5 ideas
| 22333 | Only language is understandable Being [Gadamer] |
| Full Idea: Being that can be understood is language. | |
| From: Hans-Georg Gadamer (Truth and Method [1960], p.450), quoted by Hans-Johann Glock - What is Analytic Philosophy? 5.2 | |
| A reaction: [also 1967 p.19] Glock quotes this to show that continental philosophers are just as linguistic in their approach as the analytic school. I think the main aim of representational painting is to grasp non-linguistic Being. |
| 12723 | The most primitive thing in substances is force, which leads to their actions and dispositions [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Since everything that one conceives in substances reduces to their actions and passions and to the dispositions that they have for this effect, I don't see how one can find there anything more primitive than the principle of all of this, which is force. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Jacques Lenfant [1693], 1693.11.25), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 4 | |
| A reaction: This is an attempt to connect Aristotelian essentialism with the notion of force in the new physics, and strikes me as an improvement on the original, and as good a basis for metaphysics as any I have heard of. |
| 20928 | Facts don't oppose values; they are integrated into each person's aspirations [Gadamer, by Zimmermann,J] |
| Full Idea: Gadamer shows that we cannot oppose facts to values, but that all facts are integrated into meaningful wholes through a personal commitment to some kind of vision of how things ought to be. | |
| From: report of Hans-Georg Gadamer (Truth and Method [1960]) by Jens Zimmermann - Hermeneutics: a very short introduction | |
| A reaction: Straw man here. Whoever said that facts were 'opposed' to values? Certainly not David Hume. Any sensible empiricist of that type would try to develop values that integrated nicely with the facts. Gadamer seems to be denying facts. |
| 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. |