7 ideas
| 7500 | Early Greeks cared about city and companions; later Greeks concentrated on the self [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: For early Greeks their techné for life was to take care of the city, of companions (see Plato's 'Alcibiades'). Taking care of yourself for its own sake starts with the Epicureans, and becomes very general in Seneca and Pliny. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (On the Genealogy of Ethics [1983], p.260) | |
| A reaction: In Aristotle the two strike me as ideally balanced - to become a wonderful citizen by looking after yourself. Presumably the destruction of the city-states by Alexander took away the motive, and the aim became more private. |
| 20945 | Belief is no more rational than is tasting and smelling [Hamann] |
| Full Idea: Belief happens as little in terms of reasons as tasting and smelling. | |
| From: J.G. Hamann (works [1770], v2:74), quoted by Andrew Bowie - Introduction to German Philosophy | |
| A reaction: That is one idea definitively expressed! I take it as only a partial truth. Beliefs happen as a result of observation and experience. But someone can draw our attention to something (and we can hunt it out ourselves), which is giving a reason for belief. |
| 7501 | Why couldn't a person's life become a work of art? [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: Couldn't everyone's life become a work of art? Why should the lamp or the house be an art object, but not our life? | |
| From: Michel Foucault (On the Genealogy of Ethics [1983], p.261) | |
| A reaction: This sounds wonderfully appealing until I try to think how I would implement it. The Augustine move, from sinner to saint, is a possibility, but there is nothing good about sin. The Christian ideal, of colossal self-sacrifice, can be very heroic. |
| 7498 | Greeks and early Christians were much more concerned about food than about sex [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: It is interesting to see the very slow move from the privileging of food, which was overwhelming in Greece, to interest in sex. Early Christians (and rules for monks) were more concerned with food. Sex only dominates from the seventeenth century. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (On the Genealogy of Ethics [1983], p.253) | |
| A reaction: Certainly the Greeks were obsessed with food, and the Sicilian Greeks were notorious for their love of it. Is it simply that food becomes more plentiful, or does female freedom lead to more sex? Puritanism hates the greatest pleasures the most. |
| 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. |
| 7666 | God is not a mathematician, but a poet [Hamann, by Berlin] |
| Full Idea: Hamann's fundamental doctrine was that God was not a geometer, not a mathematician, but a poet. | |
| From: report of J.G. Hamann (works [1770]) by Isaiah Berlin - The Roots of Romanticism Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: [This idea is wonderfully expressed by D.H.Lawrence in his poem 'Red Geranium and Godly Mignonette]. The idea becomes attractive when you ask whether God would need to do mathematics. |