11 ideas
19451 | When absorbed in deep reflection, is your reason in control, or is it you? [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: When, submerged in deep reflection, you forget both yourself and your surroundings, is it you who controls reason, or is it rather reason that controls and absorbs you? | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], I) | |
A reaction: A delightful question, even if it looks like a false dichotomy. I'm not sure what to make of 'me', if my reason can be subtracted from it. Aquinas was one the same wavelength here. |
6386 | In no important way can psychology be reduced to the physical sciences [Davidson] |
Full Idea: There is no important sense in which psychology can be reduced to the physical sciences. | |
From: Donald Davidson (The Material Mind [1973], p.259) | |
A reaction: In no 'important' way can the beauty of the Lake District be reduced to geology - but it is geology. 'Important' to whom? To a metaphysician, I would say psychology does reduce to physics, and that is important, but it is not important to a psychologist. |
19450 | Reason, love and will are the highest perfections and essence of man - the purpose of his life [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Reason, love and power of will are perfections of man; they are his highest powers, his absolute essence in so far as he is man, the purpose of his existence. Man exists in order to think, love and will. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], I) | |
A reaction: Feuerbach was a notable atheist, but adopts a religious style of language which modern atheists would find rather alien. Personally I love talk of ideals and perfections. Ideals have been discredited in modern times, but need a revival. |
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. |
19448 | Consciousness is said to distinguish man from animals - consciousness of his own species [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: What constitutes the essential difference between man and animal? The most simple, general, and most widely held answer to this question is consciousness. Consciousness is given only in the case of a being to whom his species ...is an object of thought. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], I) | |
A reaction: Rather speculative. Since other species cohabit and breed only with their fellow species members, one might have thought they were aware of them. |
19454 | A God needs justice, kindness and wisdom, but those concepts don't depend on the concept of God [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: The concept of God depends on the concepts of justice, kindness and wisdom - a God who is not kind, not just, and not wise is no God. But these concepts do not depend on the concept of God. That a quality is possessed by God does not make it divine. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], II) | |
A reaction: This is part of Feuerbach's argument for atheism, but if you ask for the source of our human concepts of justice, kindness and wisdom, no one, I would have thought, could cite God for the role. |
19452 | The nature of God is an expression of human nature [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: God is the manifestation of man's inner nature, his expressed self. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], II) | |
A reaction: Even if you are a deeply committed theist, you have to concede some of this point. The perfections attributed to God are usually of human qualities. Leibniz, though, says that God has an infinity of perfection, mostly unknown to us. |
19453 | If love, goodness and personality are human, the God who is their source is anthropomorphic [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: If love, goodness, and personality are human determinations, the being which constitutes their source and ...their presupposition is also an anthropomorphism; so is the existence of God. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], II) | |
A reaction: It is certainly a struggle for the imagination to grasp a being which is characterised by idealised versions of human virtues, and yet has an intrinsic nature which is utterly different from humanity. |
19449 | Religion is the consciousness of the infinite [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Religion is the consciousness of the infinite. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], I) |
19455 | Today's atheism will tomorrow become a religion [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: What is regarded as atheism today will be religion tomorrow. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], II) | |
A reaction: Modern critics of atheism frequently accuse it of being a new religion. I doubt whether Feuerbach is right, but it is a nice provocative idea. |