53 ideas
5278 | Philosophy is no more than abstractions concerning observations of human historical development [Marx/Engels] |
Full Idea: When reality is depicted, philosophy as an independent branch of knowledge loses its medium of existence. At best it is a summing up of general results, abstractions which arise from observation of the historical development of man. | |
From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.A) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as nonsense, based on a bogus Hegelian notion that history is following some sort of pattern, and that mental reality is fixed by physical conditions. The philosophy of mathematics, for one, won't fit into this definition. |
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. |
5287 | Philosophical problems are resolved into empirical facts [Marx/Engels] |
Full Idea: Every profound philosophical problem is resolved quite simply into an empirical fact. | |
From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.B) | |
A reaction: This shows that empirical accounts of metaphysics are not just a branch of British empiricism, but are a basic fact of any materialist view of the world. The influence of David Hume, however, hovers behind this Marxist doctrine. |
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) |
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) |
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. |
23872 | 'Society determines consciousness' is contradictory; society only exists in minds [Weil on Marx/Engels] |
Full Idea: In the Marxist formula 'social existence determines consciousness' there are more contradictions than words. Since 'social' can only exist in human minds, 'social existence' is already consciousness. It cannot determine consciousness, which is undefined. | |
From: comment on K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846]) by Simone Weil - Fragments p.126 | |
A reaction: I'm not convinced that society only exists in minds. Many children in Victorian London had never heard of 'London', but that didn't stop it existing. Our problems are often social substrata of which we are unaware. |
5277 | Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life [Marx/Engels] |
Full Idea: Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. | |
From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.A) | |
A reaction: This slogan is the heart of Marxism. It begs the obvious question of what determines (social) life? Aristotle is at least partly right - that some activities and social organisation are 'unnatural', going against the grain of the human 'given'. |
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. |
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) |
5280 | Language co-exists with consciousness, and makes it social [Marx/Engels] |
Full Idea: Language is as old as consciousness, language is practical consciousness that exists also for other men. | |
From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.A) | |
A reaction: Dennett takes a similar view - that consciousness is more-or-less a consequence of the development of consciousness. This is understandable if you make intentional rather than phenomenal consciousness central. Otherwise ants may well have it. |
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) |
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? |
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? |
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. |
5276 | The nature of an individual coincides with what they produce and how they produce it [Marx/Engels] |
Full Idea: As individuals express their life, so they are; what they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce. | |
From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.A) | |
A reaction: This appears to be contradicted by their subsequent idea that 'alienation' from the means of production is possible. Presumably intellectuals (in all ages) are to some extent exempt from this rule. It is, in fact, not true. |
5281 | Consciousness is a social product [Marx/Engels] |
Full Idea: Consciousness is from the very beginning a social product. | |
From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.A) | |
A reaction: This slogan has produced the sociological view of truth which has stood opposed to philosophy for the last 150 years. It would be silly to deny that there is a good point here, but equally silly to think that all consciousness is explicable in this way. |
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. |
5289 | When aristocracy or the bourgeoisie dominate, certain values dominate with them [Marx/Engels] |
Full Idea: During the time that the aristocracy was dominant, the concepts honour, loyalty etc. were dominant, and during the dominance of the bourgeoisie the concepts of freedom, equality etc. | |
From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.B) | |
A reaction: This is a very anti-Aristotelian view, based on a very different idea of human nature. It must, to some extent, be true, but freedom and equality will be a value for the proletariat, and loyalty will be a key value if the family is central. |
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) |
5274 | Young Hegelians proposed changing our present consciousness for liberating critical consciousness [Marx/Engels] |
Full Idea: The Young Hegelians logically put to men the moral postulate of exchanging their present consciousness for human, critical or egoistic consciousness, and thus removing their limitations. | |
From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.A) | |
A reaction: It seems there are three views here: this one (that we can change our consciousness), the Aristotelian view (that consciousness is 'given'), and the Marxist view (that society determines consciousness). The truth is somewhere between them. |
5275 | Men distinguish themselves from animals when they begin to produce their means of subsistence [Marx/Engels] |
Full Idea: Men begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence. | |
From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.A) | |
A reaction: This seems a rather external criterion. Presumably we can ask what biological or mental feature made it possible for men to produce their own means of subsistence, and why it evolved. Darwin puts a different perspective on this idea. |
5292 | Individuals are mutually hostile unless they group together in competition with other groups [Marx/Engels] |
Full Idea: Separate individuals form a class only insofar as they have to carry on a battle against another class; otherwise they are on hostile terms with each other as competitors. | |
From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.D) | |
A reaction: Beneath the Marxist view that consciousness is a social creation lies a Hobbesian pessimism about basic human nature. This idea bodes ill for ultimate communism, because class struggle will have been abolished. What, then, can unite people? |
21992 | Producing their own subsistence distinguishes men from animals [Marx/Engels] |
Full Idea: Men begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence. | |
From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], p.160), quoted by Sydney Shoemaker - Some varieties of functionalism 6 | |
A reaction: At the very least, we must say that there had to be some intrinsic distinctiveness in place before men could do this. I like meta-thought. |
5293 | Only in community are people able to cultivate their gifts, and therefore be free [Marx/Engels] |
Full Idea: Only in community with others has each individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions; only in the community, therefore, is personal freedom possible. | |
From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.D) | |
A reaction: This is where Aristotle and Marx agree, and I agree too. I think we could drop the word "free", which is to some degree a necessary right and precondition of human happiness, but is not the real target. |
5273 | Young Hegelians think consciousness is chains for men, where old Hegelians think it the bond of society [Marx/Engels] |
Full Idea: The Young Hegelians consider conceptions, thoughts, ideas, in fact all the products of consciousness, to which they attribute an independent existence, as the real chains of men (just as the Old Hegelians declared them the true bonds of human society). | |
From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.A) | |
A reaction: Marx and Engels will attack both views. The Young Hegelians seem potential existentialists, and the Old Hegelians followers of Aristotle. The correct view is somewhere in the middle. Self-criticism is an option given to us by our culture. |
5283 | In communist society we are not trapped in one activity, but can act freely [Marx/Engels] |
Full Idea: In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates production, and I can hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon and criticise after dinner. | |
From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.A) | |
A reaction: This sounds like a hopeless daydream, and Plato would be appalled. It now (2004) looks as if this aspiration is more likely to be met in a liberal capitalist democracy than it is under any state-controlled communism. |
5282 | If the common interest imposes on the individual, his actions become alienated and enslaving [Marx/Engels] |
Full Idea: As long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally divided, man's own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him. | |
From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.A) | |
A reaction: An isolated individual could feel 'alienated' doing menial tasks for themselves when they yearned to get on with their poetry. Alienation is not all-or-nothing. Compare working for a good employer with working for Nazi conquerors. |
5288 | The class controlling material production also controls mental production [Marx/Engels] |
Full Idea: The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production. | |
From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.B) | |
A reaction: This is mostly true, because the wealthy will control both the media and most of the educational institutions, but in a world of universal education and underground presses it doesn't seem to be a necessary truth. Wide dissemination of ideas needs money. |
5290 | The revolutionary class is opposed to 'class', and represents all of society [Marx/Engels] |
Full Idea: The class making a revolution appears from the very start, if only because it is opposed to a 'class', not as a class but as the representative of the whole of society. | |
From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.B) | |
A reaction: This appears to be the source of most of the troubles of the last 150 years. Aristotle thought a benevolent tyrant could represent all of society. It looks to me as if a representative democracy has the best chance, but control of the media is tricky. |
5294 | To assert themselves as individuals, the proletarians must overthrow the State [Marx/Engels] |
Full Idea: In order to assert themselves as individuals, the proletarians must overthrow the State. | |
From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.D) | |
A reaction: By the 'State' is here meant the centralised power of the owners of the means of production. They are not aiming at anarchism, but at a more fluid 'society' or 'community'. Most of us have an Orwellian fear of violent 'overthrowing'. |
5285 | Slavery cannot be abolished without the steam-engine [Marx/Engels] |
Full Idea: Slavery cannot be abolished without the steam-engine. | |
From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.B) | |
A reaction: In Britain and its colonies it does appear that the rise of factories and the abolition of slavery coincided. It is hard to see why this should be a necessity, though. Did the early Christians keep slaves? Some ancient Greeks objected to slavery. |
5284 | Communism abolishes private property and dissolves the powerful world market [Marx/Engels] |
Full Idea: It is empirically established that by the overthrow of the existing state of society by the communist revolution, and the abolition of private property, which is identical with it, the power of the world market will be dissolved. | |
From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.A) | |
A reaction: They later dropped the abolition of private property as an aim. They were very early in spotting the problem of global capitalism. As long as there are scarcities of anything (e.g. Rembrandts) it is hard to imagine the disappearance of the market. |
5291 | The law says private property is the result of the general will [Marx/Engels] |
Full Idea: In civil law the existing property relations are declared to be the result of the general will. | |
From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.C) | |
A reaction: In other words, the 'general will' is open to endless abuse, because it is defined by the current power group, which nowadays is whoever controls the mass media. Even a 'free' election doesn't prove the general will, which is a cultural thing. |
5279 | Human history must always be studied in relation to industry and exchange [Marx/Engels] |
Full Idea: The 'history of humanity' must always be studied and treated in relation to the history of industry and exchange. | |
From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.A) | |
A reaction: There is a lot of truth in this, but why did the Greeks produce Pythagoras, or the Jews produce Jesus, or the British produce Sid Vicious? Two very similar industrial societies can produce very different cultures. Individuals can make a difference. |
5286 | Most historians are trapped in the illusions of their own epoch [Marx/Engels] |
Full Idea: Most historians see in history just the political actions of princes and states, religious and all sorts of theoretical struggles, and in particular in each historical epoch have had to share the illusion of that epoch. | |
From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.B) | |
A reaction: Is it an illusion of our epoch that we share the illusions of our epoch? It seems unfair to say that Marx and Engels can see beyond the illusions of their epoch, but some historian writing about the Wars of the Roses can't. Princes were important. |