49 ideas
| 23890 | For Plato true wisdom is supernatural [Plato, by Weil] |
| Full Idea: It is evident that Plato regards true wisdom as something supernatural. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Simone Weil - God in Plato p.61 | |
| A reaction: Taken literally, I assume this is wrong, but we can empathise with the thought. Wisdom has the feeling of rising above the level of mere knowledge, to achieve the overview I associate with philosophy. |
| 3060 | Plato never mentions Democritus, and wished to burn his books [Plato, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Plato, who mentions nearly all the ancient philosophers, nowhere speaks of Democritus; he wished to burn all of his books, but was persuaded that it was futile. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.7.8 |
| 23891 | Two contradictories force us to find a relation which will correlate them [Plato, by Weil] |
| Full Idea: Where contradictions appear there is a correlation of contraries, which is relation. If a contradiction is imposed on the intelligence, it is forced to think of a relation to transform the contradiction into a correlation, which draws the soul higher. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Simone Weil - God in Plato p.70 | |
| A reaction: A much better account of the dialectic than anything I have yet seen in Hegel. For the first time I see some sense in it. A contradiction is not a falsehood, and it must be addressed rather than side-stepped. A kink in the system, that needs ironing. |
| 14502 | Plato's idea of 'structure' tends to be mathematically expressed [Plato, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: 'Structure' tends to be characterized by Plato as something that is mathematically expressed. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects V.3 iv | |
| A reaction: [Koslicki is drawing on Verity Harte here] |
| 17948 | Plato's Forms meant that the sophists only taught the appearance of wisdom and virtue [Plato, by Nehamas] |
| Full Idea: Plato's theory of Forms allowed him to claim that the sophists and other opponents were trapped in the world of appearance. What they therefore taught was only apparent wisdom and virtue. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Alexander Nehamas - Eristic,Antilogic,Sophistic,Dialectic p.118 |
| 3039 | When Diogenes said he could only see objects but not their forms, Plato said it was because he had eyes but no intellect [Plato, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: When Diogenes told Plato he saw tables and cups, but not 'tableness' and 'cupness', Plato replied that this was because Diogenes had eyes but no intellect. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 06.2.6 |
| 20906 | Platonists argue for the indivisible triangle-in-itself [Plato, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The Platonists, on the basis of purely logical arguments, posit the existence of an indivisible 'triangle in itself'. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) 316a15 | |
| A reaction: A helpful confirmation that geometrical figures really are among the Forms (bearing in mind that numbers are not, because they contain one another). What shape is the Form of the triangle? |
| 556 | If there is one Form for both the Form and its participants, they must have something in common [Aristotle on Plato] |
| Full Idea: If there is the same Form for the Forms and for their participants, then they must have something in common. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 991a |
| 563 | If gods are like men, they are just eternal men; similarly, Forms must differ from particulars [Aristotle on Plato] |
| Full Idea: We say there is the form of man, horse and health, but nothing else, making the same mistake as those who say that there are gods but that they are in the form of men. They just posit eternal men, and here we are not positing forms but eternal sensibles. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 997b |
| 557 | A Form is a cause of things only in the way that white mixed with white is a cause [Aristotle on Plato] |
| Full Idea: A Form is a cause of things only in the way that white mixed with white is a cause. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 991a |
| 565 | The Forms cannot be changeless if they are in changing things [Aristotle on Plato] |
| Full Idea: The Forms could not be changeless if they were in changing things. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 998a |
| 20339 | Classes rarely share properties with their members - unlike universals and types [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: Classes can share properties with their members (e.g. the class of big things is big), but this is very rare. ....In the case of both universals and types, there will be shared properties. Red things can be exhilarating, and so can redness. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 92) | |
| A reaction: 'Exhilarating' is an extrinsic property, so not the best illustration. This is interesting, but would need checking with a wide range of examples. (Too busy for that right now) |
| 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 |
| 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] |
| 20338 | We often treat a type as if it were a sort of token [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: Much of the time we think and talk of a type as though it were itself a kind of token. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 35) | |
| A reaction: A helpful way of connecting what I call 'objectification' to the more conventional modern philosophical vocabulary. Thus I might claim that beauty is superior to truth, as if they were two tokens. |
| 7906 | When the Buddha reached the highest level of insight, he could detect no self in the world [Ashvaghosha] |
| Full Idea: The great Buddha passed through the eight stages of Transic insight, and quickly reached their highest point. From the summit of the world downwards he could detect no self anywhere. | |
| From: Ashvaghosha (Buddhacarita [c.50], XIV) | |
| A reaction: In the manner of Nietzsche, I am inclined to say that they find what they want to find, because that is their value. They want to get rid of the self, and dream of a mode in which existence continues without it. Is Buddhism opposed to human life? |
| 1651 | Plato wanted to somehow control and purify the passions [Vlastos on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Plato put high on his agenda a project which did not figure in Socrates' programme at all: the hygienic conditioning of the passions. This cannot be an intellectual process, as argument cannot touch them. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.88 | |
| A reaction: This is the standard traditional view of any thinker who exaggerates the importance and potential of reason in our lives. |
| 3324 | Plato's whole philosophy may be based on being duped by reification - a figure of speech [Benardete,JA on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Plato is liable to the charge of having been duped by a figure of speech, albeit the most profound of all, the trope of reification. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.12 | |
| A reaction: That might be a plausible account if his view was ridiculous, but given how many powerful friends Plato has, especially in the philosophy of mathematics, we should assume he was cleverer than that. |
| 20342 | Interpretation is performance for some arts, and critical for all arts [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: Performative interpretation occurs only with certain arts, but critical intepretation pertains to all. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 38) | |
| A reaction: Fairly obvious, but this is the first point to make about the concept of 'interpretation'. Does the word in fact have two meanings? Or do I perform a painting when I look carefully at it? |
| 20343 | A love of nature must precede a love of art [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: We could not have a feeling for the beauties of art unless we had been correspondingly moved in front of nature. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 43) | |
| A reaction: Wollheim offers this in defence of Kant's view, without necessarily agreeing. Similarly one could hardly care for fictional characters, but not for real people. So the aesthetic attitude may arise from life, rather than from art. Is art hence unimportant? |
| 20348 | A criterion of identity for works of art would be easier than a definition [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: Maybe, rather than defining art, it would be more fruitful, and more realistic, to seek a general method of identifying works of art. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 60) | |
| A reaction: The whole enterprise is ruined by Marcel Duchamp! I'm more interested in identifying or defining good art. |
| 20347 | If beauty needs organisation, then totally simple things can't be beautiful [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: It is said that beauty cannot consist in organisation because, if it did, we would not be able to predicate beauty of totally simple objects. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 59) | |
| A reaction: [He says this idea originates in Plotinus] I'm struggling to think of an example of something which is 'totally' simple and beautiful. Maybe a patch of colour like the breast of a bullfinch? |
| 20345 | Some say art must have verbalisable expression, and others say the opposite! [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: The view that a work of art expresses nothing if it can't be put into other words ...is reduced by the view that a work of art has no value if what it expresses or says can be put into (other) words. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 49) | |
| A reaction: I prefer the second view. Poetry is what is lost in translation. Good art actually seems to evoke emotions which one virtually never feels in ordinary life. But how could that be possible? What are those emotions doing there? |
| 20331 | It is claimed that the expressive properties of artworks are non-physical [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: The argument that works of art have properties that physical objects could not have characteristically concentrates on the expressive properties of works of art. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 10) | |
| A reaction: Since the idea of an object having non-physical properties strikes me as ridiculous, this gets off to a bad start. If artworks are abstract objects, then all of their properties are non-physical. |
| 20336 | Style can't be seen directly within a work, but appreciation needs a grasp of style [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: 'Style' would seem to be a concept that cannot be applied to a work solely on the basis of what is represented and yet it is also essential to a proper understanding or appreciation of a work. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 32) | |
| A reaction: Sounds right. One long held musical note creates an expectation which depends on the presumed style of the piece of music. A single bar from a piece may well not exhibit its characteristic style. |
| 20337 | The traditional view is that knowledge of its genre to essential to appreciating literature [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: From Aristotle onwards it has been a tenet of the traditional rhetoric that the proper understanding of a literary work involves the location of it in the correct genre, that is, as drama, epic or lyric. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 32) | |
| A reaction: Walton argues this persuasively. I've seen the climax of a Jacobean tragedy ruined by laughter from the audience. Genre dictates appropriate responses, so it is a communal concept. |
| 20333 | If artworks are not physical objects, they are either ideal entities, or collections of phenomena [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: In denying that works of art are physical objects, one theory (the 'ideal') withdraws them altogether from experience, and a second theory ('phenomenal') pins them too it inescapably and at all points. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 21) | |
| A reaction: I incline towards them being transient ideals, created by human minds. As with so much, we idealise and objectify them as 'works', and abstract their image from the instance(s) we encounter. |
| 20334 | The ideal theory says art is an intuition, shaped by a particular process, and presented in public [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: The ideal theory of Croce and Collingwood says art is first an inner intuition or expression of the artist, resulting from a particular process of organisation and unification, which can be externalised in public form. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 22) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] As stated this doesn't sound very controversial or 'ideal'. I take it the theory is intended to be more platonist than this expression of it suggests. I think the idea that it is an 'expression' of the artist is wrong. |
| 20335 | The ideal theory of art neglects both the audience and the medium employed [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: Because the ideal theory makes a work of art inner or mental, the link between the artist and the audience has been severed .....and it also totally ignores the significance of the medium. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 23) | |
| A reaction: Emily Dickinson had virtually no audience for her poetry. The medium used to perform Bach's 'Art of Fugue' seems unimportant. For paintings of painterly painters paint matters. For some visual art many different media will suffice. |
| 20340 | A musical performance has virtually the same features as the piece of music [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: With the usual reservations, there is nothing that can be predicated of a performance of a piece of music that could not also be predicated of that piece of music itself. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 37) | |
| A reaction: He offers this as evidence that it fits the performance being a token, and music (and all other art) being a type. There are quite a few 'reservations'. Music too difficult to perform. Great music always badly performed. |
| 20341 | An interpretation adds further properties to the generic piece of music [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: Interpretation may be regarded as the production of a token that has properties in excess of those of the type. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 37) | |
| A reaction: I suppose so. If you play accurately everything that is written in the score, then anything else has to be an addition. If you play less than the score, you aren't quite playing that piece of music. |
| 20332 | A drawing only represents Napoleon if the artist intended it to [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: It is necessary, if a drawing is to represent Napoleon, that the draughtsman should intend it to be Napoleon. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 13) | |
| A reaction: Does a perfect and intended representation of a person also count as a representation of the person's identical twin? The families of both might well order copies. |
| 7503 | Plato never refers to examining the conscience [Plato, by Foucault] |
| Full Idea: Plato never speaks of the examination of conscience - never! | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Michel Foucault - On the Genealogy of Ethics p.276 | |
| A reaction: Plato does imply some sort of self-evident direct knowledge about that nature of a healthy soul. Presumably the full-blown concept of conscience is something given from outside, from God. In 'Euthyphro', Plato asserts the primacy of morality (Idea 337). |
| 2173 | As religion and convention collapsed, Plato sought morals not just in knowledge, but in the soul [Williams,B on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Once gods and fate and social expectation were no longer there, Plato felt it necessary to discover ethics inside human nature, not just as ethical knowledge (Socrates' view), but in the structure of the soul. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Bernard Williams - Shame and Necessity II - p.43 | |
| A reaction: anti Charles Taylor |
| 9274 | Plato's legacy to European thought was the Good, the Beautiful and the True [Plato, by Gray] |
| Full Idea: Plato's legacy to European thought was a trio of capital letters - the Good, the Beautiful and the True. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by John Gray - Straw Dogs 2.8 | |
| A reaction: It seems to have been Baumgarten who turned this into a slogan (Idea 8117). Gray says these ideals are lethal, but I identify with them very strongly, and am quite happy to see the good life as an attempt to find the right balance between them. |
| 94 | Pleasure is better with the addition of intelligence, so pleasure is not the good [Plato, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Plato says the life of pleasure is more desirable with the addition of intelligence, and if the combination is better, pleasure is not the good. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics 1172b27 | |
| A reaction: It is obvious why we like pleasure, but not why intelligence makes it 'better'. Maybe it is just because we enjoy intelligence? |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 7905 | The Buddha sought ultimate reality and the final goal of existence in his meditations [Ashvaghosha] |
| Full Idea: Next the Boddhisatva, possessed of great skill in Transic meditation, put himself into a trance, intent on discerning both the ultimate reality of things and the final goal of existence. | |
| From: Ashvaghosha (Buddhacarita [c.50], XIV.2) | |
| A reaction: The ontological and teleological goals of the Buddha were identical to the goals of the ancient Greek philosophers, and even we have teleological aims in our study of evolution. I would expect better results from the western approach. |
| 7904 | The first stage of trance is calm amidst applied and discursive thinking [Ashvaghosha] |
| Full Idea: The first stage of trance is calm amidst applied and discursive thinking. | |
| From: Ashvaghosha (Buddhacarita [c.50], V.11) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am not sure that I would want to go any further that the first stage, since the elimination of discursive thinking seems to me to be approaching death. To pursue intense thinking very calmly I take to be the ideal of all western philosophers. |