5 ideas
| 22820 | Early Romantics sought a plurality of systems, in a quest for freedom [Hösle] |
| Full Idea: It was an early Romantic idea that there is necessarily a plurality of systems in which individuality is expressed; for a complete system would destroy freedom. | |
| From: Vittorio Hösle (A Short History of German Philosophy [2013], 7) | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear why you are free because you are locked into system that differs from that of other people. True freedom seems to be either no system, or continually remaking one's own system. Why is such freedom valuable? Freedom v truth? |
| 18265 | We don't judge by combining subject and concept; we get a concept by splitting up a judgement [Frege] |
| Full Idea: Instead of putting a judgement together out of an individual as subject and an already previously formed concept as predicate, we do the opposite and arrive at a concept by splitting up the content of possible judgement. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Boole calculus and the Concept script [1881], p.17) | |
| A reaction: This is behind holistic views of sentences, and hence of whole languages, and behind Quine's rejection of 'properties' inferred from the predicates in judgements. |
| 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. |
| 22819 | In the 18th century history came to be seen as progressive, rather than cyclical [Hösle] |
| Full Idea: The turning point in the history of the philosophy of history occurs in the eighteenth century, when the ancient cyclical model of Vico is superseded by the idea of progress. | |
| From: Vittorio Hösle (A Short History of German Philosophy [2013], 6) | |
| A reaction: He says that Hegel merely inherited this progressive view, rather than creating it. I'm not sure how widely held the cyclical view was. I don't recognise it in Shakespeare. Science and technology must have suggested progress. |
| 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. |