22 ideas
7914 | To try to be wise all on one's own is folly [Rochefoucauld] |
Full Idea: To try to be wise all on one's own is sheer folly. | |
From: La Rochefoucauld (Maxims [1663], 231) | |
A reaction: I agree strongly with this. There are counter-examples, of whom Spinoza may be the greatest, and Nietzsche thought that philosophy was essentially a solitary business, but most of us are not Spinoza or Nietzsche. |
23825 | We seek truth only because it is good [Weil] |
Full Idea: Truth is sought not because it is truth but because it is good. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace (9 extracts) [1943], p.233) | |
A reaction: A perfect instance of modern platonism. A few weird people seem to enjoy lying. Personally I cannot find enough content in the word 'good' in such claims. |
335 | Do the gods also hold different opinions about what is right and honourable? [Plato] |
Full Idea: Do the gods too hold different opinions about what is right, and similarly about what is honourable and dishonourable, good and bad? | |
From: Plato (Euthyphro [c.398 BCE], 07e) |
7118 | La Rochefoucauld's idea of disguised self-love implies an unconscious mind [Rochefoucauld, by Sartre] |
Full Idea: La Rochefoucauld is one of the first to have made use of the unconscious without naming it: for him, amour-propre conceals itself in the most diverse disguises. | |
From: report of La Rochefoucauld (Maxims [1663]) by Jean-Paul Sartre - Transcendence of the Ego I (C) | |
A reaction: It seems odd that no one before that ever thought that someone might have hidden motives of which even they themselves were unaware. How about Iago, or Macbeth, or Hamlet? It is a profound change in our view of human nature. |
23826 | Beauty, goodness and truth are only achieved by applying full attention [Weil] |
Full Idea: The authentic and pure values - truth, beauty and goodness - in the activity of a human being are the result of one and same act, a certain application of the full attention to the object. Teaching should only aim to train the attention for such an act. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace (9 extracts) [1943], p.234) | |
A reaction: A distinctive Weil idea, that absorbed 'attention' produces almost mystical results. I am not convinced that a great still life painter (than which there is no higher criterion of attention) achieves contact with goodness thereby. But attention is good! |
7912 | Judging by effects, love looks more like hatred than friendship [Rochefoucauld] |
Full Idea: If love be judged by its most visible effects it looks more like hatred than friendship. | |
From: La Rochefoucauld (Maxims [1663], 072) | |
A reaction: Presumably he is thinking of pursuit, possession and jealousy. The remark is plausible if you add the word 'sometimes' to it, but as a universal generalisation it is ridiculous, the product of a society where they competed to exceed in cynicism. |
23808 | There are two goods - the absolute good we want, and the reachable opposite of evil [Weil] |
Full Idea: There are two goods - one which is the opposite of evil, and one which is the absolute. …That which we want is the absolute good. That which is within our reach is the good which is correlated with evil. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace (9 extracts) [1943], p.142) | |
A reaction: Elsewhere she seems in tune with the thought of Nietzsche (whom she despised) that good and evil are false social constructs which are quite different from healthy values. Weil, of course, sees the absolute as transcendent. |
23833 | The good is a nothingness, and yet real [Weil] |
Full Idea: The good seems to us a nothingness, since there is no thing that is good. But this nothingness is not unreal. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace (9 extracts) [1943], p.278) | |
A reaction: A neat move in the notoriously difficult platonic problem of specifying the actual nature of the good. |
7915 | Supreme cleverness is knowledge of the real value of things [Rochefoucauld] |
Full Idea: Supreme cleverness is knowledge of the real value of things. | |
From: La Rochefoucauld (Maxims [1663], 244) | |
A reaction: Good. Right at the heart of wisdom is some kind of grasp of right values. It is so complex and subtle that it seems like pure intuition, but I am sure that reason is involved. 'Intelligent' people tend to be better at it. Some justifications can be given. |
7917 | Realising our future misery is a kind of happiness [Rochefoucauld] |
Full Idea: To realise how much misery we have to face is in itself a kind of happiness. | |
From: La Rochefoucauld (Maxims [1663], 570) | |
A reaction: Probably true. Knowing that you have got hold of the truth is a sort of happiness in any area, no matter how grim the truth. However, a happy life could easily be poisoned by brooding on the future. Should the happily married brood on future solitude? |
7913 | Virtue doesn't go far without the support of vanity [Rochefoucauld] |
Full Idea: Virtue would not go far without vanity to bear it company. | |
From: La Rochefoucauld (Maxims [1663], 200) | |
A reaction: Rochefoucauld's cynicism gets a bit tedious, but lovers of virtue must face up to this possibility when they consider what motivates them. At the heart of Aristotle there is a missing question, of what is so good about right-functioning and virtue. |
7916 | True friendship is even rarer than true love [Rochefoucauld] |
Full Idea: Rare though true love may be, true friendship is rarer still. | |
From: La Rochefoucauld (Maxims [1663], 473) | |
A reaction: This seems to be true. Our culture doesn't encourage friendship as a high ideal. Are women better at friendship than men? Which culture, past or present, led to the greatest flourishing of friendship? Epicurus's Garden? |
9299 | We are bored by people to whom we ourselves are boring [Rochefoucauld] |
Full Idea: Almost always we are bored by people to whom we ourselves are boring. | |
From: La Rochefoucauld (Maxims [1663], 555) | |
A reaction: An obvious exception would be a celebrity being bored with their fans. Their very excess of interest is precisely what is boring. If two people communicate well, it is unlikely that either of them will ever be bored. |
23831 | The essence of power is illusory prestige [Weil] |
Full Idea: Prestige, which is an illusion, is the very essence of power. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace (9 extracts) [1943], p.255) | |
A reaction: It is hard to maintain illusory prestige if there is no actual power behind it. |
23830 | A group is only dangerous if it endorses an abstract entity [Weil] |
Full Idea: Any group which has not secreted an abstract entity will probably not be dangerous. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace (9 extracts) [1943], p.255) | |
A reaction: Written in the 1930s, the era of many political -isms. No group can be united if it lacks a clear label, and a few simple slogans. |
23809 | Our only social duty is to try to limit evil [Weil] |
Full Idea: Our only duty with regard to the social is to try to limit the evil of it. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace (9 extracts) [1943], p.143) | |
A reaction: This is one of Weil's occasional remarks that have an anarchist flavour. I increasingly sympathise with this less idealistic view as I get older. |
23807 | The collective is the one and only object of false idolatry [Weil] |
Full Idea: The Great Beast is the great object of idolatry, the only ersatz of God. …Only one thing can be taken as an end, for in relation to the human person it possesses a kind of transcendence: this is the collective. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace (9 extracts) [1943], p.140) | |
A reaction: [Society as the Great Beast is in Republic Bk 6] She is referring to both fascist and communist states. Weil seems to be a left-wing liberal, with a tendency towards anarchism, because her priority is the individual, not the group. |
23810 | Charity is the only love, and you can feel that for a country (a place with traditions), but not a nation [Weil] |
Full Idea: We must not have any other love than charity. A nation cannot be an object of charity. But a country can be one - as an environment bearing traditions which are eternal. Every country can be that. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace (9 extracts) [1943], p.146) | |
A reaction: This definitely strikes a chord with me. I am English and British to the core, but don't feel any love at all for the current central institutions of the state. But I love my island, and its history, and its culture, and its style. |
23811 | If effort is from necessity rather than for a good, it is slavery [Weil] |
Full Idea: To strive from necessity and not for some good - ...that is always slavery. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace (9 extracts) [1943], p.180) | |
A reaction: It is usual to see the possibility of anarchism as the starting point for political thinking, but I think for Weil the state of slavery has that role. |
336 | Is what is pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because they love it? (the 'Euthyphro Question') [Plato] |
Full Idea: Is what is pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because they love it? | |
From: Plato (Euthyphro [c.398 BCE], 10a) | |
A reaction: The famous Euthyphro Question, the key question about the supposed religious basis of morality. The answer of Socrates is Idea 337. |
337 | It seems that the gods love things because they are pious, rather than making them pious by loving them [Plato] |
Full Idea: So things are loved by the gods because they are pious, and not pious because they are loved? It seems so. | |
From: Plato (Euthyphro [c.398 BCE], 10e) | |
A reaction: Socrates' answer to the Euthyphro Question (see Idea 336). The form of piety precedes the gods. |
23765 | The soul is the intrinsic value of a human [Weil] |
Full Idea: The soul is the human being considered as having a value in itself. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace (9 extracts) [1943], p.294) | |
A reaction: [from 'Gravity and Grace'] A rather modern view, treating the soul as an abstraction, rather than as an entity. |