16 ideas
9288 | The magic of Asclepius enters Renaissance thought mixed into Ficino's neo-platonism [Yates] |
Full Idea: The magic of Asclepius, reinterpreted through Plotinus, enters with Ficino's De Vita into the neo-platonic philosophy of the Renaissance, and, moreover, into Ficino's Christian Platonism. | |
From: Frances A. Yates (Giordano Bruno and Hermetic Tradition [1964], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: Asclepius is the source of 'Hermetic' philosophy. This move seems to be what gives the Renaissance period its rather quirky and distinctive character. Montaigne was not a typical figure. Most of them wanted to become gods and control the stars! |
9291 | The dating, in 1614, of the Hermetic writings as post-Christian is the end of the Renaissance [Yates] |
Full Idea: The dating by Isaac Casaubon in 1614 of the Hermetic writings as not the work of a very ancient Egyptian priest but written in post-Christian times, is a watershed separating the Renaissance world from the modern world. | |
From: Frances A. Yates (Giordano Bruno and Hermetic Tradition [1964], Ch.21) | |
A reaction: I tend to place the end of the Renaissance with the arrival of the telescope in 1610, so the two dates coincide. Simply, magic was replaced by science. Religion ran alongside, gasping for breath. Mathematics was freed from numerology. |
192 | Only one thing can be contrary to something [Plato] |
Full Idea: To everything that admits of a contrary there is one contrary and no more. | |
From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 332c) | |
A reaction: The sort of thing for which a modern philosopher would demand a proof (and then reject when the proof couldn't be found), where a Greek is happy to assert it as self-evident. I can't think of a counterexample. |
190 | If asked whether justice itself is just or unjust, you would have to say that it is just [Plato] |
Full Idea: If someone asked me 'Is justice itself just or unjust?' I should answer that it was just, wouldn't you? I agree. | |
From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 330c) |
20184 | The only real evil is loss of knowledge [Plato] |
Full Idea: The only real kind of faring ill is the loss of knowledge. | |
From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 345b) | |
A reaction: This must crucially involve the intellectualist view (of Socrates) that virtuos behaviour results from knowledge, and moral wickedness is the result of ignorance. It is hard to see how forgetting a phone number is evil. |
20185 | The most important things in life are wisdom and knowledge [Plato] |
Full Idea: It would be shameful indeed to say that wisdom and knowledge are anything but the most powerful forces in human activity. | |
From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 352d) | |
A reaction: He lumps wisdom and knowledge together, and I think we can take 'knowledge' to mean something like understanding, because obviously mere atomistic propositional knowledge can be utterly trivial. |
191 | Everything resembles everything else up to a point [Plato] |
Full Idea: Everything resembles everything else up to a point. | |
From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 331d) |
203 | Courage is knowing what should or shouldn't be feared [Plato] |
Full Idea: Knowledge of what is and is not to be feared is courage. | |
From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 360d) |
202 | No one willingly and knowingly embraces evil [Plato] |
Full Idea: No one willingly goes to meet evil, or what he thinks is evil. | |
From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 358d) | |
A reaction: Presumably people who actively choose satanism can override this deep-seated attitude. But their adherence to evil usually seems to be rather restrained. A danger of tautology with ideas like this. |
193 | Some things are good even though they are not beneficial to men [Plato] |
Full Idea: 'Do you mean by good those things that are beneficial to men?' 'Not only those. I call some things which are not beneficial good as well'. | |
From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 333e) | |
A reaction: Examples needed, but this would be bad news for utilitarians. Good health is not seen as beneficial if it is taken for granted. Not being deaf. |
197 | Some pleasures are not good, and some pains are not evil [Plato] |
Full Idea: There are some pleasures which are not good, and some pains which are not evil. | |
From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 351d) | |
A reaction: Sadism and child birth. Though Bentham (I think) says that there is nothing good about the pain, since the event would obviously be better without it. |
200 | People tend only to disapprove of pleasure if it leads to pain, or prevents future pleasure [Plato] |
Full Idea: The only reason the common man disapproves of pleasures is if they lead to pain and deprive us of future pleasures. | |
From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 354a) | |
A reaction: Plato has a strong sense that some pleasures are just innately depraved and wicked. If those pleasure don't hurt anyone, it is very hard to pinpoint what is wrong with them. |
188 | Socrates did not believe that virtue could be taught [Plato] |
Full Idea: Socrates: I do not believe that virtue can be taught. | |
From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 320b) |
204 | Socrates is contradicting himself in claiming virtue can't be taught, but that it is knowledge [Plato] |
Full Idea: Socrates is contradicting himself by saying virtue is not teachable, and yet trying to demonstrate that every virtue is knowledge. | |
From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 361b) |
189 | If we punish wrong-doers, it shows that we believe virtue can be taught [Plato] |
Full Idea: Athenians inflict punishment on wrong-doers, which shows that they too think it possible to impart and teach goodness. | |
From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 324c) |
18202 | The concept of a field gradually replaced the substances in explaining relations between charges [Einstein/Infeld] |
Full Idea: In the beginning the field concept was no more than a means of facilitating the understanding of phenomena. ...In the new field language it is the field and not the charges themselves which is essential. The substance was overshadowed by the field. | |
From: Einstein,A/Infeld,L (The Evolution of Physics [1938], p.151), quoted by Penelope Maddy - Naturalism in Mathematics II.4 | |
A reaction: This is very important for philosophical metaphysicians, especially those like me who want to explain the universe by the nature of the stuff that composes it. The 'stuff' had better not be simplistic individual 'substances'. |