Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'poems', 'The Apology' and 'Reply to Fifth Objections'

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7 ideas

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 2. Substance / a. Substance

3626	Knowing the attributes is enough to reveal a substance [Descartes]
	Full Idea: I have never thought that anything more is required to reveal a substance than its various attributes.
	From: René Descartes (Reply to Fifth Objections [1641], 360)

12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 3. Innate Knowledge / a. Innate knowledge

3630	Our thinking about external things doesn't disprove the existence of innate ideas [Descartes]
	Full Idea: You can't prove that Praxiteles never made any statues on the grounds that he did not get from within himself the marble from which he sculpted them.
	From: René Descartes (Reply to Fifth Objections [1641], 362)

18. Thought / D. Concepts / 2. Origin of Concepts / c. Nativist concepts

3631	A blind man may still contain the idea of colour [Descartes]
	Full Idea: How do you know that there is no idea of colour in a man born blind?
	From: René Descartes (Reply to Fifth Objections [1641], 363)

20. Action / C. Motives for Action / 3. Acting on Reason / b. Intellectualism

1655	If goodness needs true opinion but not knowledge, you can skip the 'examined life' [Vlastos on Plato]
	Full Idea: If true opinion without knowledge does suffice to guide action aright, the great mass of men and women may be spared the pain and hazards of the "examined" life.
	From: comment on Plato (The Apology [c.383 BCE], 38a) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.125

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / j. Ethics by convention

6017	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.

28. God / B. Proving God / 2. Proofs of Reason / a. Ontological Proof

3640	Possible existence is a perfection in the idea of a triangle [Descartes]
	Full Idea: Possible existence is a perfection in the idea of a triangle, just as necessary existence is a perfection in the idea of God.
	From: René Descartes (Reply to Fifth Objections [1641], 383)

3639	Necessary existence is a property which is uniquely part of God's essence [Descartes]
	Full Idea: In the case of God necessary existence is in fact a property in the strictest sense of the term, since it applies to him alone and forms a part of his essence as it does of no other thing
	From: René Descartes (Reply to Fifth Objections [1641], 383)