greatest discovery in human thought is Plato's discovery of abstract objects [Brown,JR on Plato] |
| Full Idea: The greatest discovery in the history of human thought is Plato's discovery of abstract objects. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by James Robert Brown - Philosophy of Mathematics Ch. 2 | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 2860! Given the diametrically opposed views, it is clearly likely that Plato's central view is the most important idea in the history of human thought, even if it is wrong. |
| 13263 | We can grasp whole things in science, because they have a mathematics and a teleology [Plato, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Due to the mathematical nature of structure and the teleological cause underlying the creation of Platonic wholes, these wholes are intelligible, and are in fact the proper objects of science. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 5.3 | |
| A reaction: I like this idea, because it pays attention to the connection between how we conceive objects to be, and how we are able to think about objects. Only examining these two together enables us to grasp metaphysics. |
| 13261 | Plato sees an object's structure as expressible in mathematics [Plato, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: The 'structure' of an object tends to be characterised by Plato as something that is mathematically expressible. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 5.3 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be pure Pythagoreanism (see Idea 644). Plato is pursuing Pythagoras's research programme, of trying to find mathematics buried in every aspect of reality. |
| 13265 | Plato was less concerned than Aristotle with the source of unity in a complex object [Plato, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Plato was less concerned than Aristotle with the project of how to account, in completely general terms, for the source of unity within a mereologically complex object. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 5.5 | |
| A reaction: Plato seems to have simply asserted that some sort of harmony held things together. Aristotles puts the forms [eidos] within objects, rather than external, so he has to give a fuller account of what is going on in an object. He never managed it! |
| 593 | Plato's holds that there are three substances: Forms, mathematical entities, and perceptible bodies [Plato, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Plato's doctrine was that the Forms and mathematicals are two substances and that the third substance is that of perceptible bodies. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1028b |
| 13260 | Plato says wholes are either containers, or they're atomic, or they don't exist [Plato, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Plato considers a 'container' model for wholes (which are disjoint from their parts) [Parm 144e3-], and a 'nihilist' model, in which only wholes are mereological atoms, and a 'bare pluralities' view, in which wholes are not really one at all. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 5.2 | |
| A reaction: [She cites Verity Harte for this analysis of Plato] The fourth, and best, seems to be that wholes are parts which fall under some unifying force or structure or principle. |
| 11237 | Only universals have essence [Plato, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Plato argues that only universals have essence. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.4 |
| 11238 | Plato and Aristotle take essence to make a thing what it is [Plato, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Plato and Aristotle have a shared general conception of essence: the essence of a thing is what that thing is simply in virtue of itself and in virtue of being the very thing it is. It answers the question 'What is this very thing?' | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.4 |
| 6685 | 'Subjectivism' is an extension of relativism from the social group to the individual [Graham] |
| Full Idea: What is called 'subjectivism' is really just an extension of relativism from the level of the social group to the level of the individual. | |
| From: Gordon Graham (Eight Theories of Ethics [2004], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Personally I prefer to stick with 'relativism', at any level. 'Relative' is a two-place predicate, so we should always specify what is relative to what, unless it is obvious from context. Morality might be relative to God, for example. |
| 17085 | A good explanation totally rules out the opposite explanation (so Forms are required) [Plato, by Ruben] |
| Full Idea: For Plato, an acceptable explanation is one such that there is no possibility of there being the opposite explanation at all, and he thought that only explanations in terms of the Forms, but never physical explanations, could meet this requirement. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by David-Hillel Ruben - Explaining Explanation Ch 2 | |
| A reaction: [Republic 436c is cited] |
| 1651 | Plato wanted to somehow control and purify the passions [Vlastos on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Plato put high on his agenda a project which did not figure in Socrates' programme at all: the hygienic conditioning of the passions. This cannot be an intellectual process, as argument cannot touch them. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.88 | |
| A reaction: This is the standard traditional view of any thinker who exaggerates the importance and potential of reason in our lives. |
| 3324 | Plato's whole philosophy may be based on being duped by reification - a figure of speech [Benardete,JA on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Plato is liable to the charge of having been duped by a figure of speech, albeit the most profound of all, the trope of reification. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.12 | |
| A reaction: That might be a plausible account if his view was ridiculous, but given how many powerful friends Plato has, especially in the philosophy of mathematics, we should assume he was cleverer than that. |
| 6699 | The chain of consequences may not be the same as the chain of responsibility [Graham] |
| Full Idea: From a utilitarian point of view, the error of Archduke Ferdinand's driver (he turned up a cul-de-sac) was the worst in history, ...but the chain of consequences may not be the same as the chain of responsibility. | |
| From: Gordon Graham (Eight Theories of Ethics [2004], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: Can you cause something, and yet not be responsible for it? The driver was presumably fully conscious, rational and deliberate. He must share the responsibility for catastrophe, just as he shares in the causing of all the consequences. |
| 7503 | Plato never refers to examining the conscience [Plato, by Foucault] |
| Full Idea: Plato never speaks of the examination of conscience - never! | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Michel Foucault - On the Genealogy of Ethics p.276 | |
| A reaction: Plato does imply some sort of self-evident direct knowledge about that nature of a healthy soul. Presumably the full-blown concept of conscience is something given from outside, from God. In 'Euthyphro', Plato asserts the primacy of morality (Idea 337). |
| 2173 | As religion and convention collapsed, Plato sought morals not just in knowledge, but in the soul [Williams,B on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Once gods and fate and social expectation were no longer there, Plato felt it necessary to discover ethics inside human nature, not just as ethical knowledge (Socrates' view), but in the structure of the soul. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Bernard Williams - Shame and Necessity II - p.43 | |
| A reaction: anti Charles Taylor |
| 9274 | Plato's legacy to European thought was the Good, the Beautiful and the True [Plato, by Gray] |
| Full Idea: Plato's legacy to European thought was a trio of capital letters - the Good, the Beautiful and the True. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by John Gray - Straw Dogs 2.8 | |
| A reaction: It seems to have been Baumgarten who turned this into a slogan (Idea 8117). Gray says these ideals are lethal, but I identify with them very strongly, and am quite happy to see the good life as an attempt to find the right balance between them. |
| 94 | Pleasure is better with the addition of intelligence, so pleasure is not the good [Plato, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Plato says the life of pleasure is more desirable with the addition of intelligence, and if the combination is better, pleasure is not the good. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics 1172b27 | |
| A reaction: It is obvious why we like pleasure, but not why intelligence makes it 'better'. Maybe it is just because we enjoy intelligence? |
| 6698 | Negative consequences are very hard (and possibly impossible) to assess [Graham] |
| Full Idea: Negative consequences make the extension of the consequences of our actions indefinite, and this means that it is difficult to assess them; it may make it impossible, since there is now no clear sense to the idea of THE consequences of an action at all. | |
| From: Gordon Graham (Eight Theories of Ethics [2004], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: The general slogan of 'Do your best' covers most objections to the calculation of consequences. It is no excuse for stealing a wallet that 'at least I wasn't committing genocide'. How easy were the alternative actions to do? |
| 6700 | We can't criticise people because of unforeseeable consequences [Graham] |
| Full Idea: It is unreasonable to say that people have acted badly because of consequences which were not merely unforeseen but unforeseeable. | |
| From: Gordon Graham (Eight Theories of Ethics [2004], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: Interesting, and it sounds right. A key question in moral philosophy is how much effort people should make to assess the consequences of their actions. We must surely absolve them of the truly 'unforeseeable' consequence. |
| 17947 | Plato decided that the virtuous and happy life was the philosophical life [Plato, by Nehamas] |
| Full Idea: Plato came to the conclusion that virtue and happiness consist in the life of philosophy itself. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Alexander Nehamas - Eristic,Antilogic,Sophistic,Dialectic p.117 | |
| A reaction: This view is obviously ridiculous, because it largely excludes almost the entire human race, which sees philosophy as a cul-de-sac, even if it is good. But virtue and happiness need some serious thought. |
| 6704 | Egoism submits to desires, but cannot help form them [Graham] |
| Full Idea: Egoism is inadequate as a guide to good living. Though it tells us what to do, given pre-existent desires, it cannot help us critically form those desires. | |
| From: Gordon Graham (Eight Theories of Ethics [2004], Ch.9) | |
| A reaction: A crucial point in morality. It also applies to utilitarianism (should I change my capacity for pleasure?), and virtue theory (how should I genetically engineer 'human nature'?). I think these problems push us towards Platonism. See Idea 4840. |
| 6015 | Plato, unusually, said that theoretical and practical wisdom are inseparable [Plato, by Kraut] |
| Full Idea: Two virtues that are ordinarily kept distinct - theoretical and practical wisdom - are joined by Plato; he thinks that neither one can be fully possessed unless it is combined with the other. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Richard Kraut - Plato | |
| A reaction: I get the impression that this doctrine comes from Socrates, whose position is widely reported as 'intellectualist'. Aristotle certainly held the opposite view. |
| 6701 | Rescue operations need spontaneous benevolence, not careful thought [Graham] |
| Full Idea: If more lives are to be saved in natural disasters, what is needed is spontaneity on the part of the rescuers, a willingness not to stop and think but to act spontaneously. | |
| From: Gordon Graham (Eight Theories of Ethics [2004], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: This seems right, but must obviously be applied with caution, as when people are drowned attempting hopeless rescues. The most valuable person in an earthquake may be the thinker, not the digger. |
| 6693 | 'What if everybody did that?' rather misses the point as an objection to cheating [Graham] |
| Full Idea: I can object to your walking on the grass by asking 'What if everybody did that?', but the advantages of cheating depend upon the fact that most people don't cheat, so justifying my own cheating must involve special pleading. | |
| From: Gordon Graham (Eight Theories of Ethics [2004], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: It is, of course, reasonable to ask 'What if everybody cheated?', but it is also reasonable to reply that 'the whole point of cheating is that it exploits the honesty of others'. This shows that Kant cannot simply demolish the 'free rider'. |
| 6691 | It is more plausible to say people can choose between values, than that they can create them [Graham] |
| Full Idea: To say that individuals are free to choose their own values is more naturally interpreted as meaning that they are free to choose between pre-existent values. | |
| From: Gordon Graham (Eight Theories of Ethics [2004], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Existentialism seems absurdly individualistic in its morality. Nietzsche was the best existentialist, who saw that most people have to be sheep. Strong personalities can promote or demote the old values on the great scale of what is good. |
| 6688 | Life is only absurd if you expected an explanation and none turns up [Graham] |
| Full Idea: If 'life is absurd' just means 'there is no logical explanation for human existence', we have no reason for anguish, unless we think there should be such an explanation. | |
| From: Gordon Graham (Eight Theories of Ethics [2004], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This is aimed at Kierkegaard and Camus. 'Absurd' certainly seems to be a relative notion, and we have nothing to compare life with. However, life does strike us as a bit odd sometimes, don't you think? |
| 2912 | Plato is boring [Nietzsche on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Plato is boring. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Friedrich Nietzsche - Twilight of the Idols 9.2 |
| 6705 | Existentialism may transcend our nature, unlike eudaimonism [Graham] |
| Full Idea: It is the freedom to transcend our nature which eudaimonism seems to ignore and existentialism brings to the fore. | |
| From: Gordon Graham (Eight Theories of Ethics [2004], Ch.9) | |
| A reaction: It is wildly exciting to 'transcend our nature', and very dreary to polish up the nature which is given to us. In this I am a bit conservative. We should not go against the grain, but we shouldn't assume current living is the correct line of the grain. |
| 6690 | A standard problem for existentialism is the 'sincere Nazi' [Graham] |
| Full Idea: A standard problem for existentialism is the 'sincere Nazi'; there were undoubtedly some true believers, who saw in Nazism a creed that they wanted to believe, and who freely chose to endorse it. | |
| From: Gordon Graham (Eight Theories of Ethics [2004], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: The failing of Nazis was that they were not good citizens. They might have been good members of a faction, but they were (in my opinion) poor citizens of Germany, and (obviously) appalling citizens of Europe. The objection to existentialism is good. |
| 6689 | The key to existentialism: the way you make choices is more important than what you choose [Graham] |
| Full Idea: The chief implication of existentialism is this: what you choose to do, how you choose to spend your life, is not as important as the way you choose it. | |
| From: Gordon Graham (Eight Theories of Ethics [2004], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: While existentialists place emphasis on some notion of 'pure' choice, this is very close to the virtue theory idea that in a dilemma there may be several different choices which could all be rightly made by virtuous people. Integrity is a central virtue. |
| 1526 | Almost everyone except Plato thinks that time could not have been generated [Plato, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: With a single exception (Plato) everyone agrees about time - that it is not generated. Democritus says time is an obvious example of something not generated. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Physics 251b14 |
| 6706 | The great religions are much more concerned with the religious life than with ethics [Graham] |
| Full Idea: The fact is that the great religions of the world are not principally concerned with ethics at all, but with the religious life for its own sake. ..The Sermon on the Mount, for example, is mainly concerned with how to pray and worship. | |
| From: Gordon Graham (Eight Theories of Ethics [2004], Ch.9) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me a highly significant point, given that most people nowadays seem to endorse religion precisely because they wish to endorse morality, and think religion is its essential underpinning. See Idea 336 for the core problem ('Euthyphro'). |
| 6709 | Western religion saves us from death; Eastern religion saves us from immortality [Graham] |
| Full Idea: For Western minds, religion entails the belief and hope that we will be saved from death and live forever, but the belief of Eastern religions is that we do live forever, and it is from this dreadful fate that we must look to spirituality to save us. | |
| From: Gordon Graham (Eight Theories of Ethics [2004], Ch.9) | |
| A reaction: Nice. I have certainly come to prefer the Eastern view, simply on the grounds that human beings have a limited capacity. I quite fancy three hundred years of healthy life, but after that I am sure that any potential I have will be used up. |