8 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). |
8417 | Direct realism is false, because defeasibility questions are essential to perceptual knowledge [Galloway] |
Full Idea: Since awareness of defeasibility issues is an essential prerequisite for any genuine perceptual knowledge of even straightforward physical objects, any realist theory of perception must be indirect or representative, rather than direct. | |
From: David Galloway (lectures [2007]), quoted by PG - lecture notes | |
A reaction: [a very compressed summary] A very interesting claim. The issue might be over what direct realism is actually claiming. If it claims full-blown knowledge, then the criticism seems good. But it might survive if it claimed rather less. |
13304 | Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius] |
Full Idea: In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes. | |
From: Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]), quoted by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 078 | |
A reaction: These remarks endorsing the infinite superiority of the educated to the uneducated seem to have been popular in late antiquity. It tends to be the religions which discourage great learning, especially in their emphasis on a single book. |
20820 | Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus] |
Full Idea: Posidonius defined time thus: it is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed and slowness. | |
From: report of Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42 | |
A reaction: Hm. Can we define motion or speed without alluding to time? Looks like we have to define them as a conjoined pair, which means we cannot fully understand either of them. |