83 ideas
| 24047 | An account is either a definition or a demonstration [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Every account is either a definition or a demonstration. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 407a24) | |
| A reaction: That is, it is either a summary of the thing's essential nature, or it is a proof of some natural fact, starting from first principles. |
| 24052 | From one thing alone we can infer its contrary [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: One member of a pair of contraries is sufficient to discern both itself and its opposite. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 411a02) | |
| A reaction: This obviously requires prior knowledge of what the opposite is. He says you can infer the crooked from the straight. You can hardly use light in isolation to infer dark [see DA 418b17]. What's the opposite of a pig? |
| 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. |
| 1729 | We perceive number by the denial of continuity [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Number we perceive by the denial of continuity. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 425a19) | |
| A reaction: This is a key thought. A being (call it 'Parmenides') which sees all Being as One would make no distinctions of identity, and so could not count anything. Why would they want numbers? |
| 24057 | What is prior is always potentially present in what is next in order [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What is prior is always potentially present in what is next in order … - for example, the triangle in the quadrilateral, or the nutritive part of animate things in the perceptual part. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 414a28) | |
| A reaction: 'Prior' seems to be a value for Aristotle, which is never present in modern discussions of ontological relations and structure. Priority tracks back to first principles. |
| 16752 | Sight is the essence of the eye, fitting its definition; the eye itself is just the matter [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If the eye were an animal, sight would have been its soul, for sight is the substance or essence of the eye which corresponds to the formula, the eye being merely the matter of seeing; when seeing is removed it is no longer an eye,except in name. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 412b18) | |
| A reaction: This is a drastic view of form as merely function, which occasionally appears in Aristotle. To say a blind eye is not an eye is a tricky move in metaphysics. So what is it? In some sense it is still an eye. |
| 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) |
| 24058 | The substance is the cause of a thing's being [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The cause of its being for everything is its substance. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 415b12) | |
| A reaction: It sounds as if 'substance' here means essence. We no longer see the cause of something's being as intrinsic to the thing. Only previous causes produce things. The 'form' must be the intrinsic cause of being. |
| 24055 | Matter is potential, form is actual [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Matter is potentiality, whereas form is actuality. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 412a09) | |
| A reaction: Plato said mud has no Form. What did Aristotle think of that? I only ask because to me mud looks like unformed actuality. |
| 24040 | Scientists explain anger by the matter, dialecticians by the form and the account [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: For a dialectician anger is a desire for retaliation or something like that, where for a natural scientist it is a boiling of the blood and hoot stuff around the heart. The scientist gives the matter, where the dialectician give the form and the account. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 403a30) | |
| A reaction: A nice illumination of hylomorphism. Notice that the dialectician also give the account [logos]. |
| 9240 | Love creates a necessity concerning what to care about [Frankfurt] |
| Full Idea: The necessity with which love binds the will puts an end to indecisiveness concerning what to care about. | |
| From: Harry G. Frankfurt (The Reasons of Love [2005], 2.13) | |
| A reaction: I put this here as a reminder that there may be more to necessity than the dry concept of metaphysicians and logicians. 'Why did you rescue that man first?' 'Because I love him'. Kit Fine recognises many sorts of necessity. |
| 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. |
| 5051 | The intellect has potential to think, like a tablet on which nothing has yet been written [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The intellect is in a way potentially the object of thought, but nothing in actuality before it thinks, and the potentiality is like that of the tablet on which there is nothing actually written. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 429b31) | |
| A reaction: This passage is referred to by Leibniz, and is the origin of the concept of the 'tabula rasa'. Aristotle need not be denying innate ideas, but merely describing the phenomenology of the moment before a train of thought begins. |
| 16723 | Perception of sensible objects is virtually never wrong [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Perception of the special objects of sense is never in error or admits the least possible amount of falsehood. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 428b19) | |
| A reaction: This is, surprisingly, the view which was raised and largely rejected in 'Theaetetus'. It became a doctrine of Epicureanism, and seems to make Aristotle a thoroughgoing empiricist, though that is not so clear elsewhere. I think Aristotle is right. |
| 1724 | Perception necessitates pleasure and pain, which necessitates appetite [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Where there is perception there is also pleasure and pain, and where there are these, of necessity also appetite. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 413b23) |
| 17711 | Our minds take on the form of what is being perceived [Aristotle, by Mares] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle famously holds that in perception our minds take on the form of what is being perceived. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE]) by Edwin D. Mares - A Priori 08.2 | |
| A reaction: [References in Aristotle needed here...] |
| 1732 | Sense organs aren't the end of sensation, or they would know what does the sensing [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Flesh is not the ultimate sense-organ. To suppose that it is requires the supposition that on contact with the object the sense-organ itself discerns what is doing the discerning. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 426b16) |
| 1730 | Why do we have many senses, and not just one? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A possible line of inquiry would be into the question for what purpose we have many senses and not just one. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 425b04) |
| 1725 | Why can't we sense the senses? And why do senses need stimuli? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Why is there not also a sense of the senses themselves? And why don't the senses produce sensation without external bodies, since they contain elements? | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 417a03) |
| 1728 | Many objects of sensation are common to all the senses [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Common sense-objects are movement, rest, number, shape and size, which are not special to any one sense, but common to all. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 418a18) |
| 1727 | Some objects of sensation are unique to one sense, where deception is impossible [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Now I call that sense-object 'special' that does not admit of being perceived by another sense and about which it is impossible to be deceived. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 418a15) |
| 1734 | In moral thought images are essential, to be pursued or avoided [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: In the thinking soul, images play the part of percepts, and the assertion or negation of good or bad is invariably accompanied by avoidance or pursuit, which is the reason for the soul's never thinking without an image. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 431a15) |
| 1726 | We may think when we wish, but not perceive, because universals are within the mind [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Perception is of particular things, but knowledge is of universals, which are in a way in the soul itself. Thus a man may think whenever he wishes, but not perceive. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 417b22) |
| 16647 | Demonstration starts from a definition of essence, so we can derive (or conjecture about) the properties [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: In demonstration a definition of the essence is required as starting point, so that definitions which do not enable us to discover the derived properties, or which fail to facilitate even a conjecture about them, must obviously be dialectical and futile. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 402b25) | |
| A reaction: Interesting to see 'dialectical' used as a term of abuse! Illuminating. For scientific essentialism, then, demonstration is filling out the whole story once the essence has been inferred. It is circular, because essence is inferred from accidents. |
| 24048 | Demonstrations move from starting-points to deduced conclusions [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Demonstrations are both from a starting-point and have a sort of end, namely the deduction or the conclusion. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 407a25) | |
| A reaction: A starting point has to be a first principle [arché]. It has been observed that Aristotle explains demonstration very carefully, but rarely does it in his writings. |
| 16646 | To understand a triangle summing to two right angles, we need to know the essence of a line [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: In mathematics it is useful for the understanding of the property of the equality of the interior angles of a triangle to two right angles to know the essential nature of the straight and the curved or of the line and the plane. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 402b18) | |
| A reaction: Although Aristotle was cautious about this, he clearly endorses here the idea that essences play an explanatory role in geometry. The caution is in the word 'useful', rather than 'vital'. How else can we arrive at this result, though? |
| 1714 | Mind involves movement, perception, incorporeality [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The soul seems to be universally defined by three features, so to speak, the production of movement, perception and incorporeality. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 405b12) | |
| A reaction: 'Incorporeality' begs the question, but its appearance is a phenomenon that needs explaining. 'Movement' is an interesting Greek view. Nowadays we would presumably added intentional states, and the contents and meaning of thoughts. No 'reason'? |
| 5507 | Aristotle led to the view that there are several souls, all somewhat physical [Aristotle, by Martin/Barresi] |
| Full Idea: On the later views inspired by Aristotle's 'De Anima' there was no longer just one soul, but several, and each of them had a great deal in common with the body. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE]) by R Martin / J Barresi - Introduction to 'Personal Identity' p.17 | |
| A reaction: Is this based on the faculties of sophia, episteme, nous, techne and phronesis, or is it based on the vegetative, appetitive and rational parts? The latter, I presume. Not so interesting, not so modular. |
| 24051 | Soul is seen as what moves, or what is least physical, or a combination of elements [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Three ways have been handed down in which people define the soul: what is most capable of moving things, since it moves itself; or a body which is the most fine-grained and least corporeal; or that it is composed of the elements. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 409b19) | |
| A reaction: A nice example of Aristotle beginning an investigation by idenfying the main explanations which have been 'handed down' from previous generations. These three aren't really in competition, and might all be true. |
| 12086 | Psuché is the form and actuality of a body which potentially has life [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Soul is substance as the form of a natural body which potentially has life, and since this substance is actuality, soul will be the actuality of such a body. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 412a20) | |
| A reaction: To understand what Aristotle means by 'form' you must, I'm afraid, read the 'Metaphysics'. Form isn't shape, but rather the essence which bestows the individual identity on the thing. 'Psuche is the essence of man' might be a better slogan. |
| 16754 | The soul is the cause or source of movement, the essence of body, and its end [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The soul is the cause [aitia] of its body alike in three senses which we explicitly recognise. It is (a) the source or origin of movement, it is (b) the end, and it is (c) the essence of the whole living body. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 415b09) | |
| A reaction: 'Aitia' also means explanation, so these are three ways to explain a human being, by what it does, why what it is for, and by what it intrinsically is. Activity, purpose and nature. |
| 24046 | Understanding is impossible, if it involves the understanding having parts [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: How could a spatial understanding understand anything? Wiil it do so with parts, seen as magnitudes or as points? If it is points, the understanding will never get through them all. If magnitudes, it will understand things an unlimited number of times. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 407a09) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a strong commitment to the idea that the mind is not physical because it is necessarily non-spatial. |
| 1717 | If the soul is composed of many physical parts, it can't be a true unity [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If the soul is composed of parts of the body, or the harmony of the elements composing the body, there will be many souls, and everywhere in the body. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 408a15) | |
| A reaction: We will ignore "everywhere in the body", but the rest seems to me exactly right. The idea of the unity of the soul is an understandable and convenient assumption, but it leads to all sorts of confusion. A crowd remains unified if half its members leave. |
| 24053 | If a soul have parts, what unites them? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What is it that holds the soul together, if it by nature has parts? For surely it cannot be the body. For it seems on the contrary that it is rather the soul that holds the body together? | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 411b05) | |
| A reaction: This is the hylomorphic view of a human, that the soul is the form that give unity to the matter. To do the job, presumably the form or soul need an intrinsic unity of its own, and hence cannot have parts. Apart from the need for unifying glue. |
| 1721 | What unifies the soul would have to be a super-soul, which seems absurd [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If soul has parts, what holds them together? Not body, because that is united by soul. If a thing unifies the soul, then THAT is the soul (unless it too has parts, which would lead to an infinite regress). Best to say the soul is a unity. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 411b10) | |
| A reaction: You don't need a 'thing' to unify something (like a crowd). I say the body holds the soul together, not physically, but because the body's value permeates thought. The body is the focused interest of the soul, like parents kept together by their child. |
| 1735 | In a way the soul is everything which exists, through its perceptions and thoughts [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The soul is in a way all the things that exist, for all the things that exist are objects either of perception or of thought. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 431b20) | |
| A reaction: Sounds very like Berkeley's empirical version of idealism. It also seems to imply modern externalist (anti-individualist) understandings of the mind (which strike me as false). |
| 24061 | If we divide the mind up according to its capacities, there are a lot of them [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: For those who divide the soul into parts, and divide and separate them in accord with their capacities, the parts turn out to be very many. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 433a32) | |
| A reaction: I accept the warning. The capacities which interest me are those which seem to generate our basic ontology, but if the capacities become fine-grained, they are legion. |
| 24062 | Self-moving animals must have desires, and that entails having imagination [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If an animal has a desiring part, it is capable of moving itself. A desiring part, however, cannot exist without an imagination, and all imagination is either rationally calculative or perceptual. Hence in the latter the other animals also have a share. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 433b27) | |
| A reaction: Maybe if you asked people whether other animals are imaginative they would say no, but this argument is strong support for the positive view. |
| 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) |
| 1710 | Emotion involves the body, thinking uses the mind, imagination hovers between them [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Most affections (like anger) seem to involve the body, but thinking seems distinctive of the soul. But if this requires imagination, it too involves the body. Only pure mental activity would prove the separation of the two. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 403a08-) | |
| A reaction: What an observant man! Modern neuroscience is bringing out the fact that emotion is central to all mental life. We can't recognise faces without it. I say imagination is essential to pure reason, and that seems emotional too. Reason is physical. |
| 24039 | All the emotions seem to involve the body, simultaneously with the feeling [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The affections of the soul - spiritedness, fear, pity, confidence, joy, loving, hating - would all seem to involve the body, since at the same time as these the body is affected in a certain way. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 403a16) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle was not a physicalist, but this resembles the pilot-in-the-ship passage in Descartes, accepting the very close links. |
| 24056 | The soul (or parts of it) is not separable from the body [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: That the soul is not separable from the body - or that certain parts of it are not, if it naturally has parts - is quite clear. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 413a04) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't make him a physicalist. I've seen him described in modern terms as a functionalist, but that makes the mind abstract and the body concrete. Perhaps he is an 'Integrationist' (as Descartes might be in his 'pilot' passage). |
| 24050 | If soul is separate from body, why does it die when the body dies? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If the soul is something distinct from the mixture, why then are the being for flesh and for the other parts of the animal destroyed at the same time? | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 408a25) | |
| A reaction: An obvious response to this reasonable question is to say that we see the body die, but not the soul, so the soul doesn't die. The problem is then to find some evidence for the soul's continued existence. |
| 24049 | Thinkers place the soul within the body, but never explain how they are attached [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There is another absurdity which follows, …since they attach the soul to a body, and place it in the body, without further determining the cause due to which this attachment comes about. …Yet this seems necessary, because this association produces action. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 407b14) | |
| A reaction: A clear statement of the interaction objection to full substance dualism. Critics say that dualists have to invoke a 'miracle' at this point. |
| 1514 | Early thinkers concentrate on the soul but ignore the body, as if it didn't matter what body received the soul [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Early thinkers try only to describe the soul, but they fail to go into any kind of detail about the body which is to receive the soul, as if it were possible (as it is in the Pythagorean tales) for just any old soul to be clothed in just any old body. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 407b20) | |
| A reaction: Precisely. Anyone who seriously believes that a human mind can be reincarnated in a flea needs their mind examined. Actually they need their brain examined, but that probably wouldn't impress them. I can, of course, imagine moving into a flea. |
| 2683 | Aristotle has a problem fitting his separate reason into the soul, which is said to be the form of the body [Ackrill on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: In 'De Anima' Aristotle cannot fit his account of separable reason - which is not the form of a body - into his general theory that the soul is the form of the body. | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE]) by J.L. Ackrill - Aristotle on Eudaimonia p.33 | |
| A reaction: A penetrating observation. Possibly the biggest challenge for a modern physicalist is to give a reductive account of 'pure' reason, in terms of brain events or brain functions. |
| 1718 | Does the mind think or pity, or does the whole man do these things? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps it would be better not to say that the soul pities or learns or thinks, but that the man does in virtue of the soul. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 408b12) | |
| A reaction: This can be seen as incipient behaviourism in Aristotle's view. It echoes the functionalist view that what matters is not what the mind is, or is made of, but what it does. |
| 13275 | The soul and the body are inseparable, like the imprint in some wax [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We should not enquire whether the soul and the body are one thing, any more than whether the wax and its imprint are, or in general whether the matter of each thing is one with that of which it is the matter. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 412b06) | |
| A reaction: This is his hylomorphist view of objects, so that the soul is the 'form' which bestows identity (and power) on the matter of which it is made. This remark is thoroughly physicalist. |
| 1733 | Thinking is not perceiving, but takes the form of imagination and speculation [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Thinking, then, is something other than perceiving, and its two kinds are held to be imagination and supposition. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 427b28) |
| 23307 | Aristotle makes belief a part of reason, but sees desires as separate [Aristotle, by Sorabji] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle insists [against Plato] that desires, even rational desires, are a capacity distinct from reason, as is perception. Belief is included within reason. And he sometimes distinguishes steps of reasoning from insight. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 428-432) by Richard Sorabji - Rationality 'Shifting' | |
| A reaction: So the standard picture of desire as permanently in conflict with reason comes from Aristotle. Maybe Plato is right on that one (though he doesn't say much about it). Since objectivity needs knowledge, reason does need belief. |
| 24060 | Self-controlled follow understanding, when it is opposed to desires [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Self-controlled people, even when they desire and have an appetite for things, do not do these things for which they have the desire, but instead follow the understanding. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 433a06) | |
| A reaction: If modern discussions would stop talking of 'weakness of will', and talk instead of 'control' and its lack, the whole issue would become clearer. Akrasia is then seen, for example, as an action of the whole person, not of some defective part. |
| 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) |
| 9228 | Ranking order of desires reveals nothing, because none of them may be considered important [Frankfurt] |
| Full Idea: Ranking desires in order of preference is no help, because a person who wants one thing more than another may not regard the former as any more important to him than the latter. | |
| From: Harry G. Frankfurt (The Reasons of Love [2005], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: A salutary warning. Someone may pursue something with incredible intensity, but only to stave off a boring and empty existence. The only way I can think of to assess what really matters to people is - to ask them! |
| 9238 | Morality isn't based on reason; moral indignation is quite unlike disapproval of irrationality [Frankfurt] |
| Full Idea: The ultimate warrant for moral principles cannot be found in reason. The sort of opprobrium that attaches to moral transgressions is quite unlike the sort of opprobrium that attaches to the requirements of reason. | |
| From: Harry G. Frankfurt (The Reasons of Love [2005], 2.5 n6) | |
| A reaction: More like a piece of evidence than a proper argument. We may not feel indignant if someone fails a maths exam, but we might if they mess up the arithmetic of our bank account, even though they meant well. |
| 9234 | If you don't care about at least one thing, you can't find reasons to care about anything [Frankfurt] |
| Full Idea: It is not possible for a person who does not already care at least about something to discover reasons for caring about anything. | |
| From: Harry G. Frankfurt (The Reasons of Love [2005], 1.11) | |
| A reaction: This is the key idea of this lovely book. Without a glimmer of love somewhere, it is not possible to bootstrap a meaningful life. The glimmer of caring about one thing is transferable. See the Ancient Mariner and the watersnake. |
| 9232 | It is by caring about things that we infuse the world with importance [Frankfurt] |
| Full Idea: It is by caring about things that we infuse the world with importance. | |
| From: Harry G. Frankfurt (The Reasons of Love [2005], 1.10) | |
| A reaction: This book is a lovely attempt at getting to the heart of where values come from. 'Football isn't a matter of life and death; it's more important than that' - Bill Shankly (manager of Liverpool). Frankfurt is right. |
| 9233 | Our criteria for evaluating how to live offer an answer to the problem [Frankfurt] |
| Full Idea: Identifying the criteria to be employed in evaluating various ways of living is also tantamount to providing an answer to the question of how to live. | |
| From: Harry G. Frankfurt (The Reasons of Love [2005], 1.10) | |
| A reaction: Presumably critical reflection is still possible about those criteria, even though he implies that they just arise out of you (in a rather Nietzschean way). The fear is that critical reflection on basic criteria kills in infant in its cradle. |
| 9229 | What is worthwhile for its own sake alone may be worth very little [Frankfurt] |
| Full Idea: What is worth having or worth doing for its own sake alone may nonetheless be worth very little. | |
| From: Harry G. Frankfurt (The Reasons of Love [2005], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: That is one of my cherished notions sunk without trace! Aristotle's idea that ends are what matter, not means, always struck me as crucial. But Frankfurt is right. Collecting trivia is done for its own sake. Great tasks are performed as a means. |
| 9235 | Rather than loving things because we value them, I think we value things because we love them [Frankfurt] |
| Full Idea: It is often understood that we begin loving things because we are struck by their value. ..However, what I have in mind is rather that what we love necessarily acquires value for us because we love it. | |
| From: Harry G. Frankfurt (The Reasons of Love [2005], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: The uneasy thought here is that this makes value much less rational. If you love because you value, you could probably give reasons for the value. If love comes first it must be instinctive. He says he loved his children before they were born. |
| 9237 | The paradigm case of pure love is not romantic, but that between parents and infants [Frankfurt] |
| Full Idea: Relationships that are primarily romantic or sexual do not provide very authentic or illuminating paradigms of love. ...The love of parents for their small children comes closest to offering recognizably pure instances of love. | |
| From: Harry G. Frankfurt (The Reasons of Love [2005], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: Excellent. Though perhaps a relationships which began romantically might settle into something like the more 'pure' love that he has in mind. Such a relationship must, I trust, be possible between adults. |
| 9239 | I value my children for their sake, but I also value my love for them for its own sake [Frankfurt] |
| Full Idea: Beside the fact that my children are important to me for their own sakes, there is the additional fact that loving my children is important to me for its own sake. | |
| From: Harry G. Frankfurt (The Reasons of Love [2005], 2.7) | |
| A reaction: This is at the heart of Frankfurt's thesis, that love is the bedrock of our values in life, and we therefore all need to love in order to generate any values in our life, quite apart from what our love is directed at. Nice thought. |
| 9236 | Love can be cool, and it may not involve liking its object [Frankfurt] |
| Full Idea: It is not among the defining features of love that it must be hot rather than cool, ..and nor is it essential that a person like what he loves. | |
| From: Harry G. Frankfurt (The Reasons of Love [2005], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: An interesting pair of observations. The greatness of love would probably be measured by length, or by sacrifice. Extreme heat makes us a little suspicious. It would be hard to love something that was actually disliked. |
| 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. |
| 9227 | We might not choose a very moral life, if the character or constitution was deficient [Frankfurt] |
| Full Idea: People who are scrupulously moral may nonetheless be destined by deficiencies of character or of constitution to lead lives that no reasonable person would freely choose. | |
| From: Harry G. Frankfurt (The Reasons of Love [2005], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This fairly firmly refutes any Greek dream that all there is to happiness is leading a virtuous life. Frankfurt is with Aristotle more than with the Stoics. It would be tempting to sacrifice virtue to get a sunny character and good health. |
| 9230 | People want to fulfill their desires, but also for their desires to be sustained [Frankfurt] |
| Full Idea: Besides wanting to fulfil his desire, the person who cares about what he desires wants something else as well: he wants the desire to be sustained. | |
| From: Harry G. Frankfurt (The Reasons of Love [2005], 1.6) | |
| A reaction: Plato, in 'Gorgias', makes this fact sound like a nightmare, resembling drug addiction, but in Frankfurt's formulation it looks like a good thing. If you want to make your family happy because you love them, you would dread finding your love had died. |
| 4376 | Pleasure and pain are perceptions of things as good or bad [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: To experience pleasure or pain is to be active with the perceptive mean in relation to good or bad as such. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 431a10) | |
| A reaction: A bizarre view which is interesting, but strikes me as wrong. We are drawn towards pleasure, but judgement can pull us away again, and 'good' is in the judgement, not in the feeling. |
| 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. |
| 9241 | Loving oneself is not a failing, but is essential to a successful life [Frankfurt] |
| Full Idea: Far from demonstrating a flaw in character or being a sign of weakness, coming to love oneself is the deepest and most essential - and by no means the most readily attainable - achievement of a serious and successful life. | |
| From: Harry G. Frankfurt (The Reasons of Love [2005], 2.14) | |
| A reaction: Obviously it will be necessary to dilineate the healthy form of self-love, which Frankfurt attempts to do. Ruthless vanity and self-seeking certainly look like the worst possible weaknesses of character. With that proviso, he is right. |
| 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) |
| 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) |
| 9300 | Boredom is serious, not just uncomfortable; it threatens our psychic survival [Frankfurt] |
| Full Idea: Boredom is a serious matter. It is not a condition that we seek to avoid just because we do not find it enjoyable. ..It threatens the very continuation of conscious mental life. ..Avoiding bored is a primitive urge for psychic survival. | |
| From: Harry G. Frankfurt (The Reasons of Love [2005], 2.8) | |
| A reaction: Presumably nihilism will flood into the emptiness created by boredom. Frankfurt will see it as a lack of love for anything in your life, and hence an absence of value. Frankfurt is very good. |
| 9231 | Freedom needs autonomy (rather than causal independence) - embracing our own desires and choices [Frankfurt] |
| Full Idea: What counts as far as freedom goes is not causal independence, but autonomy. It is a matter of whether we are active rather than passive in our motives and choices, whether those are what we really want, and not alien to us. | |
| From: Harry G. Frankfurt (The Reasons of Love [2005], 1.8) | |
| A reaction: This is why setting your own targets is excellent, but having targets set for you by authorities is pernicious. These kind of principles need to be clear before any plausible theory of liberalism can be developed. |
| 1740 | Nature does nothing in vain [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Nature does nothing in vain. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 434a31) |
| 24045 | Movement is spatial, alteration, withering or growth [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There a four sorts of movement - spatial movement, alteration, withering and growth. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 406a12) | |
| A reaction: Large parts of Aristotle's writings attempt to explain these four. |
| 1738 | Practical reason is based on desire, so desire must be the ultimate producer of movement [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There seem to be two producers of movement, either desire or practical intellect, but practical reason begins in desire. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 433a16) |
| 24044 | Movement can be intrinsic (like a ship) or relative (like its sailors) [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is not necessary for what moves things to be itself moving. For a thing can be moving in two ways - with reference to something else, or intrinsically. A ship is moving intrinsically, but sailors move because they are in something that is moving. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 406a03) | |
| A reaction: I love the way that Aristotle is desperate to explain the puzzle of movement, yet we just take it for granted. Very illuminating about puzzles. Newton's First Law of Motion. |
| 1739 | If all movement is either pushing or pulling, there must be a still point in between where it all starts [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Every movement being either a push or a pull, there must be a still point as with the circle, and this will be the point of departure for the movement. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 433b26) |
| 24064 | If something is pushed, it pushes back [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What has pushed something else makes the latter push as well. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 435b30) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle seems to have spotted that this is intrinsic to massive bodies, and is not just friction etc. Newton adds a vector to Aristotle's insight. |
| 24063 | What is born has growth, a prime, and a withering away [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What has been born must have growth, a prime of life, and a time of withering away. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 434a23) | |
| A reaction: Modern biologists don't seem much interested in the 'prime of life', but for Aristotle it is crucial, as the fulfilment of a thing's essential nature. Nietzsche would probably agree with Aristotle on this. We dread seeing one period of life as 'superior'. |