7 ideas
| 19588 | The highest aim of philosophy is to combine all philosophies into a unity [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: He attains the maximum of a philosopher who combines all philosophies into a single philosophy | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments II [1798], 31) | |
| A reaction: I have found the epigraph for my big book! Recently a few narrowly analytical philosophers have attempted big books about everything (Sider, Heil, Chalmers), and they get a huge round of applause from me. |
| 19598 | Philosophy relies on our whole system of learning, and can thus never be complete [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Now all learning is connected - thus philosophy will never be complete. Only in the complete system of all learning will philosophy be truly visible. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments II [1798], 39) | |
| A reaction: Philosophy is evidently the unifying subject, which reveals the point of all the other subjects. It matches my maxim that 'science is the servant of philosophy'. |
| 19586 | Philosophers feed on problems, hoping they are digestible, and spiced with paradox [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: The philosopher lives on problems as the human being does on food. An insoluble problem is an indigestible food. What spice is to food, the paradoxical is to problems. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments II [1798], 09) | |
| A reaction: Novalis would presumably have disliked Hegel's dialectic, where the best food seems to be the indigestible. |
| 19587 | Philosophy aims to produce a priori an absolute and artistic world system [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy ...is the art of producing all our conceptions according to an absolute, artistic idea and of developing the thought of a world system a priori out of the depths of our spirit. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments II [1798], 19) | |
| A reaction: A lovely statement of the dream of building world systems by pure thought - embodying perfectly the view of philosophy despised by logical positivists and modern logical metaphysicians. The Novalis view will never die! I like 'artistic'. |
| 19597 | Logic (the theory of relations) should be applied to mathematics [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Ought not logic, the theory of relations, be applied to mathematics? | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments II [1798], 38) | |
| A reaction: Bolzano was 19 when his was written. I presume Novalis would have been excited by set theory (even though he was a hyper-romantic). |
| 5960 | When the soul is intelligent and harmonious, it is part of god and derives from god [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: The soul, when it has partaken of intelligence and reason and concord, is not merely a work but also a part of god and has come to be not by his agency but both from him as source and out of his substance. | |
| From: Plutarch (67: Platonic Questions [c.85], II.1001) | |
| A reaction: A most intriguing shift of view from earlier concepts of the psuché. How did this come about? This man is a pagan. The history is in the evolution of Platonism. See 'The Middle Platonists' by John Dillon. Davidson is also very impressed by reason. |
| 22456 | Maybe virtues conflict with each other, if some virtue needs a vice for its achievement [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Maybe so far from forming a unity ...., the virtues actually conflict with each other: that is, if someone has one of them he inevitably fails to have some other. ...Maybe he a man can only be good in one way be being bad in another. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Moral Realism and Moral Dilemma [1983], p.57) | |
| A reaction: She suggests the self-loathing needed to rein in evil desires. She cites Nietzsche having a similar thought. Presumably the ideal virtuous person has no such conflicts, and the self-loathing undermines eudaimonia. Unity in theory but not in practice? |