Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Statesman', 'Opus Maius (major works)' and 'Selections from Prison Notebooks'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts


17 ideas

1. Philosophy / F. Analytic Philosophy / 2. Analysis by Division
Whenever you perceive a community of things, you should also hunt out differences in the group [Plato]
     Full Idea: The rule is that when one perceives first the community between the members of a group of many things, one should not desist until one sees in it all those differences that are located in classes.
     From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 285b)
     A reaction: He goes on to recommend the opposite as well - see community even when there appears to be nothing but differences. I take this to be analysis, just as much as modern linguistic approaches are. Analyse the world, not language.
2. Reason / D. Definition / 2. Aims of Definition
To reveal a nature, divide down, and strip away what it has in common with other things [Plato]
     Full Idea: Let's take the kind posited and cut it in two, .then follow the righthand part of what we've cut, and hold onto things that the sophist is associated with until we strip away everything he has in common with other things, then display his peculiar nature.
     From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 264e)
     A reaction: This seems to be close to Aristotle's account of definition, when he is trying to get at what-it-is-to-be some thing. But if you strip away everything the definiendum has in common with other things, will anything remain?
No one wants to define 'weaving' just for the sake of weaving [Plato]
     Full Idea: I don't suppose that anyone with any sense would want to hunt down the definition of 'weaving' for the sake of weaving itself.
     From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 285d)
     A reaction: The point seems to be that the definition brings out the connections between weaving and other activities and objects, thus enlarging our understanding.
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 3. Innate Knowledge / b. Recollection doctrine
The soul gets its goodness from god, and its evil from previous existence. [Plato]
     Full Idea: From its composer the soul possesses all beautiful things, but from its former condition, everything that proves to be harsh and unjust in heaven.
     From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 273b)
     A reaction: A neat move to explain the origins of evil (or rather, to shift the problem of evil to a long long way from here). This view presumably traces back to the views of Empedocles on good and evil. Can the soul acquire evil in its current existence?
19. Language / F. Communication / 1. Rhetoric
The question of whether or not to persuade comes before the science of persuasion [Plato]
     Full Idea: The science of whether one must persuade or not must rule over the science capable of persuading.
     From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 304c)
     A reaction: Plato probably thinks that reason has to be top of the pyramid, but there is always the Nietzschean/romantic question of why we should place such a value on what is rational.
21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 5. Natural Beauty
Non-physical beauty can only be shown clearly by speech [Plato]
     Full Idea: The bodiless things, being the most beautiful and the greatest, are only shown with clarity by speech and nothing else.
     From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 286a)
     A reaction: Unfortunately this will be true of warped and ugly ideas as well.
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 2. Elements of Virtue Theory / f. The Mean
The arts produce good and beautiful things by preserving the mean [Plato]
     Full Idea: It is by preserving the mean that arts produce everything that is good and beautiful.
     From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 284b)
24. Political Theory / B. Nature of a State / 1. Purpose of a State
The state should produce higher civilisations for all, in tune with the economic apparatus [Gramsci]
     Full Idea: The role of the State is always that of creating new and higher types of civilisation; of adapting the 'civilisation' and the morality of the broades popular masses to the necessities of the continuous development of the economic apparatus of production.
     From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Collective')
     A reaction: This makes education virtually the prime role of the state. Reminiscent of Sir John Reith's original dream, in the 1930s, for the BBC. Many marxists feel that the economy is in direct conflict with morality and civilisation.
24. Political Theory / B. Nature of a State / 2. State Legitimacy / d. General will
Eventually political parties lose touch with the class they represent, which is dangerous [Gramsci]
     Full Idea: At a certain point in their lives, social classes become detached from their traditional parties. In that particular form ...the parties are no longer recognised by their class as its exopression. ...The field is then open for violent solutions.
     From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Parties')
     A reaction: Left wing parties pursue ideologies that don't connect with the actual current interests of the working class, and righ wing parties are taken over by rich elites who don't value safe traditonal communities. (This thought is resonant in the 2018 UK).
24. Political Theory / C. Ruling a State / 2. Leaders / a. Autocracy
Caesarism emerges when two forces in society are paralysed in conflict [Gramsci]
     Full Idea: Caesarism (as the emergence of a 'heroic' personality) expresses a situation in which the forces in conflict balance each other in a catastrophic manner ...which can only terminate in their reciprocal destruction.
     From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Caesarism')
     A reaction: He goes on to distinguish progressive and reactionary versions of Caesarism. Gramsci's interest is in the circumstances that throw up such people. Marx had identified 'Bonapartism'.
24. Political Theory / C. Ruling a State / 2. Leaders / c. Despotism
Totalitarian parties cut their members off from other cultural organisations [Gramsci]
     Full Idea: A totalitarian party ensures that members find in that particular party all the satisfactions that they formerly found in a multiplicity of organisations. They break the threads that bind them to extraneous cultural organisms.
     From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Organisation')
     A reaction: British parties traditionally had a 'club house', where you could do most of your socialising. Presumably Nazis left the church, and various interest groups.
24. Political Theory / C. Ruling a State / 3. Government / a. Government
What is the function of a parliament? Does it even constitute a part of the State structure? [Gramsci]
     Full Idea: The question has to be asked: do parliaments, even in fact constitute a part of the State structure? In other words, what is the real function?
     From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Parliament')
     A reaction: Nice question. In the UK it is only the cabinet which has active power. Backbench MPs are usually very frustrated, especially if their party has a comfortable majority, and their vote is not precious. They are privileged lobbyists.
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 5. Democracy / a. Nature of democracy
Democracy is the worst of good constitutions, but the best of bad constitutions [Plato, by Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Plato judged that when the constitution is decent, democracy is the worst of them, but when they are bad it is the best.
     From: report of Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 302e) by Aristotle - Politics 1289b07
     A reaction: Aristotle denies that a good oligarchy is superior. What of technocracy? The challenge is to set up institutions which ensure the health of the democracy. The big modern problem is populists who lie.
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 6. Liberalism / g. Liberalism critique
Liberalism's weakness is its powerful rigid bureaucracy [Gramsci]
     Full Idea: Liberalism's weakness is the bureacracy - the crystallisation of the leading personnel - which exercises power, and at a certain point it becomes a caste.
     From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Hegemony')
     A reaction: This sounds more like what is called 'the Establishment' in Britain, which is the hidden controllers of power, rather than the administrators (whose role is only despised by right-wingers).
25. Social Practice / B. Equalities / 2. Political equality
Perfect political equality requires economic equality [Gramsci]
     Full Idea: The idea that complete and perfect political equality cannot exist without economic equality ...remains correct.
     From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'The State')
     A reaction: In the west we are living in a period (2018) when the top 0.1% of the wealthy are racing away, creating huge inequality. Their wealth controls the media, and it seems unrestrainable. The belief that we live in a 'democracy' is an illusion.
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 8. Scientific Essentialism / d. Knowing essences
No one even knows the nature and properties of a fly - why it has that colour, or so many feet [Bacon,R]
     Full Idea: No one is so wise regarding the natural world as to know with certainty all the truths that concern the nature and properties of a single fly, or to know the proper causes of its color and why it has so many feet, neither more nor less.
     From: Roger Bacon (Opus Maius (major works) [1254], I.10), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 23.6
     A reaction: Pasnau quotes this in the context of 'occult' qualities. It is scientific essentialism, because Bacon clearly takes it that the explanation of these things would be found within the essence of the fly, if we could only get at it.
28. God / A. Divine Nature / 2. Divine Nature
Only divine things can always stay the same, and bodies are not like that [Plato]
     Full Idea: It is fitting for only the most divine things of all to be always the same and in the same state and in the same respects, and the nature of body is not of this ordering.
     From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 269b)