73 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 |
21474 | Metaphysics studies the inexplicable ends of explanation [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: The plummet touches the bottom of the sea now at a greater depth, now at a less, but is bound to reach it somewhere sooner or later; the study of this inexplicable devolves upon metaphysics. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], I:1) | |
A reaction: This definition of metapysics contains the germ of despair about the subject. Does he hope that metaphysicians can explain what nobody else can? |
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. |
21470 | For me the objective thing-in-itself is the will [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: Thing in itself signifies that which exists independently of our perception, that which actually is; …to Kant it was '= x'; to me it is will. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], IV:61) | |
A reaction: Does he mean his own will, which is plausible since he has direct experience of it, or is he referring will in general - whatever that is? |
22427 | To explain object qualities, primary qualities must be more than mere sources of experience [McGinn] |
Full Idea: In order that we have available an explanation of the qualities of objects we need to be able to conceive primary qualities as consisting in something other than powers to produce experiences. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 6 n 52) | |
A reaction: I suppose if the qualities are nothing more than the source of the experiences, that is Kant's noumenon. Nothing more could be said. The seems to be a requirement for tacit inference here. We infer the interior of the tomato. |
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] |
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? |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
21479 | Knowledge is not power! Ignorant people possess supreme authority [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: Knowledge is power. The devil it is! One man can have a great deal of knowledge without its giving him the least power, while another possesses supreme authority but next to no knowledge. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], III:43) | |
A reaction: He is referring to Bacon's famous adage. Bacon may be right about military affairs, but not about politics. |
21476 | A priori propositions are those we could never be seriously motivated to challenge [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: A dictate of reason is the name we give to certain propositions which we hold to be true without investigation, and of which we think ourselves so firmly convinced we should be incapable of seriously testing them even if we wanted to. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], I:12) | |
A reaction: This is closer to the cautious way modern thinkers are inclined to express the idea. Even Quine would be reasonably happy with this. |
22413 | Being red simply consists in looking red [McGinn] |
Full Idea: What we should claim is that being red consists in looking red. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 2) | |
A reaction: A very nice simple account. There is more to being square than looking square (which may not even guarantee that it is square). That's the primary/secondary distinction in a nut shell. But red things don't look red in the dark. Sufficient, not necessary. |
22415 | Relativity means differing secondary perceptions are not real disagreements [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Relativity permits differences in the perceived secondary qualities not to imply genuine disagreement, whereas perceived differences of primary qualities imply that at least one perceiver is in error. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 2) | |
A reaction: An example of 'relativity' is colour blindness. Sounds good, but what of one perceiver seeing a square as square, and another seeing it obliquely as a parallelogram? The squareness then seems more like a theory than a perception. |
22416 | Phenomenalism is correct for secondary qualities, so scepticism is there impossible [McGinn] |
Full Idea: We might say that scepticism is ruled out for secondary qualities because (roughly) phenomenalism is correct for them; but phenomenalism is not similarly correct for primary qualities, and scepticism cannot get a foothold. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 2) | |
A reaction: An odd idea, if phenomenalism says that reality consists entirely of phenomena. I should think phenomenalism is a commitment to the absence of primary qualities. |
22422 | Maybe all possible sense experience must involve both secondary and primary qualities [McGinn] |
Full Idea: The inseparability thesis about perception says that for any actual and possible sense the content of experiences delivered by that sense must be both of secondary qualities and of primary qualities. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 6) | |
A reaction: That would mean that all possible experience must have a mode of presentation, and also must be 'of' something independent of experience. So a yellow after-image would not count as an 'experience'? |
22428 | You understood being red if you know the experience involved; not so with thngs being square [McGinn] |
Full Idea: To grasp what it is to be red is to know the kind of sensory experience red things produce; ...but it is not true that to grasp what it is to be square one needs to know what kinds of sensory experience square things produce. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 8) | |
A reaction: Are any experiences involved in the understanding of squareness? We don't know squareness by a priori intuition (do we?). To grasp squareness if may be necessary to have a variety of experiences of it. Or to grasp that it is primary. |
22414 | You don't need to know how a square thing looks or feels to understand squareness [McGinn] |
Full Idea: To grasp what it is for something to be square it is not constitutively necessary to know how square things look or feel, since what it is to be square does not involve any such relation to experience. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 2) | |
A reaction: You could even describe squareness verbally, unlike redness. It seems crucial that almost any sense (such as bat echoes) can communicate primary qualities, but secondary qualities are tied to a sense, and wouldn't exist without it. |
22423 | Touch doesn't provide direct experience of primary qualities, because touch feels temperature [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Bennett's claim that touch provides experience of primary qualities without experience of any secondary qualities strikes me as false, because tactile experience includes felt temperature, which is a dispositional secondary quality. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 6) | |
A reaction: [J.Bennett 1971 pp. 90-4] Fair point. What about shape and texture? We experience forces, but the shape is assembled in imagination rather than in experience. So do we meet primary qualities directly in forces, such as acceleration? No secondary quality? |
22426 | We can perceive objectively, because primary qualities are not mind-created [McGinn] |
Full Idea: I hold that experience succeeds in representing the world objectively, since primary quality perceptual content is not contributed by the mind. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 6) | |
A reaction: My new example of a direct perception of a primary quality is acceleration in a lift. What would we say to one passenger who denied feeling the acceleration? It took an effort to see that mind contributes to secondary qualities (so make more effort?). |
22412 | Lockean secondary qualities (unlike primaries) produce particular sensory experiences [McGinn] |
Full Idea: In the Lockean tradition, secondary qualities are defined as those whose instantiation in an object consists in a power or disposition of the object to produce sensory experiences in perceivers of a certain phenomenological character. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 2) | |
A reaction: Primary qualities are said to lack such dispositions. Not sure about these definitions. Primaries offer no experiences? With these definitions, comparing them would be a category mistake. I take it primaries reflect reality and secondaries do not. |
22421 | Could there be a mind which lacked secondary quality perception? [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Can we form a conception of a type of mind whose representations are free of secondary quality perceptions? | |
From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 6) | |
A reaction: Nice question. Minds must have experiences, and there has to be a 'way' or 'mode' for those experiences. A mind which directly grasped the primary quality of sphericity would seem to be visionary rather than sensual or experiential. |
22424 | Secondary qualities contain information; their variety would be superfluous otherwise [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Surely we learn something about an object when we discover its secondary qualities? ...If secondary quality experience were informationally inert, its variety would be something of a puzzle. Why not employ the same medium for all primary informaton? | |
From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 6) | |
A reaction: This is important. We can't just focus on the primary qualities, and ignore the secondary. But diverse colours draw attention to information, which can then be translated into neutral data, as in spectroscopic analysis. Locke agrees with this. |
22425 | The utility theory says secondary qualities give information useful to human beings [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Secondary quality perception, according to the utility theory, gives information about the relation between the perceptual object and the perceiver's needs and interests. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 6) | |
A reaction: Almost the only example I can think of is whether fruit is ripe or rotten. ...Also 'bad' smells. We recognise aggressive animal noises, but that is not the same as dangerous (e.g. rustling snake). Divine design is behind this theory, I think. |
7629 | We see objects 'directly' by representing them [McGinn] |
Full Idea: My view is that we see objects 'directly' by representing them in visual experience. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], Ch.8 n1) | |
A reaction: [Quoted by Maund] This rejects both inference in perception and sense-data, while retaining the notion of representation. It is a view which has gained a lot of support. But how can it be direct if it represents? Photographs can't do that. |
21473 | All knowledge and explanation rests on the inexplicable [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable. It is to this that every explanation, through few or many intermediary stages, leads. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], I:1) | |
A reaction: This is obviously true, and the only question is whether it is a necessary or a contingent truth. |
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] |
21478 | Half our thinking is unconscious, and we reach conclusions while unaware of premises [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: One might almost believe that half our thinking takes place unconsciously.. Usually we arrive at a conclusion without having clearly thought about the premises which lead to it. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], III:40) | |
A reaction: Schopenhauer was a major pioneer of this crucial idea. I'm beginning to think it is much greater than a half. |
21477 | We don't control our own thinking [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: Thoughts come not when we want but when they want. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], III:37) | |
A reaction: One of my favourite Nietzsche ideas originated in Schopenhauer! |
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. |
22420 | The indexical perspective is subjective, incorrigible and constant [McGinn] |
Full Idea: I attribute three properties to the indexical perspective: it is subjective, incorrigible, and constant. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 5) | |
A reaction: That is as good an idea as any for summarising the view (associated with John Perry) that the indexical perspective is an indispensable feature of reality. For a good attack on this, which I favour, see Cappelen and Dever. |
18410 | Indexical thought is in relation to my self-consciousness [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Very roughly, we can say that to think of something indexically is to think of it in relation to me, as I am presented to myself in self-consciousness. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 2) | |
A reaction: So it is characterised relationally, which doesn't mean it has a distinctive intrinsic character. If I'm lost, and I overhear someone say 'Peter is in Hazlemere', I get the same relational information (in a different mode) without the indexicality. |
22417 | Indexicals do not figure in theories of physics, because they are not explanatory causes [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Indexicals are like secondary qualities in not figuring in causal explanations of the interactions of objects: physics omits them not because they are relative and egocentric, but because they do not constitute explanatory predicates of a causal theory. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 2) | |
A reaction: They are outside explanatory physics, but not outside explanation. The object moved because a force acted on it; or the object moved because I wanted it moved. |
18402 | Indexical concepts are indispensable, as we need them for the power to act [McGinn] |
Full Idea: The present suggestion is that indexical concepts are ineliminable because without them agency would be impossible: when I imagine myself divested of indexical thoughts employing only centreless mental representations, I am deprived of the power to act. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 6) | |
A reaction: A nice clear statement of the view developed by Perry and Lewis. I agree with Cappelen and Dever that it is entirely wrong, and that indexical thought is entirely eliminable, and nothing special. |
21475 | All of our concepts are borrowed from perceptual knowledge [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: The entire property of a concept consists in nothing more than what has been begged and borrowed from perceptual knowledge, which is the true and inexhaustible source of all insight. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], I:9) | |
A reaction: Schopenhauer is usually seen as a sort of idealist, but this is a full endorsement of the empirical view of concepts, to which I largely subscribe. Note that he talks of 'knowledge', rather than of 'experience'. |
22418 | I can know indexical truths a priori, unlike their non-indexical paraphrases [McGinn] |
Full Idea: I know the truth of the sentence 'I am here now' a priori, but I do not know a priori 'McGinn is in London on 15th Nov 1981'. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 3) | |
A reaction: I'm not convinced that I can grasp the concepts of 'here' and 'now' (i.e. space and time) by purely a priori means. But he certainly shows that you can't glibly dismiss indexicals by paraphrasing them in that way. |
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. |
21372 | Aesthetics concerns how we can take pleasure in an object, with no reference to the will [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: The central problem of aesthetics is how satisfaction with and pleasure in an object are possible without any reference thereof to our willing. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], II:415), quoted by Christopher Janaway - Schopenhauer 6 'Aesthetic' | |
A reaction: This does seem a good distinction. We can divide pleasures into willed and unwilled. Compare thinking that some remote stranger (in a photograph) is very beautiful, with falling in love with someone. |
21488 | The beautiful is a perception of Plato's Forms, which eliminates the will [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: In the beautiful we always perceive the intrinsic and primary form of animate and inanimate nature, that is to say Plato's Ideas thereof. …When an aesthetic perception occurs the will completely vanishes from consciousness. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], XIX:205) | |
A reaction: An essential Schopenauer idea. Iris Murdoch said something similar. |
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). |
21483 | Man is essentially a dreadful wild animal [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: Man is at bottom a dreadful wild animal. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], VIII:114) | |
A reaction: As an example he cites the slave owners in the United States. |
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? |
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. |
21466 | Pleasure is weaker, and pain stronger, than we expect [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: As a rule we find pleasure much less pleasurable, pain much more painful than we expected. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], XII:149) | |
A reaction: Never go on holiday with Schopenhauer. This is more accurate about pain, I think. |
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. |
21484 | A man's character can be learned from a single characteristic action [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: As a botanist can recognise the whole plant from one leaf, …so an accurate knowledge of a man's character can be arrived at from a single characteristic action. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], VIII:118) | |
A reaction: Very true. Great novelists specialise in such observations. One word can reveal a character, as well as one action. |
21482 | The five Chinese virtues: pity, justice, politeness, wisdom, honesty [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: The Chinese name five cardinal virtues: pity, justice, politeness, wisdom and honesty. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], VIII:110) | |
A reaction: I like politeness being on the list, though it seems rather superficial to be a virtue of character. Respect would be better. |
21481 | Buddhists wisely start with the cardinal vices [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: Because of their profounder ethical and metaphysical insight, the Buddhists start not with the cardinal virtues but with cardinal vices, …which are lust, sloth, wrath and avarice (and maybe hatred). | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], VIII:110) | |
A reaction: This may be right. Our lives are affected much more by the vices of others than by their virtues, and most virtuous behaviour aims at rectifying the bad effects of other people's vices. |
21480 | Boredom is only felt by those clever enough to need activity [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: Only in the cleverest animals such as dogs and apes does the need for activity, and with that boredom, make itself felt. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], III:50) | |
A reaction: But it is much more frequently young creatures, of almost any kind, that seek constant activity, and get continually restless. The most active adults need not be the cleverest. |
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 |
21469 | Human life is a mistake, shown by boredom, which is direct awareness of the fact [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: Human life must be some kind of mistake. ...Boredom is a direct proof that existence is in itself valueless, for boredom is nothing other than the sensation of the emptiness of existence. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], XI:146) | |
A reaction: I think it is a good advertisement for existentialism that it makes something more out of boredom than Schopenhauer does. |
21485 | The state only exists to defend citizens, from exterior threats, and from one another [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: The state is essentially no more than an institution for the protection of the whole against attacks from without, and the protection of its individual members from attacks by one another. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], IX:123) | |
A reaction: He then has a swipe at Hegel for his inflated idea of the importance of the state. Schopenhauer is close to Hobbes on this one. |
21486 | Poverty and slavery are virtually two words for the same thing [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: Poverty and slavery are only two forms - on might almost say two words for - the same thing, the essence of which is that a man's energies are expended for the most part not on his own behalf but on that of others. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], IX:125) | |
A reaction: The modern world is full of people who righteously despise slavery, but think only of the poor that it serves them right. |
21487 | The freedom of the press to sell poison outweighs its usefulness [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: Freedom of the press must be regarded as a permit to sell poison. …I very much fear, therefore, that the dangers of press freedom outweigh its usefulness. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], IX:127) | |
A reaction: On the whole the modern world disagrees with this view, but watching the popular press in Britain in the last twenty years has made me sympathise with Schopenhauer. |
21471 | If suicide was quick and easy, most people would have done it by now [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: Perhaps there is no one alive who would not already have put an end to his life if this end were something purely negative, a sudden cessation of existence. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], XIII:158) | |
A reaction: Nonsense, on the whole, but it is a nice question how many people would do it if it only took a painless instant. |
21467 | Would humanity still exist if sex wasn't both desired and pleasurable? [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: If the act of procreation were neither the outcome of a desire nor accompanied by feelings of pleasure, but a matter to be decided on the basis of purely rational considerations, is it likely the human race would still exist? | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], XII:156) | |
A reaction: This is almost certainly correct in the modern world. In tougher economic circumstances people seem desperate to have children who will help them survive. |
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 |
21472 | Only religion introduces serious issues to uneducated people [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: Religion is the only means of introducing some notion of the high significance of life into the uncultivated heads of the masses. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], XV:174) | |
A reaction: Cf Philip Larkin's poem 'Church Going'. On the whole Schopenhauer didn't actually believe that our lives had any 'high significance'. |
21468 | The Creator created the possibilities for worlds, so should have made a better one than this possible [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: The Creator created not only the world, but also created possibility itself; therefore he should have created the possibility of a better world than this one. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], XII:156) | |
A reaction: This is explicitly a response to Leibniz's claim that the Creator selected the best of all possible worlds from the available options. The Euthyphro Question hovers here: must the Creator accept what is possible (the platonic view), or create possibility? |