57 ideas
| 23890 | For Plato true wisdom is supernatural [Plato, by Weil] |
| Full Idea: It is evident that Plato regards true wisdom as something supernatural. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Simone Weil - God in Plato p.61 | |
| A reaction: Taken literally, I assume this is wrong, but we can empathise with the thought. Wisdom has the feeling of rising above the level of mere knowledge, to achieve the overview I associate with philosophy. |
| 23948 | Wisdom needs both thought and passion, with each reflecting on the other [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: Wisdom is a matter of living both thoughtfully and passionately, bringing understanding to bear on every passion and forcing every passion into the light of reflection. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 3.4) | |
| A reaction: His main point is that passion is a key part of wisdom, and the idea that wisdom is cold and detached is quite false. Good point. At the very least, wise people must relate sympathetically to others. |
| 3060 | Plato never mentions Democritus, and wished to burn his books [Plato, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Plato, who mentions nearly all the ancient philosophers, nowhere speaks of Democritus; he wished to burn all of his books, but was persuaded that it was futile. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.7.8 |
| 23942 | Philosophy is creating an intellectual conceptual structure for life [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is conceptual sculpture, the shaping and developing of the intellectual structures within which we live our lives. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], Intro.1) | |
| A reaction: Nice. I tend to see philosophy as conceptual analysis (though creating new concepts doesn't quite fit that), but the vision of creating a huge conceptual sculpture sounds good. I would call it a system. (See my book, 'Natural Ideas'!). |
| 23945 | Reason is actually passions, guided by perspicacious reflection [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: What is called 'reason' is the passions enlightened, 'illuminated' by reflection and supported by a perspicacious deliberation that the emotions in their urgency normally excluded. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], Intro.4) | |
| A reaction: To suggest that reason more or less is emotions strikes me as missing the point of 'perspicacious', which takes in facts outside our emotional world. We excitedly climb a cliff, then stop when we see the rocks are crumbling. |
| 23891 | Two contradictories force us to find a relation which will correlate them [Plato, by Weil] |
| Full Idea: Where contradictions appear there is a correlation of contraries, which is relation. If a contradiction is imposed on the intelligence, it is forced to think of a relation to transform the contradiction into a correlation, which draws the soul higher. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Simone Weil - God in Plato p.70 | |
| A reaction: A much better account of the dialectic than anything I have yet seen in Hegel. For the first time I see some sense in it. A contradiction is not a falsehood, and it must be addressed rather than side-stepped. A kink in the system, that needs ironing. |
| 14502 | Plato's idea of 'structure' tends to be mathematically expressed [Plato, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: 'Structure' tends to be characterized by Plato as something that is mathematically expressed. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects V.3 iv | |
| A reaction: [Koslicki is drawing on Verity Harte here] |
| 17948 | Plato's Forms meant that the sophists only taught the appearance of wisdom and virtue [Plato, by Nehamas] |
| Full Idea: Plato's theory of Forms allowed him to claim that the sophists and other opponents were trapped in the world of appearance. What they therefore taught was only apparent wisdom and virtue. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Alexander Nehamas - Eristic,Antilogic,Sophistic,Dialectic p.118 |
| 20906 | Platonists argue for the indivisible triangle-in-itself [Plato, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The Platonists, on the basis of purely logical arguments, posit the existence of an indivisible 'triangle in itself'. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) 316a15 | |
| A reaction: A helpful confirmation that geometrical figures really are among the Forms (bearing in mind that numbers are not, because they contain one another). What shape is the Form of the triangle? |
| 3039 | When Diogenes said he could only see objects but not their forms, Plato said it was because he had eyes but no intellect [Plato, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: When Diogenes told Plato he saw tables and cups, but not 'tableness' and 'cupness', Plato replied that this was because Diogenes had eyes but no intellect. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 06.2.6 |
| 556 | If there is one Form for both the Form and its participants, they must have something in common [Aristotle on Plato] |
| Full Idea: If there is the same Form for the Forms and for their participants, then they must have something in common. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 991a |
| 563 | If gods are like men, they are just eternal men; similarly, Forms must differ from particulars [Aristotle on Plato] |
| Full Idea: We say there is the form of man, horse and health, but nothing else, making the same mistake as those who say that there are gods but that they are in the form of men. They just posit eternal men, and here we are not positing forms but eternal sensibles. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 997b |
| 557 | A Form is a cause of things only in the way that white mixed with white is a cause [Aristotle on Plato] |
| Full Idea: A Form is a cause of things only in the way that white mixed with white is a cause. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 991a |
| 565 | The Forms cannot be changeless if they are in changing things [Aristotle on Plato] |
| Full Idea: The Forms could not be changeless if they were in changing things. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 998a |
| 9607 | The greatest discovery in human thought is Plato's discovery of abstract objects [Brown,JR on Plato] |
| Full Idea: The greatest discovery in the history of human thought is Plato's discovery of abstract objects. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by James Robert Brown - Philosophy of Mathematics Ch. 2 | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 2860! Given the diametrically opposed views, it is clearly likely that Plato's central view is the most important idea in the history of human thought, even if it is wrong. |
| 13263 | We can grasp whole things in science, because they have a mathematics and a teleology [Plato, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Due to the mathematical nature of structure and the teleological cause underlying the creation of Platonic wholes, these wholes are intelligible, and are in fact the proper objects of science. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 5.3 | |
| A reaction: I like this idea, because it pays attention to the connection between how we conceive objects to be, and how we are able to think about objects. Only examining these two together enables us to grasp metaphysics. |
| 13261 | Plato sees an object's structure as expressible in mathematics [Plato, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: The 'structure' of an object tends to be characterised by Plato as something that is mathematically expressible. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 5.3 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be pure Pythagoreanism (see Idea 644). Plato is pursuing Pythagoras's research programme, of trying to find mathematics buried in every aspect of reality. |
| 13265 | Plato was less concerned than Aristotle with the source of unity in a complex object [Plato, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Plato was less concerned than Aristotle with the project of how to account, in completely general terms, for the source of unity within a mereologically complex object. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 5.5 | |
| A reaction: Plato seems to have simply asserted that some sort of harmony held things together. Aristotles puts the forms [eidos] within objects, rather than external, so he has to give a fuller account of what is going on in an object. He never managed it! |
| 593 | Plato's holds that there are three substances: Forms, mathematical entities, and perceptible bodies [Plato, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Plato's doctrine was that the Forms and mathematicals are two substances and that the third substance is that of perceptible bodies. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1028b |
| 13260 | Plato says wholes are either containers, or they're atomic, or they don't exist [Plato, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Plato considers a 'container' model for wholes (which are disjoint from their parts) [Parm 144e3-], and a 'nihilist' model, in which only wholes are mereological atoms, and a 'bare pluralities' view, in which wholes are not really one at all. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 5.2 | |
| A reaction: [She cites Verity Harte for this analysis of Plato] The fourth, and best, seems to be that wholes are parts which fall under some unifying force or structure or principle. |
| 11237 | Only universals have essence [Plato, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Plato argues that only universals have essence. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.4 |
| 11238 | Plato and Aristotle take essence to make a thing what it is [Plato, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Plato and Aristotle have a shared general conception of essence: the essence of a thing is what that thing is simply in virtue of itself and in virtue of being the very thing it is. It answers the question 'What is this very thing?' | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.4 |
| 23957 | We often trust our intuitions as rational, despite their lack of reflection [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: We trust certain rational 'intuitions' in ourselves which dispense with reflection but seem to follow an indisputable logic. (note: it is thought ineffable because reflection is the paradigm of rationality. It is no less rational than reflection). | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Solomon uses the example to support that emotion is part of rationality. Since this view of intuition is more or less mine (that intuition can be knowledge, when the justification is obscure), it seems to support his claim. |
| 17085 | A good explanation totally rules out the opposite explanation (so Forms are required) [Plato, by Ruben] |
| Full Idea: For Plato, an acceptable explanation is one such that there is no possibility of there being the opposite explanation at all, and he thought that only explanations in terms of the Forms, but never physical explanations, could meet this requirement. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by David-Hillel Ruben - Explaining Explanation Ch 2 | |
| A reaction: [Republic 436c is cited] |
| 23943 | Distinguishing reason from passion is based on an archaic 'faculty' theory [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: The distinction between reason and passion is based on an archaic 'faculty' psychology of the human soul. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], Intro.2) | |
| A reaction: I like faculties, for philosophical purposes, as explanatory tools to account for our metaphysical and conceptual framework, but this point is well made. The danger is that we impose sharp divisions, where reality is more complex. |
| 23952 | I say bodily chemistry and its sensations have nothing to do with emotions [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: I shall be making the claim (sujectively) that the chemistry of the body and the sensations caused by that chemistry have nothing to do with the emotions. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: Surely an unexpected stabbing pain causes fear? Isn't pain supposed to trigger appropriate emotions? That is not to say that emotions are a feature of body chemistry. |
| 23954 | Emotions are judgements about ourselves, and our place in the world [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: An emotion is a basic judgement about our Selves and our place in the world, the projection of the values and ideals, structures and mythologies | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: Solomon's main theory. What about the Frege-Geach problem - that I feel emotions (and judgements) about fictions and remote events, in which my personal concerns and involvement are zero? Presumably these emotions are parasitic on his primary type? |
| 23960 | Emotions are defined by their objects [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: Direction, scope and focus set the stage, but the specific object is what defines the emotion. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 7.3) | |
| A reaction: This is presumably the main distinction between an emotion and a mood. He emphasises that the objects are subjective, rather than factual. |
| 23961 | The heart of an emotion is its judgement of values and morality [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: The heart of every emotion is its value judgements, its appraisals of gain and loss, its indictment of offences and its praise of virtue, its often Manichean judgement of 'good' and 'evil'. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 7.6) | |
| A reaction: He adds blame and excuse. Some of our strongest emotions can just be identifications, rather than judgements, as when we learn of someone else's triumph or disaster. On the whole I agree, though. This is important for Aristotelian virtue theory. |
| 23965 | Emotions can be analysed under fifteen headings [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: Emotions can be analysed by direction, scope/focus, object, criteria, status, evaluations, responsibility, intersubjectivity, distance, mythology, desire, power, strategy. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 8) | |
| A reaction: These are the headings Solomon actually applies in his breakdown of most of the main emotions. See his book for explanations of each of them. If people say philosophy makes no progress, I'd at least point to helpful thinking of this kind. |
| 23959 | Some emotions are externally directed, others internally [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: 'Outer-directed' emotions (such as fear) are about particular situations, objects, or other people. …The 'inner-directed' emotions (such as vanity or regret) take one's Self as their focal point. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 7.1) | |
| A reaction: This is Solomon's own distinction. Some of the emotions he cites, such as vanity, seem to me more like long term virtues or vices, rather than emotions. He did say, though, that you can have emotions without feeling, such as long-term hate. |
| 23936 | It is only our passions which give our lives meaning [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: It is our passions, and our passions alone, which provide our lives with meaning. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], Pref) | |
| A reaction: This presumably entails that the lives of plants have no meaning. It also seems to be rather egotistical, since it is not clear why anyone else's life should have meaning for me, if I don't directly experience their passions. Interesting, though. |
| 23963 | Which emotions we feel depends on our sense of our own powers [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: An emotion depends on an estimation of our own power. If a lover is jealous they welcome confrontation, but if they are just envious they assume impotence from the start. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 7.12) | |
| A reaction: This seems particularly true of politics, where the possibility (or not) of influencing events makes a huge difference. We can picture a huge variety of emotions when a fight breaks out in public. |
| 23946 | The passions are subjective, concerning what is important to me, rather than facts [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: The passions are uniquely subjective, although they sometimes pretend to have a certain objective status. They are not concerned with the world, but with my world. They are not concerned with 'the facts', but with what is important. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], Intro.5) | |
| A reaction: Values pick out what is 'important'. This idea sums up Solomon's rather solipsistic view of emotions. I accept that emotions are responses, rather than objective judgements, but there is objectivity in their social dimension. Why care about politics? |
| 23940 | Emotions are strategies for maximising our sense of dignity and self-esteem [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: Every emotion is a strategy, a purposive attempt to structure our world in such a way as to maximise our sense of personal dignity and self-esteem. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], Pref) | |
| A reaction: This is the main thesis of Solomon's book. There doesn't seem to be much to admire in what he takes to be our chief motivation. I would put a much more social spin on it - that our underlying urge is not self-promotion, but to fit into a community. |
| 23949 | Passions exist as emotions, moods and desires, which all generate meaning [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: There are three fundamental species passions - emotions, moods, and desires. …What all passions have in common is their ability to bestow meaning to the circumstances of our lives. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: Moods are said to be 'generalised emotions', where emotions are about something, and desires add objectives. Solomon criticises rigid divisions between mental faculties and states, but it is hard to disagree with this distinction. |
| 23956 | The Myth of the Passions says they are irrational, uncontrolled and damaging [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: The Myth of the Passions says emotions are irrational forces beyond our control, disruptive and stupid, unthinking and counterproductive, against our 'better interests', and often ridiculous. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: The Myth is very unlikely to be correct, for evolutionary reasons. How could there be a selection for a mental feature which distorts truths and leads to dangerous misjudgements? Most emotions motivate us to act successfully. So why do some run wild? |
| 23953 | Feeling is a superficial aspect of emotion, and may be indeterminate, or even absent [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: Feeling is the ornamentation of emotion, not its essence. ...For example, what is the difference in feeling between embarrassment and shame? …We may also experience an emotion like subdued anger or envy with no feeling. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: This is very persuasive, and supports the idea that what matters in an emotion is its content, rather than its phenomenology. He adds later that we are often mistaken about our own emotions. |
| 23964 | There are no 'basic' emotions, only socially prevalent ones [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: There are no 'basic' emotions, only those emotions which are prevalent in a particular society. This reduction to a small set makes it impossible to appreciate the richness of our emotional lives. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 8) | |
| A reaction: He cites Descartes as a culprit, and John Watson's famous list of fear, dependency and rage. I think Solomon is probably right. He suggests that the lists are usually individualistic and negative. Individuals may have their private basics! |
| 23937 | It is reason which needs the anchorage of passions, rather than vice versa [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: It is not the passions who require the controls and rationalisations of reason. Rather, it is reason that requires the anchorage and earthy wisdom of the passions. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], Pref) | |
| A reaction: I like the second half of this. We don't just follow the winds of arguments; we decide into which of the many conflicting winds we should steer the rational arguments, and that needs passions. Only a fool doesn't rationally control their passions. |
| 23947 | Dividing ourselves into confrontational reason and passion destroys our harmonious whole [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: To divide the soul into reason and passion …divides us against ourselves, forcing us each to be defensively half a person, instead of a harmonious whole. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: This is the best aspect of Solomon's book. I'm not sure, though, how this works in practice. Should I allow the winds of emotion to alter the course of my reasoning, or stunt my feelings by always insisting that reason plays a part? That's too dualist! |
| 23958 | The supposed irrationality of our emotions is often tactless or faulty expression of them [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: What is often called the 'irrationality' of our emotions is rather the faulty timing or inept choice of their expressions. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: The irrationality can be pretty obvious when having a tantrum over trivia, or resenting some tiny slight, or falling in love with a dead film star. That said, his point is well made. |
| 1651 | Plato wanted to somehow control and purify the passions [Vlastos on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Plato put high on his agenda a project which did not figure in Socrates' programme at all: the hygienic conditioning of the passions. This cannot be an intellectual process, as argument cannot touch them. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.88 | |
| A reaction: This is the standard traditional view of any thinker who exaggerates the importance and potential of reason in our lives. |
| 9471 | Intensions are creatures of darkness which should be exorcised [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Intensions are creatures of darkness and I shall rejoice with the reader when they are exorcised. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes [1955], §II) | |
| A reaction: Quine seems to be in a diminshing minority with this view. For 'intensions' read 'meanings', presumably. |
| 3324 | Plato's whole philosophy may be based on being duped by reification - a figure of speech [Benardete,JA on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Plato is liable to the charge of having been duped by a figure of speech, albeit the most profound of all, the trope of reification. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.12 | |
| A reaction: That might be a plausible account if his view was ridiculous, but given how many powerful friends Plato has, especially in the philosophy of mathematics, we should assume he was cleverer than that. |
| 7503 | Plato never refers to examining the conscience [Plato, by Foucault] |
| Full Idea: Plato never speaks of the examination of conscience - never! | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Michel Foucault - On the Genealogy of Ethics p.276 | |
| A reaction: Plato does imply some sort of self-evident direct knowledge about that nature of a healthy soul. Presumably the full-blown concept of conscience is something given from outside, from God. In 'Euthyphro', Plato asserts the primacy of morality (Idea 337). |
| 2173 | As religion and convention collapsed, Plato sought morals not just in knowledge, but in the soul [Williams,B on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Once gods and fate and social expectation were no longer there, Plato felt it necessary to discover ethics inside human nature, not just as ethical knowledge (Socrates' view), but in the structure of the soul. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Bernard Williams - Shame and Necessity II - p.43 | |
| A reaction: anti Charles Taylor |
| 23944 | Emotions are our life force, and the source of most of our values [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: Emotions are the life force of the soul, the source of most of our values (not all: there is always hunger, thirst, and fatigue). | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], Intro.4) | |
| A reaction: I am beginning to worry that Solomon's account is too individual and subjective. My personal values may derive from my emotions, but I think human and social values are based much more on objective observations and facts. We are social, not solipsists. |
| 23962 | Lovers adopt the interests of their beloved, rather than just valuing them [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: It is often said that love takes the interests of the lover as being more important than one's own; but here again we would rather say that love takes the lovers interests as its own. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 7.9) | |
| A reaction: This is because he sees emotions as almost entirely self-centred, and almost never altruistic. To me the evolutionary picture suggest a more social view. Many people want the lives of their ex- to go well, without knowing their new interests. |
| 9274 | Plato's legacy to European thought was the Good, the Beautiful and the True [Plato, by Gray] |
| Full Idea: Plato's legacy to European thought was a trio of capital letters - the Good, the Beautiful and the True. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by John Gray - Straw Dogs 2.8 | |
| A reaction: It seems to have been Baumgarten who turned this into a slogan (Idea 8117). Gray says these ideals are lethal, but I identify with them very strongly, and am quite happy to see the good life as an attempt to find the right balance between them. |
| 94 | Pleasure is better with the addition of intelligence, so pleasure is not the good [Plato, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Plato says the life of pleasure is more desirable with the addition of intelligence, and if the combination is better, pleasure is not the good. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics 1172b27 | |
| A reaction: It is obvious why we like pleasure, but not why intelligence makes it 'better'. Maybe it is just because we enjoy intelligence? |
| 17947 | Plato decided that the virtuous and happy life was the philosophical life [Plato, by Nehamas] |
| Full Idea: Plato came to the conclusion that virtue and happiness consist in the life of philosophy itself. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Alexander Nehamas - Eristic,Antilogic,Sophistic,Dialectic p.117 | |
| A reaction: This view is obviously ridiculous, because it largely excludes almost the entire human race, which sees philosophy as a cul-de-sac, even if it is good. But virtue and happiness need some serious thought. |
| 6015 | Plato, unusually, said that theoretical and practical wisdom are inseparable [Plato, by Kraut] |
| Full Idea: Two virtues that are ordinarily kept distinct - theoretical and practical wisdom - are joined by Plato; he thinks that neither one can be fully possessed unless it is combined with the other. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Richard Kraut - Plato | |
| A reaction: I get the impression that this doctrine comes from Socrates, whose position is widely reported as 'intellectualist'. Aristotle certainly held the opposite view. |
| 23941 | 'Absurdity' is just the result of our wrong choices in life [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: The 'absurdity of life' is nothing than our own unsatisfactory choices, typically of defensiveness and resentment, competition, and 'meaningless' routines. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], Pref) | |
| A reaction: He seems to have Camus particularly in mind. He sees love and co-operation as the cure. I sort of agree, but somewhere in all of our minds there lurks an abyss, with the good life looking like a distraction from it. |
| 2912 | Plato is boring [Nietzsche on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Plato is boring. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Friedrich Nietzsche - Twilight of the Idols 9.2 |
| 23955 | Ideologies are mythologies which guide our actions [Solomon] |
| Full Idea: Mythologies become ideologies when we play a role in them, live in them, take action and take sides. | |
| From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 6.1) | |
| A reaction: This may well be a sceptical American attitude to ideology, since 'mythology' implies a fiction. But I think for most of us there exists the possibility of a good ideology, which correctly points us towards a better life. Dangerous things, though! |
| 1526 | Almost everyone except Plato thinks that time could not have been generated [Plato, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: With a single exception (Plato) everyone agrees about time - that it is not generated. Democritus says time is an obvious example of something not generated. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Physics 251b14 |