73 ideas
| 2056 | Philosophers are always switching direction to something more interesting [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers are always ready to change direction, if a topic crops up which is more attractive than the one to hand. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 172d) | |
| A reaction: Which sounds trivial, but it may be what God does. |
| 2086 | Understanding mainly involves knowing the elements, not their combinations [Plato] |
| Full Idea: A perfect grasp of any subject depends far more on knowing elements than on knowing complexes. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 206b) |
| 2083 | Either a syllable is its letters (making parts as knowable as whole) or it isn't (meaning it has no parts) [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Either a syllable is not the same as its letters, in which case it cannot have the letters as parts of itself, or it is the same as its letters, in which case these basic elements are just as knowable as it is. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 205b) |
| 2082 | A rational account is essentially a weaving together of things with names [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Just as primary elements are woven together, so their names may be woven together to produce a spoken account, because an account is essentially a weaving together of names. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 202b) | |
| A reaction: If justification requires 'logos', and logos is a 'weaving together of names', then Plato might be taken as endorsing the coherence account of justification. Or do the two 'weavings' correspond? |
| 2052 | Eristic discussion is aggressive, but dialectic aims to help one's companions in discussion [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Eristic discussions involve as many tricks and traps as possible, but dialectical discussions involve being serious and correcting the interlocutor's mistakes only when they are his own fault or the result of past conditioning. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 167e) |
| 15854 | A primary element has only a name, and no logos, but complexes have an account, by weaving the names [Plato] |
| Full Idea: A primary element cannot be expressed in an account; it can only be named, for a name is all that it has. But with the things composed of these ...just as the elements are woven together, so the names can woven to become an account. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 202b01-3) | |
| A reaction: This is the beginning of what I see as Aristotle's metaphysics, as derived from his epistemology, that is, ontology is what explains, and what we can give an account [logos] of. Aristotle treats this under 'definitions'. |
| 12249 | 'Animal' is a genus and 'rational' is a specific difference [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: The standard classification holds that 'animal' is a genus and 'rational' is a specific difference. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: My understanding of 'difference' would take it down to the level of the individual, so the question is - which did Aristotle believe in. Not all commentators agree with Oderberg, and Wedin thinks the individual substance is paramount. |
| 12242 | Definition distinguishes one kind from another, and individuation picks out members of the kind [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: To define something just means to set forth its limits in such a way that one can distinguish it from all other things of a different kind. To distinguish it from all other things of the same kind belongs to the theory of 'individuation'. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: I take Aristotle to have included individuation as part of his understanding of definition. Are tigers a kind, or are fierce tigers a kind, and is my tiger one-of-a-kind? |
| 23755 | Genius and love of truth are always accompanied by great humility [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Love of truth is always accompanied by humility, and real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.87) | |
| A reaction: A striking and attractive thought, true of all the lovers of truth I have ever encountered. Socrates is the role model. She likens truth to an inarticulate plaintiff stammering before a judge who fluently manipulates opinions. |
| 12238 | The Aristotelian view is that numbers depend on (and are abstracted from) other things [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: The Aristotelian account of numbers is that their existence depends on the existence of things that are not numbers, ..since numbers are abstractions from the existence of things. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This is the deeply unfashionable view to which I am attached. The problem is the status of transfinite, complex etc numbers. They look like fictions to me. |
| 10216 | We master arithmetic by knowing all the numbers in our soul [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It must surely be true that a man who has completely mastered arithmetic knows all numbers? Because there are pieces of knowledge covering all numbers in his soul. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 198b) | |
| A reaction: This clearly views numbers as objects. Expectation of knowing them all is a bit startling! They also appear to be innate in us, and hence they appear to be Forms. See Aristotle's comment in Idea 645. |
| 12254 | Being is substantial/accidental, complete/incomplete, necessary/contingent, possible, relative, intrinsic.. [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: Being is heterogeneous: there is substantial being, accidental being, complete being, incomplete being, necessary being, contingent being, possible being, absolute being, relative being, intrinsic being, extrinsic being, and so on. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: Dependent being? Oderberg is giving the modern scholastic view. Personally I take 'being' to be univocal, even if it can be qualified in all sorts of ways. I don't believe we actually have any grasp at all of different ways to exist. |
| 2060 | There seem to be two sorts of change: alteration and motion [Plato] |
| Full Idea: There are two kinds of change, I think: alteration and motion. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 181d) | |
| A reaction: Idea 1700 is better than this. |
| 12253 | If tropes are in space and time, in what sense are they abstract? [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: If tropes are in space and time, in what sense are they abstract? | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a conclusive objection to claims for any such thing to be abstract. See, for example, Dummett's claim that the Equator is an abstract object. |
| 12256 | We need to distinguish the essential from the non-essential powers [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: We need a theory of essence to help us distinguish between the powers that do and do not belong to the essence of a thing. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a very good reason for searching for the essence of things, though the need to distinguish does not guarantee that there really is something to distinguish. Maybe powers just come and go. A power is essential in you but not in me? |
| 12252 | Empiricists gave up 'substance', as unknowable substratum, or reducible to a bundle [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: The demise of 'substance' was wholly due to mistaken notions, mainly from the empiricists, by which it was conceived either as an unknowable featureless substratum, or as dispensable in favour of some or other bundle theory. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be a view that the notion of substance is essential to explaining how we understand the world. I am inclined to think that if we accept the notion of essence we can totally dispense with the notion of substance. |
| 2084 | If a word has no parts and has a single identity, it turns out to be the same kind of thing as a letter [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If a complex or a syllable has no parts and is a single identity, hasn't it turned out to be the same kind of thing as an element or letter? | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 205d) |
| 15844 | A sum is that from which nothing is lacking, which is a whole [Plato] |
| Full Idea: But this sum now - isn't it just when there is nothing lacking that it is a sum? Yes, necessarily. And won't this very same thing - that from which nothing is lacking - be a whole? | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 205a) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be right, be rather too vague and potentially circular to be of much use. What is the criterion for deciding that nothing is lacking? |
| 15843 | The whole can't be the parts, because it would be all of the parts, which is the whole [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The whole does not consist of parts; for it did, it would be all the parts and so would be the sum. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 204e) | |
| A reaction: That is, 'the whole is the sum of its parts' is a tautology! The claim that 'the whole is more than the sum of its parts' gets into similar trouble. See Verity Harte on this. |
| 12241 | Essences are real, about being, knowable, definable and classifiable [Oderberg, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Real essences are objectively real, they concern being, they are knowable, they are definable, and they are classifiable. | |
| From: report of David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.4) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: This is a lovely summary (spread over two pages) of what essentialism is all about. It might be added that they are about unity and identity. The fact that they are intrinsically classifiable seems to mislead some people into a confused view. |
| 12244 | Nominalism is consistent with individual but not with universal essences [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: Nominalism is consistent with belief in individual essences, but real essentialism postulates essences as universals (quiddities). Nominalists are nearly always empiricists, though the converse may not be the case. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: This is where I part company with Oderberg. I want to argue that the nominalist/individualist view is more in tune with what Aristotle believed (though he spotted a dilemma here). Only individual essences explain individual behaviour. |
| 12240 | Essentialism is the main account of the unity of objects [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: Real essentialism, more than any other ontological theory, stresses and seeks to explain the unity of objects. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: A key piece in the jigsaw I am beginning to assemble. If explanation is the aim, and essence the key to explanation, then explaining unity is the part of it that connects with other metaphysics, about identity and so on. 'Units' breed numbers. |
| 12247 | Essence is not explanatory but constitutive [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: Essence is not reducible to explanatory relations, ...and fundamentally the role of essence is not explanatory but constitutive. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: Effectively, this asserts essence as part of 'pure' metaphysics, but I like impure metaphysics, as the best explanation of the things we can know. Hence we can speculate about constitution only by means of explanation. Constitution is active. |
| 12258 | Properties are not part of an essence, but they flow from it [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: A substance is constituted by its essence, and properties are a species of accident. No property of a thing is part of a thing's essence, though properties flow from the essence. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 7.2) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure I understand this. How can you know of something which has no properties? I'm wondering if the whole notion of a 'property' should be eliminated from good metaphysics. |
| 12257 | Could we replace essence with collections of powers? [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: Why not do away with talk of essences and replace it with talk of powers pure and simple, or reduce essences to collections of powers? But then what unites the powers, and could a power be lost, and is there entailment between the powers? | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Bennett and Hacker 2003 for this view] The point would seem to be that in addition to the powers, there are also identity and unity and kind-membership to be explained. Oderberg says the powers flow from the essence. |
| 12236 | Leibniz's Law is an essentialist truth [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz's Law is an essentialist truth. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: That is, if two things must have identical properties because they are the same thing, this is because those properties are essential to the thing. Otherwise two things could be the same, even though one of them lacked a non-identifying property. |
| 12250 | Bodies have act and potency, the latter explaining new kinds of existence [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: The fundamental thesis of real essentialism is that every finite material body has a twofold composition, being a compound of act and potency. ...Reality can take on new kinds of existence because there is a principle of potentiality inherent in reality. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: I take from this remark that the 'powers' discussed by Molnar and other scientific essentialists is roughly the same as 'potentiality' identified by Aristotle. |
| 12234 | Realism about possible worlds is circular, since it needs a criterion of 'possible' [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: Any realist theory of possible worlds will be circular in its attempt to illuminate modality, for there has to be some criterion of what counts as a possible world. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Seems right. At the very least, if we are going to rule out contradictory worlds as impossible (and is there a more obvious criterion?), we already need to understand 'impossible' in order to state that rule. |
| 12235 | Necessity of identity seems trivial, because it leaves out the real essence [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: The necessity of identity carries the appearance of triviality, because it is the eviscerated contemporary essentialist form of a foundational real essentialist truth to the effect that every object has its own nature. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: I like this. Writers like Mackie and Forbes have to put the 'trivial' aspects of essence to one side, without ever seeing why there is such a problem. Real substantial essences have necessity of identity as a side-effect. |
| 12237 | Rigid designation has at least three essentialist presuppositions [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: The rigid designator approach to essentialism has essentialist assumptions. ..The necessity of identity is built into the very conception of a rigid designator,..and Leibniz's Law is presupposed...and necessity of origin presupposes sufficiency of origin. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed. He cites Salmon 1981:196 for the last point] This sounds right. You feel happy to 'rigidly designate' something precisely because you think there is something definite and stable which can be designated. |
| 2080 | Things are only knowable if a rational account (logos) is possible [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Things which are susceptible to a rational account are knowable. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 201d) |
| 16126 | Expertise is knowledge of the whole by means of the parts [Plato] |
| Full Idea: A man has passed from mere judgment to expert knowledge of the being of a wagon when he has done so in virtue of having gone over the whole by means of the elements. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 207c) | |
| A reaction: Plato is emphasising that the expert must know the hundred parts of a wagon, and not just the half dozen main components, but here the point is to go over the whole via the parts, and not just list the parts. |
| 2050 | It is impossible to believe something which is held to be false [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible to believe something which is not the case. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 167a) |
| 2076 | How can a belief exist if its object doesn't exist? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If the object of a belief is what is not, the object of this belief is nothing; but if there is no object to a belief, then that is not belief at all. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 189a) |
| 2045 | Perception is infallible, suggesting that it is knowledge [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Perception is always of something that is, and it is infallible, which suggests that it is knowledge. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 152c) |
| 2067 | Our senses could have been separate, but they converge on one mind [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It would be peculiar if each of us were like a Trojan horse, with a whole bunch of senses sitting inside us, rather than that all these perceptions converge onto a single identity (mind, or whatever one ought to call it). | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 184d) |
| 2068 | With what physical faculty do we perceive pairs of opposed abstract qualities? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: With what physical faculty do we perceive being and not-being, similarity and dissimilarity, identity and difference, oneness and many, odd and even and other maths, ….fineness and goodness? | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 185d) |
| 2069 | Thought must grasp being itself before truth becomes possible [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If you can't apprehend being you can't apprehend truth, and so a thing could not be known. Therefore knowledge is not located in immediate experience but in thinking about it, since the latter makes it possible to grasp being and truth. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 186c) |
| 2078 | You might mistake eleven for twelve in your senses, but not in your mind [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Sight or touch might make someone take eleven for twelve, but he could never form this mistaken belief about the contents of his mind. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 195e) |
| 2089 | An inadequate rational account would still not justify knowledge [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If you don't know which letters belong together in the right syllables…it is possible for true belief to be accompanied by a rational account and still not be entitled to the name of knowledge. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 208b) | |
| A reaction: In each case of justification there is a 'clinching' stage, for which there is never going to be a strict rule. It might be foundational, but equally it might be massive coherence, or no alternative. |
| 2085 | Parts and wholes are either equally knowable or equally unknowable [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Either a syllable and its letters are equally knowable and expressible in a rational account, or they are both equally unknowable and inexpressible. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 205e) | |
| A reaction: Presumably you could explain the syllable by the letters, but not vice versa, but he must mean that the explanation is worthless without the letters being explained too. So all explanation is worthless? |
| 2091 | Without distinguishing marks, how do I know what my beliefs are about? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If I only have beliefs about Theaetetus when I don't know his distinguishing mark, how on earth were my beliefs about you rather than anyone else? | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 209b) | |
| A reaction: This is a rather intellectualist approach to mental activity. Presumably Theaetetus has lots of distinguishing marks, but they are not conscious. Must Socrates know everything? |
| 2087 | A rational account might be seeing an image of one's belief, like a reflection in a mirror [Plato] |
| Full Idea: A rational account might be forming an image of one's belief, as in a mirror or a pond. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 206d) | |
| A reaction: Not promising, since the image is not going to be clearer than the original, or contain any new information. Maybe it would be clarified by being 'framed', instead of drifting in muddle. |
| 2090 | A rational account involves giving an image, or analysis, or giving a differentiating mark [Plato] |
| Full Idea: A third sort of rational account (after giving an image, or analysing elements) is being able to mention some mark which differentiates the object in question ('the sun is the brightest heavenly body'). | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 208c) | |
| A reaction: This is Plato's clearest statement of what would be involved in adding the necessary logos to your true belief. An image of it, or an analysis, or an individuation. How about a cause? |
| 2081 | Maybe primary elements can be named, but not receive a rational account [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Maybe the primary elements of which things are composed are not susceptible to rational accounts. Each of them taken by itself can only be named, but nothing further can be said about it. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 201e) | |
| A reaction: This still seems to be more or less the central issue in philosophy - which things should be treated as 'primitive', and which other things are analysed and explained using the primitive tools? |
| 2088 | A rational account of a wagon would mean knowledge of its hundred parts [Plato] |
| Full Idea: In the case of a wagon, we may only have correct belief, but someone who is able to explain what it is by going through its hundred parts has got hold of a rational account. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 207b) | |
| A reaction: A wonderful example. In science, you know smoking correlates with cancer, but you only know it when you know the mechanism, the causal structure. This may be a general truth. |
| 2047 | What evidence can be brought to show whether we are dreaming or not? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: What evidence could be brought if we were asked at this very moment whether we are asleep and are dreaming all our thoughts? | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 158b) |
| 2054 | Clearly some people are superior to others when it comes to medicine [Plato] |
| Full Idea: In medicine, at least, most people are not self-sufficient at prescribing and effecting cures for themselves, and here some people are superior to others. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 171e) |
| 2053 | If you claim that all beliefs are true, that includes beliefs opposed to your own [Plato] |
| Full Idea: To say that everyone believes what is the case, is to concede the truth of the oppositions' beliefs; in other words, the person has to concede that he himself is wrong. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 171a) |
| 2059 | How can a relativist form opinions about what will happen in the future? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Does a relativist have any authority to decide about things which will happen in the future? | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 178c) | |
| A reaction: Nice question! It seems commonsense that such speculations are possible, but without a concept of truth they are ridiculous. |
| 23747 | What is sacred is not a person, but the whole physical human being [Weil] |
| Full Idea: There is something sacred in every man, but it is not his person. Nor yet is it the human personality. It is this man; no more and no less. …It is he. The whole of him. The arms, they eyes, the thoughts, everything. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p,70) | |
| A reaction: I take her to be referring to exactly the concept of a 'person' which Locke introduced. It is important to remember that his concept is mainly forensic - as a concept of ownership and contracts. A person is an abstraction. Even a corpse is a human. |
| 23756 | The mind is imprisoned and limited by language, restricting our awareness of wider thoughts [Weil] |
| Full Idea: At the very best, a mind is enclosed in language as in a prison. It is limited to the number of relations which words can make simultaneously present to it; and remains in ignorance of thoughts which involve the combination of a greater number. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.89) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a germ of the type of view of language which blossoms in Derrida. But she is on to something. None of us grasp fully, I think, the non-linguistic nature of good thinking. |
| 23758 | Beauty is an attractive mystery, leaving nothing to be desired [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Beauty is the supreme mystery of the world. It is a gleam which attracts the attention and yet does nothing to sustain it. …While exciting desire, it makes clear that there is nothing in it to be desired, because what we want is that it should not change. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.92) | |
| A reaction: She attributes beauty to a supernatural source. I catalogue this idea under 'the sublime', rather than 'beauty'. It may be better to say that beauty inspires love, rather than desire. |
| 23760 | All we need are the unity of justice, truth and beauty [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Justice, truth, and beauty are sisters and comrades. With three such beautiful words we have no need to look for any others. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.93) | |
| A reaction: The embodiment of platonist values. Without the platonist ontology, I like the identification of a few core values, and have always thought that Beauty, Goodness and Truth were a well chosen trio. Swapping 'justice' for 'goodness' is interesting. |
| 23748 | The sacred in every human is their expectation of good rather than evil [Weil] |
| Full Idea: At the bottom of every human heart …there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all crimes committed, suffered and witnessed, that good and not evil will be done to him. It is this above all that is sacred in every human being. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.71) | |
| A reaction: I'm thinking that this expectation may come from having at least one loving parent, and failing that there are people who have no such expectation as adults. Simone obviously thinks the hope runs deeper than that. |
| 23759 | Everything which originates in love is beautiful [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Everything which originates from pure love is lit with the radiance of beauty. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.93) | |
| A reaction: I suppose if I found a counterexample, she would say that is not 'pure' love. This sentence leaves open the possibility of beauty in the absence of love (such as a beautiful face noticed in the street). In her case, can beauty and love be separated? |
| 23762 | Evil is transmitted by comforts and pleasures, but mostly by doing harm to people [Weil] |
| Full Idea: One may transmit evil to a human being by flattering him or giving him comforts and pleasures; but most often men transmit evil to other men by doing them harm. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.94) | |
| A reaction: Some people receive harm very passively, especially if it is normal. What of tough love, which is erroneously seen as harm? |
| 23750 | It is not more money which the wretched members of society need [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Suppose the devil were bargaining for the soul of some wretch, and some pitying person said to the devil 'Shame on you, that commodity is worth twice as much'. Such is the sinister farce played by the working class unions, parties and intellectuals. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.80) | |
| A reaction: A striking thought. It is paradoxical when the working classes despise the middle classes, and yet aspire to be like them. It's hard to know what a mystic like Weil has in mind. An obvious thought is that the aspiration should be freedom, not money. |
| 23749 | The problem of the collective is not suppression of persons, but persons erasing themselves [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The chief danger does not lie in the collectivity's tendency to circumscribe the person, but in the person's tendency to immolate himself in the collective. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.78) | |
| A reaction: I'm guessing that in 1943 she had in mind both Nazis and Communists. She seems to articulate a strong form of liberalism in an interesting way. It sounds like a form of Bad Faith. |
| 23753 | People absurdly claim an equal share of things which are essentially privileged [Weil] |
| Full Idea: To the dimmed understanding of our age there seems nothing odd in claiming an equal share of privilege for everybody - an equal share in things whose essence is privilege. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.84) | |
| A reaction: Not sure what she has in mind. Probably not the finest food and drink. I suppose she is attacking the modern egalitarian view of democratic society. What things have privilege as their 'essence'? Being a 'winner'? Interesting, though. |
| 23751 | Rights are asserted contentiously, and need the backing of force [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Rights are always asserted in a tone of contention; and when this tone is adopted, it must rely upon force in the background, or else it will be laughed at. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.81) | |
| A reaction: This is the sort of observation which leads on to Foucault's account of all-pervasive power. Her observation may not be so sinister. It is obvious that introductions of new rights go against the grain of a conservative society - and so need a push. |
| 23752 | Giving centrality to rights stifles all impulses of charity [Weil] |
| Full Idea: To place the notion of rights at the centre of social conflicts is to inhibit any possible impulse of charity on both sides. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.83) | |
| A reaction: I think she exaggerates. To place personal charity at the centre of social conflicts strikes me as extremely conservative, and unlikely to improve the situation very much. I'm unsure how to reconcile this with Idea 23750. What sort of charity? |
| 23757 | The spirit of justice needs the full attention of truth, and that attention is love [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Because affliction and truth need the same kind of attention …the spirit of justice and the spirit of truth are one. The spirit of justice and truth is nothing else be a certain kind of attention, which is pure love. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.92) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure about this as an observation, but as an inspiration it is very appealing, and (as so often with Weil) strikingly and attractively independent. I prefer love to arise naturally, rather than be a product of exhortation. |
| 23761 | Justice (concerning harm) is distinct from rights (concerning inequality) [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Justice is seeing that no harm is done to men. When a man cries inwardly 'Why am I being hurt?' he is being harmed. The other cry of 'Why have others got more than me?' refers to rights. We must distinguish them, and hush the second with law. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.93) | |
| A reaction: Her great passion is for justice, and so she downplays rights. The simple 'why am I being hurt?' has a horrible resonance in 1943. What of the hurts of disease? Are they unjust? |
| 23764 | The only thing in society worse than crime is repressive justice [Weil] |
| Full Idea: There is one, and only one, thing in society more hideous than crime - namely, repressive justice. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.95) | |
| A reaction: Presumably fans of 'repressive' justice would describe it as 'reformative' justice. In general, one of the most hideous parts of historical human societies has been the punishments they dished out (simply because they had the power to do it). |
| 23763 | Punishment aims at the good for men who don't desire it [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Punishment is solely a method of procuring pure good for men who do not desire it. The art of punishing is the art of awakening in a criminal, by pain or even death, the desire for pure good. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.95) | |
| A reaction: I know Weil is seen as some sort of saint, but this remark could have come from the Inquisition. I'm always alarmed by talk of 'pure' good and 'pure' evil, which seem to need a superior insight the rest of us lack. But see Idea 23764. |
| 12245 | Essence is the source of a thing's characteristic behaviour [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: In the traditional terminology, function follows essence. Essence just is the principle from which flows the characteristic behaviour of a thing. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: Hence essence must be identified if the behaviour is to be explained, and a successful identification of essence is the terminus of our explanations. But the essences must go down to the micro-level. Explain non-characteristic behaviour? |
| 12246 | What makes Parmenidean reality a One rather than a Many? [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: Even if there were no multiplicity in unity - only a Parmenidean 'block' - still the question would arise as to what gave the amorphous lump its unity; by virtue of what would it be one rather than many? | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: Which is prior, division or unification? If it was divided, he would ask what divided it. One of them must be primitive, so why not unity? If one big Unity is primitive, why could not lots of unities be primitive? Etc. |
| 12239 | The real essentialist is not merely a scientist [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: It is incorrect to hold that the job of the real essentialist just is the job of the scientist. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: Presumably scientific essentialism, while being firmly a branch of metaphysics, is meant to clarify the activities of science, and thereby be of some practical use. You can't beat knowing what it is you are trying to do. |
| 12243 | The reductionism found in scientific essentialism is mistaken [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: The reductionism found in scientific essentialism is mistaken. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: Oderberg's point is that essence doesn't just occur at the bottom of the hierarchy of kinds, but can exist on a macro-level, and need not be a concealed structure, as we see in the essence of a pile of stones. |
| 2058 | God must be the epitome of goodness, and we can only approach a divine state by being as good as possible [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible for God to be immoral and not to be the acme of morality; and the only way any of us can approximate to God is to become as moral as possible. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 176c) |
| 23754 | The only choice is between supernatural good, or evil [Weil] |
| Full Idea: In all the crucial problems of human existence the only choice is between supernatural good on the one hand and evil on the other. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.86) | |
| A reaction: This idea strikes me as absurd, but I include it for a fuller picture of Simone Weil. Aristotle (my hero) is referred to, and labelled as more stupid than a village idiot. |
| 2057 | There must always be some force of evil ranged against good [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The elimination of evil is impossible, Theodorus; there must always be some force ranged against good. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 176a) |