Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'poems', 'fragments/reports' and 'Philosophy'

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4 ideas

10. Modality / A. Necessity / 8. Transcendental Necessity
Everything happens by reason and necessity [Leucippus]
     Full Idea: Nothing happens at random; everything happens out of reason and by necessity.
     From: Leucippus (fragments/reports [c.435 BCE], B002), quoted by (who?) - where?
11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 7. Knowledge First
Knowledge is beyond question, as an unavoidable component of thinking [Weil]
     Full Idea: The speaker refuses to pose the question of knowledge, since knowledge is a given that is mixed with thought, and that no thinking being can get away from.
     From: Simone Weil (Philosophy [1941], p.42)
     A reaction: On the whole I favour belief-first, but I take the primary purpose of minds to be navigation, and that needs facts, not hopeful beliefs. Weil's thought pushes me a bit towards the knowledge first view.
21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 1. Defining Art
Art (like philosophy) establishes a relation between world and self, and between oneself and others [Weil]
     Full Idea: Isn't true art a method for establishing a certain relation between the world and the self, and between oneself and others, and isn't that the equivalent of philosophy?
     From: Simone Weil (Philosophy [1941], p.38)
     A reaction: I hope the definition of 'true' art doesn't have to conform to achieving this relation. I suppose each good work of art shows you a distinctive way of relating to the world. An interesting thought (as so often with this thinker).
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / j. Ethics by convention
Nomos is king [Pindar]
     Full Idea: Nomos is king.
     From: Pindar (poems [c.478 BCE], S 169), quoted by Thomas Nagel - The Philosophical Culture
     A reaction: This seems to be the earliest recorded shot in the nomos-physis wars (the debate among sophists about moral relativism). It sounds as if it carries the full relativist burden - that all that matters is what has been locally decreed.