120 ideas
14857 | The highest wisdom has the guise of simplicity [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Truth tends to reveal its highest wisdom in the guise of simplicity. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 609) |
14854 | Deep thinkers know that they are always wrong [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Whoever thinks more deeply knows that he is always wrong, whatever his acts and judgments. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 518) |
14833 | Comedy is a transition from fear to exuberance [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The transition from momentary fear to short-lived exuberance is called the 'comic'. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 169) |
10468 | A metaphysics has an ontology (objects) and an ideology (expressed ideas about them) [Oliver] |
Full Idea: A metaphysical theory hs two parts: ontology and ideology. The ontology consists of the entities which the theory says exist; the ideology consists of the ideas which are expressed within the theory using predicates. Ideology sorts into categories. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §02.1) | |
A reaction: Say 'what there is', and 'what we can say about it'. The modern notion remains controversial (see Ladyman and Ross, for example), so it is as well to start crystalising what metaphysics is. I am enthusiastic, but nervous about what is being said. |
224 | When questions are doubtful we should concentrate not on objects but on ideas of the intellect [Plato] |
Full Idea: Doubtful questions should not be discussed in terms of visible objects or in relation to them, but only with reference to ideas conceived by the intellect. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 135e) |
232 | Opposites are as unlike as possible [Plato] |
Full Idea: Opposites are as unlike as possible. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 159a) |
10471 | Ockham's Razor has more content if it says believe only in what is causal [Oliver] |
Full Idea: One might give Ockham's Razor a bit more content by advising belief in only those entities which are causally efficacious. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §03) | |
A reaction: He cites Armstrong as taking this line, but I immediately think of Shoemaker's account of properties. It seems to me to be the only account which will separate properties from predicates, and bring them under common sense control. |
8937 | Plato's 'Parmenides' is the greatest artistic achievement of the ancient dialectic [Hegel on Plato] |
Full Idea: Plato's 'Parmenides' is the greatest artistic achievement of the ancient dialectic. | |
From: comment on Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Georg W.F.Hegel - Phenomenology of Spirit Pref 71 | |
A reaction: It is a long way from the analytic tradition of philosophy to be singling out a classic text for its 'artistic' achievement. Eventually we may even look back on, say, Kripke's 'Naming and Necessity' and see it in that light. |
14853 | Truth finds fewest champions not when it is dangerous, but when it is boring [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The champions of truth are hardest to find, not when it is dangerous to tell it, but rather when it is boring. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 506) |
24075 | Convictions, more than lies, are the great enemy of truth [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 483) | |
A reaction: Love this one. Especially in western democracies in the 2020s. If we value truth, we must be fallibilists. |
10749 | Necessary truths seem to all have the same truth-maker [Oliver] |
Full Idea: The definition of truth-makers entails that a truth-maker for a given necessary truth is equally a truth-maker for every other necessary truth. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §24) | |
A reaction: Maybe we could accept this. Necessary truths concern the way things have to be, so all realities will embody them. Are we to say that nothing makes a necessary truth true? |
10750 | Slingshot Argument: seems to prove that all sentences have the same truth-maker [Oliver] |
Full Idea: Slingshot Argument: if truth-makers work for equivalent sentences and co-referring substitute sentences, then if 'the numbers + S1 = the numbers' has a truth-maker, then 'the numbers + S2 = the numbers' will have the same truth-maker. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §24) | |
A reaction: [compressed] Hence every sentence has the same truth-maker! Truth-maker fans must challenge one of the premises. |
13986 | Plato found antinomies in ideas, Kant in space and time, and Bradley in relations [Plato, by Ryle] |
Full Idea: Plato (in 'Parmenides') shows that the theory that 'Eide' are substances, and Kant that space and time are substances, and Bradley that relations are substances, all lead to aninomies. | |
From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Gilbert Ryle - Are there propositions? 'Objections' |
14150 | Plato's 'Parmenides' is perhaps the best collection of antinomies ever made [Russell on Plato] |
Full Idea: Plato's 'Parmenides' is perhaps the best collection of antinomies ever made. | |
From: comment on Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Bertrand Russell - The Principles of Mathematics §337 |
16150 | One is, so numbers exist, so endless numbers exist, and each one must partake of being [Plato] |
Full Idea: If one is, there must also necessarily be number - Necessarily - But if there is number, there would be many, and an unlimited multitude of beings. ..So if all partakes of being, each part of number would also partake of it. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 144a) | |
A reaction: This seems to commit to numbers having being, then to too many numbers, and hence to too much being - but without backing down and wondering whether numbers had being after all. Aristotle disagreed. |
229 | The one was and is and will be and was becoming and is becoming and will become [Plato] |
Full Idea: The one was and is and will be and was becoming and is becoming and will become. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 155d) | |
A reaction: This seems to be rhetorical, rather a precise theory, given that the One is said to be eternal and unchanging. The One is not just what we call 'reality'. |
21821 | Plato's Parmenides has a three-part theory, of Primal One, a One-Many, and a One-and-Many [Plato, by Plotinus] |
Full Idea: The Platonic Parmenides is more exact [than Parmenides himself]; the distinction is made between the Primal One, a strictly pure Unity, and a secondary One which is a One-Many, and a third which is a One-and-Many. | |
From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Plotinus - The Enneads 5.1.08 | |
A reaction: Plotinus approves of this three-part theory. Parmenides has the problem that the highest Being contains no movement. By placing the One outside Being you can give it powers which an existent thing cannot have. Cf the concept of God. |
221 | Absolute ideas, such as the Good and the Beautiful, cannot be known by us [Plato] |
Full Idea: The absolute good and the beautiful and all which we conceive to be absolute ideas are unknown to us. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 134c) | |
A reaction: These seems to thoroughly pre-empt Plato's Theory of Forms a century before he created it. Which shows (as Simone Weil says) that Plato was just part of a long tradition. |
10747 | Accepting properties by ontological commitment tells you very little about them [Oliver] |
Full Idea: The route to the existence of properties via ontological commitment provides little information about what properties are like. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §22) | |
A reaction: NIce point, and rather important, I would say. I could hardly be committed to something for the sole reason that I had expressed a statement which contained an ontological commitment. Start from the reason for making the statement. |
10748 | Reference is not the only way for a predicate to have ontological commitment [Oliver] |
Full Idea: For a predicate to have a referential function is one way, but not the only way, to harbour ontological commitment. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §22) | |
A reaction: Presumably the main idea is that the predicate makes some important contribution to a sentence which is held to be true. Maybe reference is achieved by the whole sentence, rather than by one bit of it. |
10719 | There are four conditions defining the relations between particulars and properties [Oliver] |
Full Idea: Four adequacy conditions for particulars and properties: asymmetry of instantiation; different particulars can have the same property; particulars can have many properties; two properties can be instantiated by the same particulars. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §09) | |
A reaction: The distinction between particulars and universals has been challenged (e.g. by Ramsey and MacBride). There are difficulties in the notion of 'instantiation', and in the notion of two properties being 'the same'. |
10721 | If properties are sui generis, are they abstract or concrete? [Oliver] |
Full Idea: If properties are sui generis entities, one must decide whether they are abstract or concrete. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §09) | |
A reaction: A nice basic question! I take the real properties to be concrete, but we abstract from them, especially from their similarities, and then become deeply confused about the ontology, because our language doesn't mark the distinctions clearly. |
10716 | There are just as many properties as the laws require [Oliver] |
Full Idea: One conception of properties says there are only as many properties as are needed to be constituents of laws. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §03) | |
A reaction: I take this view to the be precise opposite of the real situation. The properties are what lead to the laws. Properties are internal to nature, and laws are imposed from outside, which is ridiculous unless you think there is an active deity. |
10720 | We have four options, depending whether particulars and properties are sui generis or constructions [Oliver] |
Full Idea: Both properties and particulars can be taken as either sui generis or as constructions, so we have four options: both sui generis, or both constructions, or one of each. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §09) | |
A reaction: I think I favour both being sui generis. God didn't make the objects, then add their properties, or make the properties then create some instantiations. There can't be objects without properties, or objectless properties (except in thought). |
10714 | The expressions with properties as their meanings are predicates and abstract singular terms [Oliver] |
Full Idea: The types of expressions which have properties as their meanings may vary, the chief candidates being predicates, such as '...is wise', and abstract singular terms, such as 'wisdom'. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §02) | |
A reaction: This seems to be important, because there is too much emphasis on predicates. If this idea is correct, we need some account of what 'abstract' means, which is notoriously tricky. |
10715 | There are five main semantic theories for properties [Oliver] |
Full Idea: Properties in semantic theory: functions from worlds to extensions ('Californian'), reference, as opposed to sense, of predicates (Frege), reference to universals (Russell), reference to situations (Barwise/Perry), and composition from context (Lewis). | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §02 n12) | |
A reaction: [compressed; 'Californian' refers to Carnap and Montague; the Lewis view is p,67 of Oliver]. Frege misses out singular terms, or tries to paraphrase them away. Barwise and Perry sound promising to me. Situations involve powers. |
10741 | Maybe concrete particulars are mereological wholes of abstract particulars [Oliver] |
Full Idea: Some trope theorists give accounts of particulars. Sets of tropes will not do because they are always abstract, but we might say that particulars are (concrete) mereological wholes of the tropes which they instantiate. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §12) | |
A reaction: Looks like a non-starter to me. How can abstract entities add up to a mereological whole which is concrete? |
10738 | Tropes are not properties, since they can't be instantiated twice [Oliver] |
Full Idea: I rule that tropes are not properties, because it is not true that one and the same trope of redness is instantiated by two books. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §12) | |
A reaction: This seems right, but has very far-reaching implications, because it means there are no properties, and no two things have the same properties, so there can be no generalisations about properties, let alone laws. ..But they have equivalence sets. |
10740 | The orthodox view does not allow for uninstantiated tropes [Oliver] |
Full Idea: It is usual to hold an aristotelian conception of tropes, according to which tropes are present in their particular instances, and which does not allow for uninstantiated tropes. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §12) | |
A reaction: What are you discussing when you ask what colour the wall should be painted? Presumably we can imagine non-existent tropes. If I vividly imagine my wall looking yellow, have I brought anything into existence? |
10739 | The property of redness is the maximal set of the tropes of exactly similar redness [Oliver] |
Full Idea: Using the predicate '...is exactly similar to...' we can sort tropes into equivalence sets, these sets serving as properties and relations. For example, the property of redness is the maximal set of the tropes of redness. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §12) | |
A reaction: You have somehow to get from scarlet and vermilion, which have exact similarity within their sets, to redness, which doesn't. |
10742 | Tropes can overlap, and shouldn't be splittable into parts [Oliver] |
Full Idea: More than one trope can occupy the same place at the same time, and a trope occupies a place without having parts which occupy parts of the place. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §12) | |
A reaction: This is the general question of the size of a spatial trope, or 'how many red tropes in a tin of red paint?' |
10472 | 'Structural universals' methane and butane are made of the same universals, carbon and hydrogen [Oliver] |
Full Idea: The 'structural universals' methane and butane are each made up of the same universals, carbon and hydrogen. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §07) | |
A reaction: He cites Lewis 1986, who is criticising Armstrong. If you insist on having universals, they might (in this case) best be described as 'patterns', which would be useful for structuralism in mathematics. They reduce to relations. |
223 | If you deny that each thing always stays the same, you destroy the possibility of discussion [Plato] |
Full Idea: If a person denies that the idea of each thing is always the same, he will utterly destroy the power of carrying on discussion. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 135c) |
227 | You must always mean the same thing when you utter the same name [Plato] |
Full Idea: You must always mean the same thing when you utter the same name. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 147d) |
10730 | If universals ground similarities, what about uniquely instantiated universals? [Oliver] |
Full Idea: If universals are to ground similarities, it is hard to see why one should admit universals which only happen to be instantiated once. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11) | |
A reaction: He is criticising Armstrong, who holds that universals must be instantiated. This is a good point about any metaphysics which makes resemblance basic. |
10724 | Located universals are wholly present in many places, and two can be in the same place [Oliver] |
Full Idea: So-called aristotelian universals have some queer features: one universal can be wholly present at different places at the same time, and two universals can occupy the same place at the same time. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11) | |
A reaction: If you want to make a metaphysical doctrine look ridiculous, stating it in very simple language will often do the job. Belief in fairies is more plausible than the first of these two claims. |
7963 | Aristotle's instantiated universals cannot account for properties of abstract objects [Oliver] |
Full Idea: Properties and relations of abstract objects may need to be acknowledged, but they would have no spatio-temporal location, so they cannot instantiate Aristotelian universals, there being nowhere for such universals to be. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11), quoted by Cynthia Macdonald - Varieties of Things | |
A reaction: Maybe. Why can't the second-order properties be in the same location as the first-order ones? If the reply is that they would seem to be in many places at once, that is only restating the original problem of universals at a higher level. |
10727 | Uninstantiated universals seem to exist if they themselves have properties [Oliver] |
Full Idea: We may have to accept uninstantiated universals because the properties and relations of abstract objects may need to be acknowledged. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11) | |
A reaction: This is the problem of 'abstract reference'. 'Courage matters more than kindness'; 'Pink is more like red than like yellow'. Not an impressive argument. All you need is second-level abstraction. |
7962 | Uninstantiated properties are useful in philosophy [Oliver] |
Full Idea: Uninstantiated properties and relations may do some useful philosophical work. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11), quoted by Cynthia Macdonald - Varieties of Things | |
A reaction: Their value isn't just philosophical; hopes and speculations depend on them. This doesn't make universals mind-independent. I think the secret is a clear understanding of the word 'abstract' (which I don't have). |
211 | If admirable things have Forms, maybe everything else does as well [Plato] |
Full Idea: It is troubling that if admirable things have abstract ideas, then perhaps everything else must have ideas as well. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 130d) |
220 | The concept of a master includes the concept of a slave [Plato] |
Full Idea: Mastership in the abstract is mastership of slavery in the abstract. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 133e) |
16151 | Plato moves from Forms to a theory of genera and principles in his later work [Plato, by Frede,M] |
Full Idea: It seems to me that Plato in the later dialogues, beginning with the second half of 'Parmenides', wants to substitute a theory of genera and theory of principles that constitute these genera for the earlier theory of forms. | |
From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Title, Unity, Authenticity of the 'Categories' V | |
A reaction: My theory is that the later Plato came under the influence of the brilliant young Aristotle, and this idea is a symptom of it. The theory of 'principles' sounds like hylomorphism to me. |
210 | It would be absurd to think there were abstract Forms for vile things like hair, mud and dirt [Plato] |
Full Idea: Are there abstract ideas for such things as hair, mud and dirt, which are particularly vile and worthless? That would be quite absurd. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 130d) |
219 | If absolute ideas existed in us, they would cease to be absolute [Plato] |
Full Idea: None of the absolute ideas exists in us, because then it would no longer be absolute. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 133c) |
228 | Greatness and smallness must exist, to be opposed to one another, and come into being in things [Plato] |
Full Idea: These two ideas, greatness and smallness, exist, do they not? For if they did not exist, they could not be opposites of one another, and could not come into being in things. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 149e) |
215 | If things partake of ideas, this implies either that everything thinks, or that everything actually is thought [Plato] |
Full Idea: If all things partake of ideas, must either everything be made of thoughts and everything thinks, or everything is thought, and so can't think? | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 132c) |
10722 | Instantiation is set-membership [Oliver] |
Full Idea: One view of instantiation is that it is the set-membership predicate. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §10) | |
A reaction: This cuts the Gordian knot rather nicely, but I don't like it, if the view of sets is extensional. We need to account for natural properties, and we need to exclude mere 'categorial' properties. |
216 | If things are made alike by participating in something, that thing will be the absolute idea [Plato] |
Full Idea: That by participation in which like things are made like, will be the absolute idea, will it not? | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 132e) |
218 | Participation is not by means of similarity, so we are looking for some other method of participation [Plato] |
Full Idea: Participation is not by means of likeness, so we must seek some other method of participation. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 133a) |
212 | The whole idea of each Form must be found in each thing which participates in it [Plato] |
Full Idea: The whole idea of each form (of beauty, justice etc) must be found in each thing which participates in it. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 131a) |
213 | Each idea is in all its participants at once, just as daytime is a unity but in many separate places at once [Plato] |
Full Idea: Just as day is in many places at once, but not separated from itself, so each idea might be in all its participants at once. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 131b) |
217 | Nothing can be like an absolute idea, because a third idea intervenes to make them alike (leading to a regress) [Plato] |
Full Idea: It is impossible for anything to be like an absolute idea, because a third idea will appear to make them alike, and if that is like anything, it will lead to another idea, and so on. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 133a) |
214 | If absolute greatness and great things are seen as the same, another thing appears which makes them seem great [Plato] |
Full Idea: If you regard the absolute great and the many great things in the same way, will not another appear beyond, by which all these must appear to be great? | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 132a) |
10744 | Nominalism can reject abstractions, or universals, or sets [Oliver] |
Full Idea: We can say that 'Harvard-nominalism' is the thesis that there are no abstract objects, 'Oz-nominalism' that there are no universals, and Goodman's nominalism rejects entities, such as sets, which fail to obey a certain principle of composition. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §15 n46) | |
A reaction: Personally I'm a Goodman-Harvard-Oz nominalist. What are you rebelling against? What have you got? We've been mesmerized by the workings of our own minds, which are trying to grapple with a purely physical world. |
15851 | Parts must belong to a created thing with a distinct form [Plato] |
Full Idea: The part would not be the part of many things or all, but of some one character ['ideas'] and of some one thing, which we call a 'whole', since it has come to be one complete [perfected] thing composed [created] of all. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 157d) | |
A reaction: A serious shot by Plato at what identity is. Harte quotes it (125) and shows that 'character' is Gk 'idea', and 'composed' will translate as 'created'. 'Form' links this Platonic passage to Aristotle's hylomorphism. |
10726 | Things can't be fusions of universals, because two things could then be one thing [Oliver] |
Full Idea: If a particular thing is a bundle of located universals, we might say it is a mereological fusion of them, but if two universals can be instantiated by more than one particular, then two particulars can have the same universals, and be the same thing. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11) | |
A reaction: This and Idea 10725 pretty thoroughly demolish the idea that objects could be just bundles of universals. The problem pushes some philosophers back to the idea of 'substance', or some sort of 'substratum' which has the universals. |
10725 | Abstract sets of universals can't be bundled to make concrete things [Oliver] |
Full Idea: If a particular thing is a bundle of located universals, we might say that it is the set of its universals, but this won't work because the thing can be concrete but sets are abstract. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11) | |
A reaction: This objection applies just as much to tropes (abstract particulars) as it does to universals. |
15846 | In Parmenides, if composition is identity, a whole is nothing more than its parts [Plato, by Harte,V] |
Full Idea: At the heart of the 'Parmenides' puzzles about composition is the thesis that composition is identity. Considered thus, a whole adds nothing to an ontology that already includes its parts | |
From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Verity Harte - Plato on Parts and Wholes 2.5 | |
A reaction: There has to be more to a unified identity that mere proximity of the parts. When do parts come together, and when do they actually 'compose' something? |
15849 | Plato says only a one has parts, and a many does not [Plato, by Harte,V] |
Full Idea: In 'Parmenides' it is argued that a part cannot be part of a many, but must be part of something one. | |
From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 157c) by Verity Harte - Plato on Parts and Wholes 3.2 | |
A reaction: This looks like the right way to go with the term 'part'. We presuppose a unity before we even talk of its parts, so we can't get into contradictions and paradoxes about their relationships. |
15850 | Anything which has parts must be one thing, and parts are of a one, not of a many [Plato] |
Full Idea: The whole of which the parts are parts must be one thing composed of many; for each of the parts must be part, not of a many, but of a whole. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 157c) | |
A reaction: This is a key move of metaphysics, and we should hang on to it. The other way madness lies. |
13259 | It seems that the One must be composed of parts, which contradicts its being one [Plato] |
Full Idea: The One must be composed of parts, both being a whole and having parts. So on both grounds the One would thus be many and not one. But it must be not many, but one. So if the One will be one, it will neither be a whole, nor have parts. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 137c09), quoted by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 5.2 | |
A reaction: This is the starting point for Plato's metaphysical discussion of objects. It seems to begin a line of thought which is completed by Aristotle, surmising that only an essential structure can bestow identity on a bunch of parts. |
15847 | Two things relate either as same or different, or part of a whole, or the whole of the part [Plato] |
Full Idea: Everything is surely related to everything as follows: either it is the same or different; or, if it is not the same or different, it would be related as part to whole or as whole to part. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 146b) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as a really helpful first step in trying to analyse the nature of identity. Two things are either two or (actually) one, or related mereologically. |
10745 | Science is modally committed, to disposition, causation and law [Oliver] |
Full Idea: Natural science is up to its ears in modal notions because of its use of the concepts of disposition, causation and law. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §15) | |
A reaction: This is aimed at Quine. It might be possible for an auster physicist to dispense with these concepts, by merely describing patterns of observed behaviour. |
14858 | Being certain presumes that there are absolute truths, and means of arriving at them [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Conviction is the belief that in some point of knowledge one possesses absolute truth. Such a belief presumes, then, that absolute truths exists; likewise, that the perfect methods for arriving at them have been found. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 630) |
14830 | Intuition only recognises what is possible, not what exists or is certain [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: 'To intuit' does not mean to recognise the existence of a thing to any extent, but rather to hold it to be possible, in that one wishes or fears it. 'Intuition' takes us not one step farther into the land of certainty. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 131) | |
A reaction: I like this remark. I am sympathetic to the view that the actual world has modal properties (in opposition to Sider, for example). To apprehend dispositions is precisely to apprehend possibilities. Intuition is a thousand interwoven inductions. |
20378 | Just as skin hides the horrors of the body, vanity conceals the passions of the soul [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Just as the bones, flesh, intestines, and blood vessels are enclosed with skin, which makes the sight of a man bearable, so the stirrings and passions of the soul are covered up by vanity: it is the skin of the soul. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 082) | |
A reaction: What a glorious analogy! None of us should underestimate our vanity. The least vain people you ever meet can reveal their vanity if you challenge them close to home. Try accusing them of vanity! Attack their essential character! (No, don't do that). |
10746 | Conceptual priority is barely intelligible [Oliver] |
Full Idea: I find the notion of conceptual priority barely intelligible. | |
From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §19 n48) | |
A reaction: I don't think I agree, though there is a lot of vagueness and intuition involved, and not a lot of hard argument. Can you derive A from B, but not B from A? Is A inconceivable without B, but B conceivable without A? |
14820 | People always do what they think is right, according to the degree of their intellect [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Socrates and Plato are right: whatever man does, he always acts for the good; that is, in a way that seems to him good (useful) according to the degree of his intellect, the prevailing measure of his rationality. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 102) | |
A reaction: I associate this doctrine much more with Socrates than with Plato - but Nietzsche was a great classical scholar. |
14856 | Our judgment seems to cause our nature, but actually judgment arises from our nature [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: It seems that our thinking and judging are to be made the cause of our nature after the fact, but actually our nature causes us to think and judge one way or the other. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 608) |
14842 | Why are the strong tastes of other people so contagious? [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Why are likes and dislikes so contagious that one can scarcely live in proximity to a person of strong sensibilities without being filled like a vessel with pros and cons? | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 371) | |
A reaction: I was on the receiving end of this when young, and I think it influenced me to propound stronger views about things than I could ever justify, since my natural disposition is to be cautious about all views. Nice question. Why? |
14835 | Artists are not especially passionate, but they pretend to be [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Artists are by no means people of great passion, but they often pretend to be. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 211) | |
A reaction: Presumably people can gradually become what they consistently pretend to be. |
14807 | The history of morality rests on an error called 'responsibility', which rests on an error called 'free will' [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The history of moral feelings is the history of an error, an error called 'responsibility', which in turn rests on an error called 'freedom of the will'. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 039) | |
A reaction: I totally agree with this, though I think the term 'responsible' is useful in ethics, though only in the sense that the lightning was responsible for the thunder. Nietzsche appears to have anticipated Mackie's error theory about morality. |
14823 | Ceasing to believe in human responsibility is bitter, if you had based the nobility of humanity on it [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Man's complete lack of responsibility, for his behaviour and for his nature, is the bitterest drop which the man of knowledge must swallow, if he had been in the habit of seeing responsibility and duty as humanity's claim to nobility. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 107) | |
A reaction: If you were seeing humanity as little transient angels, living a moral life that was an echo of God's, then you needed cutting down to size. But if you ask if there is anything 'noble' in the universe, it will still be the fine deeds of humanity. |
14824 | It is absurd to blame nature and necessity; we should no more praise actions than we praise plants or artworks [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Man may no longer praise, no longer blame, for it is nonsensical to praise and blame nature and necessity. Just as he loves a work of art (or a plant) but does not praise it, because it can do nothing about itself, so he must regard human actions. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 107) | |
A reaction: But humans can 'do something about themselves'. They can read the works of Nietzsche. He overestimates the importance of the loss of free will, when we grasp that there is no such thing. |
22473 | Nietzsche said the will doesn't exist, so it can't ground moral responsibility [Nietzsche, by Foot] |
Full Idea: Nietzsche challenged belief in free will, on the ground that will itself …is non-existent. The will is in truth nothing but a complex of sensations, as of power and resistance, and it is illusion to think of it as a basis for 'moral responsibility'. | |
From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 107) by Philippa Foot - Nietzsche's Immoralism p.153 | |
A reaction: Modern neuroscience seems to support Nietzsche on this, though I will continue to use the concept of 'will' in philosophy, to mean the main brain events which normally combine in decision-making. That makes the will a process, not a entity. |
14812 | Intellect is tied to morality, because it requires good memory and powerful imagination [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one has given. One must have strong powers of imagination to be able to have pity. So closely is morality bound to the quality of the intellect. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 059) | |
A reaction: Nice to see him say that strong powers of imagination are an 'intellectual' quality, which I think is not properly understood by the more geeky sort of intellectual. |
14810 | Originally it was the rulers who requited good for good and evil for evil who were called 'good' [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: In the soul of the original ruling clans and castes, the man who has the power to requite goodness with goodness, evil with evil, and really does practice requital by being grateful and vengeful, is called 'good'. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 045) | |
A reaction: The idea that evil should indeed repay evil was very much a feature of goodness until the philosophers came in on the act. In those days no one else had any power, so they had no scope for goodness. |
14831 | No one has ever done anything that was entirely for other people [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Never has a man done anything that was only for others and without any personal motivation. …How could the ego act without ego? | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 133) | |
A reaction: This is only a denial of the purest of 'pure' altruism. It is hard to imagine anyone performing an altruistic action which permanently shamed the reputationof its performer - though it might be possible in a nicely contrived fiction. |
14855 | Simultaneous love and respect are impossible; love has no separation or rank, but respect admits power [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: It is impossible to be loved and respected by the same person. For the man who respects another acknowledges his power; his condition is one of awe. But love acknowledges no power, nothing that separates, differentiates, ranks higher or subordinates. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 603) | |
A reaction: Depends what you mean by 'respect', but this looks like nonsense. Do we 'respect' someone because they point a gun at us? I would say love and respect are inseparable. |
14815 | We get enormous pleasure from tales of noble actions [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: How much pleasure we get from morality! Just think what a river of agreeable tears has flowed at tales of noble, generous actions. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 091) | |
A reaction: How can anyone not adore Nietzsche? The pleasure of a noble deed is the most piercing and the deepest pleasure known to us. It isn't 'just' a pleasure. |
14849 | We can only achieve happy moments, not happy eras [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The destiny of men is designed for happy moments (every life has those), but not for happy eras. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 471) | |
A reaction: The vicissitudes of life (my favourite word!) are such that even the most serene and well-adjusted person is going to be perturbed on several days of the week, even if only by the unhappiness of the people around them. |
14818 | First morality is force, then custom, then acceptance, then instinct, then a pleasure - and finally 'virtue' [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Force precedes morality; for a time morality itself is force, to which others acquiesce. Later it becomes custom, and then free obedience, and finally almost instinct; then it is coupled to pleasure, like all habitual things, and is now called 'virtue'. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 099) | |
A reaction: How few philosophers delve into the history of the concepts they work with, and yet how revealing it can be. Richard Taylor was wonderful on 'duty'. You will never grasp the 'problem of free will' if you don't examine its history. |
20103 | You are mastered by your own virtues, but you must master them, and turn them into tools [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: You had to become your own master, and also the master of your own virtues. Previously, your virtues were your master; but they must be nothing more than your tools. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 006) | |
A reaction: What on earth would Aristotle make of that? Nietzsche offers a sort of metatheory for virtues. I take this to be a form of particularism - that you live by your virtues, but occasionally you can discard a virtue if it seems right. Lie, steal... |
14817 | The 'good' man does the moral thing as if by nature, easily and gladly, after a long inheritance [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: We call 'good' the man who does the moral thing as if by nature, after a long history of inheritance - that is, easily, and gladly, whatever it is. …He is called 'good' because he is good 'for' something. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 096) | |
A reaction: I am amazed at the brief and rather disrespectful remarks that Nietzsche makes about Aristotle's ethics, given how close this idea is to the ideal of Aristotle (though the latter who not emphasise 'inheritance'!). |
14809 | All societies of good men give a priority to gratitude [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Every society of good men (that is, originally, of powerful men) places gratitude among its first duties. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 044) | |
A reaction: His reason here is that gratitude is a way of displaying the power of the powerful! |
14816 | Justice (fairness) originates among roughly equal powers (as the Melian dialogues show) [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Justice (fairness) originates among approximately equal powers, as Thucydides (in the horrifying conversation between the Athenian and Melian envoys) rightly understood. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 092) | |
A reaction: The moral position of the powerless is a notorious problem for social contract theories of morality. They have nothing to offer in a mere contract. |
20112 | Pity consoles those who suffer, because they see that they still have the power to hurt [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The pity that the spectators express consoles the weak and suffering, inasmuch as they see that , despite all their weakness, they still have at least one power: the power to hurt. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 050) | |
A reaction: This pinpoints how the will to power led to the inversion of values. |
14821 | Apart from philosophers, most people rightly have a low estimate of pity [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Aside from a few philosophers, men have always placed pity rather low in the hierarchy of moral feelings - and rightly so. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 103) | |
A reaction: Presumably this includes Jesus among the 'philosophers'. |
14841 | Many people are better at having good friends than being a good friend [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: In many people the gift of having good friends is much greater than the gift of being a good friend. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 368) |
14843 | Women can be friends with men, but only some physical antipathy will maintain it [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Women can very well enter into a friendship with a man, but to maintain it - a little physical antipathy must help out. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 390) |
14811 | In Homer it is the contemptible person, not the harmful person, who is bad [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: In Homer, both the Trojan and the Greek are good. Not the man who inflicts harm on us, but the man who is contemptible, is bad. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 045) |
20111 | We could live more naturally, relishing the spectacle, and not thinking we are special [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: I can imagine a life much more simple...than the present one. ...One would live among men and with oneself as in nature, without praise, reproach, overzealousness, delighting in things as in a spectacle. One would no longer feel one was more than nature. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 034) | |
A reaction: [compressed] Safranski says this passage is a big turning point for Nietzsche, replacing his earlier idea that art could be salvation. Eternal Recurrence puts a seal on this new view. Nietzsche adds that this life needs to be 'cheerful'. |
14844 | People do not experience boredom if they have never learned to work properly [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Many people, especially women, do not experience boredom, because they have never learned to work properly. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 391) | |
A reaction: It certainly seems right that boredom is a response to expectations and past habits. Life in a medieval village looks like boredom verging on torture for your busy modern urban sophisticate, but I daresay it was quite absorbing. |
14808 | Over huge periods of time human character would change endlessly [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: If a man eighty thousand years old were conceivable, his character would in fact be absolutely variable. …The brevity of human life misleads us… | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 041) | |
A reaction: This would be one of my many exhibits for claiming Nietzsche as an existentialist. I think he is largely right, and we do detect slow shifts in our characters over long periods of time. They may be as much a response to culture as a personal matter. |
14822 | If self-defence is moral, then so are most expressions of 'immoral' egoism [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: If we accept self-defense as moral, then we must also accept nearly all expressions of so-called immoral egoism. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 104) | |
A reaction: I find this idea rather disconcerting, because I have always thought that the clearest possible 'natural right' was that of self-defence - but this implication (if it be so) had never struck me. Hm. |
14838 | The state aims to protect individuals from one another [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The state is a clever institution for protecting individuals from one another. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 235) | |
A reaction: This is Nietzsche allying with Hobbes, and presumably aiming this remark at Hegel. |
14852 | Culture cannot do without passions and vices [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Culture absolutely cannot do without passions, vices and acts of malice. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 477) | |
A reaction: I'm not sure how you test the truth of that aphorism, given that humanity is perpetually doomed to live with such things. If those qualities disappeared, I suppose we would drift apart. We are 'dependent' beings, as MacIntyre says. |
14846 | If we want the good life for the greatest number, we must let them decide on the good life [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: If the business of politics is to make life tolerable for the greatest number, this greatest number may also determine what they understand by a tolerable life. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 438) |
14819 | Slavery cannot be judged by our standards, because the sense of justice was then less developed [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The injustice of slavery, the cruelty in subjugating persons and peoples, cannot be measured by our standards. For the instinct for justice was not so widely developed then. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 101) | |
A reaction: Why do we value the instinct for justic which we have subsequently developed? Why do we think it is important, and battle to preserve it? This is the sort of creepy relativism that Nietzsche drifted into, and for the worse. |
14847 | Laws that are well thought out, or laws that are easy to understand? [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Lawyers argue whether that law which is most thoroughly thought out, or that which is easiest to understand, should prevail in a people. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 459) | |
A reaction: Our system of speed limits is radically simplified, to save money on road signs, and facilitate enforcement. But then its inflexibility brings it into disrepute. |
14814 | Execution is worse than murder, because we are using the victim, and really we are the guilty [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Why does execution offend us more than murder? It is the coldness of the judges, the painful preparation, the use of a man to deter others. For guilt is not being punished, which lies in the educators, parents, environment, in us, not in the murderer. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 070) | |
A reaction: Someone was stabbed to death in Oxford Street yesterday (26 Dec 11), and we all feel horribly that London is responsible for producing this event, even if we try and load all the blame onto one youth with a knife. Oscar Wilde endorsed this idea. |
14836 | People will enthusiastically pursue an unwanted war, once sacrifices have been made [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: All things for which we have made sacrifices are in the right. This explains why, just as soon as sacrifices are made, people continue with enthusiasm a war that was begun against their wishes. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 229) |
14845 | Don't crush girls with dull Gymnasium education, the way we have crushed boys! [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: For heaven's sake, do not pass our Gymnasium education on to girls too! For it often turns witty, inquisitive, fiery youths - into copies of their teachers! | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 409) |
14839 | Interest in education gains strength when we lose interest in God [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Interest in education will gain great strength only at the moment when belief in a God and his loving care is given up. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 242) | |
A reaction: This remark may well sum up the motivation of my entire life. What effect would it have had if I had read it when I was twenty? |
14848 | Education in large states is mediocre, like cooking in large kitchens [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The educational system in large states will always be mediocre at best, for the same reason that the cooking in large kitchens is at best mediocre. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 467) | |
A reaction: I wish he had said what that 'same reason' is. Something to do with too many cooks, I suppose. Nothing seems harder than reaching a wide concensus on how the young should be educated. Like interior design by a committee. |
14834 | Teachers only gather knowledge for their pupils, and can't be serious about themselves [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: A teacher is incapable of doing anything of his own for his own good. He always thinks of the good of his pupils, and all new knowledge gladdens him only to the extent that he can teach it. He is a thoroughfare for learning, and has lost seriousness. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 200) | |
A reaction: Oh dear. I look in the mirror. Do I only delight in finding all these quotations so that I can stick them in the database and pass them on to someone else? Are they actually impingeing on my life? Could I meet an idea that made me abandon this project? |
222 | Only a great person can understand the essence of things, and an even greater person can teach it [Plato] |
Full Idea: Only a man of very great natural gifts will be able to understand that everything has a class and absolute essence, and an even more wonderful man can teach this. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 135a) |
225 | The unlimited has no shape and is endless [Plato] |
Full Idea: The unlimited partakes neither of the round nor of the straight, because it has no ends nor edges. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 137e) |
233 | Some things do not partake of the One [Plato] |
Full Idea: The others cannot partake of the one in any way; they can neither partake of it nor of the whole. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 159d) | |
A reaction: Compare Idea 231 |
231 | Everything partakes of the One in some way [Plato] |
Full Idea: The others are not altogether deprived of the one, for they partake of it in some way. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 157c) | |
A reaction: Compare Idea 233. |
2062 | The only movement possible for the One is in space or in alteration [Plato] |
Full Idea: If the One moves it either moves spatially or it is altered, since these are the only motions. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 138b) |
14825 | In religious thought nature is a complex of arbitrary acts by conscious beings [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: In the mind of religious men, all nature is the sum of actions of conscious and intentioned beings, an enormous complex of arbitrary acts. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 111) | |
A reaction: This is the beginning of the process, I think, which then sees the gods as dictating through laws, and then the laws themselves doing the dictating, then seeing the laws as inhering in nature - and finally realising there aren't any laws! |
14826 | Modern man wants laws of nature in order to submit to them [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: In present times, man wishes to understand the lawfulness of nature in order to submit to it. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 111) | |
A reaction: They don't make philosophers like Nietzsche any more (or at least, in the analytic tradition I am following!). No one who is trying to give an analysis of the laws of nature has any interest in why we are so keen to find them. Stoics 'live by nature'. |
234 | We couldn't discuss the non-existence of the One without knowledge of it [Plato] |
Full Idea: There must be knowledge of the one, or else not even the meaning of the words 'if the one does not exist' would be known. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 160d) |
14827 | The Greeks saw the gods not as their masters, but as idealised versions of themselves [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The Greeks did not see the Homeric gods above them as masters and themselves below them as servants, as did the Jews. They saw, as it were, only the reflection of the most successful specimens of their own caste - an ideal, not a contrast. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 114) |
14813 | Science rejecting the teaching of Christianity in favour of Epicurus shows the superiority of the latter [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: We can determine whether Christianity or Greek philosophy has the greater truth by noting that the awakening sciences have carried on point for point with the philosophy of Epicurus, but have rejected Christianity point for point. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 068) |
14832 | The Sermon on the Mount is vanity - praying to one part of oneself, and demonising the rest [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: This shattering of oneself, this scorn of one's own nature, is actually a high degree of vanity. The whole morality of the Sermon on the Mount belongs here; in ascetic morality man prays to one part of himself as a god, and has to diabolify the rest. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 137) | |
A reaction: This seems to be the core of Nietzsche's objection to Christian teaching - that it doesn't provide a direction of life for the whole human being. The modern rejection of religions agrees with Nietzsche, especially in disputes over the place of sex. |
14850 | Christ was the noblest human being [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Christ was the noblest human being. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 475) | |
A reaction: That one will come as a surprise to those who only know of Nietzsche's religion that 'God is dead'! |
14837 | Christ seems warm hearted, and suppressed intellect in favour of the intellectually weak [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Christ, whom we like to imagine as having the warmest of hearts, furthered men's stupidity, took the side of the intellectually weak, and kept the greatest intellect from being produced: and this was consistent. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 235) | |
A reaction: Thomas Aquinas was a stupendous intellect. The surest way to be swept forward on a wave of popularity is to find some reason why the uneducated are superior to the educated. |
14828 | Religion is tempting if your life is boring, but you can't therefore impose it on the busy people [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: People who think their daily lives too empty and monotonous easily become religious: this is understandable and forgivable; however, they have no right to demand religiosity from those whose daily life does not pass in emptiness and monotony. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 115) | |
A reaction: Well wicked, that Nietzsche. Richard Dawkins and the hated new atheists are a right bunch of wimps in comparison. |